Mar 2007

Lucas: We went to the Uffizi on our last day in Florence and I was counting how many willies were on statues and I counted 28! Theo thinks it is 29 but I am sure I counted 28. Bottle top [deduce Botticelli here, sugar plum] painted women epics [hope I'm one of them] with their toe next to their big toe longer than the big toe! [Nope - have tried stetching it but no luck.]
Me: In Florence it slowly dawned on us (screaming headlines in Italian easily ignored) that they have a serious poo problem. Reader, this blog is not unduly concerned with a person's nether regions but it seems that the whole of the historic quarter of Florence has to be - ermmm - pumped out every night. This must be an issue on the scale of foot and mouth for us Englanders a few years ago and visitors beware. We had wondered why the Florentines looked so knackered and this, it transpired, was the unglamorous answer.
And now, your (not so) silent witness:
Tony: Have you ever smelled a mediaeval drain? On the third night I went down to the street to investigate. The smell was worse than anything you can believe as they sucked the ordure of millennia from a hole in the street. Who knows, this might have been part of a ‘Mediaeval Florence Experience’ laid on by the City Council. Not known for my sensitivity, I was actually gagging as I tried to get back into the apartment ['nuff said].
And so.....let'sgettouta here...

Next day we’re on the train to Nice, the first one, for 2 and a half hours and the seats were cool because there was a button that made the seat go up higher because it was First Class and on the second train Nothing much Happened!
Tony: The train to Milan was fine and the restaurant car offered thirteen variants on spaghetti pomodoro – but no, we saved ourselves for the longer leg to Nice and the SNCF first class compartment and restaurant car. Do not believe anything you read about Euro-trains – the restaurant car should have read: Pringles Originals con café freddo (not even any warm white wine) and a compartment that had seen better days in 1972. However, it is a beautiful route even though we did not stop in Monaco long enough to buy an apartment. Nor were we allowed up for air at Monte Carlo [keeps us riff raff out, tho']. We all felt a joie de vivre when we entered France and the sea in Nice really is azure even in the rain.

Lucas: In Umbria at Lee’s place, when we were watching movies on his roll down Cinema [I think he prefers the term “screening room”, honey] and in citta della pieve where there was the smallest street in the world and adults had go sideways when they were near the end, and Mum wasn’t very happy when she saw how narrow it was. Me and Theo pretended to hold the walls back from closing in. It was called the “street of kissing women” yuk!
Me: For me Citta della Pieve was memorable for its Duomo carvings, which were fluid and almost early 20th C in their pastoral curves and realism – very different from the French gothic of Notre Dame and Chartres that I’m used to. How to make stone look like water – that’s the thing. That and the cold, alleviated by spankin’ hot water bottles – nice touch.

Theo: on Monday morning we got up early to take the train to Florence, everyone was freezing except me. I refuse to wear the new coat Mum bought me in Paris. In Florence I turn mums dads and Lucas’s fans on and off, muhahahahahhahahhah. I refuse to eat anything at all.
Tony: This should be a home-coming; after all, Deborah and I practically met at Instituta Machiavelli. But cunning manoeuvring of childer-beasts into cultural positions to no avail. So, today, reinforcements for leather fetish (Deborah two pairs, me one, but with Missoni belt). Managed (actually voluntarily) to take Lucas to first concert – Bach partita and solo violin programme – luckily Lucas agrees to stick with piano. Florence wonderful but very, very noisy at night as sound funnels up 16th century walls and full of pheromonal and unsupervised school trips by day. With post modern irony we go to excellent “Cezanne in Florence” exhibition (and expect to see “Masaccio in Nice” exhibition at the weekend).
Me: shopping tourism is unbounded in Florence as there are few (as yet) of the stolid comfort zones of department stores, gap or sephora. Instead – with aid of Lee’s unpublished notes for concierge.com – we make our way to the ‘erbalista of Sta Maria Novella for world’s best (and naturally most expensive) soaps.

Heading towards a Christmas tree near you soon….. Kids fail to realise that best part of being in a City is simply being there: walking and ogling. Humour at lunchtime in ersatz café next to local meat market, thus giggles at expense of American tourists who have inadvertently ordered whole boiled cock’s heads. Speaking of which, how many variants of sculpted willies can two small boys laugh at in one Florence stroll, we have: moley ones, pointy ones, bendy ones, ones that go up then across, anything it seems other than plain big ones. Indeed, only incentive for Uffizi tomorrow is David’s willy (small, as I recall).

Am right now hanging out of window by toe nails to bring you this...Florence anarchic enough to have unsecured wifi points but archaeic enough not to understand they might as well surrender the wep code as not....mwah!

Wendsday night: our bold attempt to probe the wheels of steel and travel, 'cross Europe by train.
Lucas: Well now we are travelling on a train to ROME and Mum though it was a first class sleeper train but it is a boring tiny smelly carriage and I’m feeling claustrophobic because it’s tiny and boring. All I hope is that tonight will have gone by soon but I feel annoyed but I’ll just eat till I go to sleep, Bye!

