The Brides of Paris #2

I do love seeing brides in Paris. I've seen some before in 2010. We only saw two more in 2013, it seems brides love a Paris monument just like everyone else.

Photographing the bridal nose perhaps?

On the temporary seating outside Notre Dame

Turning up to find the Eiffel Tower shut
because of a strike
would be disappointing

Most of the Paris brides I saw in 2013 were potential brides in shop windows.

Suzanne Ermann
29 rue de Tournon 75006

And a glimpse of wedding pamplemousse!

Max Chaoul
55 Quai des Grands Augustins 75006

Pronuptia
66 Blvd Raspail 75006

My favourite frock I think

Saturday Snapshot is a wonderful weekly meme now hosted by WestMetroMommy

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog

The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon

I read David Almond's extraordinary The Fire-Eaters last year. I've been keen to read more of his writing ever since- checking out my library, and even buying a book online (not this one). I've been enjoying a few quick reads over the last few weeks- perfect for our ridiculously hot Australian summer this year- it's much too hot to concentrate on anything lengthy, I have no idea how everyone else is reading The Luminaries in this weather.

I'd borrowed The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon from my library before, but returned it unread. I was determined to read it this time. I'm determined to read more David Almond and the title and cover of this one really appealed.

There is what seems to be a typical Almond start.

Some time ago, there was s rather lonely boy named Paul who lived in a city in the north of England. He lived underground, in a basement flat at the bottom of a great apartment block. Over his head, there was floor after floor after floor, and family after family.

This made the world seem very heavy and the sky seem far away. 

Paul decides to go and touch the sky even though he'd never thought that he might be adventurous. Of course he sets of on his adventure and meets a cast of rather unusual characters that populate his apartment building. It all becomes rather bizarre, diverting off to thoughts about war, and while that is moving, it's also a becomes even more odd.

"Correct! It was the obvious solution. There we were, billions and zillions of us lined up on the battlefield, armed to the teeth, glaring and growling and gnashing our teeth, all of us determined to kill as many of each other as we possibly could. I just took a shortcut. Soon as any battle started, I just dropped down dead."

There are discussions of fate and destiny. Of imagination, spontaneity and planning.

"What's the plan?" he asked.

"The plan?" said Benjamin. "What could be more boring than a plan? How can we plan when the outcome is unknown? How can we plan for the impossible, the outrageous, the unspeakable?"

The back cover blurb quotes:

Almond lays claim to being Roald Dahl's rightful heir- cookiemag.com

I don't think I really agree with that- I do think that David Walliams is much a better fit for Dahl's legacy. Although we do learn that sausages are better than war, that's somewhat Dahlesque. Philip Ardagh proclaimed it a modern classic, a fable for all ages, and "the kind of book I've always wished The Little Prince had been". I do think that The Little Prince is a better comparison than Dahl. But I didn't understand The Little Prince that well either. I'm sure both would reward rereading at some stage and while I didn't love The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon as much as I expected, I'll certainly keep reading David Almond.

I am not Esther

I was quite blown away by meeting Esther recently. A New Zealand classic previously unknown to me, I am not Esther should be more widely recognised outside of New Zealand. An exploration of self, of identity, of religion, of family, of friendship, that is also a gripping page-turner.

I am not Esther is the absorbing tale of 14 year old Kirby Greenland. Kirby lives in Auckland with her somewhat disorganised mother. It has always been just the two of them, and Kirby has grown up to be a competent young woman. Sometimes she is forced to be too competent.

She was fun, my dizzy flake of a mother. I loved her passionately and I didn't care that I was the one who had to organise the running of our flat, who had to write out cheques for the bills, make sure she didn't spend all the money before the next payday, get the washing done, drag her off to buy groceries. 'They're so boring, Kirby!' she'd cry. 

Very soon Kirby's world dissolves. Her mother's behaviour becomes even more bizarre.

There were two weeks between when school broke up and Christmas. Mum was worse than dizzy, she was frenetic. She dragged me and Gemma all over Auckland looking for just the right Christmas decorations. She went to parties, she worked, she pinched the plastic money card when I wasn't looking and hung round in town giving money to people who looked desperate. 

Her mother Ellen decides to go to Africa to work with refugees, and so she takes Kirby to stay with relatives that Kirby never knew existed. Enough of a shock perhaps. But her relatives are members of a very strict religious order, and live a rather strict, spartan life in Wanganui. There is no television in the house, no radio, no mirrors, no newspapers, and no book except the bible. In a unique riff on the classic orphaned children's book heroine Kirby is renamed Esther, and is thrust in a totally foreign way of life.

I had to find myself before it was too late and I vanished, worn away under a welter of prayers, rules and restrictions. 

Kirby can't understand her new life, or why her mother would abandon her this way. Kirby and her story really stayed with me. I have one little quibble with the plot that doesn't make to sense to me, well it's probably a major quibble, but I've been mullingover this book for days now. Not something I often do.

Fleur Beale is a prominent New Zealand author, with over 30 books under her belt, who sadly still needs to find other work to supplement her income as an author.  She helps other writers asses their manuscripts and is a relief teacher. I'm so glad that I bought my copy of Esther last time we were in New Zealand. Fleur based I am not Esther on a former student- a member of a cult who wanted to go on to university and who was kicked out of his family and church. His story bubbled away in the background before it came into life as part of I am not Esther.

In the words of our immortal Molly Meldrum, do yourself (and Fleur Beale) a favour and go buy a copy of I am not Esther (fishpond do free worldwide shipping). And then read it.

The Rainbows of Paris

While David Lebovitz tells us that Paris has now turned purple, we found Paris awash in Pamplemousse on our visit last year, but there were many, many rainbows too. Parisians do seem to love their rainbows.

