“We’re going to move to France, to live the simple life….we’ll buy a little cottage in a sleepy little rural village in the sunshine…. We’ll do it up ourselves, live off the land or buy only in local markets….. it will be so much cheaper, so much easier, so few pressures, so much….simpler.”  Er, yeah.

We moved to France, to a sleepy little rural village in the sunshine.  Luckily, we had no illusions, no dream of a simple life. Basically, it was the start of the Celtic Tiger boom in Ireland and we were trying to buy a house in Dublin, but of all the estate agents and auctioneers I visited with our details, not one – not a SINGLE ONE came back to me.  So we said yerrasoditanyway, let’s buy in France instead. Apropos of The Dream, we bought a modern (but local design timberclad) 4 bedroom house with a balcony and a small garden in a good location which would sell easily in case we weren’t happy in France. We were very happy in France. The sunshine was great, but in the Haute Savoie, for 100 days of the year the temperature is below freezing and our little ‘mitoyenne’ house (in the centre of 3, joined by garages) had no fireplace.

After two winters, we though we’d either A: put in a wood stove B: buy a new house or C: freeze to death. Because in France NOTHING is simple (think of the word ‘bureaucracy’  where did it originate?) and it was all such a palaver, we decided to move, but first applied to the Mairie (local administration) for planning permission for a ‘cheminée’ and as soon as we got that, we put the house on the market. Three weeks later it was sold, at one third more than we’d paid for it. To make a long story short, because we loved the area and wanted to remain there, we bought a house down the road, closer to the lake, bigger, detached and surrounded by a large garden. It had a fireplace…..and a swimming pool.

The house was vacated by a family and was ready to move into, and we moved in almost a decade ago. Then we had to live with all the design faults. It is still a work in progress. We tore out the huge, under-effcient fireplace and brought our woodstove over from Ireland and had it installed. We tore up most of the land (a dandelion farm) and are still designing and planting a garden, tore up the hard concrete slabs of the terrace and put a timber deck all around the house, re-built the buanderie (laundry) and installed a sink (imagine having a laundry with no sink….the French are a very odd race) and insulated it and the cave -the wine was boiling in the summer, freezing in the winter, which didn’t do anything for the taste– but the biggest job of all was the swimming pool.

Covered in mosaic tiles which fell off as soon as the temperatures went down, with a circular paddling pool, and a towering pump-house surrounded by concrete pillars, we called it ‘Hearst Castle’ because of its ostentation. The pump house was built high – with imposing concrete steps going up – but was actually below the water-level and accessed by concrete steps going down – and flooded in winter. The over-flow was open and dangerous and ugly, the jets were against the prevailing wind and as it was built so close to the house, at an ‘off’ angle, it was literally an eye-sore. I hated it with a vengeance. Over the first few years, I tried everything to soften the look, Himself tried everything to get the controls working, the water clean. Finally we said yerrasoditanyway, got a big wheelbarrow, filled it full of money and began emptying it into the hole which was supposed to be a swimming pool.

Long story….. which actually involved the filling and emptying into the hole of not one, but several, wheel barrows full of money. We got an Englishman up from the South of France to do the job as the local swimming pool business wouldn’t touch our abomination and it would have been stupid with our halting French to try to make sense of all that was involved in the destruction, re-alignment, modification and re-building, installation of a new control technique and change to a salt-water system.  The job was supposed to take 3 weeks…..it took about 3 months. The Englishman knew his stuff, did the job – eventually – and did it well, but he was completely mad. Himself thought it was from working with all the chemicals….standing in 40C of heat in a semi-enclosed space slathering on fibre-glass can’t be good for the brain…especially when the ensuing thirst is slaked with copious amounts of alcohol.

Finally, it was done…..well not really; since then we’ve been thinking about a water heating system and a winter enclosure – I don’t want the latter as it, also, would be an eye-sore – and of course there are maintenance and water charges and the odd dead mouse/toad and the legal requirement to have it alarmed. Still, we enjoy the pool enormously.

At least we did, until recently we visited Hearst Castle and saw the real thing/s – an outdoor and an indoor pool in all their glory. We are simple folk (we live simply in a little rural village in France, we grow vegetables, buy locally at the markets) who are not acquisitive or prone to jealousy……but in Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, Himself admitted to a very serious case of Swimming pool Envy.

It’s St Patrick’s Day and I am determined to be miserable.   Being miserable is, after all, a tradition on St Patrick’s Day. We Irish (being prone to misery) hold our national holiday on March 17^th when the weather is always awful; cold, wet, often windy…miserable actually.  Not so the French, the Americans (and even the reputedly dour Northern Protestants) who have their festivals in July, when one can take off one’s clothes and have a picnic. Try having a picnic in Ireland in mid March. Harrumph. Bah! Shamrock!

In lieu of shamrock, I put on my green plastic wrist bands this morning. One says “Happy St Patrick’s Day” the other says “Kiss me I’m Irish.” Then I proceeded to sneeze all over the supermarket when I went to get milk (and such festive fare.) Luckily, nobody noticed that I was Irish, nobody kissed me, as all they would have got was a glower and a snake pit of germs. I’ve been invited to a very nice birthday party tonight with a greenish theme (the hosts are French and English) but I don’t think I can go…..I’d only infect the household and their guests with wheezing, sneezing, typically Irish, misery.

St Patrick’s Day was always miserable when we were children in Cork.   Not only was it freezing cold, but the Parade consisted of cement, creamery and sludge removal lorries driving slowly through the city, decorated with no more than a banner advertising the business to which the truck belonged. In the wake of the lorries, breathing in their fumes, walked members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, and their contribution to the gaiety of nations was to polish their lapel pins proclaiming their lifelong vow to eschew alcohol.  And that’s another thing: all the shops, restaurants…. yes and even the PUBS were shut on St Patrick’s Day. There were three days in the year when the pubs were shut: Christmas Day, Good Friday and St Patrick’s Day. Miserable.

