Au revoir á Europe

And as the sun sets slowly over the Champs-Élysées we say, not ‘Adieu’, but a fond ‘Au revoir’ to Paris and to Europe…

Actually it’s not quite that easy. First we had to get from London to Paris, and then we have to wait until midday tomorrow to start flying home. The last train trip has been taken, and next time I’m going in First. I’ll stick with Economy for the flight.

I write this on our balcony at the Hôtel Cecelia five floors above in Avenue Macmahon. I have a very good view of the Arc de Triomphe a couple of hundred metres up the road, but more interestingly of the traffic circulating around it – Paris traffic is especially enjoyable in the roundabouts, and the Arc de Triomphe sits in the middle of the granddaddy of them all. All it would take is a couple of cameras and you would have a very popular cable channel, Canal Etoile.

After checking in we strolled up to the Champs-Élysées. As the song goes, the Champs-Élysées is a busy street, full of tourists gawking at the sights and marvelling that they’re in Paris. I know a couple of people who did that about two months ago, so we forgive them. Chocolate at Ladurée, an establishment near Etoile that sells, well, chocolate, and back up the road and the subway under Etoile (the roundabout) to get to the Arc.

The only word is massive. Not the Arc de Triomphe, although that’s pretty big. I’m thinking of the ego it takes to build something like that. Napoleon wanted it finished by the time he married Josephine, but he had to make do with a full scale replica on the site. The displays are ho-hum, but the view from the top is spectacular, in some ways better than the Tour Eiffel because you are closer to the buildings. We could see all our favourites: the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Pantheon, Les Invalides, and the Eiffel. You can also see La Defense, but you don't have to.

The time to see the Arc de Triomphe, however, is at about 6.20pm. Every night the flame on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is relighted, and it is as much an event as the Ceremony of the Keys. A military guard, parade of standards, wreath-laying, salutes, and the singing of La Marseillaise. Now you see the Arc de Triomphe as a war memorial, not a monument to Napoleon’s vanity. At the moment the flame was relighted the sun broke out of the clouds. If that was scripted, I’m impressed. The solemnity of the ceremony is accompanied by amusement at the traffic stopped by the gendarmes for the standard bearers to parade across Etoile from the Champs-Élysées. That’s France; rush hour, and they hold the traffic up. I love this place.

Bath

‘You must go to Bath’, said Tim and Olivia when we ran into them at the Palace. Barb and Michael were equally adamant. ‘Make sure you get to Bath.’

So we went to Bath, from Paddington again, across the Sounding Arch at Maidenhead, and all the way across the waist of England, in only ninety minutes. A sunny and warm day in London became a cloudy and cool day in Bath.

At the door of Bath Abbey an elderly man took our donation and asked where we were from. ‘Australia’, we replied.

‘USA’, he said.

‘No, Australia.’

‘Espagna.’ He reached for the Spanish leaflet.

‘No, Australia.’ As we walked away Megan said, ‘There you go, honey, you could’ve been as deaf as him.’

Edgar was crowned the first King of England at the Abbey in 973 A.D. Since then it has been completely re-built once, and repaired lots more times, including after minor damage in WWII. The stained glass is nothing to write home about if you’ve seen Chartres and Cologne – typical Victorian, like the stuff I grew up with at Cronulla. But the fan vaulting of the roof reflects the light so that it seems brighter inside than out. It also feels good. Like Saint Vulfran’s in Abbeville, you get a strong feeling that this is a working church, with a ministry to its parishioners.

Our chief interest were the memorials. Arthur Philip, the first governor of New South Wales, and who died near Bath, is remembered with a plaque and Australian flag on the northern wall. On the other side of the nave we found the plaque for Richard ‘Beau’ Nash, the Master of Ceremonies (that was his title) at Bath for much of the eighteenth century. Ensuring that all social events proceeded without gaffes or embarrassment, he did more than anyone else to establish the town as a fashionable winter resort:

If social Virtues make rememb’rance dear,
Or Manners pure, on decent rule depend;
To His remains consign one gratefull Tear,
Of Youth the Guardian, and of All the Friend.


The Roman Baths are just across the square from the Abbey, in the middle of Bath cheek by jowl with shops and other businesses. This would have presented problems to those wishing to present the Baths in historical context without overcrowding the site. But they have built the museum around the baths in such a way that there isn’t a wasted square metre. We had lunch in the Pump Room, the legendary venue of many a Regency gathering, and where a young musician from Germany, of whom we shall hear more, regularly played oboe in the orchestra gallery.


Up the hill from the main part of the town is the upper crust area, the most-desired real estate in both Regency and modern times. The Assembly Hall was another important venue for all sorts of social engagements, where many a social career was launched and consolidated under Nash’s watch.


A little further west you come to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, two of the finest examples of Georgian architecture anywhere. They represent a classic solution to the form and function problem, and look impressive by anybody’s standards.



Back down the hill, where the middle class lived, is 19 New King Street, now the William and Caroline Herschel Museum. William was the young musician, who came from Hanover in the late eighteenth century to earn a living playing and mounting concerts for himself and his sister Caroline, a singer. But there professional life was eclipsed by their hobby. William was a gifted astronomer who made his own telescopes (to Caroline’s chagrin and the detriment of the flagstones in his workshop, cracked by molten metal). It was in the backyard at New King Street that William discovered the seventh planet, Uranus, in March 1781. (This impressed me more than the Abbey or the Baths. I’ve looked at the planets from my backyard. Like seeing where Thunderbirds was made, it’s the connections with your personal history that are more exciting, not someone else’s.)

Under the patronage of King George III, William became a professional astronomer for the rest of his life, cataloguing many stars and discovering infra red radiation. Caroline learned astronomy to assist her brother, but became notable in her own right, discovering eight comets and being honoured by the Royal Society and the University of Edinburgh.



