The old master

Today we walked up the hill, rising from our seedy city neighbourhood through several social strata to the Musee Matisse.

Between the museum building itself and the little cafe outside, there's an absolute rarity - empty space.

This part of the world has been civilised for so long that parklands just don't seem to exist any more, long ago built over with apartment blocks.

So naturally some people were in this little park playing the French national sport, pétanque.

I think it's a sport in much the same way that Thumb War is a sport.

A game, yes. A thing to keep children amused at a picnic, definitely. But not a sport.

I suspect that the drugs in cycling (the other French national sport) actually drifted over from pétanque, as it would take some serious mind alteration to make me buy a special shirt for tossing metal balls in random outdoor venues.

But the people playing were taking it very seriously indeed, putting on that grim face known amongst aficionados as the "total pétanquer".

I digress.

So the Matisse Museum is full of the old master's work, mainly donated by his family, as they were clearing wall space for plasma TVs.

(Below is the sculpture series: The Many Faces of Margaret Thatcher.)

If the museum was your only exposure to Matisse, you might think he was a bit crap, because it's full of his practice works - the stuff he created on the way to being sublime.

{ Read More }

Viva la di'France

A French road and a French footpath are more or less the same thing.

One has mainly cars and the other mainly pedestrians, but that's mostly a matter of convenience and relative sizes.

After less than a week here, it's no longer a surprise when a Vespa jumps the curb beside me to overtake some jammed cars. And cars will also use the footpaths with aplomb, should the driver need to pick up some dry cleaning, or just stop for a chat about the cigar stink that clings to his jackets.

(This is true: today I watched the local dry cleaner enjoying a stogie in his doorway, smoke drifting back to hang around inside his shop.)

{ Read More }

Hobart to Nice

I'm on holiday. A long break overseas - landing in France, driving into Germany, then flying home via Thailand.

Getting here meant 30 hours in transit with a three year old. He did pretty well, though there's a certain level of exhausting paranoia necessary when you take an adventurous child through an international airport.

We spent a few hours in Dubai airport, which appears to be a massive duty free shop designed by someone with far too much money. 

This is a stone waterfall / fountain, next to the main elevator bank in the 'A' terminal. You can see the curving roof overhead - from outside, the whole building appears to be a tube lying in its side.

And outside it's over 40 degrees and muggy as hell. The minute it took to climb from the bus into the plane convinced me that I really didn't want to live there.

But we finally landed in Nice, which is a gorgeous French seaside city.

Nice used to be Italian and it still has that shabby-chic Italian feel to it. The buildings are all beautiful, painted in lovely colours, but perhaps they're about due for a new coat?

{ Read More }