On St Patrick’s Day we would go out to the garden and pick some shamrock and pin it to our coats with our badges, which were either bought or home-made – a tri-colour ribbon and a goldy harp. These we would wear to Mass, followed by two hours standing on a street corner in the cold, watching the lorries and the Pioneers and maybe the Carrigaline Pipe band pass by. My father would buy us sweets, because St Patrick’s Day is always in the middle of Lent (miserable time) and we’d have given up sweets as a penance.  My parents would not be drinking wine during Lent, so there would be wine with lunch, chocolates and a cake with green icing for tea.  (My father would also break his abstinence two days later on the feast of St Joseph the Worker whom he considered his patron saint.)   One year my mother was sick for St Patrick’s Day, so my father, in charge of the kitchen, dyed the potatoes green.  We children thought it great gas, history does not record my mother’s reaction when her tray was brought to the bedroom.

It wasn’t until years later that the Majorettes entered the parade scene, knees purple with cold, twirling their batons.   (It was many more years before the Majorettes learned about fake tan, and after that they had very peculiarly  coloured knees indeed.)  In those intervening years, someone decided to market St Patrick’s Day, calling it a ‘Festival.’ Foreign tourists apparently, liked to enjoy themselves. Enjoyment (especially in Lent) was patently A Sin, but the Tourist (or ‘Welcome’) Board managed to dumb down this as tourists were sacred beings who must be appeased….for they had dollars.  Then along came the Galway based Máchnas theatre company (a kind of Cirque du Soleil) who thought up themes for their parade, made fantastic costumes, put people on stilts, had fire eating dragons (or maybe they were snakes) and suddenly, parades became colourful and FUN.

One St Patrick’s Day I really enjoyed.  It was in Berlin and we went to an Irish Embassy party at Museum Insel.  It was absolutely jointed with people of every nationality wearing green something – I wore my black green-shamrock tights – and everybody wanted a drink.   The drink was accessible the noise level was high and the food was in short supply. We left when it ran out and one of the hosts – an Embassy official and his wife – joined us later for supper at home, where, amongst other delights, I had made a St Patrick’s Day tree, with hanging potato baubles…..now THAT was a party!  (The prize for the best decoration goes to my sister -the Elder- who managed to find a green foil banner on which were menorah instead of shamrocks.)

But back to to-day. I can’t stop shivering and sneezing, my eyes are burning, my nose is red and running and my ears hurt. All I want to eat is mango and strawberries.  There are narcissi and Lenten roses to be planted and the Mexican-type decoupage of a Frida Kahlo mirror to be finished. There was a card in the post from my sister (the Younger) the sun is shining, and there is a party to go to.  But I’ll not be cheered up.  It is after all St Patrick’s Day……

My New Year’s Resolution for 2012 was ‘More Culture, fewer shoes.’ “Why Belle?” Because I have so many boots and shoes, sandals and slippers that I have lost count of the number I own. Two months into 2012…..and I’m doin’ good.

In California last month, I only bought 2 pairs of shoes; one sensible (albeit red patent) Aerosoles slides with a wide toe box for running around in cities such as hilly San Francisco.   I also bought a pair of Skele-toes.  “What’s Skeletoes Belle?”

‘Skele-toes’ are basically toe socks made from a nylon/neoprene type material, mostly fastened with Velcro bands and with a ‘bungee-jump’ pull-on loop, bound in bright turquoise, neon pink or sometimes, black.  Flat to conform to the shape of the foot, the toes are moulded into the shoe.  They are not the sexiest footwear.

The character Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) in the TV series “30 Rock” isn’t exactly a fashion icon. Her boss, Jack (Alec Baldwin) himself  self-aware to the point of obcession, (“I only had my dress cuff-links, and one couldn’t wear dress cuff-links with a business suit, so I had to wear a dress suit at work to-day”) impeccably dressed and au fait with current trends, tries to get Liz to dress in a more feminine and alluring manner. Liz, however, dresses for comfort rather than sex-appeal, status or power, and is  more a sweatshirt kind of gal.  One day, in the midst of one of Jack’s criticisms of her ability to attract men, Liz puts her feet up on the table.   She is wearing Skele-toes.   So that’s the kind of shoes they are…..comfortable, ugly, but not sexy.

With their Skele-toes, the sportswear company Fila is cashing in on what is known as ‘the Barefoot Revolution.’ The Barefoot Revolution has been going for some years now, inspired and popularized as a performance enhancer by champion Kenyan athletes who don’t wear shoes when running, and by afficianados advocating mimicking the footfall of unsupported feet for health.  For decades, the manufacturers of trainers and runners encouraged their clientele to buy wider and wider, bigger and bigger, higher and higher-soled heel-padded shoes – people actually killed for them in the Christmas sales in England.  Now the thinking is that by having padding under the heel, we have learned to land on the heel rather than on the ball of the foot, which impededs the absorbsion of the ‘striking’ shock by the arch and the lower leg, causing it to be sent up the heel to the knees and hips. Now the trend is towards thin-soled athletic shoes which encourage the foot to move as though barefoot. The original ‘barefoot running’ shoe was the Vibram Five Toes. The soles of Skele-toes represent the bones of the feet and there are 4 toes instead of 5, which the makers call ‘easy slide’ and thus claim a new product. There are pros and there are cons to barefoot-mimicking shoes, and there is an interesting history of how this new thinking came about, but I couldn’t be bothered going into it all here……(However, if you really want the background, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running)

Though I love, love, love shoes, from May to September, I am happiest being barefoot. I have stood on a bee which was very painful to both bee and me, I have stood on thumbtacks (a different kind of painful) and I ruin my pedicure and nail varnish with stones and mud.  My friend Janis recoils at the sight of my green grass-stained lizard heels and my daughter has gone so far as to buy me dry-foot cream….but I am rather proud of my carefully cultivated leather-hard soles, brown toes and excellent grip on rockeries and wet timber.

