Switzerland

The house is brimming with life again. The three girls and their parents are busy giving it back its character, which it must be admitted, was starting to ebb away as the empty, quiet days wore on. Panpounette the rabbit seems to have recovered from her weird malady; perhaps she simply ate a bad weed.
I have now tried just about every local speciality the baker has been able to produce and am even tired of muesli. I have had Tarte au Vin Cuit made in Grandvillard, Yogourt au Vin Cuit made in Villars-Sous-Mont, and ice cream au Vin Cuit made in Rossiniere, in Rossiniere.
I have phoned two more conductors today and one may be able to meet me but he's having troubles with his family, and the other has said he'll meet me any day this week. On Friday I go up to Schaffhausen for lessons, and to prepare for the concert I'm to do up there with Peter Leu on the 11th of September. Also hoping to meet with my friend Anna, who is doing a modern opera on the subject of shopping in nearby Bregenz. Perhaps a meeting on two boats in the middle of Lake Konstanz.
I went with Veronique and the girls to L'Etambeau, which is a museum in Chateau d'Oex. Veronique volunteers at an old cabin up from the museum where they are having an exhibition themed around the diary of a local woman, written in the 1860s. The whole house is filled with things from the period, and is a very good time-travel exercise. I found myself reminded of Laura Ingalls Wilder's «Little House» books. Sage leaves threaded along a string and drying, handwoven straw hats, a nice big loom, a sturdy, handcarved wooden bike, a spinning wheel, furs, bells to put on a sleigh...
But on the way I was lured by a banner in Rossiniere saying «Grand Mystere des Chats». It was an exhibition in the Grand Chalet where the artist Balthus lived. He liked doing slightly surreal oils of young girls, usually with a cross expression and their knickers showing, and cats. Long dead, I believe. Anyway, Veronique dropped me off, saying that I could take the train to Chateau d'Oex and make my way to L'Etambeau and join them later. I was just standing in the entrance to Grand Mystère des Chats, looking at a rather funny video and wishing that one of the girls was with me...it seemed to be a child-friendly little exhibition...when Veronique appeared suddenly, offering little 8-year-old Magda like a lovely little gift. «She likes cats and made me come back and leave her with you.» It was perfect.
The short video was a close-up of a moody looking cat with a round face and enormous black eyes on a nice bed, looking this way and that, and intercut were various odd cat toys, moving and looking surreal. Then the big-eyed cat hisses and goes under the bed. The odd cat toys (not toys for cats, but toys that look like cats) were all in the exhibition, which was a modest size. Anything from a really gorgeous 18th century bronze sculpture to ancient Egyptian jewellery, or teapots, or Japanese prints. Anything, so long as it was a cat or had cats painted on it.
Quite nice.
Whenever the Grand Chalet has an exhibition, the whole little village joins in the spirit of it, constructing things that are related to the theme and putting them in their front gardens. Magda and I had a good time wandering in the warm sun, looking at mosaics of cats made out of different coloured shells from garden snails (a huge quantity are available this year after the mild winter), children's paintings of cats on the side of a house, with real clothes fixed to them, and slogans, none of which I remember. And there was a wonderful piece of metalwork, a cat with an arched back seen from the front. Huge. And a sleigh, which seen from the side, is in the form of a cat stretching its front legs out in front of it, hind end raised. Also beautifully made. Outside the Raffeisen bank was a most peculiar creation. It was a vast box covered with fake fur, with a tail and a big cat's head and four legs. The box had about six holes in the sides, lined with old sleeves. One was encouraged to put ones hand in and feel what was inside. Magda and I enjoyed this. I felt a stuffed elephant, she felt a boot, then we took turns feeling a rubber squeaky toy. There was a book, also fur-lined, for comments, and Magda drew a picture of the whole thing, with herself sticking her arm inside it, and the comment «C'est chouette!» which she mirrored upside-down, as she did her name also.
Then from the cricket-deafened, dusty station onto a train, to Chateau d'Oex. An old man with a grey beard and hiking gear yodelled as the train pulled in.
Fun times at L'Etambeau, exploring the house.
Today I hiked right up along where the Cascades come from, and looked at a logging site. If the Canadian methods are like raping a forest, one could say that the Swiss keep their forests in a perpetual state of gentle foreplay. It was a pleasant clearing, full of lovely things for wildlife, and a few small trees here and there, naturally seeded, left to make of the light and air what they will.

Late tonight or tomorrow this house will be restored to its rightful owners. In a way I'm sad, but in a way I'm relieved, as Pomponette, the elder rabbit, has had two or three more funny turns with her hind legs. Eyes shut, battling with the legs which seem to stretch behind her and not want to function. This is exacerbated by the fighting the two of them do over food. Even if I carefully give them each a morsel of something, they're battling it out fiercely, chasing each other from one end of the cage to the other. Pomponette won tonight, even with her temporary disability, and on her side and convulsing, eyes half shut, leg stretched out, she was busily eating the apricot. So she couldn't be in much pain when it happens. But it's horrible to watch. She seems to have recovered now and they're sleeping peacefully like a couple of cats.

Earlier today Edouard, the Beatnik, came by and asked me to breakfast. So I sat outside at Estavennens in their crazy little garden overlooking hilly fields...there's always a couple of cats out in the middle of these fields. There must be something for them there. Breakfast was really thinly sliced dark, hard bread, and thickly sliced medium-coloured, a beautiful pat of butter with an Edelweiss stamped onto it, some hard and delicious goats' cheese from the Alps, and Vacherin and Gruyere. And almond butter so smooth it really was like butter, and that wonderful slightly tart pear syrup I adore. Tea was green at first, and in those lovely, very very thin bone china cups that are very shallow and a pale, pale green. And then Erika brought out «Monk's Tea» which she assured me was «Very dangerous» I asked her what she meant, and she just repeated it. I joked that maybe I would see the Assumption or a few saints with halos, and she shrugged. It was extremely perfumey. I asked what was in it. She said that she didn't know, and that it was from a friend they knew in the mountains. Hm. I asked to see the container. It was just a small paper bag with «Monk Tea» scrawled across it. Well I did become a bit expansive and a sort of funny feeling happened at the throat, not as if I would be sick, but kind of like it, but pleasant. She kept refilling the teacup and I said no.

Four male sheep with very very curly black hair were very close next door and I smelt this very strong farmyard smell through breakfast. They do look funny with their ears sticking out sideways. Male sheep don't get bells round their necks. Not sure why not.
Edouard played his guitar for a bit, and it was quite lovely. Folk meets Bach meets flamenco meets jazz. I suppose it's just everything he likes. He only plays his own music. He was frustrated because he has to change all his fingering, only having three useable digits on the left hand. He'd lost his index finger when scything some of the wild garden years ago, and his thumb is going to take months to recover from whatever he did to it. I can't find out definitively what exactly did happen.

Then he phoned a man who puts on a yearly festival at Gruyere, and plays the lute. But mostly, he makes lutes and guitars. We went over to meet him. He lives in a very new, modern house, a sort of salmon colour and like a box. His wife is a reflexologist. His workshop is extraodinary. Full of wonderful things. He does a lot of replicas, and there was an incredible guitar, INCREDIBLE, with filigree work, many little tiny bits of different woods all put together beautifully. The original belonged to a neice of the Sun King or something like that. Extraordinary work. Apparently if you want something made by him, you must wait three years for it. He showed us some wood, including one he called pink ivory. Very dense, very heavy, very, very expensive. And some really wonderful stuff from South Africa, from a sawmill there owned by a Swiss man who specialises in wood for oboes. Apparently a lot of it is discarded or rejected because of knots and flaws. So Philippe asked for a lot of little pieces of it and laid the floors of his house with it. Dark, hard wood, all put together beautifully, all little rectangles.

I asked if he designed the house himself and he said that he originally did make a design, but you have to go through an architect in Switzerland, and the architects are all disciples of Le Corbusier, and very firm about proportions and light streaming through every part. So they changed it. I must say that the light in the house was lovely. The architects also tell you what colour it must be. He said that after the thing was designed, he and his wife were seated in front of a computer and the architect said «You have a choice.» and proceeded to show them the salmon colour, and then a dark brown. That was the extent of the choice.

