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?