The compromise is Skele-toes, which I found in California. The ground here in the French Alps is still very hard and cold, so I have not yet really tried my fine new toe shoes, though for the photograph, I walked a wee bit by the lake…..and the mud squelched up through the soles.  I don’t mind wet feet in warm weather  – though I do believe that with wear, the shoes stink to high heaven – but so long as they have good grip on a Stand Up Paddle board, who needs sexy?

For St Valentine’s Day I got a Titian, Holbein, Cezanne and a Renoir, several Rembrants, Monets, El Grecos and Dagaseses and Van Gough’s “Irises.”    I also got a signed card from a man called Valentine.

To celebrate the feast day of St Valentine, I didn’t want to do anything that smacked of what the Americans call “V Day” and whose theme, rather than roses being red and violets blue, could be “SHOP! ….in the name of love.” So we went to the Getty Centre, perched on a 750-acre site in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking Los Angeles. Admission to the Getty is free…admittedly, if you don’t take public transport, parking costs $15, but then a dinky little electric tram takes you up from the noise and the traffic below, up the hill to an oasis of calm, beauty and heart-lifting food for the spirit. In a series of pavilions built campus-style around terraces and gardens are the collections, lecture halls, reading rooms, research, education and conservation institutes and the public facilities.

On St Valentine’s Day, as a special treat, the Getty Centre had invited a sculptor by the same name to be in attendance. As we were coming in, the staff – predominantly middle-aged women – suddenly went all a-flutter as a strongly built man in a black hat, red embroidered Western shirt and red shoes entered, riding a motorized wheelchair. This was De Wain Valentine, who had made “The Grey Column,” a towering, tapered monolith of smooth, semi-transparent, reflective cast polyester resin on show in the West Pavilion. Begun in 1975 and weighing almost 2 tonnes, it measures approximately 3m x 2 m (12ft high by 8ft wide) which is slightly higher than the Berlin Wall.

Talk about a hunk……and I don’t just mean the ‘Grey Column’…. It may have been the “looming interplanetary sentinel”, it may have been the red shirt and the red shoes, but I was one of those middle-aged women all a-flutter on St Valentine’s Day when he signed my bright red heart-shaped museum card offering a ‘sweet treat.’  (These were chocolates, which were all gone by the time we got there, but who cares….I got to meet The Man.) He was so polite he called me “Ma’am” and when I mentioned the light sourcing, light bending work of James Turrell (who began  experimenting with light in his Santa Monica studio in 1966) he sweetly flagged their familiarity, calling him “Jim.”

De Wain Valentine was born in Colorado in 1936, moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and still lives and works in California. A minimalist sculptor, he is associated with the Light and Space movement of the 1960s and so is part of a re-examination and re-evaluation of the West Coast art scene 1984–80 currently being celebrated throughout the state. It was a time of great vibrancy, an era of change and experimentation, the fruits of which are now both widely accepted and still influential and inspirational art forms.

Valentine was a pioneer in the use of (often dangerous, often toxic) synthetic materials such as fiberglass and Plexiglas, acrylics and polyester resins in art. There was plenty of the stuff about, from the surf boards being designed, made, used, abused and mended right outside the door, to the local automotive industry, and NASA and the aerospace industry up and down the road, but it was not considered an artistic medium. As a young fella, De Wain Valentine worked in a studio in Venice Beach open to the street, so that if his materials blew–up (which they could, and did, they were prone to spontaneous combustion) he could get the barrels, the work in progress – or himself – out fast. He wanted to celebrate the light, the sea and the air of that marvelous coast and from his childhood in Colorado, fascinated by the mines, he equated industrial products swith creativity. Desperate for the materials to (more safely) produce his creations, melding art, science and technology, De Wain Valentine was instrumental in developing a modified polymer resin with which large objects could be cast in a single pour. This is sold today as ‘Valentine MasKast resin.’

The work of De Wain Valentine is the embodiment of the slightly skewed vision and reflection which is, and produces, California’s cultural creativity, from architecture to painting to music and film. Not just the West Coast girls are hip….. period Los Angeles art is super cool at the moment….and the East Coast is getting in on the act. In 2010 the Museum of Modern Art in New York re-hung a Valentine piece from 1966 as the centerpiece of a room devoted to Minimalism. The other day I was delighted to see De Wain Valentine named as one of the sculptors included in a major show of 150 works of Los Angeles Art in various mediums from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection which opened last Sunday last (March 4^th) at the Parrish Museum in Southampton New York.  “EST -3: Southern California in New York” – meaning “Eastern Standard Time minus 3 hours” – refers to “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980” the Getty inspired series mentioned above, which is the largest arts project ever to take place in Southern California, with some 60 cultural institutions celebrating the art of the West Coast.

This is a lovely short video by the Getty Institute on the people and the magical times:  http://www.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/explore-the-era/archives/v47/)

Any of the pix in this piece which aren’t my own are probably Getty….most pix are probably Getty…… 

When we were secondary school students, girls who were not especially academic did Domestic Science, the boys Technical Drawing. In America, it was more or less the same except that they had more facilities; girls did Home Economics, boys did Shop. Domestic Science was basically cooking and sewing, ‘Shop’ was skills such as carpentry and metal work, often taught by a non-academically trained practitioner.