They were setting up a trampoline for their daughter. He said it was an ugly thing to have in a yard, but she got good grades at school and he'd promised. Naturally all the children in the neighbourhood were soon there, all on it together.

Edouard's enormous old Volvo wouldn't start, and after a while I got out of everyone's hair by taking the train back to Grandvillard. He said that the car would start eventually, and when I left he was using a broom handle to nudge various parts of the engine. «I can't understand it. It hasn't broken down in a month!»

With my friend Barbara from Kreutzlingen, I went to the HR Giger museum up at the top of Gruyère. It is truly an incongruous location. To spare the out-of-shape tourists, there is an ultra-kitsch fake train that runs up and down from the station to the castle, and from the castle to the station. Right next to the station is the cheese factory, or at least a place people can watch it being made in. And of course buy vast quantities of the stuff. Anyway, up you go, and there are the round turrets and all, and the Knyghts and Ladyes and tapestries and so forth, and shops that sell aprons with cows on them, and the smell of many fondues simmering away at many gingham tables even in this heat...and then there's HR Giger. It costs twelve francs to go into the museum, and what can one say? If you like Aliens you'll adore it. If you have terrible fears about women you'll find them realised. I don't think the guy is capable of drawing a female figure unless she's got her legs apart. Also, the consistent use of the airbrush reminds me of artwork on the sides of white vans. Hilariously, after walking past women being penetrated by machines, severed babies' heads covered with growths, giant maggots coming out of armpits etc., you see a flappy kind of door that says «Adults Only» and inside, lit with red lights, are some bits of juvenilia, cartoons that look like seaside postcards crossed with bondage-shop advertisements. Oh, and a life-sized woman with a barbed dildo and tongues coming out of her breasts instead of nipples. The very same image was outside the «adults only» room, even larger, but in two dimensions. And I saw more children in this museum than in most. Fairly small ones too.

Barbara was disappointed that there was very little of Giger's earlier work. She remembers seeing an exhibition in the seventies in Zurich, where he did drawings and paintings of city garbage. She said it was very interesting. The best thing in the museum was a large skeleton train. It was a sculpture and quite large. Ribcages, skulls etc. and the odd machine part thrown in. Rather good. But far more striking than anything in the museum was the cafe across the way, which is like the stomach of a giant monster. Backbones, ribs, hundreds of pelvises lined up one after the other across the ceiling, chairs that are a mixture of tongue and tail...in short, no flat surface at all. And it's free. Unless you want to buy something to drink. But then you get something to drink, which is more than one can say for the museum.
Gruyère is a very small place. There is a Catholic church with a modest and well-kept graveyard, and plenty of sorrowful virgins. One wonders what they are thinking about the museum that's just a stone's throw away. And the tourists? Do they wander around saying, «Hm. Cow-bells or anal disembowellment?»

Barbara and I consumed rather a lot of meringe and Gruyère double cream. Meringues are made by the fabulous local baker, and double cream of course is available at the laiterie. It is possible to eat the stuff for a tiny tiny fraction of the cost in this way. Especially if one goes to the Laiterie in Grandvillard, which serves dairy products to the locals rather than the tourists. Something I don't understand about this Gruyère cream is how good it is, how hugely thick (they keep it below the counter, and ladle it up with a strangely-shaped implement, dolloping it into a container you can bring yourself if you so choose) and yet, how un sick-making it is. I can eat three or four times as much of this stuff as I can the English Clotted Cream. Why?

Last night we went for a late night walk along the old road from Grandvillard to Lessoc. No streetlamps. Suddenly in the dark embankment leading up to the hilly pasture I saw what must have been some kind of power-point, a fusebox or something set into the ground. Because there was a bright green, pea-sized light, very very bright indeed. «Ah. That is a Glühwürmchen» said Barbara. A Glow-worm? Yes, a glow-worm. After trying, unsuccessfully, to say Glühwürmchen about ten times, I saw another one, in the woods this time, and a few yards away, shining right through all the undergrowth and branches. I seized Barbara's arm, saying «Look!» She said, calmly, «Next time you see something in the dark woods, please don't grab my arm like that.» Poor Barbara! Singers are such drama-queens. It could have been a murderer or a wounded, angry bear...but these Glow-worms excited me. Never having seen one. They are simply so incredibly bright. She was surprised that I was so hopeless at pronouncing it, because I sing German all right. So I sang the word, and of course it was perfect.

Speaking of singing, I had an email from a person in England today saying that they heard my recording of Autumn Leaves on BBC Radio 3, and that they loved it. About time it got some play! It's been four years since the disc came out!

Today was the last time I played and sang at the church in Chateau d'Oex, and it wasn't so bad. Finally got the hang of it. Even played pedals for a bit. And Michel was there to listen to me sing and take me back to Grandvillard. He invited me to go on a picnic with him up the mountains, but I said (quite truthfully) that I really had to go back and clean up the house for when its owners return, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day.

The rabbits are rather bad-tempered today. Barbara spoilt them very much, feeding them all sorts of lovely things while she was here, and they were awfully greedy today, perhaps as a result, and got quite ferocious when I fed them, snatching food from each others' mouths. Pomponette, the elder rabbit, started dragging one of her hind legs after a particularly vicious fight they had, and I panicked thinking that she'd die by painful inches in front of my eyes. I don't know what I could do in such a circumstance. She appears better now.

Really, rabbits aren't the most rewarding pets. They don't react to kindness in the way cats or dogs or even hamsters do. They snatch food greedily, and they nip you if they feel like it, and they run away from you always. And they'll eat EVERYTHING in the garden, and that includes ivy and tomato leaves, and all kinds of flowers. Even though I have spent an entire summer telling them very clearly NOT to eat the lily-of-the-valley or the irises, they try and get away with it as much as possible. Pomponette by stopping eating them when I shout «Pomponette! No!» but then sneaking back when I'm not looking, and Paillette by simply eating at triple speed when I shout «Paillette! No!» and then as I approach (usually holding the book I can't ever read more than two paragraphs between rabbit reprimands) ripping off a huge chunk of plant to be going away with. And all the time with a vacant stare from their round eyes. Bah! Rabbits! I love animals, and I love looking after them, and I do my best with these guys, even stroking their fur...Paillette is fluffy and Pomponette is smooth...but they're just so naughty. What can one do?

Nadia came up for a few days to take in some of the Menuhin Festival and I suggested that, as she was coming on the Thursday, we meet in Bulle and see the market together. She pointed out that markets start shutting down at around midday, but I assured her that I had seen signs stating that this one went on until four. Accordingly she appeared, and they were indeed putting their things busily into vans, etc. and we had to make a mad dash round to get a few things for the dinner table that night. We collapsed into the only two seats to be had in a restaurant and she ordered an 'Exotic Salad' and I had the Macaroni Montagnard, a supposedly local thing. Her salad was a horrid affair of dreadful iceburg lettuce, strips of wretched chicken doused in a grim sort of sauce, and with a dusty bit of tinned pineapple on top with a marachino cherry that looked as if it had come out of a museum. I don't know how it tasted because she refused to talk about it, being a positive kind of a person. My Macaroni Montagnard was repulsive, with endless chunks of ham that had actual bone, huge circular pieces of gristle in EACH CHUNK, and inedible. I said as much to the dim woman who brought them, and she said «Non, ce n'est pas d'os. C'est du lard.» I said it jolly well was not lard, it was stinking great pieces of gristly bone. «C'est du lard.» she continued to insist. Then she shooed us off the table. So: if anyone reading this ever intends to go to Bulle, give the Hotel de Ville a wide berth. At least neither of us was ill. But that's all I can say in its favour.

The next day was so glorious that Nadia and I just wandered about looking at the interesting houses in and around Grandvillard, ate local things including some very excellent fresh Tarte au Vin Cuit, and then went on a walk in the Montbovon direction. It was hot and the various flowers were blooming and waving about in the heat, and the slurry mixture on some of the fields was incredibly ripe-smelling. Overwhelming, in fact. We passed a sort of marsh, which was interesting, and went over a little river. This was the old road, the one that corresponded with the other old road from Rossinière that Michel took me on. Soon the road began to climb, and Nadia had to see what was the other side of the hill. At the top we saw the most unexpected 18th century chapel. It was completely round and with a pointy roof and a sundial. Extraordinary. It overlooked the territory for miles around, and there was a quaint house next to it that predated it by a few centuries. The present owners' taste seemed to run to gnomes, who peered out from every window. The chapel was locked. There was a water fountain nearby which we were grateful for. Then on our way back Nadia noticed a sign saying fresh eggs and we went up another hill, a sideways hill, and found the people with the eggs, bought some, and continued up that hill because Nadia remembered that there is a trail along there, through woods and fields, parallel with the old road. So we went back that way to Grandvillard and managed to get to the house just as the thunderstorm opened up above us. I saw huge forks of lightening near the Cascades.

