The heart of Django Reinhardt

Having been MIA for some months, I have decided to get out my rusty digits and get typing again. Apologies for the long yet necessary hiatus. 

Finding myself once again living in the UK, 'Keeping up my English' may seem a little out-dated as a title; but suffering in the throes of the current economic climate [three tired words which I am weary of] finds me monotonously filling out forms and looking at CVs all day, the thought of writing something where I can be me me, not professional me, somewhat appeals. So Keeping up my English stays.

My final months in France turned out to be the opposite of the slow start to the year. The many months of glacial progression towards fluency began to pay off, and I got the chance to move to Samois sur Seine, a gorgeous village on the side of the river Seine, and also the home of the founder of 'Jazz Manouche' or 'gypsy jazz': Django Reinhardt.  For those unfamiliar with old Django [before moving, I had only heard his name passed around in conversation but had not quite gauged how big he actually is in France], you may be familiar with his most famous song 'Minor swing', a song which became the theme tune of my final month in France. [Put it on, if you will, while you read this, just to get a true feel for the atmosphere of that last month]

Samois sur Seine

So I moved in with three other French people, a mix-matched but familial and extremely welcoming bunch, to a busy house placed just 10 meters from the Seine. My female housemate had a studio-come-gallery in the basement/garage where she put on an exhibition for the village in my final week (pictured). In the evenings we would have wine [these guys really knew how to drink] and/or beer and/or mojito. It was interesting to have been welcomed into the bosom of a French community after skirting around groups for so long; as I mentioned in earlier blogs, the stereotype of the French being 'closed' is not totally false. In fact, what I discovered was that once you were welcomed into a group, the cultural differences are not all that apparent, we talked about everything that we would talk about at home; music, TV, politics. However, getting through the 'initiation' stage is far more grueling than I, as a Brit, am generally used to and this is what appears 'closed'.

the exhibition in the garage

The living room had been converted into a fourth bedroom, where music would blast out in the evenings; generally Rosenberg Trio, a huge group on the Jazz manouche scene, or Rodrigo y Gabriella. I learned a lot about jazz manouche, its culture being totally intertwined with the village. On the way to work, I would drive past the traveling community to some rather hostile glances. I discovered an old-fashioned community where the men really are in charge, and in the evenings the kids play in the road and the mums would rap on our door to sell sunglasses. I really liked seeing how the Samois and gypsy community lived side by side, slightly wary of each other, but neither causing any trouble. And the fact that every member of the traveling community that I met claimed to be Django's grandson/daughter, showed the importance that the Reinhardt name still holds for its people.

The house, on the right with the red roses (French cliché)

The traveling community had descended on Samois as it was, in fact, the month of the internationally renowned Django Reinhardt festival. I had not quite anticipated the significance of this when I arrived, but as my flatmates formed the heart of the organisational team, I soon realised what a big thing this festival was going to be. One Wednesday, I got home from a long day at work to find a queue of about 100 people outside our flat, waiting to get onto the island where the festival was warming up. The atmosphere was buzzing; old Belgian couples, young Brits, middle-aged Americans and Frenchies from all-over had swarmed to the village to experience the festival, right at the heart of the jazz manouche birthplace [our house was opposite the house that Django grew up in]. It was then that I felt pretty lucky to be living where I was living, and with the housemates that I had, who had managed to squeeze me a free pass! And so, despite being a little stressed by my double life of doing an 8-6 day job in a school for kids with disabilities and festival goer by night (Samois-style, which generally means alcohol), it was amazing. The house was over-run with guests, on one occasion I was kept up until 4am by Moldovan accordionist [and possibly one of the most talented musicians I have met] in the kitchen, with the famous festival performers taking to the guitar and voice. Retrospect does make that story seem a little rosier than reality (with a 6 am start the next day).

The main-stage featuring Rosenberg Trio

So, with a large dose of Sod's law, my final week in France was probably one of the best I had. A balmy evening, listening to Ibrahim Maalouf, surrounded by 5000 people, my front door just 50 metres away, narrow boats piled up on the side of the Seine with people leaning off them to watch the bands and a cool [free] beer in hand...couldn't have asked for much more!

If anyone is interested in going to this festival next year, or knowing more, tickets are cheap and I would certainly be keen to go. Let me know!

Winging it on the slopes

Kart-ski

I learnt a wonderful fact last week. Being an adult isn't always about being wise, it's not about knowing the answer. It's about winging it.