I wanted to do Art and Latin but also loved all that was involved in the vital, creative science of homemaking, so I merely sat the Dom Sci examination without having attended any classes (and was disappointed not to get an honour.) I would have loved the opportunity to go to ‘Shop.’  Sure I can wash 44 pairs of socks and have ‘em hangin out on the line, I can starch and iron 2 dozen shirts ‘fore you can count from 1 to 9, I can scoop up a great big dipper full of (home-grown, home-made) pesto sauce from the freezer, throw it in the microwave, go out and do my shopping and be back before it melts in the pan. I can rub and scrub this old house til it’s shinin’ like a dime, feed the baby, grease the car and powder my face all at the same time, get all dressed up, go out and swing till 4 am, lay down at 5, jump up at 6 and start all over again….. ‘cause I’m a woman (W.O.M.A.N…I’ll say it again) but it has always grieved me that I can’t make concrete. It’s a gender thing – men won’t share The Knowledge but it’s also an equipment thing (exacerbated by living in France, as I don’t have the vernacular for the materials.)

I adore mechanical tools and am a complete sucker for any of the handy yokes they sell in Lidl. I have a Dremel, but still, every time I see a similar set with its associated diamond and carborundum drills, sanding cutting and polishing bits in Lidl, I want it.  I had to bully my husband into buying a small electric saw and now he won’t let me use it….keeps telling me there is a difference between a band saw, jig-saw and a circular saw (and at any given time that they won’t achieve what I want to do)…. and besides, they’re too dangerous.

Recently we spent some time in California. When she heard we were going, our friend Margaret Heffernan urged Himself to visit TechShop. (Margaret is an international businesswoman, speaker and writer, author of such books as ‘The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto about Business and What Really Matters’ and ‘How She Does It.’ Her most recent book ‘Willful Blindness’ was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of 2011. She is not easily impressed.) So Himself went along one morning and was so enthusiastic that he brought me there that afternoon. It was love at first sight.

Inside the unassuming door beside the main TechShop building in an unassuming neighbourhood – which is actually assuming the mantle of being a start-up haven – the first thing we encountered was what appeared to be an orgasmatron….actually an art installation (TechShop encourages artists and entertains artists in residence)  a “Heart Monitor Amplifier Chair” which went boom boody-boom boody-boom boody boom depending on my level of energy/relaxation/excitement. In San Francisco TechShop is housed at 926 Howard in an old newspaper building with attendant high ceilings and open floor space. It embodies the karma, the creative osmosis attained over decades through the smell of ink, the clank of type through hot and cold press, and the immediate production of the work of passionate thinkers, writers, printers, artists, skilled craft and tradespeople, all reflecting the times that were in it, the ideas, concerns and events of the day.

Founded in 2006 by Jim Newton, a former full-time Science Advisor on the Discovery Channel’s TV show “MythBusters” and serial entrepreneur who holds several design patents he created TechShop because he needed a place to build his own inventions, TechShop is a membership based DIY workshop and fabrication studio, a centre for innovation and invention, that provides its members with a space, access to tools and equipment, instruction and a community of creative and supportive people, to facilitate the creation of nebulous ideas. It is your dream garden shed where not only is everything accessible twenty four seven, but if the machine breaks down, someone else will fix it, if you don’t know how to do the next fiddly bit, someone will teach you, and when you want a cuppa, there will be like-minded people to sit and sup with you. If your bits and pieces (kept because they are Bound to Come in Handy Some Day) are taking over the entire shed – and the living room – there is storage space available and if you want to hold a celebratory party when you finish making your birch bark canoe or the first sale from your start-up, spray painting your bicycle or hang an exhibition of your oeuvres or entertain potential investors in your new business – you can have a large room for the event.

For $99 a month, inventors, makers, hackers, tinkerers, artists and crafters, entrepreneurs – anyone, regardless of skill level- who wants to be able to make things, can use TechShop. TechShop has milling machines and lathes, welding stations and a CNC plasma cutter, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws, (gulp) industrial sewing and long arm quilting machines, hand tools, plastic and wood-working equipment (including a 4 X 8 ShopBot CNC router) CAD and fabrication facilities, Epilog laser cutters, sand and acid etchers, tubing and metal bending machines, electrical supplies and tools and (fall down in a dead faint)….a Dimension SST 3-D printer. (I asked Santa Claus for a 3D printer last year, but he let me down. I am beginning to doubt if Santa Claus really exists.)

If you have an idea, want to put it in action but don’t have The Knowledge or know-how to use the machines involved, TechShop will organize a course….in fact, they give you a ‘Safety and Basic Use’ class before you are allowed use the machines. It’s all about encouragement and support. They mean what they say:  “Don’t be afraid to try new things, whether it is welding, using a milling machine, working with fabrics and leather or plastics, or cutting keyways in a gear. The whole point of TechShop is to empower you with a wide variety of new capabilities so you can start to see the pathway that lets you make new and exciting things.” It would be untrue to say that the highest aim of TechShop is the creation of industry, businesses and employment, because any idea, any desire to create, is treated with the same respect as the building of a marketable prototype or an entrepreneurial start-up. TechShop’s highest aim is really to celebrate the creative spirit and encourage those looking for ways to get back to the art of making it themselves.

