Well yes it is much more serious here. About 48 young people turned up at the School this morning, and the fly and another retired librarian from Sweden – from the Stockholm Public Library. How about that. She speaks excellent English, as do all the Swedes apparently, so we had a good chat. And the test was the real deal – oral and written and then we were graded and assigned to classes according to some system – I will have to look it up on the net. Fortunately the School has internet and wifi, so I will take the laptop tomorrow. I tried a few emails today with the machines there, but was exasperated by the French keyboard, which has even more transpositions of letters than the German one. And you have to press shift key for numbers, and the symbols are normal – all back to front for me.
There are four classes between 9am and 1pm, with two short breaks. I am free then, and the Swedish librarian also, but the young ones are all taking the afternoon intensive course as well. They are very earnest. Igor said to me “I am out to learn all I possibly can while I am here”.
Most of the shops are closed on Monday. Open all weekend, as that is when the tourists are here, and then Monday rest day. But I can see that there are things in the shops of great appeal – tapestries and handworked linen to start with; clothes to die for; the plastic will have to be left at home. I do wonder how many of the suits of armour they sell – they are in all the souvenir shops.
So I went to the Chateau. This town and its Chateau have such a long history. Even Clovis King of the Franks, and Alaric King of the Visigoths had a pow-wow on one of the islands in the Loire here, back in 503. The Chateau is wonderfully preserved and presented, with written or audio guides explaining everything. I got the history of France in 2 hours (as this was a major centre for all those kings etc). No pics however, as the camera battery went flat, so will have to go again. Too many photo opportunities to miss! Something that struck me: one part of the Chateau, the Gothic wing and the Renaissance Rooms, is furnished with objects from those periods, still as strong and durable and functional as ever they were (well there are some patches in the Aubusson tapestries); then Louis –Philippe was King from 1830 to 1848 and he had his rooms in another wing decorated according to the tastes of the time. And there is such a difference – Louis-Philippe’s stuff looks so fragile and less permanent that the hundreds of years older pieces in the other rooms. I suppose in a couple of hundred years more, anyone looking for furniture of our time will be out of luck, as it will all have fallen apart.
Of course, beautiful terraced gardens. Apparently the first of the Renaissance gardens in France to depart from the medieval tradition of closed, walled gardens, to open perspectives across large spaces. Slopes of spherically clipped box hedging, a stand of lime trees, paths running through avenues of blooming plants. Impressive is the contemplative garden where family and retainers of Abd El-Kader are buried. Abd El-Kader and retinue were brought to Amboise and placed under house arrest in the Chateau after his surrender to the French in Algeria in 1843. The graves overlook a massively beautiful Cedar of Lebanon, and a “river” of rosemary (remembrance) flows down the slope in the direction of Mecca.
Back from another dinner. (Dinner takes an hour and a half – conversation is important). Cucumber salad (delicious dressing), strongly flavoured sausage and potato casserole - Madame can make potatoes taste wondrous. I could not get through the mountain allocated to me, and had to decline the cheeses and dessert. We were entertained by Madame’s two-year-old grandson, Matthias, who chattered away in beautiful baby French and consumed a great deal of his grand-mother’s cooking, with frequent “bons” and “ouis”.
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