To put this revelation into context, last week I had the pleasure of joining some of the kids in my school on a trip to explore the wonders of skiing for disabled people, also known as handi-ski. Having worked in a school for children with physical disabilities for some months now, I thought I had a handle on the logistics required for day-trips and excursions. A trip to KFC, which proved more complicated than just eating chicken, showed me that you really have to think of everything in advance. Quite the logistics required for a trip like this, however, I was not expecting. For example, the relatively simple task of driving to your nearest ski resort is immediately doubled from a normal four hours to get to the Alps, to an epic eight hour trek to find Serre-Chevalier, the handi-ski hot-spot situated firmly in the south-west of France. Fair enough, you think, it'll be a long day, but eight hours is do-able. Now add another layer of complexity, seven children very different disabilities. With this, you have to think about how long they can sit still for on a bus without getting uncomfortable thus the requirement of breaks, each one taking no less than an hour. Three breaks and a little maths later, the journey has jumped to eleven hours. This is but a taster of the organisation required for such a trip.

Now imagine, four apartments, each built for four people. Four people without disabilities that is. Although 'adapted', these apartments had no idea what hit them when seven delightful twelve year olds blasted through their doors, accompanied by seven lagging adults and two bus loads of equipment. At peak times (morning showers and meal-times) there were some serious circulation issues...said meal-times were an optimist's dream and a realist's logistical nightmare. It is some feat to perfectly time 14 three course meals [always three courses in France, however complicated it may make things], whilst installing seven children with wheelchairs and 7 other rumbling stomachs, into a room built for four. You get the picture.

Dual ski

Underneath this heavy pile of logistics, it seems easy to lose the point of our trip: skiing. Handi-ski is, in no fewer words, bloody brilliant. It comes in different forms, depending on level of independence. For the less autonomous, there are the luge-like 'dual-ski and 'tandem ski' which basically means sharing a pair of skis with the instructor. They look like the best roller-coasters of your life, whizzing downhill at the speed of the monitor, without the fear of falling over. For those who have the desire and ability to take control, there is kart-ski which enables almost complete independence, a bit like skiing sitting down. Of the group I went with, three tried kart-ski and four took on the luges. At the end of the week, one girl got her first 'flocon' (snowflake), which is the first-level ski certificate with école du ski Français. Her piercing scream of excitement when surprised with it was, alone, enough to make all our hard work worth it.

         Tandem-ski: please ignore the music and watch how it works to get on and off the lifts...amazing

So, back to my starting sentence. It may seem that we had it all under wraps, but the truth is that such a feat would have been near-impossible. The official organisers of the trip had put a back-breaking amount of time and effort into getting everything right and raising the funds. Even so, the fact that after the aforementioned 11 hour journey, I found myself single-handily cooking a three course meal for the kids is enough to explain that not everything ran smoothly. Poor kids. Saying that, they ate hungrily and one of the more polite kids even said I could cook it every night of the week and she would be happy. God love pre-packaged soup...

I feel far too young to have already been one of the 'teachers' on a school ski-trip. It seems only yesterday that I myself was one of those kids, waiting eagerly for my tomato soup, ravioli and chocolate pudding to be served so that I could get on the slopes [!]. I would have had no idea back then that it was being cooked by a just-out-of-university student with limited culinary skills. I think I got away with it. But I learnt a lot in a week; trying out the knackering life of a 24 hour carer and the logisitical complexities of disability 'on-the-go'. Most importantly, I learnt the unspoken talent required of adults from time to time, when you give kids an answer, or cook, with certainty, even if you are no way near certain...also known by another term: winging it.

More photos to follow...

A cautionary tale of Kony

Now, I am by no means a political activist. However, I watched the Kony 2012 video yesterday and I was strangely unnerved by it. Here is what I think.

Social networking is a strong force. So strong, in fact that it is becoming hard to avoid. Now that Kony 2012 has caught on [in just 40 minutes, I watched the number of views rise from 1,800,000 to 4,300,000] people will be using every means of social networking to feed this. I am also frustratingly aware of the irony that I am doing the exact same thing by writing this blog. It is unavoidable, whether you support the notion or not, acknowledgment leads to sharing. So what I am saying here is don't buy straight in to it.

Now, I am not normally one to express a set opinion about things but here is what I can see happening. As we have seen with almost any 'internet phenomenon', passion fades. This video will be watched by millions; millions of people who will give half an hour of their lives, write a comment and move on. The problem is that a project like bringing down Joseph Kony first and foremost needs full understanding. It also needs strategy and it needs time. Giving the people of the world 'a voice' allows people who know very little about a very delicate political situation in Uganda to feel like they know more than perhaps they do. As seen with Live Aid in 1985, mass marketing of third world issues can drum up awareness, great really great, and it can also generate unfathomable amounts of financial support and huge amounts of activism. But is this the end of the story? No.