To quote Margaret Heffernan’s article for CBS News: “Recent TechShop successes include Patrick Buckley’s  award winning Dodocase. The trap for inventors used to be that you needed money to make a prototype but since you couldn’t get it without proof of concept, you never got off the ground. But Buckley – a research scientist – joined TechShop, used its ShopBot (a robotic carving tool) to prototype his iPad case and had a finished version for under $500. In less than a year he had over a million dollars in sales.” “Similarly, Jack Dorsey and Jim McElvey used TechShop to prototype ‘Square’, a gadget that plugs into you riPhone and turns it into a credit card terminal. It was something McElvey needed – he lost business when his customers didn’t have cash or cheques – but as a glass blower, hardware design and manufacture wasn’t his forte. It wasn’t Dorsey’s either; one of the co-founders of Twitter, software was his patch. But they could prototype the whole thing using TechShop’s equipment and expertise.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-44341288/techshop-the-cheap-easy-innovation-revolution/ ) http://www.inc.com/margaret-heffernan/how-to-build-great-corporate-collaborations.html

There are now TechShops in North Carolina and Detroit and three in California, with others in the pipeline in Portland (“Put a bird on it”) Oregon and New York.  Over supper with friends in San Jose a few weeks ago (see blog “Finding Joans”) we wanted to tell them about this wonderful facility.  They smiled knowingly. “We’re investors” they said. Jeff and Joan use the facilities regularly; Jeff to make bits for cars, Joan to work on polymers, cements and acrylics or anything that takes her fancy.

I want to marry TechShop….I want to have its babies…….

Joan and Miriam, Cork, circa 1973

Two friends with Joan, Sherkin Island circa 1973

We were wild.  We had long hair we wore long skirts and embroidered waistcoats and carried big bags we’d made ourselves out of textiles we’d found, scrounged, bought in markets, re-jigged. It was the ‘Seventies and we were wild. I was working part-time in a crafts co-operative while engraving glass and doing the odd bit of writing and Joan was an art student. Though two years younger than I, she had already been married, had a son and broken up with her husband. One didn’t have a baby four months after getting married and then break up with one’s spouse within 3 years in Cork in the ‘Sixties. But then, Joan was American and Joan was Joan.

Life was very hard for a single parent in Cork in the ‘Seventies. Our friend Miriam and I used to take turns babysitting baby Shane when Joan worked as a life drawing model in the School of Art at night. Shane used to climb up into the hot press (airing cupboard) and hide when we tried to put him to bed. I remember her once cooing “Oh look at the birdie on your t-shirt” to which the four year old replied “That’s not a birdie…it’s a fucking duck.” She had free housing and free child care when she was at class, but that was it. Joan, strong, independent, resourceful and hardworking, couldn’t hack it. She left Cork and went back to her family in Florida.

She left me some of her pots; a large bowl, pale blue and sandy with 6 small bowls to match and a vase which had slumped in firing and was concave instead of convex, and a round domed piece from which the glaze had flaked at the top. The domed piece marks a path between the terrace and the lawn through a rose arch.  The concave vase has been with me in every house in which I’ve ever lived. We call it my wabi-sabi, as in the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection, celebrating cracks and crevices. Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry – roughness or irregularity – simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes.

We met once since, when Joan came back to Cork for a visit….can’t remember when…possibly in the early ‘eighties. Last Autumn, she wrote a comment on this blog, saying hello and that she was now living in California.  I wrote back, but when Joan didn’t reply, I thought she wasn’t really all that keen on getting back in touch.

In February, we were in California and I went to the San Jose Museum of Art.  Their featured show was called “This Kind of Bird Flies Backward” paintings by Joan Brown. The gallery described it as “exploring the work of this beloved and pivotal Bay Area artist in the centre of the women’s movement and staking a claim for her place American art history.”

Joan Brown was born in 1938 and studied art in San Francisco, receiving national recognition for her work by the age of 22, when she was the youngest artist featured in “Young America 1960” at the Whitney in New York, was included in a travelling exhibition “Women in American Art” and in a ‘Look’ magazine feature along with well established practitioners such as Georgia O’Keefe. At the time, female artists and their work did not garner the same level of attention, respect or serious consideration as male artists; they tended to be treated as disciples, followers and even imitators of the styles and artistic movements of men.

Joan Brown started painting big with exuberant brush strokes and thick layers of paint (impressive stuff.) Her approach to sculpture – using nontraditional materials such as scraps of fur or fabric, cardboard and wood – was spontaneous and casual. Her style changed over the years; her paintings, always deeply introspective, became lighter, more defined. Her art and her life were inseparable and her art chronicled her life; the life of a successful artist in a time of seismic global change, a tremble terre celebrated with wild abandon in the culture, mores, social structure, politics, religions and life of the West Coast of the United States. In her examination and exploration of her life in order to paint it, she depicted the role and representation of women in society at the time. She was apolitical however, and did not align herself to any one group and as a result – though they preached that the “personal is political” -Joan Brown’s unique approach to everyday events and objects, to subjects of domesticity, gender, identity, aging, relationships and motherhood excluded her from her feminist sisters. Joan Brown married three times, and had one child, a son. In 1990, she died in a construction accident while installing an obelisk in Prodattur, India.

“This Kind of Bird Flies Backward” is taken from the title a book of poetry by Diane di Prima, who came to prominence as a Beat poet of the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties and is currently Poet Laureate of San Francisco. As part of a literary movement dominated by men, di Prima also focused her writing, as Joan Brown did in her paintings, on subjects stereotypically associated with women. Brown said that she “got very pissed off” when people made gender-based distinctions….“it’s such bullshit.”  “At a certain point, you couldn’t tell my paintings from any of the guys’ of my generation, except that in some cases mine might have been better.”

Something – no, not something – LOTS reminded me of my old friend Joan.

