The Queue

How much must one suffer for one's art?

Depends on the factors. This response comes to me with the grace and dignity of hindsight.

I'd been sent an invitation for the private view at the Musée Rodin of the Camille Claudel blockbuster.

Apt terminology for a sculptress I guess. So that the missus could feast on the splendours, we organised a babysitter.

As I was travelling to the museum from the radio station, I got there first only to find out that the private view was anything but.

The queue to get in was a blockbuster.

But since La Claudel suffered for her art, I should at least reciprocate.

It had been raining earlier in the day but the clouds had yielded to a clear, blue sky.

Jolly queueing weather, la di di di da da.

I read my book and 25 minutes later I was at the door to the museum just as the missus arrived.

We were allowed into the foyer only to be ushered politely to another queue.

This one was a beast. And it was barely moving. But it was a beautiful spring evening. And the garden at the museum is a joyous place to be. We really should have taken turns to go for a stroll around it.

But we didn't. We stayed put. We shuffled a few yards and though there was never any doubt that we would eventually get to see the pieces, economics and hunger were starting to wreak their havoc.

With a baby sitter on the clock, waiting was costing and since neither of us had eaten, I was in danger of coming over all reductionist.

And you don't want to do that.

We left.

But in doing so we'd entered the realm of the impromptu. We have three children. We don't do unusual.

We breathe studied.

However by eschewing the queue we were unleashing ourselves into the unplanned. And what's more in a quartier that's not a usual haunt.

So we walked around bits of the 7th - choice, very choice and ended up on Boulevard St Germain.

We took an apero at Cafe Flore. I think the first time we'd been there in the seven or so years that we've been in Paris.

As we sipped our Kirs and observed the other almost as beautiful people, the missus popped out: "Ooh look a mouse."

Like the impromptu, I don't do mice. I hate the cellars in our block because I once saw a rat scurrying off after the missus had gone snooping around somebody's else's cellar.

Cafe Flore's house mouse darted around a bit. Gradually its presence was more widely noted. We drank up to move on to the planned part of the evening and a meal at Chez Casimir in our neck of the woods.

Didn't see anything untoward there. Too busy savouring the cuisine.

But I'm on my guard now about the doyens of Latin Quarter watering holes.

After Cafe (don't look at the) Flore. What next?

Flies in the drinks at Les Deux Maggots?

The Fall

I think it's safe to say that the team is going down. Not only are we losing, we're not even scoring goals. Not even against teams that are not that good.

Watching from the sidelines and even while playing, it seems abundantly clear that the luck is not with us this year.

Of course this goes back to my theory since my perfectly valid goal was disallowed a couple of weeks back.

There were a series of offside decisions given yesterday which were never offside. I rail and fret now but as one of my teammates said afterwards, it's not about the poor decisions.... we were slower than the other team and didn't look as if we wanted to win.

This was a bit odd since last week when we were getting absolutely thrashed, it never became a question of morale.

Yesterdayone of the key players pulled a muscle while warming up. The goalie got hurt during the match, we were low on reserves and seemingly low on energy.

For the first time in four seasons I felt really low. It was quite depressing.

And the poor run continued. Back at home while sitting as a dispirited hunch, prodding at my lunch, the baby sitter phoned to say she couldn't make it on Saturday night.

Just one of those days in just one of those seasons.

I've perked up a bit since yesterday because, after all, it's only a game and it is not my day job.

But I want to do well and feel disappointed when I feel I haven't played my part.

In church this morning there was a christening and the father of the children read If by Rudyard Kipling.

There was a bit about treating triumph and disaster in the same manner. And I laughed wryly to myself.

I've also dipped into the book of footballers' clichés. "Keep my head down and keep working hard."

If I do that luck's bound to turn on the field. Off the field I have to prepare for a week in the Loire starting next Saturday morning.

Forget the football, follow the history and the wine.

Will be difficult. Fontevraud does chime rather ripely with Here we Go.

The Legend Part II

It's been instructive reading the obituaries of Charlton Heston. I never knew he was a civil rights campaigner marching with Martin Luther King and being pro John Kennedy back in the 1960s.

Of course I knew the film roles. My mum took me and my sister to see Ben Hur at the Streatham Odeon. I think she might have even splashed out and taken us up into the Dress Circle there.

I love cinemas. Especially the ones with a big screen. In fact I'm sitting and watching Ben Hur now on the video and it seems odd looking at it without my mum's running commentary.

I phoned my sister yesterday when I got back in from work and when she answered the phone my first words were: 'He will come."

This was uttered by Tribune Messala after the chariot race.

The famous chariot race. One of the obituaries told how Heston actually learned to ride a chariot.

I've read about a homo erotic sub text to the whole thing. Vehemently denied of course by Heston. But with all the male bonding and vendettas going on it's difficult not to see that side.

But I guess you could say that about any sword and sandals epic.

However Ben Hur is the master of them all.

The Legend

I will sing psalms of praise, yea, lift up my heart and rejoice.

Obviously been to church this morning.

And boy did I need to after Saturday's debacle with the football team. We need a miracle and if one happens I will, with a gladsome mind, render up joyful sounds.

I didn't even bother to note the goals. Six? Seven?


The opposition scored from the kick off. The bloke kicked it towards our goal. It hung in the air for so long that the goalie could have tied his shoelaces, picked his nose and set up home with at least three women.

He did none of these things and as the ball descended I looked on disbelievingly from the right wing as it dropped over his head into the goal.

1-0 before kicking a ball. Indeed before even needing to move my legs. Incredible. I simply twisted my torso to face the half way line.