Having been involved with two charities, it has taken me some time to even begin to understand a bit about charitable interventions. I have seen first hand that if money is given to a corrupt organisation it can feed the problem, not make it better. As a result, I've learnt that even on a small scale, interventions and financial aid need to be heavily regulated, so as to prevent furthering the problems that are already considered so bad that they needed intervention. My worry, is that yes, 1 billion or more people may soon have heard of Kony, but what then? The policy makers who are being targetted will find themselves straining under the weight of an incomprehendable number of letters, phonecalls, faxes, blogs...and therefore effectively the pressure of the entire media world to intervene. If they really would intervene due to this pressure, they could well be doing so prematurely in Uganda, and this would certainly not solve the problem.

So here it is. If Kony 2012 is a 'success', and the voice of the people does in fact lead to an American intervention in Uganda, there is no way it will 'expire' by the end of 2012. The mere suggestion of this is ridiculous. So, after considering this and chatting to my brother, who very succinctly referenced me to this blog and this video to learn a bit more, I urge you to be aware of this whole Kony campaign. If you still want to back it after considering the other side of the argument, feel free. Just proceed with caution.

Afterthought: The Kony backlash could be just as proactive as the video itself if people donate to other, more accountable, more direct charities as a result of it...

**SEX*** and now that I've caught your attention...

Sex sells in France...

 
Today, I'm going to be talking sex. Some of the more conservative amongst you are probably already freaking out. 'What is she thinking, writing about sex'. Well, don't get too worried, or excited, I am wondering more about the reaction to the subject itself, what do you think when you hear it casually breached in day-to-day conversation? So, I am not going to be rude. But is the subject of sex considered  taboo in all countries? By all countries, I am going to draw, as per usual, on what I've experienced here in France. The reason that this question comes to mind is due to a couple of things that have happened recently...

The first, a rather amusing story which I have already recounted to many of my nearest and dearest, started on a quiet Friday afternoon in school. As I sat, helping out in break-time with the kids, a couple of the teachers decided to let me in on their Friday night plans. One said: 'Hey Claudia, fancy coming to our little 'soirée' tonight?', 'Uhh...' I said, pretty excited that I was finally being invited to something with my collegues after many months of professional distance, 'Yeh, that sounds great'.  'Cool, well its a *something whispered* party'. The *something whispered*, I assumed, was a reference to alcohol, so I just gave a little laugh and nodded, as is my now natural response when I'm not quite sure about something.

So, a couple of hours later, in the car on the way to my colleague's house, I asked again what kind of party it was. 'Une soirée sex toy' was the response. 'Oh right'. No smile, no knowing look, no reference to the awkwardness of the fact that I was being taken to a sex toy exhibition party, no 'have you ever been to one of them before?'...we just carried on driving. And so, my little eyes were soon exposed to a multitude of sex toys in different shapes and sizes, bottles and bottles of flavoured oils, powders, handcuffs, lingerie... To be honest, despite a fair bit of of cringing inside, it was ok. The other colleagues were so comfortable with it all that I relaxed. One highlight for me came during a lull in conversation, while the presentation of each item was in full swing, where I found myself holding a sex toy in each hand, with noone speaking to or looking at me. I wish, I so wish, that any one who knows me had seen the expression on my face at that moment. True Bridget Jones stuff that.

Would this have been the same in the UK? To be honest, the party itself, probably. It was behind closed doors and so the people there would generally be there by choice (not accident as in my case!). I think the only thing that would be different would be that noone would invite their younger, foreign (especially british) collegue to join them! A learning curve it certainly was.

Another experience I had was a very casual conversation about group sex at lunch time. Granted it wasn't, thank God, a 'let's share stories' moment, but the openness with which the conversation topic was breached still amused me. Again, from the look on my face when I realsied what everyone was talking about, bit of a  sore thumb moment...

Certainly, those of you have seen the contraceptive advert with a personified little penis [warning: for the more conservative types, this is a bit explicit] will know that the French don't shy away from a subject matter like this just because it's 'taboo'. Ok, this link is a little rude but me even saying that is an example of shying away from the subject. In fact, its not rude, its an effective way of publicising contraception. We wouldn't be seeing it on TV in the UK though...! And now compare it, for a moment, to this British contraceptives advert, featuring none othe than our beloved Dominic Cooper, star of Mamma Mia [but a little earlier in his career, I would guess!]. Now this advert, I would say was pretty effective, nothing too lewd, and it gets the point across.  Now notice that it was banned. Come on UK! Finally, look at how Belgium tackles this subject...I am not surprised this one was banned, even though it's pretty funny.