When the Museum closed, I took the Caltrain north to Los Altos. Away from the demands of home, one has time for research and back at my hotel on the Camino Real I began searching the internet for Our Joan. I found someone who looked like her, but this woman was an established member of the establishment, an upstanding member of the community.  She had a proper job – had worked for the same company for 17 years – and yes, she had the right maiden name and was doing artistic stuff…..but it couldn’t be Our Joan….Our Joan would be wearing drippy dippy clothes and living in a yurt in a commune in a field with a dread-locked wuz -probably keeping him – by her efforts –  in roll-ups and fuel for their  van and they’d both be strung out on rock and roll.

First I found Shane. Shane, the four year old hiding in the airing cupboard is a Maverick Giant Wave surfer, dedicated to wholefoods and good living, husband, and father of two. Eventually, I found Joan, and sent her a message. Next morning she called and invited me for lunch at her home. When we drove down the street, Joan came running out the door and we met in the median and hugged. Then we talked for 4 hours. She showed me around her house and her studio, the work she had done in the garden, her gorgeous decorative finishes, photographs of her grandchildren (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1591454353538.89897.1451271877&type=1) We hopped in her low-slung sporty car and went for a Mexican lunch. She was different, but she was the same….and I think the feeling was mutual. Four decades had elapsed and sad as it is to have to admit it, we’d grown up. We’re still wild at heart, but it’s a kind of responsible, respectable, wild. Because we got on so well, we reckoned our husbands would also get on well together, so she asked us for supper that weekend.

Joan has been married three times (well, so have I, but two of these times to the same person)  and this time, she’s found the love of her life. Jeff – uber trendy, uber sexy – works locally in the uber trendy, uber sexy electric car industry. Himself and Himself (a bit of alright) got on famously. They spoke the same language, even liked and disliked the same foods. Sitting around the circular table, eating good food, drinking good wine, talking of new ideas and concepts, laughing, telling stories of people who are gone, times past, future adventures, we were like old friends…….

Isabel and Joan, San Jose California, 2012

(information on the artist Joan Brown from the San Jose Museum of Art catalogue)

Today is my daughter’s birthday. We do not know what life will bring, except that we get what we wish for (i.e. a daughter, snow) and what if I had known that three decades later, I would be spending this auspicious day tromping in the French Alps?  Today we went snowshoeing.  Because the French for snowshoes is ‘raquettes’ we call the activity ‘racquetteering’….which translates better when spoken than written.

Still and calm, the sun was shining from a clear blue sky, the perfect day for the mountains, half an hour up the road to the Semnoz, our local local ski station. The Semnoz isn’t a resort per se, there are lifts and well groomed trails for all the snow sports, ski schools and gear rentals, a few restaurants and good parking, but no high-rise hotels, shops or après ski. In the summertime, cows graze on the pistes and the only commerce is the sale of cheese. With regular buses from the city and easy access from the mountain villages and the towns along the lake, the Semnoz is very much an Annecy community amenity, frequented predominantly by local people. (http://www.semnoz.fr/)

It was absolutely gorgeous.  Some French Departments have school holidays this week so there were lots of families and children out on the slopes and because the snow is so good and the weather so fine, it was ‘crowded’ (see pix.) The only problem was the heat.  When we started out from home at 400 metres, it was 7C degrees. At the top of the Semnoz, (1,700metres) it was 9C degrees, but because we were closer to the sun if felt much hotter. (Yeah, OK Brian Cox….it was hotter, right?)

We sat on a rock and ate baguette sandwiches and drank hot chocolate we had brought with us. At that stage, I began to divest myself. First I took off my gloves (silk, a present from Canada) then I took off my big jacket (Lidl) then my sleeveless body warmer (Pucci for Rossingol) then my polar neckfleece (purchased in Skibbereen, stolen from the daughter) and zipped polar fleece jacket (Patagonia.)

We rubbed on sunscreen and clipped on our raquettes and off with us, over the hills and far away. With the exertion, it felt even hotter, so off came my fleece top (Patagonia) and when I was down to my silk vest (Manor) I lay down on my backpack on the snow and sunbathed.

The television news has just begun. All sorts of stuff may be happening out in the world, but the biggest, the top story in France tonight is that hospitals in the skiing areas – particularly Grenoble – are critically overcrowded. Three reasons are given: the ‘flu epidemic, the viciously cold weather of the past weeks which caused respiratory difficulties and the high number of skiing accidents. Wear a helmet the doctors urge.

That’s all very well, but you’d be too hot……….

www.nfb.ca/film/buffy

This week’s second day was Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Pancake Tuesday.  According to nephew Thomas, there is a French tradition that having a coin in your pocket while making the pancakes ensures good luck and money for all of Lent. I rarely question Thomas, but in this instance, I dunno…..for pancakes on Mardi Gras is not a French tradition, their “Jour des Crêpes” is February 2^nd, Candlemas or “La Chandeleur,” so maybe the tradition is for that day, not the moveable Shrove Tuesday.

In matters of superstition and fortune however, one has to suspend one’s disbelief. Himself went upstairs and came down with an American dime and a Swiss cent saying “two strong currencies.” Finding that my Mardi Gras costume of cords and sweater had no pockets, I put the dime in one side of my bustenhalter, the cent in the other. Thus breastplated, I made crêpes which fixed on the pan in the shape of Great Slave Lake and then, adding some self-raising flour to the mixture, make drop-scones like speech bubbles. The latter we ate in the Cork way, with butter, lemon juice and sugar – pale gold maple sugar – a gift from my friend Fiona in Canada. Enjoying the crêpes with some Vin de Noix from walnuts gathered at the end of our driveway in the autumn facilitated sentimental thoughts of Canada and Fiona. Fiona has just been awarded a 3M National Teaching Fellowship for Exceptional Teaching and Learning at Canadian Universities, one of only 10 fellowships awarded each year by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, sponsored by 3M (think sticky tape and Post-It notes.)