The next morning was the first concert, a rehearsal of the Menuhin School Orchestra for which a happy public paid 10 or 20 francs to watch. The concert itself, that night, would cost up to 150 francs. It is an excellent band. Golly those youngsters are talented. The interesting piece was a new work, a concerto for string orchestra and two solo violins, one classical and one Klezmer. Though to be honest, I didn't notice much difference between the two. Perhaps that's because the Klezmer violin solo was played by a girl from the Dominican Republic and the classical violin solo was played by a passionate ball of charisma from Azerbaijan. I am tempted to say that the Azarbaijani girl is in for a brilliant career, only in this day and age it is reckless to make such predictions.
I overheard an organiser having a frantic phonecall outside, uttering the wonderful phrase: «Well could you ask Ashkenazy WHY he refuses to do the Elgar, or is it just whim?»

We wandered up the hillside behind the Saanen church, quite steep and sat in the woods on a very old bench covered in tiny tiny little bugs that looked like bits of soot. Smaller than fleas. I'd made sandwiches. Then we took the Yeheudi Menuhin Philosophenweg to Gstaad. This is a walk punctuated by signs every so often that have favourite philosophical thoughts of the great man. Either BY him or ones he likes, I don't know. Though several are most certainly not original, and date at least to Marcus Aurelius. But no sources are credited. The thoughts themselves are in English, German and French. A few sound awkward in English and better in German. Most sound best in German. My favourite was the one that said, more or less, that everyone should create something, even if it's rubbish. Creativity should be in everyone's life, somehow. It was a pleasant walk, and at one point there was a sort of caravan park by a river. Several of the homes looked reasonably permanent. One even had a dog that woofed at passers-by, though it was a truly civilised, Swiss woof. A sign said «Attention au Chiens» «Warnung vor die Hunde» and finally, a rather mystifying «Warning for the Dogs»

Coming into Gstaad we were completely drenched by rain. Nadia wore waterproof everything, rather vexing in the sultry morning, but I wore a lovely summer dress and moccasins that squelched. We took refuge in a tea-room in Gstaad, a place absolutely full of the absurdly rich. Designer childrens' wear, discarded Armani boxes littering the streets, and a huge tent for the tennis tournament. We read the International Herald Tribune, very interestingly anti-British, referring to the EU as a form of «Colonialism»

Wandering about a bit we had a long time to wait before the next concert, a vocal recital in a tiny church that started at 10:30 pm. I would adore to do that sort of recital. The atmosphere of late evening mine for the taking! Wonderful. We went to what was probably the best restaurant there, an old family-run establishment, with hunting trophies everywhere inside, and a fascinating menu. Nadia's ham had some cinnamon mustard to go with it, and I had rösti potatoes with finely sliced ham over them, and topped with grated smoked cheese, and served with a cherry compote. It seemed like cuisine from a hundred years ago. Then we proceeded to the small church to see the singer, who was a soprano, and who had a rather ambitious programme. She was palpably young, and the programme defeated her. She had no low notes left at all for Vorrei Spiegarvi, o Dio at the end (!!) and consistently ran out of breath at the end of most long phrases, but made up for it by her youthful enthusiasm and charm. She wore what was undoubtedly a wedding dress, with boning, sequins and boudoir-ish lacing at the back. If this all sounds very singerish and a bit 'miaw', I do apologise. A very funny Scotsman sat next to me. He is an engineer and lives in Berne and said that as everyone speaks English so well here, in order to finally be given a chance to learn the language, he'd reply in Gaelic whenever anybody spoke English to him. We dropped him at his hotel in Saanen on our way back to Grandvillard...in a taxi, as by the time the recital ended, trains had stopped running. Incredibly, the concert had been packed out, as all of them are here.

Sunday morning came very soon indeed, and luckily due to my having said to the Curé last week that waiting two hours in front of the locked church was «Ennuyant,» he appeared an hour before starting time rather than his customary twenty or fifteen minutes. I had only wanted to say that it was a bit boring, but I think that ennuyeux means 'annoyed' as well as bored. So due to my unwittingly strong language, he came in earlier for me! And it made ALL the difference in the world. I played far, far better. I had things organised, books open, items practised. Only my sortie was out of sorts, because I used the old peripheral vision to see the keys (as one does) and those darned keys on that darned organ! Black ones are light brown, white ones are black. Honestly.

Afterwards, Michel comes up and presses me to meet with him on Friday. Yes, yes, I say. Okay. Next to the church in Grandvillard. I shall have Barbara then, I hope, for protection! I rushed off to Gstaad and the Grand Chalet, where I was to meet Nadia for a final concert. It was a pianist who comes from a positively unbelieveably rich family, and who has a story that is for all to see in countless videos, interviews, films, all being set out, along with a huge number of Cds, when I got there. She sat under her mother's piano as a girl, and although her mother was terribly cruel and sadistic, at least gave her daughter the enjoyment of her playing. Daughter had a flash of wisdom: music should never be paid for. Not sure how that works out for the rest of us but she has merrily given concerts at places like Carnegie Hall for free. Or perhaps even paid for the privilege. I wouldn't know. She runs a school that teaches serious students for free, so she is a philanthropist, and three cheers for her.

Well, the crowd at this was such that I felt so unsuitably dressed I actually clutched my hem for the whole thing, acutely aware that the cotton was flimsy and creased from having sat out front of the Catholic Church in the drizzle for an hour, then sweated on the bench and then high-tailed it to the Grand Chalet in time. And also that it was a jaunty little summer dress of polka-dots, optimistic and cheerful and rather sweet. Whereas everyone here had been professionally pressed and polished and also was wearing the most expensive smart-casual that Continental Europe has to offer. Lots of beige, lots of crochet, lots of embroidery, lots of nice straight seams. The only thing wrong was the faces, which were overtanned and lined with the strain of so much dieting. A girl half my age was dressed twice my age, in pointy black stiletto slingbacks and a very structured yellow thing that was halfway between a coat and a dress and had shiny large buttons, very sixties. And a lady with a miniscule dog and a very slightly bouffant short spiky hairdo, skinny jeans over even skinnier legs, vertiginous heels and a little son and heir with a moon face that spoke of suffering, and blonder hair than his mother by her side. All the ladies working at the hotel wore hilarious folky costumes with long full skirts. Hideous mock-old oil paintings were on the walls of the place. And a big huge black Steinway sat waiting. It was sold out. Concert was fifty-five francs, and lunch was seventy-five. Everyone but us was having lunch too. The pianist was announced in two different languages by the director of the hotel, who was very honoured, etc. and he told us to refrain from applause throughout. We clapped him off and anticipated her entrance. She kept us waiting almost ten minutes, I suppose to put us into a sort of trance state. I closed my eyes because I was very tired, and listened to what happened, which was that people started to talk quietly. I heard the word «manger» amongst it. The volume rose gradually. Then in she wafted. And she really did waft. She wore a very old dress in white that looked as if either a fairy or an angel were what the designer had had in mind. several layers of diaphenous skirt. She came straight to the piano and knelt down to fix the bench. Two men leapt forward to assist her until it was just right. Then she composed herself and played Rameau's 'Gavotte variée', very romantically. I enjoyed that very much. Then 'Beethoven: 32 variations.' I'd not looked forward to that, but it was quite wonderful. I loved it. Then Chopin's Ballade number 1, a favourite of mine and it takes a lot to beat Simon Barere's live from Carnegie Hall in the late forties. Or Rubinstein, or...well. It was okay. It was good actually. Though I like the opening theme to be a bit more gypsy-like somehow, with a bit of lilt. Modern pianists refuse to do this. It ended well. You could tell that everyone was dying to burst out applauding but no! They'd been forbidden to do so! Then it was Schumann's Carnaval op. 9. I find this a tedious work, a kind of in-joke with Schumann's friends and so forth, and structurally it annoys me. Anyway, she was so hesitant about the recurring 'Schumann' theme, perhaps doing some very profound character-painting. Nonetheless it was irritating to me. And several members of the audience were, in truth, lost at this point. Eyelids drooped. And the lady with the dog and the expensive skinny trousers lost her little flaxen-haired cherub son. He ran out, had had enough. The piano was against a window, and the pianist was more or less framed carefully by this window. We saw her profound profile and her artistic fingers against it. At the bottom of the window was the obligatory box of red geraniums. Well, soon the miserable saggy moon-face of the blond child was poised absurdly above the geraniums. His chin thrust down over them, he rolled his agonised eyes from outside and we all saw his mouth open and silently say «Maman! Maman!...Maman!»
She shooed him away from the window, but he kept looking at her, just his head visible, inches from the glass, nearly misting it. He was perfectly placed, exactly between the hands and head of the pianist, who was starting to be distracted. She made a few little mistakes and turned to look at him as she played, no doubt a rather withering look. He was immune though. But a few more gestures from his mother seemed to do it, and I for one was sad to see him go.