On the train back to London Megan and I tried to think of other musicians with a significant link to astronomy. We came up with Brian May of Queen and Bryan Cox of D:ream (Things Can Only Get Better - you’d know it if you heard it). Any others?

A weekend in the country

On the first of our out-of-London excursions we spent a weekend in Berkshire with our friends Barbara and Michael. We took the train from Paddington along the Great Western Railway (another legendary name) to Taplow.

At Eton we parked in the High Street and walked across the Thames to Windsor. We gawked at the Castle (no, she wasn’t in) and took a long walk along the Long Walk. Good name for it.


Back over in Eton students hurried along in their morning coats or cricket whites. A shop sold classy merchandise for the school; when I bought a fridge magnet the woman served me with a sniff, which I thought was hilarious given that she was the one who sells fridge magnets for a living.

We had the mother of all afternoon teas at Oakley Court, a Victorian mansion in mock Gothic style, used as a film location in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Murder by Death and lots of Hammer Horror movies. It’s just up the road from Bray Studios, where Gerry Anderson made The Thunderbirds.


Barbara picked up Tess the terrier from home at Maidenhead, and we went to Cookham. After visiting the churchyard of Holy Trinity church (where Barbara’s parents are buried, as well as the artist Stanley Spencer) we walked along the towpath beside the Thames and through a water meadow. All I could hear in my head was Paul Weller’s beautiful words for Tales from the Riverbank, which suited the place perfectly.



It was the classic ‘green and pleasant land’ on which I was brought up. A winding road took us up Winterhill from where you can look down on Marlowe across the Thames Valley.


At Maidenhead the Thames is spanned by I.K. Brunel’s Sounding Arch. A part of the Great Western Railway, the bridge was painted by Turner in Rain, Steam and Speed which we saw at the National Gallery last week. It’s the ‘Sounding Arch’ because of its powers of echo. When Michael took us there on Sunday morning a goose was entertaining or confusing itself by honking at the echo of his own voice. Our laughter echoed, so did whoops, claps, and other weird noises, coming back multiplied as the echoes echoed. Good fun.


On Saturday night Barb and Michael took us to a little pub called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, where we had a great time. I wish we’d had more time to spend with them. Next time!

The Damnation of Faust, English National Opera, London Coliseum, 6 May 2011

On Thursday night there had been a buzz at Covent Garden about Rolando Villazon. On Friday night there was a buzz at the Coliseum about Terry Gilliam’s debut as an opera director.

Judging by a body of work that includes Monty Python, Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam’s talent needs an epic canvas, something large scale, examining the individual in the context of their world rather the intimacy of human relations. So Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust (based on Goethe) is a good choice for his first opera production. But it is essentially a concert work, with long sections of orchestral music in which nothing happens. It is a director’s piece, needing a strong concept to hold it all together. So what would his concept be?

Controversial. Gilliam takes Faust as an analogue for the German people, and Faust's journey is their path from Romanticism through cynicism to Fascism.

Faust/Germany is Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer, standing on his rock and bemoaning the vapidity of life. Mephistopheles tries to win him by showing him the delights of the ‘Back to Nature’ movement. But Faust is disillusioned and he returns to the rock to watch the rise of Prussian militarism and descent into World War I, played out to the Hungarian March. The tavern scene takes place in the Weimar period, the design reflecting the Expressionist works of Otto Dix and George Grosz. Brander is a Nazi brownshirt, tormenting Jews and communists. As the Nazis come to power, the Wanderer’s rock becomes the balcony at Berchtesgaden; Faust becomes enmeshed in Nazi society, and during a presentation of Die Walküre is given a vision of Marguerite. The first half finishes with images from Riefenstahl’s Olympia and Triumph of the Will as this new path seems to bear fruit.

But Marguerite is Jewish. Faust seduces her (to the background of Kristallnacht), but this does not save her from transportation. Faust agrees to sell his soul to Mephistopheles if Marguerite is saved. Mephistopheles takes Faust to hell on his motorbike, and a gentle snow falls on a tangled pile of corpses in a concentration camp, as the angels sing Marguerite’s soul into heaven.

So was this ‘Naughty Nazis’? Did Gilliam take inspiration from ‘The Producers’ and deliberately try to make the production a flop? No. Because for the only time I can remember, the Nazi analogy actually worked! It is a very deeply thought-out concept that works consistently through the whole piece. I was impressed how the ideas Gilliam used reflected Berlioz's text while maintaining historical chronology - it's as if Goethe had foreseen how things would go.

Peter Hoare sang Faust with a beautiful dramatic tenor voice and a red Eraserhead hairdo, Christopher Purves was a lyrical and nasty Mephistopheles, and Christine Rice was a bewildered but beautiful Marguerite. The cast and production team, including Terry Gilliam in a huge woollen cardigan, received huge cheers, and when the curtain calls were ended prematurely by the house lights the audience expressed their disapproval.

Two Goethe operas in a row, and both absolute crackers.

Werther, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 5 May 2011

Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is one of the lynchpins of the Romantic movement. Werther loves Charlotte, and Charlotte loves Werther. But she promised her mother she would marry Albert! There is only one thing worse than unrequited love, and that is requited but impossible love. So Werther kills himself. In normal circumstances you would just give these people a hard slap, but Massenet’s music is so ravishing you have to go for the ride.

It was exciting to be at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden on Thursday night. I had been there earlier in the week for a few hours’ work in the archives, but that was backstage, which is not as glamorous as you might think. The thrill when I walked up the stairs and saw that proscenium…

What made it all the more exciting was the buzz. This wasn’t just another opening night; it was an opening night with Rolando Villazon, superstar tenor, beloved of millions for his gorgeous voice, his sense of humour, his crazy hair, and his Mr Bean eyebrows.