Peesee Pitsiulak, Dr. Fiona Walton, and Elisapee Karetak at UPEI's May convocation in 2009

Dr Fiona Walton, Professor of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island Charlottetown, is a graduate of University College Cork where her late father, Dr Gerald A.Walton was a much loved and revered member of the Zoology Department teaching staff. Her own philosophy is “teaching toward bettering selves, teaching beyond the classrooms and teaching toward caring and democratic communities” and this, according to her nominator for the award was exactly what she has demonstrated throughout her work in education for over 30 years. “She is known as a visionary, a determined and courageous educator who makes a difference and creates a lasting legacy in aboriginal education. Her work has expanded the notion of what, and where, a university can be in the Canadian context.” This was exemplified on Canada Day 2009, when at a conferring in Iqaluit, 21 Inuit women students graduated with Master of Education degrees. Fiona was instrumental in establishing the groundbreaking Leadership in Learning MEd programme out of UPEI, the first post-graduate degree to be offered in Nunavut.

Thinking of Canada and Fiona over the maple-sugared pancakes, I thought of Buffy Sainte-Marie, who had turned 71 the day before. Buffy Saint-Marie is best known as a singer-sogwriter, but she is also a UNESO spokesperson and a committed educator with particular interest in First Nation and indigenous minority education. (The MEd programme for which Fiona won her award was set up to encourage a school system that reflects the culture, language and values of Inuit communities, parents and students by providing Inuit leaders for the Nunavut school system; local people with an Inuit perspective on teaching, history and intra-personal relationships. This vast area now has 100 Inuit teachers with undergraduate degrees, but the great majority of principals are ‘Qallunaat’ – from the South.) A believer in the importance of early learning, Buffy Sainte-Marie – often with her son Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild – was a regular on the Sesame Street Children’s Television Workshop programme between 1975 and 1981. In one lovely segment, Big Bird questions her in wonderment as she breastfeeds baby ‘Cody. ’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-L-Fg7lWgQ)

Born on February 20^th 1941 in a Cree Indian reserve in Saskatchewan in Canada, Buffy Sainte-Marie was raised in Maine and Massachusetts with adopted parents, relatives of her biological parents. Growing up, she taught herself to play piano and guitar and attended U.Mass. at Amherst where she obtained a primary degree in Oriental Philosophy and Education(1963) and a PhD (1983) in Fine Art. She has also received honorary Doctorates of Laws (double) Letters, Music, and Fine Arts degrees from various Canadian Universities and is a member of the Order of Canada. A Nashville star and Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA ‘Best Original Song’ winner (for “Up Where We Belong” – with Will Jennings, and her former husband Jack Nitzsche – from the film “An Officer and a Gentleman”) her songs include a lament for the buffalo and her subjects include war and religion as well as spirituality and love. It was she who wrote “Universal Soldier” (which is so closely identified with the neo-Corkonian singer Donovan, as to have become almost his own.) A visual artist she is also a pacifist and social activist devoted to issues relating to the First Nation peoples of the Americas, in particular the plight of Native American children in residential schools.  Married three times, and in a fourth partnership since 1993, she lives on a Hawaiian island.

When I first married in 1994, we asked Deirdre and Seamus Creagh to provide the music.  Seamus played the fiddle and during the ceremony in the Collegiate Chapel of St Finbarre in University College Cork, Deirdre sang “The Wedding Song” by Buffy Sainte-Marie from her 1967 album “Fire and Fleet and Candlelight.” Fiona’s parents, Doc and Mrs Walton heard Deirdre sing the Canadian’s song in the Honan that day. Seamus is now, sadly, deceased, but a meeting in 2000 with the young Newfoundland accordion player Graham Welles resulted in a collaborative recording of traditional music of both their home countries for the 2002 album “Island to Island.” Seamus spent five years living in Canada (Labrador and Newfoundland) Fiona Walton some 35, between Arctic Baffin and gentle Prince Edward Island.

Even writing the words “Fire and Fleet and Candlelight”now, after all those years, excites me, and I can hear in my head Buffy Sainte-Marie’s deep slow voice, the sustained, recurring vibrato, which was the background to so many of my times and our gatherings, in the ‘Sixties and ‘Seventies. Maybe it was this presentation (sometimes exaggerated by the use of electronics) resembling as it does, a First Nation mouth-music not at all strange, but rather identifiable, to those attuned to Irish Sean Nós. Buffy Sainte-Marie was part of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, along with fellow Canadians such as Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, who also provided the sound-track to our (mostly) ill-spent and wildly entertaining youth. (When I think of all the good times that I wasted, having good times.)

Now wouldn’t it be just lovely if Buffy Sainte-Marie were to make the Convocation speech for the next group of Inuit UPEI MEds in Iqaluit?……….

Until last night, I was a Raclette Virgin. My friends around the supper table wouldn’t believe it….couldn’t believe it. To have lived in the Haute Savoie for over a decade and never done Raclette……”NEVER”? they quizzed, dumbfounded “Never EVER?” It was as though they had discovered I’d never ridden a bicycle or been in a Museum. Christian joined his hands, bowed his head and said I deserved a monument “L’église de la Vierge de la Raclette.” “La Vierge de la Raclette, priez pour nous” he intoned as The Cheese Ceremony began.