Nadia and I went to the hunting restaurant again, and the outside of it was one big trading post, or appeared to be. It had skins of all kinds hanging on hooks, all along two sides of the building. You name it: foxes, bears, marten...and a sort of stall with small examples of the taxidermist's art. From our table we couldn't see the skins any longer, but we could see the reactions of passersby to the skins, which were just below us. It was the same expression for almost everybody. A sort of incredulous disbelief, a fascination, and an overriding conviction that there would be no place in the house for such a thing. But some people must have bought them.

We had another hike in Saanen, and then one in Gstaad when we got on the wrong train, and then finally through the beautiful scenery as the shadows were lengthening in the warm sun. It was a really lovely train, all wooden and with little wooden tables with shaded imitation candles on them. The light in the carriages was gorgeous when the train went through tunnels. Like real candlelight.

I am really very grateful to Nadia for this look-in at the Menuhin Festival. Next time I hope to be one of the performers!!

Today I took the bike to nearby Estavennens. In fact, I visited Estavennens almost a decade before Grandvillard, when Nadia took me and three Georgian violin students from Geneva on a journey to the mountains. We hiked somewhere I can't remember the name of, though I remember what we saw, including dessicated frog silhouettes flattenened into dust near a lake, and spectacular mountains, and the most enormous bull imaginable. Then later, she took us all to the Poya celebrations at Estavennens. The hillside was covered in parking places, marked out with sawdust, which I thought clever, and huge tents were erected, and there was a blacksmith hammering out cowbells and selling them, and alphorn players making a wonderful din, and tractors from all different decades, and cows of every imaginable breed including the extinct Aurochs. I don't know how this one got there, but there it was, all red and shaggy and blinking at us from inside a roped pen. There were cows decked out in flowers, and tankards of ale, and sausages and much rejoicing. The Poya is when the cows come down from the mountain pastures, on their strong legs and with wreaths around their necks. Or I think so. Well anyway that was in 2000, in August I think. I remember that all visitors paid something and were given a small cowbell to pin on, to show that payment had been made. So everyone tinkled. I gave my little bell to my mother, who put it on her rearview mirror in the car in Gibsons.

Without all that, Estavennens is one sleepy village! It's nearer mountains than Grandvillard, and in fact at one point, you're right smack against them. As with Grandvillard, the railway station is a twenty minute walk. But only one store, which looked full of dusty tinned goods and seed packets. No wonderful bakery, no stunning Laiterie. There is even more of the cow about Estavennens. Cowbells decorating houses, paintings of Poya processions from quite a long way back, many medallions and cow signs, huge metal advertisements for the Holstein, etc.

...Oh something funny just happened. The phone rang and a girl tried to sell me some weight-loss pills! So they're afflicted even here by cold-callers. When she heard I spoke English she gamely switched languages, saying «You aare afflicted by obeeseetee? Are you worried about health and feetness?» That was easy! «No actually, I'm not worried at all! I'm incredibly fit! I'm great! I'm really fabulous!» A pause. «Oh. I am really sorry!» If only all cold-callers were that easily put off.

Anyway. Estavennens. Piles of manure at the side of the street and barn doors everywhere. Geranium baskets, lace curtains with folky motifs. And guys in yellow t-shirts were constructing a swimming pool in a backyard and the radio was playing a French version of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight...A-weema-weh...'

Now, a few days ago a grey-haired man with a slightly hippie-ish look about him came by to apologise to the people for whom I'm housesitting that he hasn't been able to make any fruit-bread because he's injured his thumb. I was playing the piano when he arrived and after we had established the business about the fruit bread and the fact that the Wezranowskis were away, he told me I was welcome to visit him and his wife in Estavennens, and they love music and have a piano. His name was Andrew and he explained that theirs was the house covered in vines and with a wild garden. Indeed it was. There was a cactus garden in the front with flowering varieties galore, and wonderfully wild nettles and flowers and bushes in a sort of controlled profusion at the side, and driftwood, gnarled and interesting, about the front, so that it looked like a house on the beach in Sechelt. Inside it was even more like a house on the beach in Sechelt. Smelling of old wood and fireplace, with guitars, fraying Chinese tapestries, lutes, handmade pottery and artistic 1950s modernism here and there, dried flowers and breadboards with hunks of hard bread. An extremely old, amiable cat that blinked often and slowly sat on the kitchen table, and a rescue dog named Lucky appeared incredibly friendly but I was told that one has to know him at least five days before putting out one's hand to pet him. A shiny black Schimmel upright was perfectly tuned and had piles of dog-chewed Bartok on the top of it. I played and sang Bist Du Bei Mir and they wept. I was given tea in lovely delicate bone china, and also some fried oat mush with raisins, quite, quite tasty. The back garden has two lovely interesting trees twining round each other. Erika, Edward's wife, told me that their new neighbours, constructing a modern house next door, had asked them to get rid of all of their wild garden and wrote to the authorities about it. An inspection was made, and a compromise was offered. Erika and Andrew get rid of parts of the wild garden, and eliminate these two trees, because they cut off sun from what appeared to be a barely-used barn door on the other side, and the leaves interfere with drainage! Erika said that the trees had been seeded there by birds, and that they hadn't planted them, and that to get rid of them is stupid and sad. «Estavennens is a sort of an island, and we are an island on the island.» They are very cultured people, and have a huge record collection, with Richter and Haskil and rare 50s and 60s early music recordings, and also piles of dusty back-issues of a magazine called «Du» which looked like a kind of German version of Horizon. They have told me to visit often.

Took Fred for a longer walk today and saw Grandvillard from above. We were the first to walk, and my arms, legs and face kept being tickled by all the strands of spiders' silk that was along the way. Strangely, I have never come across anyone on this walk, which is really a pretty fair road up the nearest hill and through trees. I found many wild strawberries, each with a different flavour, but too tiny and quickly gone for my mouth to discover what, exactly. I was variously reminded of huckleberry, cherry, artificial cherry, violet and rose. I brought a jar of water for Fred and a bottle for me, and we were both very glad of it.
Towards evening, a bicycle ride through the small but beautifully paved roads through the fields (would put many a British high street to shame), watching paragliders drifting above and along the hillsides, and then watching the sun sink behind the mountains and gliding blissfully down a road into the gravelpits and discovering them full of poppies. Up again wasn't so blissful and had to dismount and walk the bike.
Tried phoning conductors but absolutely nobody in, except for the wife of one, who must be starting to think me a real nuisance. He's never in. And when he is and I've been told to call, it's busy constantly.

Well, in the absence of anything more exciting, I'll copy in a sort of retro-blog, a letter written in June and never sent.

Before the Wezranowskis went away, Wojtek played in a brass concert in the church at the top of the hill in Chateau d'Oex. The band was from the tiny village of Rougemont, or was it Rossiniere? Anyway a tiny village nearby. And they were fabulous! World class. Did all kinds of English repertoire, reminding one that England used to rule this field. Well, emphatically, no longer! There was even an arrangement of The Lost Chord for organ and brass band, and looking at the programme I thought this was unwise as a final piece. How could such a silly song be the best piece of the night? And yet it was. It put chills, it started the eyes a-waterin'. Amazing. And then I realised that this song wasn't so bad, and the words came home to me in a way that they never had done before.