I know this is a very generalised conclusion that I am coming to, there is no way that what I am saying about us in the UK is true for everyone and I am certainly no anthropologist. Of course, being younger than my colleagues, the [hopefully-ever-dimishing] language barrier and not being surrounded by my friends, may have affected my reaction to these things. However, it does seem that the French are not afraid to breach the subject of sex, even with a young British stranger, their professional colleagues, or with the public as seen in many ad campains here. And so, I can only be left wondering if it's our idiomatic 'stiff upper lip' that makes us so very....stiff....on this subject. Apologies for that.


Have a little watch of some of some other banned adverts here by the way...I expecially like the Peter Kay/ John Smith one...

Highly contested French anti-smoking campaign...does sex always sell?

Regret

I have just read an article from the guardian which describes research that a palliative nurse has done regarding the top most common regrets that people have before they die.

It got me thinking, this article, do most people regret things? The thought of knowing that I was in the last 12 weeks of my life scares the hell out of me, I can't possibly imagine what parts of my life, good or bad, would be dug up and bought to the surface when faced with this knowledge. I don't think anyone can predict the feelings that you would experience. The nurse who compiled these 'top 5 regrets', has obviously seen this first hand, and so, after getting over the somewhat insensitive title of her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying [why she had to put the second 'the' in this title, the dying, ugh, I've no idea], let's see what she put up there in her list.

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

As noted by the author, I think that a number of these regrets actually reflect a different generation to ours. For example, it is interesting that it was pretty much only men who say they wished they hadn't worked so hard. I suppose she is right that the people she works with mostly come from a time where men were traditionally the breadwinners. I wonder if this will be different for our generation; will us women share this regret equally when it comes to the end? Morbid, sorry.

Staying in touch with our friends: easy peasy these days. I doubt it will be such a common regret in the future..although you still have to make a bit of effort, a bit of clicking and typing you know, so maybe given a few years it will not seem so easy after all. I actually think a common regret for our generation will probably be 'I wish facebook had never existed', after reading that 1/3 of divorces...yes that's one third...cite facebook, or the inappropriate use of, as one of the reasons for the spilt.

The regret that I find the saddest, and the one that I can imagine the is most easy to identify with is the wish to have had the courage to express true feelings. I bet there have been times in most of our lives when we have suppressed saying things that we would have liked to, but does the fact that it is a reported common regret mean that we are all a little too afraid of being honest? Two thoughts: 1) This is a British book so is it our natural British reservation that means we don't always say what we think, would this regret be the same in a different country? and 2) I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy the other day, [bear with me, I am genuinely about to reference Grey's Anatomy, but it did make me think] and a man who had been given a very slim chance of survival, decided that he would send videos of messages to everyone from whom he had kept his feelings secret. He entrusted the sending of these videos to Meridith Grey, who being the meddling so and so that she is, didn't send them. Of course, the man survived the surgery, to be presented with his bag of videos. He decided to send them anyway. The point of this segue is to wonder whether, given this option, would we send the videos? If yes, then why not just say it all now...just a thought.

The final listed regret, I wish that I had let myself be happier, is interesting. Being only 22, I can barely even begin to know what I will be thinking in 60 odd years time, but I'm going to try bloomin hard to make this not one of them. In have found that happiness is a very temperamental emotion, it comes and goes as it pleases. Like cats really. Happiness is like cats. And in my experience with cats, you can try as hard as you want but you cannot control them, they will not come when called but they always come back. I am gonna try damned hard to keep my cat alive right up to my last day!

After making this wonderful analogy, I have just typed it into google, only to find that someone has stolen my idea and made one of those motivational posters of it. I'm going to see it as a good thing and let myself be happy about it.

Nothing to say

Silence

 

After watching 'The Artist' the other day, it got me thinking about how integral spoken language is to our lives. It was suggested to me before I went to see it, that I may not enjoy the film due to a general lack of patience and indifference to many forms of art. However, despite finding it strange that a film like this is deemed original, truly porn for Empire Magazine, when it is actually the root of modern day cinema, I did quite enjoy it. Firstly, the film is set to a soundtrack [see video], thus dispelling my fear that we would have to sit and listen to rustling packets & crunching popcorn in a cinema for 2 hours. Secondly, the lack of speech meant the story and characters had a subtlety that is so often lost in 'hollywood flicks'.  And it was this that got me thinking about what the world would be like without talking.      