Rolando Villazon is a beautiful singer, but a bad one. He produces beautiful sounds, full of expression. But he produces them in a bad way, riding his throat rather than supporting the breath from the abdomen. You can get away with it for a while, but eventually it affects your voice: the top notes get harder, and polyps form on your vocal cords. The damage happens quicker if you sing roles too demanding for your voice. Rolando has been doing just that; the voice started getting unreliable, and he had to take a long time off singing. His path back to the stage has been unsteady. So spending a large amount of cash on fourth row centre tickets could have been a disaster, and the ability to say ‘we were there when Villazon’s career went down the toilet’ wouldn’t have been much of a consolation.

But Werther is a role that suits Villazon’s voice. At his first appearance there was a little hoarseness when the notes weren’t well-supported, but as the night went this became rarer. He always took care, he didn’t force, and we were given one beautiful phrase after another. The big aria ‘Pourquoi me reveiller’ was brilliant, with no strain, only passion.

I can understand why Werther fell in love with Sophie Koch (Charlotte), I did it a long time ago. Her tone is clear, her looks are radiant, and she’s a good actor. The letter aria was exciting, and the scenes between the two thwarted lovers had a chemistry that added to their intensity.

Antonio Pappano, one of the best opera conductors today, guided the orchestra and singers with his usual skill and understanding. We were pleased to see that he was conducting in his characteristic manner: chewing away in time with the music. That’s one of the advantages of a fourth role seat.

The production was unconventional: it was set in the time specified in the text. Nice change.

What makes a good museum?

I’ve thought about this a lot during our trip, and I’ve come up with a few criteria. Here are some observations on the museums we’ve seen since we hit London.

Personal interest
If I see a place I want to have a reason for going there. I went to the Tower of London because so many important events happened there. I went to the Imperial War Museum at Lambeth because I like war stuff. I went to the Churchill War Rooms because I was fascinated by Churchill since I read My Early Life as a boy. I went to the British Museum because I wanted to see if the Parthenon Marbles were as beautiful as everyone says. (They are, but they’d look even beautifuller in Athens.) So I found them all interesting.

Stuff
Original stuff, the real thing that was used by the real people. The Crown Jewels (the Tower). John Harrison’s clocks (Royal Observatory). A Spitfire that fought in the Battle of Britain (Imperial War Museum). Pink Floyd's Azimuth Converter (the V&A).

Space (and preferably light)
To see things. To walk around and think. To let each object show its character.

The Imperial War Museum has it. The British Museum has it. The National Gallery, with space to swing a cat even with a zillion schoolkids around (tempting idea), has it.

The Churchill War Rooms doesn’t. You expect that from the Cabinet Room, Churchill’s office, etc – they were fighting a war underground. But the purpose-built museum space is just too small and too dark – both inadequacies due to their dependence on high-tech.

A clear direction and/or narrative
Something that shows the context. Signs saying ‘This is…’, ‘You are here’, ‘This way to the bouncy castle’. Art galleries have them: ‘15th century Florentine painters’, ‘Monet and Impressionism’. A logical layout.

Most places achieve this, like the ‘Time and Longitude’ display at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. When they’re not good at it you can usually muddle through, like the White Tower at the Tower of London. But the Churchill War Rooms were in another class altogether. Truly awful. I know more about Churchill’s life than most people, and I had trouble working out where things were.

Not too much high tech
I like a good simulation. The Imperial War Museum has two: ‘The Trench Experience’ and ‘The Blitz Experience’, letting you experience for a few minutes the sights, sounds and the smells (yes, but not too realistically) of like the real thing.

The Churchill War Museum has won awards for its high tech displays. An interactive electronic timeline stretches across the room, a long touch screen display at table height that gives you access to documents, photos, audio and film from their extensive archives. It’s a brilliant piece of technology. But it takes up too much room, is too noisy and chaotic. Yes, you need audio-visual in a Churchill museum – you have to be able to hear him say ‘We shall fight them on the beaches…’ But they’ve gone so overboard they’re in another ocean altogether.

No audio guides
Sorry, no one wins here. I thought the bloke at the Churchill War Rooms was going to hit me when I said no, he got really stroppy. I should have told him why I loathe them:

• I don’t want someone else telling me what to think about what I’m seeing
• I’m deaf and I can’t hear the thing properly even with hearing aids
• The bloody things create static and feedback in my hearing aids when other people are using them around me
• They turn human beings into shuffling, erratic morons who can’t remember they’re not the only person in the room (most important reason).

But I was trying not to tell him that he should shove it up his arse, so I just walked on.

Balance
There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you’ve stuffed up. The Imperial War Museum spoke of the terrible toll of Arthur Harris’ bombing strategy on Germany. But the Churchill War Rooms explained the failure of the Dardanelles campaign as the result of poor intelligence – ‘Winnie wasn’t wrong’. I like the guy, and I can give you a list of his poor judgemnents a mile long.

Good catering
A decent cafeteria is all you need – it doesn’t even have to be made-on-the-spot.

The Court Restaurant at the British Museum is silver service (tick), reasonably priced (mains about £15-18) (tick), and truly excellent food (double tick) – a veal hot pot with potted shrimp that made my heart sing. The V&A has dining rooms designed by William Morris and Edward Poynter - very nice, except you can't get in there for all the Kensington matrons meeting their friends for lunch.

The lunch we had at the Churchill War Rooms, is a contender for ‘Worst Meal of the Trip’. (More on that another time.)

Something you’ll never forget
The Imperial War Museum: the hundreds of shoes taken from Jews killed at Majdanek
The Churchill War Rooms: his toy soldiers
The Tower of London: the Traitors’ Gate and the execution place.
The National Gallery: Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire and Rain, Steam and Speed.
The British Museum: the Parthenon Marbles, the golden torcs and the Portland Vase.
The V&A: Pink Floyd's Azimuth Converter.

