Friday, November 02, 2007

Better red...

than dead? There aren’t many things that the French Riviera doesn’t have. Even snow has been known. But it does lack sunsets: unless you’re very high up, the sun will disappear behind a mountain long before it reddens the evening sky. But the Atlantic coast has crepuscular views like this every evening across the Bordeaux Lake.

The Riviera comes good in the mornings: this was the sun this morning as it peeped over Cap Ferrat:

Our beloved PM, Gordon Brown, is supporting a Bill to prevent criminals from making profit from their crimes by publishing books about them. “Are there no lengths Brown will not go to,” said Matthew Parris in yesterday’s Times, “to prevent Tony Blair from publishing his memoirs?”

It’s Toussaint – All Saints Day - the long holiday weekend in which everyone buys chrysanths and goes to the cemetery to visit defunct relatives. A morbid way to spend a beautiful autumn day - if not as ghoulish as the Mexican dia del muerte, when the kids eat skull- and coffin-shaped candy - but a good excuse for a long weekend. The UK’s the only place I know where they don’t have any hols between August and Christmas - no Toussaint, no Yom Kippur, no Labour Day, no Armistice Day, no Thanksgiving. But there’s a lot of people not visiting necropoli - they’re here enjoying the sunshine; some are even swimming.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You always know just what to say;)
What about Guy Fawkes Day? Hmm? What do you MEAN it doesn't count?!

Tuscan Traveller said...

Thanks Ed, you're too kind. We'll still be here on the 5th, so won't be burning the effigy of a Catholic terrorist! Funny - they don't celebrate it in France!

Anonymous said...

THey don't celebrate it in the States either.

justin said...

One of my sisters lives in France (Strasbourg) and told me some years ago, that I should never give her chrysanths (which I think are gorgeous), because of their association with funerals in France ... quel domage.

justin said...

Lovely photos, by the way, RW.

Tuscan Traveller said...

Thanks Justin - I realised when we got here that I'd left the battery of my litle Olympus on charge at home. (Should be well charged by now!) THEN the DG emerged with my (next year's) birthday present - a beautiful Canon D400 SLR. Still learning it, but in the meantime it's amazingly idiot-proof and I love it.
Yes, most of us made the chrysanth mistake - but only once...