Raclette is more than just a cheese, it is an Alpine tradition, eaten religiously in some households every Saturday night. Sister to the fondue, made individually by each diner at the table, it is served as small (raw) slices, accompanied by boiled potatoes, ruffles and rosettes of thinly sliced cured hams and salamis (“charcuterie”) and bowls of gherkins and pickled silver-skin onions. According to Diana Henry in her wonderful book “Roast Figs and Sugar Snow” my bible of cold weather cooking “Raclette is an ancient mountain cheese made in the French Savoie and the Calais region of Switzerland. Once heated, on a grill, it becomes sweetly savoury and wonderfully elastic, perfect for scooping up with bread or potatoes.”

Diana Henry quotes the cookware company Le Cruset as reckoning that two in every ten British households owns a fondue set.  Certainly, this might have been true in the ‘Seventies, when fondue parties (and, let’s face it, wife swapping…see “The Ice Storm” film) were all the rage, but nowadays, I dunno.  There is a storm of protest over posters of “Your Thighs on Cheese” which have been posted on highways in upstate New York -ironically just before this weekend’s ice storm – by a vegan advocacy group in a campaign against dairy foods, to spread the message that meat and dairy will make you fat. Fondues, raclettes and their other sister Tartiflette (potatoes boiled, sliced, sautéd in butter with diced fat bacon, then covered with slices of Reblochon cheese and spoonfuls of crème fraiche and baked in the oven) have never gone out of fashion in Switzerland the French Alps. It is, however, winter food and sun-burned tourists who order these heavy dishes outdoors on a balmy evening are of course served, but dismissed as …..well, tourists…..by wait staff in lake-side restaurants. However, so loyal are natives and besotted skiers to their cheese-based dishes, that it is not unusual to see cars in our area with the bumper sticker “In Tartiflette we Trust”

At the Fete de St André market in the first week of December in Annecy, raclette is cooked on the city streets in huge half moons over a burner. When hot, the cheese is dolloped and spread onto halved baguettes and squidged together again over a good scoop of frites, to be eaten on the hoof with mulled wine or cider. Last night, sitting around the table, each diner was given a little square pan and a wooden scraper. In the centre of the table was an electric grill, with space for eight of these pans. A basket of bread, plates of sliced raclette cheeses, charcuterie, gherkins and onions was passed around. While our cheese was cooking, we helped ourselves to boiled potatoes from the bowl on top of the grill, and by the time a potato was cut on our plates, the bubbling cheese was ready to be scraped from the pan directly onto it and eaten with the meat.

I lost my raclette virginity last night with affectionate bantering, community support, guidance and mutual enjoyment, minimum fuss and maximum pleasure.

But I durst not look at my thighs this morning…….

We live at 480 metres. At 9 pm on January 13^th it was -1.5C outside. We have some electric underfloor heating downstairs, but no central heating upstairs or in the house generally.  Today, we did not light our wood-burning stove in the living room until until 5 pm. Supper finished and about to watch some television, we are snug at 25C.

At this time of year, in our part of the French Alps it would not be unusual for the daytime temperature to be –5C, the nighttime temperature to be -10C. At the moment, the birds – though very glad of their well-stocked, multi-storey diner in the garden – are experimenting with their Springtime songs. The Irish tv news reports plants sprouting and budding 2 -3 weeks early, but the nice weatherwoman (with the bad wardrobe) is saying not to be too complacent, that the winter might yet arrive. At home in Ireland in December, a brother-in-law bought for Christmas presents, a dozen pairs of those silly looking (but effective) shoe grips to give purchase on ice. My niece gave me a glovely scraper for de-icing the car windscreen. Sorry Mark, no takers for your crampons, sorry Rachael, haven’t even taken your scraper out of its box.  It’s cyclical, I know, but this ‘not knowing the seasons but for the length of the days’ (prophesies of St Columcille) is a bit discombobulating.

At 1,000m., there’s snow in these here mountains with bright clear skies by day or dense fog.   The conditions are perfect for the Grand Odyssee, the European version of the Alaskan Iditarod Dog Sled race.  ( See:   http://www.grandeodyssee.com/fr/62/Programme-détaillé/) The Grand Odyssee, with international dog teams and A-List mushers, began on January 7^th and runs (literally) until the 18^th…..The current leg is in the Savoie – Manche Haute Maurienne Vanoise.  I may yet get up to see them…I really, really want to be a musher.

We have not yet done any snowshoeing, I haven’t yet this season clicked into a pair of Nordic skis, wobbled a bit, got my feet entangled and fallen down (albeit while wearing the very best of Extreme Sports Gear.)  We had snow for a few days down here, but it was wet and unreliable (what I call ‘Cork snow’.) It was not good enough to make an igloo, or to roll in to clean my fur coat. The latter is a handy household hint learned in Iqaluit in Nunavut: parents gladly give polar bear skins to the children to use as toboggans (furside downside) in order to clean them.

In the meantime, here is a short video so that we may be prepared when the snows return (ah, where are the snows of yesteryear?) by the Exceedingly Excellent National Film Board of Canada whom God preserve.  How to build an igloo It is from 1949 so the delivery is a bit dated (and I get antsy when Eastern Arctic First Nation peoples are called ‘Eskimos’ rather than Inuit, but the 1940s weren’t exactly known for their political correctness.) The design and the skills demonstrated have never been bettered– and probably never will – and they are presented with respect. It is, as the narrator says, a perfect design.

Oh to have a little igloo, to own the soapstone and stool and all; the heaped up Arctic cotton grass and seal oil beside the kudlik, the pile of furs against the ice blocks.…..but if I can’t have the snow, maybe I could have the Hermes scarves?