No more marriages

Royal Wedding day came, it didn’t rain, and everyone had a good time. We watched it on tv. The best moment was when the Lancaster, the Spitfire and the Hurricane flew over; we could hear it through our windows, the beautiful bass throb of the engines sounding like the love-child of a Harley-Davidson and the Death Star.

What better way to celebrate a wedding than to attend a performance of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre? We crossed the Thames over Tower Bridge, full of footsore soldiers from the Westminster frontline bearing their Union Jacks and looking totally knackered from having stood up since the early morning and walked all the way back. (The Circle and District Lines, which service Westminster and Tower Hill, have been closed for ‘planned engineering works’ over the long weekend. Morons.)

Our seats at the Globe were on the second tier facing the stage. We rented cushions so that we wouldn’t get sore backsides. Didn’t work. Those benches are tough, with no backs, which is bad news because my back has been playing up for a week. There isn’t much room, but it’s still much more comfortable than the Théâtre du Champs Elysees.

The stage looks just like the ‘wooden o’ I always imagined. No curtain, with costumes and props hung at the back of the stage. Just before 7.30 the bells were rung and the actors came out on stage, putting on costumes, chatting with each other, having a word with the groundlings.

It was still daylight when it started, but the stage was lit. The lighting was unobtrusive, illuminating the whole stage rather than individuals or for effect. And the audience was also lit; we could all see and be seen..

Eight people played all the roles, doubling up on minor roles, providing the music (violin, lute, recorder, drum) and dancing. Two stage hands helped at other times.

Joshua McGuire (Hamlet) is short and slightly built – looking adolescent rather than a young man – and has a RADA accent, which could have been unfortunate. But he has the intensity to carry the role. Jade Anouka was compelling in Ophelia’s mad scene, and Simon Armstrong was equally impressive as Claudius and his brother the slain king.

They played the jokes as jokes, not as arch comments, and this made the play very funny at times, for example when Polonius gives his advice to Laertes. John Bett’s Polonius had a Scottish accent, and his delivery made him as funny as he reads.

And Hamlet’s ‘We will have no more marriages’ will probably never get as big a laugh as it did the night of William and Kate’s wedding.

The Tower of London

Invasion of England was accomplished by tunnel. The chief resistance we encountered was from French and English immigration staff at the Gare du Nord. For our Eurostar Standard class seats we had paid an extortionate price through the Australian agents which we wouldn’t have had to pay had we been able to deal directly with Eurostar. It reminded Megan of the Intercity to Newcastle; I have to say I prefer travelling in first class, as we did all over the continent, if only because the rude people one encounters are better dressed.

Our little eyrie at Tower Hill is a two-floor flat perched on the fourth and fifth floors of a 1920s building a short walk from the Tower of London. The lower floor is a comfortable living room and kitchen (with a washer/dryer that actually works). Up the spiral staircase (now adorned with a week’s washing) to our bedroom, sitting room and bathroom. Small, but comfortable. For our groceries we have a choice of Tesco on Eastcheap, Sainsbury’s on Fenchurch Street or Waitrose at St Katherine Docks. We prefer the latter because we can stop for a coffee at one of the zillion cafés or restaurants on the docks, which when the sun is shining reminds me of Cronulla or Sydney Harbour.

After dinner on Wednesday night we went for a walk around the manor, seeking out Crutched Friars (another Dornford Yates location), having a half at the East India Arms (a nice little pub outside Lloyds on Fenchurch Street) and looking at Tower and London Bridges from Tower Dock. I love the long twilights at these latitudes.

Thursday morning we took our lives in our hands to face the millions of tourists that have descended upon London for the Royal Wedding. Actually, they haven’t. The town has been fairly quiet for most of the week, because the predicted multitudes haven’t turned up, and many of the locals have taken Tuesday to Thursday off so they could have a ten day break from Good Friday to May Day.

We strolled over to the Tower just before 9 am and joined the brief ticket queue. Wandering quite freely through the Tower precincts we wondered where all the stories came from about queuing for hours for the Crown Jewels. We’re sure it happens, because at the front of and inside the building were cattle runs, with video displays to entertain the bored and anxious masses. But we just walked straight through.

I have to say, the Crown Jewels are impressive. Maces, trumpets, plate galore. You move past the crowns themselves on a travelator, and the reflections from the jewels change as you go. The Cullinan and Koh-i-noor diamonds are literally dazzling. The place must be the most heavily secured outside the Bank of England, but it doesn’t feel like it.



We had a close encounter with a raven, who entertained us by making some unusual vocalisations then destroying the turf in search of grubs. Smart bird. Another refused to be photographed, turning his back to me and saying ‘Nevermore.’

It is strange to see places like the Traitors’ Gate and the Scaffold Site on the Tower Green: places I’ve read so much about for so long, where so much happened, and where there should be so many ghosts, but aren’t. Many places have a weird feeling about them; at Sachsenhausen you know something unspeakable happened as soon as you walk into the place. Tears don’t leave a mark on a place as much as pain.

If you come to the Tower make a point of visiting the Museum of the Royal Fusiliers. It is one of the best-presented exhibits on the site, with displays for most of their campaigns, from the American Revolutionary War through Crimea and the twentieth century to Iraq. One room is dedicated to decorations: cases of them, including twelve Victoria Crosses in a row.

The White Tower, the big building in the middle, is old and impressive, but the exhibits are a bit tiring. Here you can see the armour of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Charles I, whose gorget looks a little battered. (No it doesn’t.) Knives, guns, projectiles, you name it, it’s here. And then there is a display on the history of the White Tower which really doesn’t make much point. The touch-and-feel exhibits were much better at Azincourt. Not enough thought, or the wrong thought, has gone into how these things are displayed. The simplicity of St John’s Chapel in one of the corners of the tower comes as a relief.