They love them in shops.

You might see more rainbow after all that vodka!

Rainbows of chocolate

 A lovely rainbow of  ballerina flats at Repetto

It's not surprising to find rainbow bars in the Marais

They even dressed the iconic ET in a rainbow
for Bastille Day 2013
which may seem a political statement, and it was,
but not the one you might think. 

Saturday Snapshot is a wonderful weekly meme now hosted by WestMetroMommy

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

I think it's fair to say that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is more famous as a movie than in its original book format. I've seen the movie several times over the years of course, but had never read the book until recently. Ian Fleming is much more famous as the author of James Bond. He lived quite the life it seems, and was to die quite young. Actually a lot of children's authors seem to die quite young I'm learning. For Ian Fleming a life of hard drinking and heavy smoking was to cause him to have a series of heart attacks in his early fifties.

After one of his heart attacks he was convalescing in a seaside hotel in England. He was banned from his typewriter, and a friend gave him a copy of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, and suggested that he write out the stories about a magical car that he used to tell his young son Caspar. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was the end result of this rather odd set of circumstances.

Ian Fleming begins by dedicating Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to a car built in 1920 by Count Louis Zbowroski. I loved the cross channel setting- the Pott family lives in England of course, after Chitty is acquired and fixed up they set off for a summer picnic at Dover, and after a series of misadventures in the English Channel the book ends up in Paris (now that was rather unexpected, a Parisian setting!) with a planned robbery in the most famous chocolate shop in the world, Le Bon-Bon. Some of the Channel adventures were reminiscent of Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories of shipwrecks and smugglers.

It's a cutsey family adventure, where the good guys win of course, and the baddies are outsmarted by a car. Which is all quite different from the movie plot as I remember it- the famous child catcher character was created by Roald Dahl for the film script and didn't feature at all in the book. The core idea of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a magical car that can transform herself to fly or to swim is fantastic. Sadly I was somewhat underwhelmed by the book. Rather too much mechanical detail at times for me- it's safe to assume that I don't need any mechanical detail I suspect, and just a bit well, pedestrian. There must still be interest in these books though because there are now three recent sequels penned by Frank Cottrell Boyce, although Chitty Chitty Bang Bang now takes the form of a souped up Kombi Van.

Ian Fleming didn't live to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang published. He died of another heart attack on 12 August 1964, his son's twelfth birthday. Poor Caspar was to live a sad life and then die an even earlier death, taking his own life with a drug overdose in 1975.

Mr Stink

My love affair with David Walliams rolls on. Mr Stink is the third book by Walliams that I've read in the last few months. I finally got to reading his first book The Boy in the Dress in October last year, and then Billionaire Boy as a Christmas treat. I've had some idle moments this month and so picked up Mr Stink on a whim spurred on by the fact that the tv version was played here recently and I'd taped it and knew it was waiting on the hard drive for me, and I'd come to notice that many of my reads this month have yellow covers.

Mr Stink is perfect Walliams. Chloe Crumb is 12 years old. Everyday as she is shepherded to her "posh private school" she sees a homeless man sitting on the same bench with his little dog. She is intrigued by him. Mr Stink has appeared in town suddenly and taken up residence with his little black dog, who also smells.

No one knew where he had come from, or where he might be going. The town folk were mostly nice to him. They sometimes dropped a few coins at his feet, before rushing off with their eyes watering. But no one was really friendly towards him. No one stopped for a chat. 

But Chloe is curious. She lives in a "boring little town where nothing happened that hadn't happened the day before."

She was only twelve and she had never spoken to a tramp before. Her mother had forbidden her to speak to 'such creatures'. Mother even disapproved of her daughter talking to kids from the local council estate. But Chloe didn't think Mr Stink was a creature. She thought he was a man who looked like he had a very interesting story to tell- and if there was one thing Chloe loved, it was stories.

Of course Mr Stink does have a story to tell. And so does David Walliams, he does it with his trademark intelligence and humour.  The highlight of which is again a list (similar to those in Billionaire Boy) of the nonstop and rather nonsensical extracurricular activities undertaken by Chloe's over achieving sister Annabelle in a typical week.

Thursday
2am Learning Arabic
3am Dance lesson, break-dance, hip- hop, krumping
4am Oboe lesson
5am Tour de France cycle training
6am Bible studies
7am Gymnastics training
8am Calligraphy class
9am to 4pm School
4pm Work experience shadowing a brain surgeon
5pm Opera singing lesson
6pm NASA space exploration workshop
7pm Cake baking class, level 5
8pm Attend lecture on 'A History of Victorian Moustaches'

And in a beautiful moment of synchronicity I learnt what krumping was this week. I'd never heard of it before. And here it is again. I'm not certain that my life has been enriched. Is all knowledge enriching?

Mr Stink is David Walliams' second book for children. In his thank you at the beginning of the book he thanks his readers.

Finally I would also like to thank all the people who wrote to me to say they enjoyed my first book, The Boy in the Dress, particularly the children. It is very touching when someone takes the time to write a letter, and greatly encouraged me when working on Mr Stink. I hope it doesn't disappoint. 

It certainly didn't.

There is a sweet tele movie version of Mr Stink, with David Walliams appearing as the Prime Minister. It was on tele before Christmas and Master Wicker and I got to watching it this week. Rather enjoyable- but the book was better (of course).

Louise in Paris

Why is it so fun to see your own name up in lights? Or on cushions?

This prompted a squeal, and stopping in ones tracks down rue du Bac.
You just know that there is one of these in Australia now don't you?
Louise is the makers' daughter, so used for the display pillows.
It had to be. And so it was. 

Obviously I had to stop and have a glace here.

Saturday Snapshot is a wonderful weekly meme now hosted by WestMetroMommy

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog