Footnotes to a Conversation, March 6, 2023
Settled
I’m so happy to be settled in familiar surroundings in Quillan, France, for the month of March. I loved all the travelling I did in the UK with so many new sights and experiences and so much to learn. But I’m tired. It’s a delight to sit quietly and watch the last rays of light touch the hills and mountains, to shop at the Saturday farmers’ market, and to stock up on vegetarian products at the “bio” store. I have lots of stories and photos to share, but that will happen gradually as I’m also trying to catch up on a backlog of work.
Homogenous?
I sent my brother a photo I’d taken of Mevagissey and he commented that, “despite the world's homogenization, it still looks very different from North America.” That got me to thinking. Perhaps the world feels very much the same from one country to the next if you stay in tourist hotels or travel as part of an organized group. Travelling independently and staying in other people’s homes, I find so many things operate differently from how they work at home. They may be minor, but I find them indicative of different cultures and ways of life.
I went into a store to stock up on Vitamin D tablets the other day and got offered a glass ampoule or drops to put on my tongue. They eventually found some tablets, but that doesn’t appear to be the norm in France. I should mention that I was shopping in a “parapharmacie” which is somewhat different from an ordinary pharmacy. They don’t fill prescriptions but focus on health and beauty products. I’m not sure what I’d have been offered in a pharmacy – but therein lies yet another difference. [Les Furets]
Energy costs were always higher in Europe and they’ve gone up tremendously in the past year. As a result, I stayed in a good-quality hotel and a bed and breakfast that only heated their rooms in the mornings and evenings. In one house, I had to turn on the water heater and wait half an hour before doing dishes – that was the only time there was hot water in the bathroom basin as well. Electricity is often cheaper at night so that’s when I’m asked to run the dishwasher or washing machine. Of course, if the homeowners are taking advantage of solar panels, you do those chores during the day. The UK is switching more and more to contact-less payments, similar to Canada. But cash still dominates in France.
And last but not least, don’t forget to lift the door handle before turning the key if you want to lock a door in France and the UK. You may or may not have to lift it to unlock the door.
Public Expectations
A short story by Margaret Atwood reflects on grief and widowhood – what it’s like and how it contrasts with people’s expectations. [The Guardian]
Witches and the Supernatural
The introductory paragraph of an article about two current art exhibits is thought-provoking:
“In search of the roots of our current ecological crisis, the writer Amitav Ghosh, in his most recent book The Nutmeg’s Curse, looks back to the suppression of witchcraft in 16th-century Europe. He views this as the moment human violence towards the natural world came to supersede an older wisdom, inherent in magical practices around the world, that ‘landscapes are neither inert not mute, but imbued with vitality’.” [The Guardian]
A Different Perspective
Are they bored? Do they enjoy art? Are they making up stories about the people who pass through? If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be a museum guard, you may want to read All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley who worked at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for 10 years. An interview in The Guardian is informative.
If you read in French, I recommend Vers la beauté by David Foenkinos, a fictional book in which a man leaves his career as a professor of art to work as a guard at the Musée d’Orsay.
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.
If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.