Afterward, I went to the reception where band members looked as if they were merely biding their time until the proper destination of pub and flagons of ale could be politely buggered off to. The lanky verger (?) and his lanky daughter poured wine into plastic cups the size of largeish thimbles, and obligingly filled paper plates with pale cheese fingers and crackers and tiny, tiny-tiny-tiny sausages. I told the director, in halting French, how he'd transformed The Lost Chord for me, raising the rafters, swelling the sound, making it so moving and showing me what it was all about, and that until that night it had been one of the few Victorian songs I really couldn't stand. He smiled but looked blank. I thought it was my French but it turned out that he didn't know anything about the song at all, or that there ever was a song!

For those with an interest, here is the programme:

William Byrd – Earl of Oxford March arr. Philippe Sparke (brass only)
Bach/Gounod – Ave Maria arr. Gordon Langford (brass and organ)
Gabriel Pierné – Prelude op 29 no. 1 (Organ solo)
Giovanni Battista Grillo – Canzona Quarta (brass quartet and organ)
Henry VIII – Pastime with Good Company arr. R. Newsome (ditto)
Felix Alexandre Guilmant – Priere en Fa Majeur op 16 no. 2 (organ solo)
Benedetto Marcello – Sonate en Fa Majeur arr. J-F Michel (brass, with spectacular girl soloist)
Gabriel Fauré – Pavane arr. Gordon Langford (brass only)
Arthur Sullivan – The Lost Chord (brass and organ)
Charles-Henry Purday – Abide with Me (brass and organ)

They did the Sullivan as the encore. The Henry the Eighth number was an extremely enjoyable and catchy thing.

Michel, the truck-owning son of an Armailli who gave me a lift from the station on the day I sang for Corboz, remembered that I played at the Chateau d'Oex Catholic Church on Sundays. After finishing today's now-customary shambolic service (poor visiting Priest from Italy knowing even less about the average Sunday there than I did, which said something, and know-all fellow not standing behind me to lead things this time, so his technique of sing-everything, harmonize-everything didn't work) up popped Michel, all tanned, lined face, grin, trucking clothes and regional accent, to excitedly embrace me and say how wonderful it was to see me again.

He insisted on driving me back to Grandvillard. And as the train journey takes about two hours rather than the usual half hour due to Sunday scheduling, I said yes. He stopped at the Chateau d'Oex graveyard, walked to a particular grave and made the oddest sign of a cross I have ever seen. It involved a motion so quick it was apparent that he had done it thousands of times at least. And it finished with a kind of gesture that looked as if he was spraying drops of water from his fingers at the grave in question. Then he got into the car and I asked if it was his mother's or his father's grave, and he replied that no, it was his friend's father's grave, a friend with whom he had worked up in the nearby mountains. He pointed to it and was very specific about which bit he meant. The locals here never wave vaguely at a mountain. They insist on explaining, naming, specifying, pointing, taking one by the shoulder. Or maybe they just do that to me. Anyway, he then asked me if I wanted to take a short journey up there to see the place. Well hell, I said yes.

We first went to a little cafe at the bottom of the hill, by a river. Lots of motorcyclists there, mostly old couples. I tried to imagine them as rebellious seventies teenagers, with heavy borrowings from Grease, the movie. Meanwhile Michel looked at the paper, paying close attention to road accidents. Not many. He had coffee and I had coffee with ice cream and loads of local cream. The blushing waitress gave the wrong change back, a difference of something like 60 centimes, but Michel said «Mais, ce qu'il est juste, c'est juste,» Or something like that. In any case he made it a point to insist and regaled me with some long story about another incident in his life where a waitress gave him the wrong change. I sat there trying to place Michel in the town where I was born, Gibsons. He'd definitely be a logger of some kind, brusque in his manner, possibly causing offence to young ladies, but with a heart of gold. Not much notion of culture as such, and probably only read cowboy novels. I never asked him the books he read, which would have been interesting. Before we left he asked me if I needed to go to the toilet, then said it was tres important. When I laughed he became extremely serious and told me earnestly that if you have a full bladder and are in an accident, you'll die, but if it's empty, you'll be all right. He really pressed that point, completely convinced that this information could mean the difference between life and death.

We went up, up, up, past sweating cyclists, various families parked at the sides of the road with picnics, past the inevitable groups of cows. It was quite steep and I felt truly sorry for the cyclists. Soon there was a collection of chalets and a restaurant and we were in Etivaz, where they make the wonderful Gruyere cheese. Michel told me something about the trees, something about a tree falling on a Porche he once owned, at around Christmas time when the garages were shut. Or something. I could understand a bit of his talk, but most certainly not all. His accent was thick, and I am far from being a fluent listener, nor a fluent speaker, though I do try. I managed to explain the way my father and grandfather used to handlog on steep islands, and the way the large trees would slide down the mountainside and into the water, and the kind of saw they used, and he understood enough to shake his hand and say ayayay, beaucoup de traivail. He told of logging with cables. I got the impression he had done many many kinds of jobs. But whenever we passed a backhoe, or a machine of some kind by the road, he would say what kind of engine it was before we could actually see it. As he'd say the name, I said «peut-etre,» meaning, hell, it could be anything for all I know. But he said «no, no, c'est juste! Pas peut-etre.» We reached La Lecherette, the region where Michel-Joseph, berger, has his straw-bed and goat's cheese breakfast, though Michel didn't know him. There were two huge owls carved out of wood on an enormous stump along with the sign saying «Lécherette». And the hill still climed up and up and up. We reached a sort of village, or scattering of chalets and small farms and a sort of military base, very small really, and Michel pointed out a few places where he'd worked, in the fields. At this point he was a bit confused as to which road to take. He seemed torn between wanting to show me more and not going too far out of the way...or getting lost. We started along a road, he changed his mind, mentioned something about speeding and cameras, turned back and then started along the road a second time, slower. Perhaps this is some truck-driver's trick. The road we went along was a military road now used by everyone, built in the sixties. He knew when everything had been built and could probably say which machines built it. Every few yards there was a little sign saying «Pont 1» «Pont 2» «Pont 3» and so on, up to at least forty. That was what was needed to make a straight road I suppose. All sorts of little bridges on concrete pilons. It curved round and round the mountain, and there were wild roses a very pale pink, and these enormous, practically elephantine white flowers, kind of like, I don't know, giant baby's breath, but more clump-like. The air smelt very, very good; wild flowers mixed with the smell of clean hay in the sunshine. Then suddenly one looked down and saw the Lac de Hongrin. Stupendous, and bright green. One looked down, down, and there it was spread out like an unexpected plateau before the land continued down, down. By this time it was apparent that any remarkable view would result in Michel taking hold of my left arm in order to facilitate my viewing. I kept smearing on the sunscreen. I must have put ten layers on at least. I saw two old, rusting tanks that seemed to be left as symbols, or art, or perhaps because there was nowhere better for them to go. There were relatively few trees and I commented that they were small, but Michel said they grew slowly and had excellent wood, très solide. The most remarkable view, to my mind, was just after the lake, when you go around and around a few mountaintops, and then you see the green mound of mountain and sticking up are two eroded striated rocks. Huge, like cores of extinct volcanoes. I asked if it was volcanique (I sometimes guess correctly that if you pronounce the English word with a French accent, you'll get it right) but he said no. He's possibly wrong of course, an expert in farming and construction and trucks and motors but not so good with geology. But they just stuck out, like gigantic ears, two bare grey things arising out of a giant green mound.
Underneath them was a long flat shape, rather tiny. Michel pointed out that this was a chalet especially designed so that avalanches pass over it, rather than picking it up and taking it along.

