The Drawings

Quite how the Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson got a hold of my Guardian email address, I'll never know. And it seems quite churlish to ask.

The invitation arrived a few weeks ago to go along to the press view of an exhibition on Saul Steinberg at the foundation down in the 14th.

So as today was the day off I went. And it was excellent. Well that's what I wrote in the visitors' book. When confronted with such tomes, there's a pressure to add something spectacular. There was a book in the gite where we stayed in the Loire. I did not consign my thoughts to it.

However when the email from French Country Cottages arrived about whether I was satisfied with my stay, I did fill that out suggesting that it might be a good idea to get the address right.

But at least the telephone number was correct.

Anyway, the Steinberg exhibition was excellent so I thought why not put "excellent". At least I didn't spend minutes trying to be creative. Got on with the task of enjoying the drawings.

A range from the playful to the political. The whole creative gamut.

Sadly the latter has excaped the football team for the season and we're going back down to division two. One inglorious season in the top flight. And it's all over. The team we came up with whom we beat at the beginning of the season is staying up. We've just not adapted well with key injuries and of course I'm sure me going to Ghana and missing six weeks didn't help.

Though I'm not so sure about that given that I've missed two good chances to score a goal in recent matches.

This has caused no end of existential doubt. I do not know what happened for I expected to score.

And the fact that I didn't has left me rather perturbed. Fortunately it was not going to alter the course of the match. But it's all about personal satisfaction.

Just have to get back out there and try again.

Obviously need a midweek five a side football match.

The Blues

Typical that in the year I reduce my fervour for Chelsea, they go and get into the UEFA Champions League final. Of course nothing has been won yet.

But in all the years that I cared, they got to the semi final and lost. But that was with Jose Mourinho. How he made me smile with his antics. There was a savage beauty about the well-drilled teams he sent out. They crushed and yet never ran amok.

But the self-styled special one is long gone.

And now in the winter of my discontent, his baleful successor, Avram Grant, makes glorious summer in the competition. Maybe I should have turned from them earlier.

Since tonight's second leg of the semi final was only being shown on the cable channel, I had to venture out to a cafe to watch it.

Having predicted that Liverpool would go through on penalties after the match ended 1-1, I was not at all surprised to arrive at the cafe as they were taking in Liverpool's equaliser.

It must be said Liverpool looked the likelier to win within the 90 minutes and they did start extra time with more zest.

But to watch Chelsea go 3-1 up was great. But then a touch of the old pre-Mourinho Chelsea crept in and you knew that a two goal advantage with eight minutes remaining still wasn't quite enough.

Moreso since the players seemed to be trying to retain possession but were too inept to perform this basic task and kept gifting the ball to Liverpool who promptly scored a second with four minutes to go.

An equaliser would have sent Liverpool through and even me into despair.

As it was the nervous few minutes passed and two English teams will fight it out in Moscow in three weeks.

My approach is since Manchester United have already won the trophy twice in their history, it's time for somebody else to win.

I know it doesn't work like that. it would be good if it did. It would be brilliant if Jose were still around. He'd look so good lapping up the adulation.

Maybe he'll be in work somewhere next season and my heart can go back into supporting a team.

The Wine

Quite why it surprises me rather surprises me. I telephoned the delivery company on Monday and arranged with the lady there for the 12 bottles of wine to be delivered between 10am and midday.

That way I could take the boy to creche and get back. I forewent my usual coffee at Chez Prune and returned home.

While I waited I set about discarded bits of administration — organising folders and dashing off a few letters.

I felt productive. By 1245 my planned trip to the swimming pool looked in jeopardy so I phoned the delivery company and was told that the driver was in the area.

At 2pm I phoned once again to say that I had to go and pick up my son from the creche. I was informed that the driver was in the area.

Now the 10th arrondissement is not that big so clearly he must have been very busy in the district or well out of it when I called originally.

I've had this sort of lackadaisical approach from other delivery companies. You both agree times and they don't venture anywhere near it.

I got a call at 2.25 from the driver to tell me that he was a minute away from my front door. I said I was five minutes away as I was collecting my son.