Earlier this evening we returned to the Tower for the Ceremony of the Keys. This is the formal locking of the gates of the Tower, and has happened every night for over seven hundred years. We were part of a group of about thirty people who were met at the main gate by the sole female Yeoman Warder (or Beefeater), who took us into the Tower and explained what was about to happen. For centuries the gates were locked at dusk, until 1826 when the Constable of the Tower, Arthur Wellesley (who invented a type of boot in Spain or something) ordered that the locking take place at 10pm, on the grounds that dusk in winter could be as early as 3pm.

We stood in silence at the Traitor’s Gate and waited for the Ceremony to begin. At seven minutes to ten we saw a brass lantern bobbing in the darkness along Water Lane; the Chief Yeoman Warder was approaching with the keys. He was met at the Bloody Tower by an armed military guard (the soldiers with bearskin hats), and together they returned up the lane to lock the gates. Their footsteps faded away; there were faint shouts as the gates were locked and arms presented. When the party returned to where we were, the sentry on duty under the Watergate advanced with pointed gun and challenged them.

Sentry: Halt, who comes there?
Chief Yeoman Warder: The keys.
Sentry: Whose keys?
Chief Yeoman Warder: Queen Elizabeth’s keys.
Sentry: Pass then, all is well.

The party walked under the Bloody Tower into the laneway by the White Tower, and we followed. Another military guard was standing with a bugler at the top of the steps. They presented arms, the Chief Yeoman Warder presented the keys to the Resident Governor and called out ‘God preserve Queen Elizabeth’. To which everyone present replied loudly, ‘Amen!’ (as previously instructed). The bugler played the Last Post, the Resident Governor returned to his residence in the Queen’s House, and the guard returned to the guardhouse. The Tower was secured for the night, and the Warder escorted us to the postern gate.

Battlefields of Northern France, Day 3 – Le confiture carambolage

Thirty generations ago my ancestor Jean sailed from Normandie with Duke William to take part in the thrashing that was Hastings. Sometime later he was granted a piece of land at Cameis in Wales, and took the cognomen Cameys. Thus the family of Kemmis was off and running. So I was looking forward to today’s visit to Bayeux to see the famed tapestry and celebrate yet another family contribution to the history of bloodiness. However…

The first fifty kilometres out of Abbeville took half an hour. The next five took one hour and fifty-five minutes. The effects of a pile-up on the F3 are NOTHING compared to its French counterpart. Every main road in the region was seized up. People became bored, tempers flared, children hit each other in the back seat and grown men fled their vehicles to frolic amidst the daisies and blow dandelions (not me – the guys in the van behind us).

In between changing cds* and soothing the driver’s fevered brow, I sat in the passenger seat doing mental arithmetic. From Bayeux to the D-Day beaches and back, plus looking time; how long to Bayeux itself, how long in the museum with the tapestry, how long for lunch; and how long from Bayeux to our hotel in Rouen. The time required grew larger, and the time available grew smaller. ‘We’ll have to pass on the beaches,’ I announced.

After ten minutes we advanced another one hundred metres and the guys from the van raced into the woods for a toilet stop. ‘Honey, we have to get out of here,’ Megan announced, and at the next chance we turned onto a back road and made our way to Neufchatel-en-Bray. It was almost midday, and the whole schedule was blown. No battlefields for us today. We decided to run for Rouen. The trick was to find a road that wasn’t full of trucks and cars trying to head west. The best option was the D1 going northwest towards the coast. And what’s that town on the coast at the end of the D1?

On 19 August 1942 several thousand Canadian troops launched a raid on Dieppe, partly to cause trouble, partly for reconnaissance. It was a disaster; many died or were captured, and few made it safely back to England.

When we got to Dieppe we drove up to the headland overlooking the harbour. We had to put on our jackets because a cold wind was blowing off the Channel and it was less than ten degrees. Waves were dashing against the breakwaters, seagulls were hovering, and the horizon was obscured by mist after a few kilometres. Not having had a chance to do any research we didn’t know what evidence of the raid remained, but we could see part of an old blockhouse or gun position overlooking the harbour entrance.


Once away from the coast the sun came out and the temperature went up, so by Rouen it was twenty degrees. The cathedral is of course impressive, if only for its size. You can see what Monet saw in the western façade, although to get the viewpoint of his paintings you would have to knock down a few trees and possibly some buildings. I may be jaded from having seen too many cathedrals (saw a great one at Abbeville on Saturday), but I was excited by the pillars. Yes, they are massive bits of masonry, but they also play an important part in one of Dornford Yates’s thrillers (Red in the Morning, I think; my mind is fuzzy and for some strange reason I haven’t packed Yates’s complete works in my bag).


I like this part of Rouen; it is like the old town of Cologne, only there is more of it – winding, narrow streets of teetering buildings, cafés and tabacs. We looked for a street that might fit the description of one in Yates’s Shoal Water, a cul de sac home to a den of thieves named the Wet Flag. No cul de sacs, but a disreputable-looking laneway called Rue du Petit Mouton ended in a small square with a narrow exit between buildings. I could imagine the unwary meeting an evil fate there.

Rouen is the place where Jeanne d’Arc met her fate, put on trial in the cathedral and burned at the stake in the marketplace. An ugly modern church covers most of the site now, but at the back the actual location is a garden badly in need of weeding. It’s interesting how the places, unadorned and unexplained as they might be, say more than the monuments.



Tomorrow we invade England.

*We have found that Art vs Science (The Experiment) and the Brand New Heavies (compilation) are good for tollway driving, and Tame Impala (Innerspeaker) is perfect for the open countryside. These things are important.

Battlefields of Northern France, Day 2 – Anzac Day 2011

3 a.m. start, with an orange half-moon in the east. Took the wrong turnoff from the tollway, and got trapped in Amiens. By trial and error we discovered the right road and joined the line of traffic to Villers-Bretonneux.