Many more cyclists, sweating in the heat. Many more families with picnics. The road wound and wound upward and I hoped that it was leading us back to Grandvillard, or at the least, Chateau d'Oex. No chance. After a while, Michel admitted that he was lost, and recalled a time when he went up this area when it was deep in snow and his father told him he was a silly boy, completely crazy. At this point I started to recall to myself the self-defence lessons taught in school, and size him up for speed. I could certainly outrun him. Silly apprehension of course. Everyone knew him at the Pic-Vert place in Grandvillard, and he really wasn't that sort. But still, this was a loooong way from Grandvillard and Chateau d'Oex. Perhaps not so long as the crow flies, but certainly as the foot walks. Just how long was demonstrated when suddenly (sorry for all the 'suddenlys' but it's how these roads are. Or railways for that matter. And Switzerland in general) to my right and as if seen from an aeroplane, was Lac Leman, looking truly immense, and a town. I asked him what town it was and he didn't know. Looking at the map, it must have been Villeneuve. I don't think it was Montreux, because we were further south and further east than that. Soon there was a one-way tunnel which was very rough and hewn and blasted throughout, no polishing or cementing at all, with what looked like torches on either side from time to time. Of course they were lights, but they looked primitive like the tunnel itself. Then it was down, down, down, curving and twisting and like a small intestine. Anyone tending to motion sickness would have been in hell, especially with Michel's hilarious driving, pointing at things, sure of his experience on the roads. After a bit, during which I was silent, trying to do the dancer's head-turning trick during the constant bends and rolling my tongue around like a lozenge (a trick I have), he said «T'as peur? T'as pas peur? T'as peur, t'as peur, ou t'as pas peur?» Well, mister, when you put it like that...anyway he took his watch off without slackening his pace, and handed it to me and told me to read it. I looked at the time and thought that this was something sinister. Like, your time is up little girl. But no, he wanted me to see the back of it, and it was incidentally a Mercedes-Benz watch (didn't know they made 'em) and it said «Michel Sciboz, 1,000 000 km» Driving their trucks, I suppose. He put it back on without slackening his pace, and the curves in this road are almost circles. Looking down was almost frightening, because it really and truly was precipitous. Below was another town. This time Michel knew which one. Aigle. I needed the loo. That was very important to Michel and he found one quickly. I came back and he said, oddly, «Tout propre?» Through a whole hillside of vineyards, and past a fascinating looking tiny chateau that looked as if Disney had gone to it for inspiration, with a cone-like tower. Either this place was called Corbérier, or it was just after a place called Corbérier. Then Aigle, which looked quite Mediterranean in the baking heat, or at least the bit by the vineyards did. Further along there were power stations, factories...I saw a fabulous Chateau with scaffolding around it but we didn't stop. There was a river in a gorge. We went up the mountains again, though the curves weren't as sharp. Signs pointed reassuringly toward Gstaad. We more or less followed this river, and it was fairly dramatic looking down at it. Soon we were in forests and across the valley I saw a fascinating orange bridge across a huge gully, just hanging there in the air, it appeared. It was for the railway line that goes to the Diablerets. The air smelt of forests and rivers, rather like western Canada. We got closer to the bare-looking rutted grey mountains with the traces of snow on them, and I could see that it was melting and that there were an impressive set of waterfalls tumbling onto rock that was polished over many many many years of that snow melting. This was the source of the river we'd been seeing. Then Michel said we must eat (it was around two o'clock by this time. Remember that mass at Chateau d'Oex ends at eleven) and went up a single-track road to the Lac Retaud restaurant. Many many ramblers and cyclists. Mostly getting on in years, and very obviously not from anywhere farther than France, Italy or other parts of Switzerland. We parked and he said «Il y a une surprise au sommet...Une bonne surprise pour toi...une veritable surprise» or words to that effect. I figured it'd be a lake, and I was right. Up there, in the middle of the mountains, was the sweetest pond you could wish for. Ducks a-quacking, boats a-rowing (nice colourful wooden affairs, four francs per hour. I would have liked to have rented one, but it would have been far too romantic for my already excitable friend) and of course, a restaurant. All those curves and turns down the mountainside had rendered me without much of an appetite. Not ill, not even nauseous, but just without an appetite. So I urged Michel to eat, and he had the local thing, which was a huge hunk of bread with an enormous amount of cheese melted onto it, and a big slice of ham and more cheese, and two fried eggs on top. I had some Grappino, or whatever it's called. Grape juice. Michel spoke with the owners to get to know them, and told me it was a family establishment, so would be all right.

On our way again, and there was a crude sign advertising Serac, a very mild cheese. Michel turned around and we went into this farm, which was the real thing, truly. The woman there was youngish, and not fat, but somehow the way she was built was odd, spread out. Her face looked as if it were made out of plasticene and somebody's thumb had pressed the nose a bit, spreading the features. The forehead was a bit low. her body was similar, a bit splayed. She was quite droopy and would probably be classified as 'special needs' in a school. But she has a good herd of cows and makes good cheese. She had a different dialect than Michel, and they each had a little trouble understanding a few words of the other, but they spoke the same language in other ways. The right questions, the right answers. Incidentally, Michel's dialect, the local here in Grandvillard, has a lot of 'ng' in it. Prends ca comes out prung ca. Pays d'Enhaut is Pays dung-oh. The lady farmer didn't prounounce 'G', and Gummfluh was Yummfluh. It was a dank cellar and there were at least three sheets of flypaper, each about 14 inches by 11, and COVERED with flies. I'm certain I've never seen so many flies in my life, in one place. The woman has thirty-nine cows. There was an enormous old iron stove, and a brass cauldron that would easily have provided a good-sized man an adequate bath. Her cupboards contained tinned goods, just as they must have for countless decades, in an area far from shops. It was none of it any too clean. An extremely faded picture of cows cut out from a newspaper hung next to a tiny radio from the rafters, which were low. The Serac was in two sizes and looked like cottage cheese pressed into a little plastic bucket full of holes. Michel bought a big one and I bought a small one. Mine was only three francs. Imagine. It's not at all small and will last me a week at least. I have had some already and it is lovely. Nice and nutty and mild and a bit sweet somehow. Not too salty at all.

Down through little farms, whole families sweating away gathering in mown hay or grass or whatnot, vast heaps of shaggy green stuff. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. Their clothes were modern, their hair modern, but they might just as well have been wearing smocks and aprons and so forth. Even the equipment, vast rakes and forks, was traditional. People sat in doorways in shade, and after a few more minutes, we came to a place where there was a small concentration of chalets, and Michel honked his horn and shouted out the window «Salut Bertrand!» A white-haired man was slaving away on his own field with a rake with tines about a foot long. Michel turned around and said «Je vais dire bonjour a mon copin, Bertrand» or words to that effect. Bertrand was a sweet man, sweating like a fountain all over his tanned face. He seemed to have something quite dignified about him and was gentlemanly in his complements, and I sent him telepathic waves that said: I am not Michel's paramour. I am not Michel's paramour. As they chatted in the horrendous heat, I looked up at the absolutely gorgeously ornate chalet near me and read the inscription that said the chalet had been constructed in 1988 by Bertrand B.............. I forget his last name. And then I noticed that behind it and to the side, there was one that was of much darker wood that had also been constructed by Bertrand B.............., in 1962. They were truly remarkable, with such wonderful woodwork and attention to detail, and with beautiful and very large floral patterns near the inscription, big enough to see properly from a distance. Very stylish. I complemented him on these. It turned out he had built the majority of them in the little village, and he explained why he came to put his name on them, a long story I didn't quite understand enough words of. And he told of an amusing anecdote involving some English tourists thinking he owned all the ones he'd signed. Or at least I think that's what the story was about. We said goodbye and drove on, and Michel said that Bertrand was divorced, and had two daughters and a son. I asked if his son also builds chalets like his father (I know enough about the Swiss not to bother asking if the daughters do...) and Michel shook his head sadly and said «Non. Pas un bon fils. Bas bon. Pas du tout.» Having a bon fils is one of those very important things, I realised.

Signs were in German now. We approached Saanen. On the way there was a sort of holiday camp with small buildings and a volleyball court which I saw from slightly above as we passed. It looked just like a tennis court, except filled knee-deep with light yellow sand. Very clean. Very odd.

A little river right next to the road was light green and clean, and Michel started to see the odd person on the road that he knew and he tooted his horn to them always. Being a truck driver (and he continued to say «trooc» with a great deal of pride) since 1967, I would imagine he knows quite a number of people. He told me that he was without a wife, without children, and that when he bought his first truck, his girlfriend left him and he abandoned the idea of having a truck and a wife. «C'est un peu egoiste, et les enfants sont bon, mais c'est une choix.»