PS: In Paris the pyramid Gallery,” the Louvre” was fun till my legs ran away & and I could hardly walk! But I saw the Mona Lisa it was cool and it was behind bullet proof glass!
Lucas: Well sleeping on the train was boring and the blanket for the duvet was itchy and the bed was tiny and you had to walk up a ladder to get up, the bed was kind of hanging from the wall! Well me and Theo, and me, bought monster munch crisps and they were nice but mum didn’t let us have many and mum was whining about how much wine there was (NOT)
Tony: It was a pleasure to see Deborah’s face when she saw that the couchette did not contain even a lavabo let alone somewhere for Oddjob to hide and spring out as we trained through the St. Godard Pass. Much muttering about planting trees and flying first class rather than endure a night with the children’s feet within three feet of our faces. There is also a danger of the train being full of people eager to minimize their carbon footprints [not much, mon cher…..most brought their own chuppa chips]. The morning rose bright and cheerful as we passed through Modena.
Rome: Keat’s Flat

Lucas: about ten minutes before I wrote this I was go-Carting and whizzing round the park and knocking Theo’s wheel and nearly I got lost! But now I’m hungry and there’s nothing in the fridge {In Keats’s house}, Bye bye!
Theo: in the exhibition about Leonardo da Vinci there was a mirror room
which I nearly couldn’t find my way out of. There was also a 12 barrel shot gun which you could spin and more barrels would come.
Hey ho: still the best kitchen in the world (all Keats needed was good chicken soup; all that swooning bollocks, oi vei), universe and anything (see view, above).
To Umbria and beyond…..T does country:
Tony: France was good enough for Terence Conran, even for Rick Stein, so who needs Umbria ? Many years of prejudice and a fear of running into Germaine Greer have needed to be eroded by a: visiting Umbria and b: having friends with a beautiful casa, indeed virtual castello between Rome and Florence on the edge of one of the hill cities. Weather not so good so time in front of fire drinking and reading books on Algeria (homework). Flesh frozen and unyielding - damn.

Arrival Paris. MORNING: Grim weather and no thermals but determined to conduct worthly tour including homage to old home on Isle St Louis.
Lucas: well i couldn't believe my eyes when i saw the hotel bath it was the tiniest smallest puniest bath i have ever seen in the world and when I tried getting in only my head didn’t fit in it was so small and I’m telling the truth “Honest”! The room was tiny too but we have BBC prime and i caught Theo watching big chef little chef.

AFTERNOON: Like a wrinkle in time, we were standing outside our old home on Quay de Bethune and Madame the concierge came out. She looked exactly the same and I still don't know her real name.
Louvre unaccountably closed on Tuesday which is weird for capital city but they do have this 35 hour week thing to contend with. However, the most important (for me) place was the least known - the memorial to the French deportees, 200,000 of them, at the tip of the Isle de la Cite just by Notre Dame. This is not flagged in many guides and is the most moving, appropriate piece of architecture (opened 1961) that evokes powerful emotions. The centre installation, a long corridor lit by a single light, is lined with 200,000 glass beads or lights, each one a soul killed in deporation camps during the war. Impossibly not to be moved to tears - thus no photos as mascara not holding up. A stark contrast to Notre Dame, where we herded around with thousands of tourists (the Russians being best dressed for this weather). Suddenly realised this was down to Mr Dan Brown and secretly cursed. Taxi driver on way home will vote Segolene Royale...we will conduct straw pole (we're coming out as covert Sarkozies but strangely are keeping quite on this, not sure why).

Tony: Sitting in Jean Paul's favourite seat and trying to compose a sequel to 'L'etranger' involving the post modern irony of Paris on a rainy day with children, I was affronted to be photographed by a tourist who did not even ask for my signature.

Allow us to add to the white noise of the 21st century. Permit our (very) short term blog to intrude on your already exciting lives. Dear readers, those of you more used to Dee Dee von F's apercus will have to read between the lines; this is the Orchard-Clark's collective toe dipping in the waters of blog-dom and children are present. I fear that it may fizzle out under a barrage of male hormones, "self-medication" and shopping but let's all see....together.
Take it away, childer-beasts:
Lucas: I'm bored beacause I'm not allowed to bring my laptop, "bored". The only fun thing will probably be when we are at the park at Rome!
Theo: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah boring boring blah blah
dont read it blah.
Me: Oh my lord.
Tony: What am I looking for in a whistle stop tour of France and Italy? I want: vespas, low-life, riviera, flesh, pasta, sad eyed madonnas, oranges and lemons, flesh, sunshine, bonding moments the children will re-live forever, flesh...[at this point camera pans out to lengthy wait at Exeter airport; Deborah being a travel-ubercontrolfreak. We have 12 rail connections ahead of us after short flight into Paris. That's 36 hours in Deborah-wait-time.]