A ROOM...

I think I'm turning into a senior citizen, as all I like doing is visiting gardens, taking pictures of flowers, then going for a cream tea. We went to Monk's House, the country getaway of Virginia and Leonard Woolf in East Sussex, on a typically rainy May bank holiday weekend. As we arrived in the tiny village of Rodmell, the skies cleared and a Manx cat bounded up to greet us.

Because it was so wet, there were hardly any other visitors to the house and garden. I had a good poke around the garden - so many sections, with roses tumbling and spilling around the house, lupins and tons of flowers in bloom near to it, a rectangular pond with a bench, then an orchard, a lawn for playing bowls overlooking the fields, the writing hut, a large vegetable garden next to the church. I love when gardens are sectioned like that, which takes real imagination and vision. Anyway I'll stop being a granny for a minute, going on about gardens. Still got some life in me yet.

What really, really got me at Monk's House was Virginia's bedroom. Separated from the rest of the house with its own external door onto the garden it was the most tranquil, calming space I could ever think of. Pink climbing roses covered the wall outside and most of the windows, the inside of the room had that perfectly calming arrangement, where someone with a strong eye has books and possessions and things that don't 'match' but everything is harmonious, everything flows. The importance of a room of one's own - had to say it. The privacy, the refuge. There was a man whose job it was to sit in there, probably to stop people having a nap on Virginia's bed, which was hard not to do. The photos below are of the exterior and interior of VW's bedroom.

GIVERNY...

When I was in Paris last weekend we took a day trip to somewhere I've long wanted to see: Giverny. My grandmother (yes the teapot one) had a beautiful, large framed print of Monet's Japanese Bridge, that I remember not quite understanding wasn't the original painting until I was old enough to realise that this was unlikely. So to see the actual bridge that I grew up looking at in the painting print was a dream.

I seriously didn't know quite what a major tourist destination the home and gardens that belonged to Monet and inspired his paintings were. We thought that by arriving late in the day we'd beat the crowds, but wow, we were wrong. Apparently Giverny ranks up there with Versailles as a day trip for Paris visitors (and it's a fraction of the size) - I had no idea...

The planting of the gardens was beautiful - peonies, tulips, irises and roses out in full force. It was a bit hard to move around - you just had to follow the herd and shuffle forward when you could. When we got to the waterlily pond it was difficult to imagine Monet painting the scene in the serene, calm environment that inspired him for so long - and difficult to take a photo that didn't include two hundred other people also madly taking photos from every angle in the frame. At one point a lady took a photo up my nose. Such was the frenzy. I mention this not to complain, but to give the full experience. I don't think there's a time of day you can go that would not be so busy though. Maybe during winter, but then you'd miss the flowers in bloom and the wisteria which absolutely covers the Japanese Bridge. I somehow managed to take a photo of it that doesn't betray quite how many people were standing on it also taking pictures. I started to wish that brightly coloured gore-tex anoraks and DSLRs were banned and that everyone had been issued with faded linen artists' smocks and panama hats on entry and made to take photos only with vintage or very small cameras; they'd blend in a bit more... In this setting, hell was definitely other people. But if you can't beat them, style them.

Anyway! It was lovely really! I was very inspired by the planting in the gardens near the house. Long beds full of colour and so many different flowers.

Monet's breakfast room

FLOWERS, CAKE, NICE LUNCHES, CATS, A FEW DOGS, WINDOW BOXES, CHARACTERS, MORE FLOWERS...

Herewith - a selection of my photos of Paris, which I have arranged in a procrastinatory fashion into a little gallery on my website - here. It will rotate as and when I add to or subtract to it with new photos. Luckily I'll be seeing all the above things in person this week.

LIFE ON THE STREET ~ PARIS...

These pictures don't go with my other pictures of Paris somehow - random moments snapped on the street of humans and animals going about their day in a Paris of grey streets.

FLOWERS...

In building my new portfolio website for my writing work (oh yes I did) it became apparent that I have tens of thousands more pictures of Paris than I know what to do with, or could even begin to categorise and edit into a cohesive collection. I'm beginning to organise them and certain themes have begun to emerge - if you know me, you'll be able to guess what those are instantly... Eventually I'll have a rotating gallery on my site, but until then I'll post little collections here on the blog now and then. First up, in honour of spring - flowers and florists.

{© Claire Oldman}

SO THAT HAPPENED...

{In the desert, you can remember your name.}

THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY...

