Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Back when we were free to travel, the simplest of reasons might have been sufficient for us to set out. Leinster Rugby off to play in Castres? Let’s visit Albi, the Toulouse Lautrec Museum and see the game in Castres. We’ll make a proper weekend of it. Such was the opportunity we took this date four years ago.
It’s funny to think that a lick of paint could change music forever. You might not think that’s possible and if I am exaggerating, it’s only by a speck. In the world of European medieval music, so much was centred on religious rites that you could argue it was a change in church design that popularised polyphony.
C: If you were in Rome, you’d find that C used to be a hundred. You and I knew that anyway but until today I had no idea that the Latin for 99 was undecentum which might occasionally be written as IC rather than the more standard XCIX. Useful trivia for a pub quiz perhaps?
There’s an ad that’s been on our fence for over 10 years. We brought it home as a souvenir from a week on the Côte d’Azur in the fishing port of Villfranche-sur-mer, a place widely known because of the Cocteau Chapel or U2’s video Electrical Storm or the retired-Bond movie Never Say Never Again. A great place to spend a few days even if we’re not Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
The ad is in metal and enamel, a touristy replica of the famous fin de siècle poster for Absinthe Blanqui. A fully clothed red-headed woman is adorned in green ribbons with an upper arm wrapped with a serpent. Or at least she was. The green devil dress and every other colour has drained away, a metaphor for the absinthe itself dripping through sugar cubes.
[Read more…] about Absinthe