I rushed back and still had to wait a few minutes for him to arrive. Maybe they're operating in another time continuum.

Well at least out of the vortex have emerged some bottles of Chablis.

We discovered Chateau Long Depaquit about 18 months ago when we went to stay in Burgundy in the house of a colleague at the Guardian

I know little about the top houses. And in Chablis — such a well scrubbed little zone — they all appeared rather choice.

We stopped off at Chateau Long Depaquit because it had an appealing courtyard where we could park the car while we did our tasting. As the boy was sleeping and the girls didn't want to get out. It seemed the perfect spot.

This all embracing approach now informs our decision on where we stop.

As we were heading into Vouvray last Saturday on our way back from the Loire, we noticed a discreet sign to a vineyard. But I couldn't manoeuvre the motor quickly enough and we went steaming past.

Everything else in the town looked much of a muchness so we returned. Parked the car, got out and waited for the chap on his tractor to come and greet us.

His was a welcome as warm as the Saturday afternoon. He said the girls could go and play on the swing and slide in the garden and off they went chirping.

Within 10 minutes or so I'd transferred driving duties to the missus and 45 minutes or so later we'd both been brought up to date on aspects of local history, met the mother who'd given the girls some orange juice after they'd helped her with the shopping bags from her car.

These being the same children who don't notice their socks on the floor.

But I can't admonish smooth young chancers. Especially when the charm offensive is occurring while I'm rolling the sparkling stuff around my palate.

M Monmousseau is a shrewd operator. He quipped that his Turonien 2006 should be drunk "à l'anglaise".

We had a friend round this evening for supper. We didn't quite reach those heights.

But the wine goes down so well that it was tempting.

Such honesty will be rewarded.

The Chateaux

The Loire was a swollen wonder. So was the Vienne. The Indre and the Cher too. Downpour upon downpour flooded our midst.

We surfaced into sunshine every now and again. And during those interludes I got a sense that this was a really lovely region.

Actually I knew that before I set off having travelled to the Loire in various incarnations of m life.

This was the first as a fully signed up family man. And the three children added a new edge to the chateau tours.

I'm not entirely clear that I learned much more than I knew before. I don't think I've retained it. But I remember thinking it was interesting as I listened before it flooded out of my brain.

We went to Villandry which is about 10 kilometres from the base in Ballan-Miré just west of Tours.

There is a picture of me at Villandry from about 1990 taken by the then live in girlfirend. I remember buying a Stone Island sweatshirt and pair of linen shorts at Harrods for the trip.

The shorts disintegrated long ago and the sweatshirt was left in Ghana after sterling service.

Had I known during the Africa Cup of Nations that I'd be in the Loire a few months later I would have saved it for the sake of symmetry.

The chateau at Azay le Rideau is all about mirror images. The chateau is supposed to relfect in the water. Sad thing was that the water was so murky that day due to the rain that there were no bright shining images to be seen.

Never mind. We went along to see Fontevraud Abbey which has been restored since I was last there.

Can't say I was ushered into the feeling of a medieval nunnery. The parking lot seemed to be in a housing estate and we were directed to the abbey via a building site.

It was more effective when it was less polished. Left more to the imagination. But then again the eldest was quite taken with the fact that Henry II, Richard the Lionheart and Eleanor of Aquitaine were all buried there.

I'm quite taken too. Perhaps I should get her to see A Lion in the Winter and see what she makes of that.

To her credit she got me to go back with her to read the little panel near the tombs.

"How old was Richard, heart of lion, when he died?"

"I'm not sure...." From the mists of my mind I remembered he was in his 40's. I took an interest in Richard, mainly because there used to be a TV series called Richard the Lionheart when I was a kid. And of course there was Robin Hood.

There was definitely a few TV series about him and countless films. Shall we all go into the Errol Flynn canon?

I also went to Nottingham University and worked at the Nottingham Evening Post. So there is a link.

Once back at the gite, after gulping down a sandwich and hot chocolate there was silence and about 20 minutes later the eldest informed me that Richard was 42 when he got une fleche dans la colonne vertebrale (for she was consulting her French library book about the region).

This is the most enriching of all my incarnations.

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.