Our unscheduled excursion cost us about forty minutes, so by the time we parked the car and walked fifteen minutes back to the Australian memorial the service had started. A couple of thousand people sitting quietly in the dark, without enough light to read the programs. The sky was cloudless. It was jumper and coat and scarf weather, but not freezing. By the time the sun had come up so had the breeze, the gloves came out, and people started shivering. With the light we could see people of all ages around us, and hear Australian, English and French accents. Young French couples sat in front of and behind us. That impressed me – it wasn’t just the usual suspects.


Kevin Rudd gave a good speech, full of the motherhood statements that need to be said on occasions like this. Apparently Barry O’Farrell didn’t like it, but I can’t say I saw him haul his backside out of bed at 3 a.m. to be there.

A bugler in khaki played the Last Post from the top of the tower. The Last Post marks the end of the day; at memorial services it symbolises that the dead are no longer on duty and can stand down. As he blew Reveille the flags, Australian and French, were raised from half mast. It was the most moving part of the service.

The Ode of Remembrance was recited in English and French, and we responded to both to show off our language skills, and even had a stab at La Marseillaise. (That’s a bloodthirsty bit of poetry, isn’t it?). A cup of coffee and some croissants laid on by the community of Villers-Bretonneux, and a walk around the memorial to see a misty sunrise out of a Friedrich painting.


When we arrived back at our car we realised that we had parked in Villers-Bretonneux itself, so we walked into town to watch the wreath-laying ceremony at the French Memorial. As we went we ‘bonjoured’ the locals out of habit; you can tell we’ve been in France for a while. At the memorial we had a good position on the edge of a garden, but a group of older package-tour Australians on a pushed past and stood in the shrubbery. I made semi-loud comments about the rudeness of pushy people who trample the gardens of the country in which they are guests. They spoke loudly about the tragedy of leaving their carry-on baggage in the hotel rooms at their last stop, expecting the local slaves to pick it up and put it on the bus for them. Sadly, these days you can’t get good slaves. They blamed everyone but themselves. I didn’t tell them that the garden they were trampling had been recently manured, it would only inflict more distress. A close encounter with KRudd at the end of the ceremony helped them overcome their tragedy.

A beautiful drive through Corbie and up to Pozieres, where in six weeks Australia had more casualties than at Gallipoli. One of those casualties was Charlie Andrews, a railway officer from Lakemba in Sydney aged 22. After joining the 1st Battalion he found a niche as the quartermaster and was very popular. On 19 August 1916 his company was advancing on the heavily-entrenched German position at Mouquet Farm, north-west of Pozieres, when a shell killed Charlie and three other soldiers. The Red Cross located soldiers who had been there and collected their reports for the comfort of the family; however they edited one, to leave out the fact that Charlie was ‘knocked to pieces by a shell’. Mouquet is still a working farm, owned by the same family. Today its fields are covered in canola instead of trenches.


At the farm Megan gathered some small white flowers to take with us to Serre. Charlie’s body was buried near the trench the night he was killed. After the war the Commonwealth Graves Commission asked his family to supply an inscription for a headstone in the proposed war cemetery. They did so, but heard no further word. For several years his father Alfred repeatedly wrote to ask if they had found Charlie’s grave. In 1928 Charlie’s body was located at Pozieres and identified by his identity disc and a ring, which were returned to his father. He was reinterred in Serre Road Cemetery No 2, about 11 kilometres north-west of Mouquet Farm.


I had heard that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission takes very good care of the cemeteries, but I was impressed with how neat they were. It took us a while to find Charlie’s grave, thanks to the idiosyncratic numbering system; but when we did, Megan placed the flowers at the foot of her great-uncle’s headstone. The inscription is there (‘Safe in his Father’s arms’), and I wished we could have told Alfred how good it looked, and how the gravesite looks northeast across the fields.

Battlefields of Northern France, Day 1

Abbeville is a town of about 15,000 people about 2 hours drive north of Paris, 2½ if you follow the sat nav. It sits on the Somme River, an innocuous little stream that has given its name to one of the grimmest impasses of human history. But more of that tomorrow. Today we go back a little further.

To 26 August 1346, in fact, in a little town called Crécy-en-Ponthieu about 20 minutes north of Abbeville. To the north of the village the authorities have built a two-story tower overlooking the fields where England, under Edward III, defeated France and Philip VI at the battle of Crécy. The tower is allegedly the site of the windmill from which Edward watched the battle. Why is Crécy worth remembering? Because it’s where the longbow first showed its supremacy as a weapon, allowing Edward’s Welsh archers to devastate the enemy with its superior range and firing rate.


Agincourt was the battle where Laurence Olivier defeated the French with his declamatory powers and won a BAFTA. Azincourt, on the other hand, is another little village, 30 minutes up the D928 from Crécy. It’s hard to miss; there are very silly painted knights and men-at-arms by the roadside every fifty metres or so as you approach it. The local authorities have made a bit more effort than those at Crécy, having built a museum and tourist centre. I had been told it was rubbish; that was wrong. They have some great displays showing the context and progress of the battle, some artefacts from the site and surrounds, and lots of things for the kiddies, for example getting your photo taken in armour.


I was quite chuffed, although perhaps I wouldn't have been had I realised I look like Harry Potter.

The story of Agincourt (25 October 1415) can be found on Wikipedia and in Henry V. What the former says that Shakespeare doesn’t is that the rearguard of Henry’s army was led by Thomas, Lord de Camoys. This fine fellow was in fact the cousin of my great-times-sixteen grandfather, so for me it wasn’t just another place where the French had the shit kicked out of them. As well as an ‘artist’s impression’ of cousin Tom his armorial bearings were on display:


So I was doubly chuffed.

The battlefield of course is now covered in clover and canola, and you wouldn’t know from looking at it that it was where the history of France and England changed.