I was recently invited to a special preview screening of The Two Faces of January, the directorial debut of screenwriter Hossein Amini, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last night. The film is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name. which will invite inevitable comparisons with The Talented Mr Ripley; but this is a tighter, more subtle film that plays on the tension between the performances of Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.  It's the relationship between Chester and Colette Macfarland (Mortensen and Dunst) and Rydal (Oscar Isaac) under the blazing sun of Greece and Turkey which drives the film. Any other characters are incidental.

It's the summer of 1962. First we see Chester and Colette as wealthy vacationing Americans, singled out by the shady small time con-man Ryder, who works as a tour guide, short-changing pretty American tourists. As the story unfolds, the position of who is not to be trusted changes places between Chester and Ryder several times, with the complication that Ryder is now implicated in Chester's much darker crime, and the Macfarlands are indebted to him for helping them flee Greece and the police. Eventually the action becomes a straight battle of wits between the two men, each desperate to escape, but unable to disentangle themselves.

The costumes by Steven Noble hit just the right spot - again, subtle. Viggo Mortensen's white linen suit's deterioration from pristine to crumpled follows the story arc to a T. Kirsten Dunst only has three or four costumes - all pitched perfectly. The backdrop of bright Greek sunshine and holiday resorts to what is essentially a film noir is a great contrast - also highlighting the Greek tragedy elements of the story.

{Released in the UK on 2 May 2014}

WHAT REMAINS...

It took me so many years to finally visit the Musée Nissim de Camondo, but it was worth the wait.
My favourite part of the house was the kitchen, where I could happily have spent all day/the rest of my life.

Less happy was the fate of the Camondo family. Moise de Camondo had the house, which faces into Parc Monceau, built in 1911, which he then filled with his collections of tapestries, furniture, porcelain and art. His son and heir Nissim was killed in the first world war, so Moise changed his will to bequeath the house and all its collections to Les Arts Decoratifs in his honour. The house opened as a museum after Moise's death in 1935. During the second world war, Camondo's daughter and her family were all taken to Auschwitz where they were killed, meaning the family line died with them. I imagine that if the house had not been in the possession of Les Arts Decoratifs already, then it may have been seized by the occupying German army and who knows what would have happened to it. It has always been preserved in its original condition as a family home, which is what makes it unique.

The area around Parc Monceau is not one I have reason to visit often. So after visiting the house, we walked in the bright winter sunlight of Parc Monceau, where piles of Christmas trees being chipped scented the air with fresh pine. Then I insisted on going to the cafe in Place Saint-Augustin and sitting in the same seat as Frédéric in L'Amour L'Apres-Midi, famously shown in this scene. Neither the cafe (or its menu!), nor the exterior view of Place Saint-Augustin seemed to have changed at all.

LE TIGRE D'HIVER...

If I have a resolution for 2014 apart from to cull quell(!) anxiety, or deal with anxiety better, or be less crippled by anxiety please, it's to get my camera fixed or get a new/old camera that I'm happy with. If I'd done that I would not be presenting these dreadfully awful phone pictures of an intensely amazing moment.

We were wandering the streets of Paris, commenting on various architecture, looking at trees, wandering past the Cirque d'Hiver, which I've never paid much attention to and actually always thought was an old circus that was now only used as a theatre / venue.

Crossing into the little Place Pasdeloup I turned my head to the side and looked straight into the eyes of a tiger. A real, full sized adult tiger who batted his eyes at me like a cat, from his green room cage across a yard behind railings. Tied back tarpaulin curtains framed him. We had a long silent communion and I tried to zoom in enough with my iphone to picture the moment. Mostly failed on that. After about ten minutes I wandered off in shock and later couldn't stop telling everyone about the tiger, including a four year old boy who wouldn't believe me and thought I meant a statue of a tiger, until I showed him a blurry photo as proof. When we passed by again later the curtains were pulled shut.

I feel uneasy about the existence of circuses in general and wouldn't go to one for entertainment. Though from the little I saw, the animals seemed content and well looked after in their yard. The next day I just so happened to conveniently pass by again at around the same time and my friend was waiting there, curtains open - this time putting on a Lola worthy display of flirting, paw licking, stretching and yawning. Fortunately there were several layers of bars between us - not because I was scared; I felt no fear at all - but because I would have been so tempted to crawl in and nestle into the beautiful fur of his belly.

It was a genuinely magical happening. Things that are dear to me are not what I usually share with the internet anymore sadly - the nature of the beast, one might say. But I think this incredible creature, hiding in plain sight in the centre of Paris, is larger than life enough to be a spirit animal to me and anybody else who cares to pay him a visit.

NORMANDY...

It seems I haven't photographed any of the picturesque things I did this month. Lack of available light might be to blame, so I'm craving the sweet light of the Normandy coast on a quick overnight trip there in November. Taken on a disposable camera.

p.s. The cat and dog were best friends...