A few more places Michel had done one thing or another at - fields, rivers, machines, factories, lumberyards - were pointed out. Presently he put a cassette into the car's primitive tapedeck, and the sound boomed distantly amidst a loud hissing so that the music was almost unidentifiable. I could just tell that it was vaguely folk-like, in French, and had a sixties air about it, though too much on the folk side ever to be in, say, the Eurovision song contest. Then he changed his mind, took out that cassette and put in a comedian who spoke in a Genevoise accent and made funny voices and punctuated stories with chords and arpeggios on a piano. Again, it was with a heavy dialect, boomed distantly, as if the two speakers in the back were wadded down with numerous old dungarees, and had a loud, hissing overlay. Even if it had been clear I wouldn't have understood it. The audience laughed that drunken, generous laughter with equal parts male and female that one hears on old videos of «The Comedians» in the UK. Perhaps he was Geneva's answer to Bernard Manning. Perhaps I'll never know. I understood one word out of seven. But Michel was howling! He thought it was extremely funny. He laughed so much I feared for his steering. He kept pointing at the tapedeck after punchlines, looking at me through his laughter, saying «T'as vu, Patricia? Eh?» I did laugh, at the oddness of it all, the crowning touch of it. He was so happy having a girl in his car that he was able to suspend disbelief this far...he'd just spent five solid hours listening to my ghastly attempts to formulate the most rudimentary of sentences and must have known that understanding this was impossible for me, but to make his day perfect, said girl in car would have to laugh with him at his favourite, worn-out cassette of this old comedian.

We got to Gstaad and I insisted on treating him to a coffee at a tea-room. I had iced Ovamaltine and used the public loo there, and when I came back he asked, «T'as trouver le bonheur?» A real thing with toilets, he has.

At last Chateau d'Oex again, five hours later! «Le cercle est complet,» I said. «Le boucle,» he corrected. We went past Les Moulins. I asked if it was true that the station there, as Michael has told me several times, is haunted, si il a un Phantom. He very quickly and firmly said «No. Ce n'est pas vrai.» The idea was ridiculous, preposterous, and furthermore a bad thing to say. It struck me that this fellow, who has religion so deep in the marrow that he makes his funny genuflexion even when he gestures at a church, is just the kind of person a world requires for ghost stories to have the necessary impact.

Then instead of taking the way back that Wojtek and Veronique take when they drive, after Rossiniere he went along the old road. He called it «ancien». He grew up here, and his reminiscences from then on were impossible for me to understand. «Mon Papa» figured in them, and «ce maison jaune,» and bicycling, heat, distance, snow, and all sorts of other things. This old road more or less follows the MOB line. He went extremely slowly and it did have an abandoned air, this road. Just a few old dwellings and trees that, uncharacteristically for Switzerland, were left to be a bit wild. As he slowed down to walking pace I started to be a bit apprehensive again. We passed some shacks and he mentioned them somehow and I was thinking that he'd maybe tie me up in one or something, and again I looked around for the best route to run the fastest, the way with the fewest obstacles to trip me up, but all he did was gesture to the shacks and say «Tu ne veut pas les acheter? Non? Pourquoi pas?» in a jesting kind of a way. Then I mentioned that I had hungry rabbits waiting in Grandvillard.

There was a clearing with a lake just visible to the right. He pulled to the side and stopped. There was lots of gravel and a precipice. He started talking and I only caught bits. One must pay attention. It is dangerous. It is a precipice. It was a gravel pit. Then the incredibly reassuring «As-tu peur? T'as peur? T'as peur?» Shit, I thought. A goddamn precipice. Where a body wouldn't be found in ages. He went on. He had worked here in the sixties. It was very hard work. He worked with a woman. Oh God, a woman. Where is her body now? At the bottom of the pit, now covered not only with sixties gravel but also the lake? He sighed and started to drive again. The man was only reminiscing, possibly for the first time in his life, the poor lonely fellow.

And so to Grandvillard, where I had the bike waiting, thanks to Michael's instructions on wheel-changing, and also the neighbour who interrupted me and took over, which I allowed him to do, despite being confident of eventual success. Michel hugged goodbye, asked if I was doing anything Vendredi soir, to which I said yes, I am going with my friend the Princess to the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad. Poor Nadia doesn't like her title bandied about, but it had such a wonderfully exotic ring to it that I couldn't resist. Nothing to do with name-dropping, honest, but the day had been so utterly bizarre that I had to add my own bit of bizarreness to it.

The bicycle ride back to Grandvillard was absolutely sweltering, and all the time I've been writing this, I have cradled a bottle of frozen milk against various parts of my person. It also happens I need milk and the Laiterie is closed. So a good thing all round.

And no, Ma. No photos. I was intending, after waking up at six for the early train, to come straight back from Chateau d'Oex after mass and fall asleep. Last Sunday I brought my camera and ended up deleting the boring pictures that I took on the way, so I left the appareil a la maison, as I kept saying to Michel. Still, I'm a bit glad in a way. The trip was so bizarre that I don't want tourist snaps to make it mundane in retrospect. Besides, every spectacular sight on that journey had local tourists with cameras much like mine, immortalising it all...except for the old man Bertrand, the cheese kitchen with the flies, the sad old road from Rossiniere, and Michel himself. And to photograph any of these would be either rude, or next to impossible to do properly.

Briefly, a Saturday as still and as hot as can be imagined, but through the stillness, three German tourbuses and the local Boulangerie's fortieth anniversary. Free croissants and coffee at dawn, and local wine to go with the roasting sausages later. Sounds like bedlam in a town this size but that is without taking into account the civilized nature of the people. The Boulangerie simply made more money than usual and there was continuous gentle chatter drifting from that direction from about 8am to 8pm. I bought some Moutard de Benison, which is a sweetish jellyish mustard spread. Excellent with croissants. Croissants are, by the way, a habit easy to fall into. I remember that when my brother and I decided to give our mother breakfast in bed for mothers' day many years ago, I thought a croissant would at least make the thing presentable, whatever else we managed to bungle. And if I'm not mistaken, she had a croissant every morning for years afterward.
In any case, tomorrow I'm up at six, and if they're open, I shall certainly buy a croissant.
As to the tour buses, the people in them gently and geriatrically disgorged and proceeded to sit the whole day. Towards evening an accordionist, presumably brought along with them, played while they continued to sit. It made a most pleasant sound in the quiet dusk. He played extremely well, and it was all folk music.
Fred and I went for a walk that went up the side of a nearby mountain. I was told to keep him on the lead no matter what, but I couldn't be doing with that, the poor boy. So he went off into the woods from time to time, which meant either a very steep ascent or a very steep descent, but he'd pretty good on those stubby legs of his. Though once I really thought he was gone for good and I was glad I'd taken a photo of him (note: one problem with my otherwise excellent camera is that it doesn't take the picture of what you clicked the shutter on. It takes the picture of what happened a second AFTER you pressed that button. No good for action shots) because it gave me a good story: Wanted to get good shot of Fred running through long grass, and he kept running. Je suis très desolée). He went waaaay up above the trail and got smaller and smaller through the trees and suddenly it was only cliffs above me and I kept seeing rocks, large-ish and small, tumbling down the cliffs toward me. That wasn't so good.

It was hot today, for the first time in weeks. In this altitude (though I don't know if 830m above sea level is particularly high) it can go from being bone-chillingly cold to sweltering in a very short time. In any case everyone was glad to swelter today.

I took the neighbours' unfortunate dog Fred for a walk...the poor feller never gets out and is on a lead with his head between his paws pretty much all day every day. We went up toward the Cascades, took a way through some trees that I'd never taken before and I felt these sharp pricks about my sandalled feet, looked down and saw huge, savage, half-red half-black ants biting me. Fred and I dashed back to the road and I was stamping like mad to get the bastards off when we heard a helicoptor and saw that it was coming down toward us. It was strangely thin when viewed from underneath. «très mince, eh?», an old man with a camera said to me. It had two blades and there was something savage about it. It landed a few feet away and the pilot got out and talked to some fellows with hard hats. In the meantime I went running back to the house with Fred to get my camera. The traditional group of boys had gathered round the helicopter until the pilot got back in and proceeded to do his job, which was logging. It had a long cable and loggers below would cut the tree, attach the cable and the chopper would then effortlessly haul the tree to another location. The trees were around the waterfall and therefore in a tricky location. I explained to the old fellers standing around watching that my dad and brother did the same thing with boats, and when I said «Motor 'Veh Huit'» they understood what that meant right away. Not that Erik has a V8; I know my Dad did have one once, though I am often wrong about such things. Chatted with a talkative fellow called Fernande who is eighty five years old, speaks with the local brogue, and can talk the Patois. He wants to go in a helicopter one day.