A place where the history of England could have changed but didn’t is La Coupole. Another 40 minutes up the D928, just south of St Omer, this is where the Germans built a base from which to shower London with V2 rockets in 1943-44. Using slave labour they constructed a complex of tunnels and galleries, and a huge concrete dome, 75 metres in diameter and 5 metres thick, in which they could assemble the rockets for launch across the Channel from the chalk quarry just outside. Fortunately in 1944, 617 squadron (the Dambusters) dropped some humungous bombs (‘tallboys’ for those who know the story) and made the launch site unusable. A good thing too, because it was nearly ready.


The dome sits on the hill above the quarry like a huge cockroach of aging concrete. Down in the chalk tunnels it is very cold, something you feel very much when you come in from 26 degree sunshine. A lift takes you up inside the dome, where it’s warmer and looks like the villain's headquarters in a James Bond movie. As well as the story of the V1s and V2s (with examples) the museum describes the German occupation of the Pas de Calais and the experiences of the slaves of the Dora-Mittelwerk camp in Germany who made the rockets. It also follows the trail of the German rocket scientists to America and their role in the space race. A fascinating place that we only knew about because Megan discovered something on the web by accident. But gee we were glad to get out into the warmth again.

Stanley Kubrick exhibition, Cinematheque Française

Back to Paris via a couple of days in Cologne, in which I caught up with an old girlfriend (Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus - usually in the Musee d’Orsay, temporarily in an exhibition at the very good Wallraf-Richartz Museum), ate half a pig, and didn’t have to put up with a leaking toilet or a smelly washing machine that didn’t work properly (our fate in Berlin). The people are friendly and the beer is lovely (Gaffer kölsche). The Cathedral is astounding, a huge rocket ship, beautiful and light-filled. But the priests are rude and cranky. They make Berlin museum attendants look charming and amiable, and more than justify the Reformation.

The forementioned washing machine meant that we had some domestic duties to take care of on our first morning in Paris. I will never forget the sight of the Palais Garnier majestic and dazzling in the morning sun as we lugged our washing down the Avenue de l’Opéra to the laundromat. A quick drying cycle and excellent timing on the Metro, and we were at the front door at opening time of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française at Bercy near the Gare de Lyon.

The Cinémathèque is a Frank Gehry-designed building that is as confused inside as it is complex outside. There are logical dissonances in the layout; that’s a polite way of saying it’s a bloody mess. It seems like they bought a ready-made interior and made it fit into the building.

The permanent collection has a few dissonances of its own. The history of French cinema is a long and glorious one; after all, they invented it. So where are the Lumiére brothers? Some objects relating to Georges Meliés, but nothing earlier. Then there’s a jump to some jewellery worn by those well-known French actresses Theda Bara and Louise Brooks; some set designs for those well-known French movies Metropolis and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari; and Ringo Starr’s Pope costume from Lisztomania by that well-known French director Ken Russell. Oh, and that thing that happened in the 50s and 60s – the ‘nouvelle vague’? Doesn’t rate a mention – not a sniff of Godard, Truffaut, Resnais or Chabrol in the air. Not so much a crap exhibition as one that completely misses the point. This is a case of buying something and making it fit; it is based on two idiosyncratic private collections, and they haven’t done much to fill out the gaps. It’s like calling a place a restaurant and not selling food.

Incidentally, the Cinémathèque has a restaurant, ‘Restaurant 51’, which doesn’t serve food.

The Kubrick exhibition, however, is brilliant. It should be, it wasn’t curated by the Cinémathèque. It spreads over two floors, with the exhibits on most of his films on floor 5 and those on the last two films, his photography and the films he planned but didn’t make (Napoleon, Aryan Papers and A.I.) on floor 7. That arrangement doesn’t quite work; it would have made more sense if the photography and unmade films had been presented chronologically with the other films, so that we could see for example the influence of Napoleon on Barry Lyndon. Again, it’s buying something and making it fit. But the content is so good it’s a minor point.

It’s all there for all of them – photos, scripts, production documents, designs, cameras, posters and publicity materials, tickets and other ephemera, props, costumes, clips from the films and the inevitable interview with Martin Scorsese. My favourites:

• the script for Paths of Glory
• HAL’s ‘face’ from 2001
• the set model for the War Room in Dr Strangelove (‘Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!’)
• the friendly and funny letter Nabokov sent Kubrick concerning the script for Lolita (with a great line that I can’t remember but is very Nabokov)
• the droog suit and turntable from A Clockwork Orange• the axes from The Shining

Makes me want to watch them all again. Is it really twelve years since he died?

Bonhoeffer-Haus

The Heerstraße estate in western Charlottenburg was established in the 1920s and 1930s as a suburb for professional people, and since then it hasn’t really changed. It is very leafy with lots of birds, which sing very loudly. Other than that it is very quiet, which is surprising considering what surrounds it. In the 1930s the government built the Olympia Studium to the north-west, and the Avus autobahn/grand prix racetrack to the south-east. The Bonhoeffer family moved to the house at Marienburger Allee 43 in 1935, when Karl Bonhoeffer retired from practice and teaching as a psychiatrist. It became the focus for the large Bonhoeffer family, and Dietrich always lived there whenever he was in Berlin. The house is now a ‘Memorial and Place of Encounter’ where people can visit to learn about Bonhoeffer and research his theology and his involvement in the resistance against Hitler.

We had arranged to visit the Bonhoeffer-Haus simply by emailing Dr Knut Hämmerling, the house coordinator. Knut is very laid back while preserving all the formalities. He met us at the door and showed us the best bit of carpet to dry our shoes on so we wouldn’t track moisture through the house. The hallway was full of shoes; part of the house is used as accommodation for pastoral students, so I felt right at home.

Knut took us through to what was once the dining room and is now the office, with an enormous collection of works and other material by and about Bonhoeffer, in a number of languages. Swapping my theologian brain for the uni administrator one, I realised that as a research centre with a very limited budget it must be a tough job keeping on top of all the Bonhoeffer research and publications, but they do their best.