The other side were good in that they kept possession well and those who weren't altogether comfortable on the ball passed it quickly to those who were.

I think it was 4-0 at half time and the only thing I can say that they were trying to showboat a bit in the second half. They weren't that good to do that and did lose concentration a bit. We should have scored one.

Well beaten.

Which is what galley slaves undoubtedly were.

And the scenes in the battle ship in the film Ben Hur remain among my favourites. Not necessarily for all the greased up torsos but for the sadistic cox (it's so homo erotic) who pounds fervently onto a drum the beat for "ramming speed".

My sister was on the phone just after Easter telling me that Ben Hur was on TV in England. I said it was on in France too. I thought of watching it to find out exactly what ramming speed was in French.

Not the kind of thing they teach you at university but more useful to my humour.

I woke up this morning to find out that Charlton Heston had died. He of mighty muscle and ubersquare jaw in various epics such as Ben Hur, the Ten Commandments and El Cid.

I like the bit in that film where he and the amassed armies avow to capture the Saracen stronghold of Valencia.

Chunk Heston turns that jaw into the Cinemascope, bares his strong shiny teeth and utters: "Valencia".

I've always watched Valencia's progress in the Spanish league since.

They're not likely to be relegated; we are.

I'm going to wheel out the videos from my video library of Ben Hur and El Cid in honour of a Hollywood legend.

God rest your soul Chuck. They don't make films like that anymore.

The Splash

There really should be some kind of rule book for people using swimming pools. And in it should be rule one: Don't chose the open area for doddery paddlers to do sprint lengths.

It's a bit like Roger Federer going to the public tennis courts and playing normally with someone like me. Sure we'd all look and wonder at the silky movement and fleet feet but you would ask yourself why.

I found myself posing this question while ambling along in the open area at Parmentier this morning. There was a muscular swimmer who commandeered a lane and went up and down it with dazzling rapidity.

None of the other paddlers dared go anywhere near it for fear of upsetting our local Poseidon. I'm quite surprised none of the lifeguards ushered him into the the lanes for those in need of speed.

The showman slightly overshadowed my paddle but it didn't prevent me from eventually reaching my own goal.

I got out as Mr Muscles continued to make waves. As I was getting my stuff out of my locker I wondered if you could complain about aggressive swimmers.

What would be the etiquette and whose right would be supported?

But given that time is so limited during public swimming sessions before the schools go back in would you want to spend it on such a subjective issue?

It's probably best to do the aquatic equivalent of opening out your newspaper to hide behind.

But even if you keep your head down under the water you can often hear the beeping of the watches telling their wearers they've done 200 miles in just under four and half minutes.

The Renewal

There was a crisis of a kind.

On Monday I looked at my Paris Passe Familles and saw that it expired that very day.

The passe has been the conduit to a world of free swimming and other ancillary benefits such as help with the gas bill and the quarterly charges for the upkeep of the apartment block.

We've got this because of the third child.

I went to the district office which dishes out the pass on Tuesday bright and early after dropping off said third child at crèche.

I showed the assistant the two passes that needed renewing and he said that we shouldn't have two passes. Not at all in order. "How did you get two?"

"We asked and the bloke gave us two..."

"He shouldn't have done that," came the reply. "Perhaps he was leaving," I offered jauntily.

I went in on Tuesday expecting to make an appointment for another day when our dossier could be forensically analysed.

But the man said the card could be instantly renewed as long as I had the 2006 tax returns, the last three pay slips and the most recent bill from the managing agents of the block.

The choice was either to get back before 11am or in the afternoon after 2pm.

An afternoon return would be complicated by the presence of the boy.

I thought why impose bureaucracy on a querulous pup even if his very presence on earth had spawned the trip.

I returned before 11am and got sorted. I asked for a second card but was informed by another assistant that no deviation would be tolerated this time.

Shame.

I deviated myself this morning, opting for a splash at Piscine Parmentier rather than the usual lengths at Piscine Pontoise.

Parmentier, which is a lot nearer - about five mintues away on the bike - has been renovated recently. The lockers don't take money, they have codes. A man kindly explained to me how it worked.

What I'm not so keen on is the mixed shower zone. I was there early enough not to encounter anything remotely approaching a mixed changing zone.

I did see cubicles for other self-conscious types.

The pool itself is bright with an air of cleanliness rather unlike Pontoise which seeps faded splendour. At Pontoise you give your ticket to a man and he shows you to a cubicle and there are separate areas for the men and women to do their pre and post swim ablutions.

I quite like that kind of demarcation, smacks of old world values.

Quite why I should stand on such ceremony beats me. Three children in, inhibitions should, by now, have fled the coil.

It's time to unwind and dance to the rhythm of change. Stop swimming against the tide, so to speak.

The Centurion Part II

It wasn't the fairy tale ending. I was banking on a trademark Beckham free kick. But it didn't come. Just goes to show how much I know about the game.

England lost 1-0 to France and it was a good evening with my mate Neil in the Scottish pub watching France outclass our boys.

Lots of work to do before England become world beaters.

It's getting rather precarious. I might go through my entire adult life without seeing England win the world cup...or a major honour.

But at least I saw Chelsea win something big. Ah the glory days of Jose Mourinho. Not so keen on his successor Avram Grant. In fact right off that whole scenario.

But away from running around after a ball which I shall do this Saturday morning. But to more important things like Kultur.

There's an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier all about Patti Smith.

The last time I went to that venue it was to see David Lynch show his artistic prowess. And jolly weird it was too.

I'm slightly intrigued by the Patti Smith thing because really all I know is the song: Because the night belongs to lovers etc etc. I'm sure there's much, much more to her than that.

Likewise England.