                                                                                                                

                                                                                          Comme une rosée de larmes - Ludovic Bource

Recently, I have come face to face with someone who experiences this on a daily basis. One of the kids in my school has a debilitating social phobia which renders her speechless (and fairly motionless) at school [I must add that this is only at school, she walks and talks vivaciously at home]. After working with her for many months, I am slowly developing ways of communicating with her to help her in lessons, such as through yes/no questions, and she is starting to relax around me, though she is still far from speaking. This has been rather pains-taking at times, a true test of patience, but I was rewarded last week when I was told by her friend that she had asked to speak to me on the telephone from home. It was probably the highlight of the year so far to hear her normal, teenage voice for the first time after four months of silence. In addition, that she could say 'hello' and 'goodbye' in English, something the English teacher himself didn't even know, was even better! Although it was a great feeling to finally hear her voice, school the next day continued as normal and she remained silent. The good and somewhat amazing news here is that it does not seem to stop her having friends.

It's amazing quite how much we take chit-chat for granted, and experiences like the one above, as well as learning a new language, are making me appreciate what I have. Four months in, and I am still communicatively deficient at times. One example of this was during red cross a training week where all the trainees were put into pairs and asked to direct each other round a town. The added complication of being blindfolded made a highly un-anticipated task on my part. Piece of cake for all the other, French speaking participants who naturally share a language, not so piece of cake for me and my partner. To cut a long story short, it was not long after we had finished that the leader of the exercise insinuated that I was the cause of her subsequent panic attack. Wasn't convinced myself, it was hard to translate 'walk around the edge of the pavement but don't step down', but they don't mince their words, the French.

I have said more than once throughout this year that I feel like I'm reduced to not much without free-flowing, decorative vocab on my side and I am still yet to make jokes, at least ones that others find funny. But, as shown by 'The Artist', we can get by without spoken language and I am getting better at miming. Next time I am lost for words, I am just going to raise my eyebrows up and down and grin ridiculously. You'll probably need to see the film to get that reference. 

Go watch it.

The Mahogany Sessions

It is hard to believe that our beloved youtube has only been around since 2005. I only realised the other day quite how much I rely on it; I browse it almost as much as facebook [I say almost.!]. And so, in one of my numerous sessions of late, I stumbled across a channel called 'The mahogany sessions' and feel its worth sharing.

I cannot deny that I'm a realityTVophile, there is really no point in hiding it. My clean sheet of 12 big brother series and 8 X-factors speaks for itself [yes..really]. However, thanks to the latter of these two great boasts, I am aware that a lot of modern-day music has been losing its originality. When X-factor now heralds, show after show [...after show...to the tune of Chasing Cars by Snow patrol], that it is searching for Britain's new talent, we all know that the barrel has already been scraped pretty throughly. Joe McElderry, probably the biggest fail to date, proves that in buckets. Mind you, he did go on to win another reaility TV show ('pop star to opera star', which I didn't watch...), thus recycling himself and feeding a British public who have become so lazy that they can't even be bothered to get to know another monotonous personality. [This, may I add, led to this, which ruined my Christmas a little.] And so, manufactured artist after manufactured artist are being churned out with not much to distinguish them but a highly contested race for Christmas number one, often a nail-biting push to the finish against a facebook campaign. 

I digress.

I came across the Mahogany sessions on youtube after reading for the millionth time that Michael Kiwanuka is tipped to be the big next thing in 2012 [apologies for saying it again]. After getting past the decidedly average 'Home again', I found 'Tell me a tale', filmed in a field. I figure that if someone can play a song like that in the middle of a field, then they are probably quite talented. And so I had a wee look at what else was on offer. 

 

It turns out there are some slightly more veteren artists, such as Jamie Woon, and having previously seen how he performs, he does not disappoint. One of the wierder videos I found was Marques Toliver and his violin. Once you get over the fact that Marques is pronounced 'Marquees', like the pluralised gazebo, and that it is a strange combination of things to watch, it surprisingly does kind of work. Certainly talented, even if you hate the violin abuse. And filmed in some park, even better. Neither he nor we, need a Louis Walsh telling us what's right.

Another find, although they appear to have a fairly rounded repetoire already, is Everything Everything. They make this peformance of 'Schoolin' ' look pretty easy. I also love the observation in the comments that the drummer is the happiest person on the planet - he really does have a content face.

And so, if you can bear to get over the irritating central focus that they use on every video, I would suggest a browse of what they have on offer, you can also find Ghostpoet performing in his sleepy rappish way, or Beardyman's amazing beatboxxing.

So, go and have a listen, enjoy some unadulterated talent. Go! Before Tulisa has a chance to so kindly share her wisened opinions with us, once again.