The living room is unfussy and full of light, not filled with the overstuffed décor and furniture I had expected but simple, stylish and warm, with copies of family portraits on the wall and a view into the back garden.

When you know the story of a family, to stand in their house is like being invited into their lives, a privilege, not like standing in a museum or even the Buddenbrooks House. You are where their joys and sadnesses occurred. When Karl Bonhoeffer retired he still saw private patients, and when not in professional use his consulting rooms on the left side of the house were the place of many family celebrations. One famous one was the celebration of Professor Bonhoeffer’s seventy-fifth birthday in 1943. While the extended family ate and drank and played Bach for their father, the brothers Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and their brothers-in-law Rüdiger Schleicher and Hans von Dohnanyi were sweating it out waiting to hear the outcome of a plan to assassinate Hitler. To stand in that room knowing that, and what happened later...

These rooms have now been converted into a large seminar room with an exhibition about Bonhoeffer’s life and work. Nine large panels line the sides of the room with photos and documents but no explanatory labels. This allows the guide to adjust the level of commentary and explanation to the knowledge and understanding of the visitors. Since we already knew a lot about Bonhoeffer, Knut let us ask questions about the things that interested us.

Upstairs in the attic is the study where Bonhoeffer wrote part of his Ethics and the essay ‘After Ten Years’ (on the need to take action against Hitler), and where he was arrested by the Gestapo on 5 April 1943. It’s a room I could quite happily work in. Some of his own furniture is still here: a simple desk, with a stylish lamp and chair; his harmonium (he was an accomplished musician), still playable but in need of tuning; and the original bookshelves, lined with copies of the works he owned (the originals are in the Stadtbibliothek with Bonhoeffer’s papers). The window overlooks number 42 next door, where his sister and her husband lived with their children. Dietrich would watch the children playing in the yard and throw sweets to them. A single bed has been placed in the same position as Bonhoeffer’s to show how the bachelor theologian lived.

While standing in the study I recalled how his parents wrote to him in prison to ask which books he wanted taken down to the cellar to be protected from the air raids, and I can imagine the trouble it took to move the harpsichord down the winding stairs. I’m not surprised he wrote to them saying ‘Don’t go to too much trouble.’

Back downstairs we signed the guest book, and Knut very kindly showed us where Kevin Rudd signed when he visited a couple of years ago. Bonhoeffer would be embarrassed by some of the attention he gets, but he would be grateful that people like KRudd (and me) are taking his ideas seriously and trying to put them into practice.

*7/8/2011: Actually the attempt happened during preparations for the party some time earlier - you get confused when you're writing on the run. But my point still stands.

Sachsenhausen

KZ Sachsenhausen lies at the end of a twenty minute trudge from Oranienburg station, which is a forty minute train ride from Berlin. Small groups of people are all walking in the same direction through the cold, wind and rain and the streets torn up for roadworks. There are lots of tour groups, mostly young people, English, German and Swedish. All the local youths have a number two cut, which is ridiculous for today’s weather.

After the information centre you walk down a road for a couple of hundred metres, with a high concrete wall on one side and old buildings, some in ruins, some in great shape, on the right or southern side. If you look at your map you will see that these were the SS troop quarters. Then you turn left into the camp proper. The first section is a perimeter zone, which has been planted with tress and memorials. On the right is the museum, which today is shut ‘for technical reasons’.



Straight ahead is the camp entrance, Tower A, a guardhouse with a gate bearing the notorious ‘Arbeit macht frei’. There is an odd feeling. I know what that sign means, literally and figuratively, yet I feel a barrier go up between me and its real significance. In places like this, with the perpetrators and victims long gone and only relics to testify to their experience, we are removed from the reality. Our imaginations and hearts can bridge the distance only so far, and our minds give us other levels of protection too. I can only wonder what the locals felt when the Allies forced them to tour the concentration camps by the busload, and whether this same distance was possible with the smell still in the air.

We are thankful for our coats and scarves and umbrellas as we walk through the gate, because the weather is bitter. The Soviets reconstructed some of the barracks from original materials in the late 1950s as a memorial against fascism (!), and in spite of arson attacks by right-wingers they are still in good condition. Barracks 38 and 39 lie in the ‘small camp’ to the south east of the triangle of the main camp. These two barracks were the home of many Jewish prisoners in the late pre-war period, and contain displays on the treatment of Jewish prisoners. They are the only buildings here now, but there were many others, each now marked by a concrete block with a number on it. It was here in the small camp that the Nazis placed special prisoners who had skills the Reich needed, such as counterfeiting and forgery. The German film ‘The Counterfeiters’ tells the story of some of these prisoners. I was glad that we had seen it a few months ago on tv, as it gave us some hooks to hang our ideas on.





Just north of these barracks is the prison, where the Nazis held people for special treatment, political enemies like Hans von Dohnanyi. One of the leaders of the military conspiracy against Hitler, he was held, tortured and eventually executed here, on the same day as his brother-in-law Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The prison is one of the few original buildings left, and the huge stretch of empty ground looks ominous. When it was full of barracks it would have looked less forbidding, in spite of the brutality. You can see what’s left of the ‘Shoe-testing Track’, where prisoners were forced to jog for hours ‘testing shoes’. Whoever thought of that was truly evil.

We walk across the rainswept ground to the other side of the triangle, to Station Z, where prisoners were forced to run down into a trench and were then shot. Next to that is what is left of the crematorium, including three or four ovens. To the west is a large gravelled area marking the pit where the ashes were disposed of (‘buried’ seems too deliberate and careful an act).





Even though we haven’t seen the Pathology Building and the Soviet camp, an hour and a half in the cold and wet is enough. We trudge back through the mud to find somewhere in Oranienburg that sells hot chocolate. It’s only when we are sitting in the warmth of the café waiting for our order that I realise I am utterly weary, not just from fighting the cold but from keeping the emotion in check underneath the analytical eye and the questioning mind.