Towards dusk I went for a bike ride past the poultry barn and into the little roads through the open wheat fields, looking toward Estavennens. But on the dirt road suddenly the back of the bike jarred and rattled and I knew there was a flat. I took it back, examined it closely and could find nothing that was obvious. I tried pumping it up but something was odd with the bit you put the pump into. It moved in and out, and the air seemed to go through it. Some French cyclists stopped and tried to help but said it would require repairs. I have lived here without a bike, but it is incredible how one gets used to the things. The walk to the station is 25 minutes without one, five minutes with one. And it's fun! My plan to go to Estavennens a few times in the coming warm weeks has now shrunk to perhaps walking there once. Still, one thinks differently when walking. In fact, when one walks, one thinks, and on a bicycle, one doesn't think. One reacts. Or at least that's the way it is with me. Bicyling to the station is incredibly fun. It's downhill all the way. On the way back, it isn't arduous, except for around the one sharp corner. The Swiss are so safety conscious that if a car is coming behind you, they go your pace for as long as it takes to get a decent view of what's coming. This makes me work very hard to try not to slow them down too much. But as the bend is at the top of the hill from the station, that is tough. And just there, at bike level, where it's toughest, is a plaque to the Virgin, and the image of her weeping over her crucified son's body. I wonder if somebody was killed at that bend. I doubt it, because the Swiss don't seem to be like that, and there are religious symbols absolutely everywhere here. I haven't counted the crucifixes in Grandvillard, but it's in two figures. Which is a lot for a village this small. And if you have good eyes, you can see that on the summits all around, there are crosses. No, I think the Virgin was put there to encourage exhausted cyclists.

Market day in Bulle today. It's my fourth Thursday here but I missed the first Thursday because the rain was absolutely pouring, and then on the second Thursday I found out that the train I was going to catch didn't run on Thursdays. Last Thursday I went hog-wild at the market. I feel that when somebody's gone to the trouble of planting something and growing it, and cutting it out of the ground and taking it to a market, and then placed it on a table for me to look at it, I have to buy it! So I tried to buy something from every stall. I didn't quite succeed, but I managed to spend eighty francs. For just lil ol me. No family of six or anything, just moi meme, hogging it all week. This week was sunny (last week I went in wellies borrowed from the house here) and thus the market was huge. There were men in the bredzon (that's the local mountain costume, denim with little short puffed sleeves) playing alphorns, there were folk bands with double bass sawing away, and also there was my friend of the Sunday morning train, as he promised, selling cheese made from his lovely goats, so full of finesse and sensibility and espieglerie. He was sharing a little table with a man I met with and had a long conversation with last Thursday, who also lives on the mountains, though one closer to Bulle than Chateau d'Oex, and also sells cheese he makes himself from his lovely goats. And who has also travelled the world before going back to his remote mountain chalet and the activities of his forefathers. I bought goat cheese from them both. Jean-Michel, the man from the train on Sunday morning, gave me a brochure he had hand-written and photocopied himself. He offers a B&B experience with a difference; one has the choice of sleeping on straw and it's waaay up there; one has to take one of the legendary Post-Buses, yellow things that go where the trains don't go. Guests get to drink Jean-Michel's own wine, a speciality of the region, and something passed down through generations. And also his homemade cheeses and several other things I imagine. I pass on his details for anyone reading this who is interested:

Michel-Joseph Braillard
a c/oe Les Sciergnes
Poste Restante
1660 La Lecherette, Vaud
SMS (+41) 079 813 4607

He speaks fluent English and in fact was in Canada in 1968, as I think I said earlier, and in Scotland in 1973.
I can't possibly reproduce his fascinating handwriting on this brochure where he waxes eloquent and poetic (in French) about his mountain and his home. The heading to it is: «Trois Lacs en un Clin d'Oeil»
I have been eating a heck of a lot of goats' cheese, in fact. I bicycle around everywhere here and there's something about a bike that is truly special. You have direct contact with your surroundings because you're not inside a moving object...you are the moving object. But you move fast, and so things suddenly come upon you. For example the other day a huge huge furry cat came upon me. So big he could have been a medium sized dog. And as for those ridiculous mechanical dog-toys that spoilt Hollywood bimbos carry around in bags, this cat could have eaten one and looked around for more. His name was Maurice.
Anyway, I was gliding along shortly after the beginning of my stay here and suddenly I heard the sound of faerie bells! So they were! Tinkle tinkle tinkle tinkle. Then I noticed that it was a small flock of fuzzy black goats, eating grass for all they were worth, nodding their heads up and down as they cropped the grass and setting the bells around their necks a-tinkling. Well when I saw «Tomme de Chevre de Grandvillard» in the Laiterie, I simply had to buy one. That was a lot of goat's cheese to eat. And now these mountain men, so kind and genteel and interesting, with their goats which they love and milk and make cheese with, bringing it all the way down to Bulle. The least I can do is buy it.
Yesterday on my way from the station after the audition in Lausanne, I was offered a ride from a nice man who had something of the armailli about him (armailli is the name for the mountain shepherds) but who wasn't one. He didn't speak a word of English, not a single word, and he had a thick dialect. His father was an armailli, and he still lived up in the mountains, but he dealt in (and I thought he meant, 'farmed') «Camio». It took me ages to figure it out, but he meant trucks. Or at least, he owns one big one and uses it for the various local industries. Gravel excavation, logging (talk about selective. The way these Swiss go about it, no forest would ever notice the difference) and that sort of thing. He took me for a coffee in the restaurant adjoining the laiterie. When you ask for cream here, they give you thick, spoony stuff in a tiny cup made of milk chocolate. What a fabulous idea. Michel regaled me with stories of the area's history, and wars that Swiss soldiers were hired to fight over the centuries. His refrain was «alors tu vois, mon ami Patricia.» I didn't understand much but it was fine, really. He wanted to know the word «Truck» and kept using it, pronounced «trroooc» He simply couldn't get the vowels right.
Incidentally on my way back from Bulle market, as I sat waiting for the train to Grandvillard I spoke with a local old lady who was happily eating a cheese tart made by the flamboyant baker at the market, who sings opera as he sells his stuff. We had a nice little chat about him and things, and sat companionably. Then along came a couple from Suffolk, as touristy as Britain makes 'em, she with a freckly red tan and leathery cleavage, and many gold chains and he with a huge belly and triple chin. I sort of like talking to tourists because it makes me feel wonderfully different; poised between two worlds. And they're always so delighted to meet someone who speaks English. Did you buy anything at the market, I asked, laughingly pointing at my bulging backpack looking like a horn of plenty with local produce sticking out of it. No, they said. Not very good shops here. She wanted a cow, she said, to take back to England, like she saw in the tourist shops on the 'Lake Geneva'. We got on the train. Where else could they go shopping, they asked? Well, Chateau d'Oex? No, they're staying there; no shops there. Uhhh, Montreux? Been there yesterday. Okay, sorry I guess. Nowhere else for what you want. I tried to tell them about Tarte au Vin Cuit. I might have been speaking Swahili. Did they try the famous cream and meringue at Gruyeres? No, they didn't have time. Well, we're going through Gruyeres in just a couple of minutes. You could go there again. They shook their heads. Been there. Another couple got on and the pair from Suffolk shouted greetings at them. They were on the same tour. 'We're following the woman in the hat!' they all laughed, pointing at the old lady I'd been talking with earlier. Yes, she was wearing a sunhat. A nice little affair in white straw. But here these people were, talking as if this local woman were some sort of savage rustic, pointing at her as if she didn't have eyes or ears. I had been considering spreading the word about Michel-Joseph's Pays d'Enhaut mountain chalet experience, but swept the thing from my mind.