What I'm reading

Firstly, a birds'-eye view.   What I am reading for the most part are my Kindle and my Android tablet, although to be fair, I suppose those are what I am reading things on.

I got myself a Kindle Paperwhite a couple of months ago, second-hand, nearly new, perfect condition, on Le Bon Coin, and I have to say that it's a fine reading device; light, compact, legible in all light conditions, easy to carry around and with ample battery life.   Not the fastest screen response on earth, but good enough.  Shame about the lack of colour, because book covers can be quite artistic and attractive.

There's a whole heap of pros and cons about electronic books, and tying yourself into one particular format or supplier.  I really don't like the fact that Amazon can wipe your book collection without notice, explanation or your being able to defend yourself, and I can see why some people might want to use Calibre and other software to get around this problem.

On the Kindle I am reading a novel in French and one in English.  "Les Rois Maudits", "The Cursed Kings" is a multi-volume historical fiction series that starts with the execution of the last Knights Templar by Philippe le Bel.  I have just finished a novel in English called Henry by Christopher Hooks, describing the antics of an octogenarian widower who has lots of spirit left, if not much energy or concentration, that I can recommend.
On the reference side, I've just finished Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, an excellent exposition of common sense.  I'm also re-reading Churchill's "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples".  I got volume 2 for free on an Amazon promotion, but I'm still on the first volume, pondering how the legal reforms put into place by Richard II that led to the right of an Englishman to a trial by jury, can by swept away by the European Arrest Warrant, whereby you can now be tried by kangaroos.  Mind you I'm not sure that English courts have anything to recommend them these days, other than to people who want to get let off for robbery or violence.  But whatever happened to free speech?

I've always been suspicious of "man bags", considering that carrying them might be a bit effeminate, maybe even gay.  Not that I've got anything against gays, but I don't especially want to mislead the world at large as to my sexuality.  However, pragmatism rules OK, and I found this leather bag the other day, that neatly carries my Kindle and a pair of reading glasses. 3 euros at a fleamarket, not bad at all.  Fits onto my belt too, so I can pretend it's not there.

The Android tablet is a 7 inch Google one, again a fine device, not perfect for reading like the Kindle, but much more versatile.  It plays games, acts as a remote controller for my stereo, it displays books, blogs, facebook, magazines, the weather forecast, emails, stocks and shares prices.......  For reading, it is my main route into the blogs that I follow (mornings over breakfast, instead of a daily newspaper) and it runs the Economist app, Le Parisien (French newspaper), Al Jazeera, and  Zinio.  I got a man bag for it as well, at the same fleamarket.

Zinio is a magazine subscription manager, that delivers electronic magazines to my tablet.  I'm noticing that many publishers are taking advantage of the low costs of production and distribution of electronic mags, and offering very cheap subs.  (Economist please note).  Having tested the Zinio app on a single issue of Wired and found it perfectly useable, I bought a sub to Audiophile at just over 3 quid for the year.  Come on, that's 25p an issue, how can I refuse?   And I can drool over the $25,000 amps even if I can't afford them, but the CD reviews are good and I can play the featured music on Spotify.

Physical books and magazines present me with a bit of a problem.  I like reading them, but I don't especially like owning them; I resent the shelf space they take up.  On the other hand, I find it difficult to throw them away, and so they tend to accumulate, until I crack down and have a clear-out.  (They're a bit like CDs except I don't chuck out CDs.)    Perhaps I need to learn to just dispose of them once I've read them.  Until then, electronic ones take up no space, so I don't need to bother with all that.

But for all that, there is something about a bookshop.   There was a souvenir book shop at the Phare des Baleines, on the Ile de Ré, with all sorts of books relating to the sea, lighthouses, fishing traditions and so on.  I find it diffcult to resist the temptation to buy something that allows me to take back a permanent reminder of my visit.   And Editions Ouest France print brightly illustrated books on just about every subject that you can think of that can be sold in a souvenir shop.  They are everywhere.   You're on Robert Louis Stephenson's trail that he took in the Cévénnes, and there's a Ouest France souvenir book about it.  You're in the chateau des ducs de Bretagne in Nantes and there's a Ouest France book on the history of Brittany.   And so on.

I succumbed.  A book about the Ile de Ré was a must, presenting a history of the island to the present day, and a book on the Knights Templar, their rise and fall fits nicely with Les Rois Maudits, so I got that too.  *sigh*  I guess I'll just have to find shelf space for them, once I've read them.  Be a shame to throw them away.  And besides, they're holiday souvenirs.  And they're not very thick.

Special bonus feature:  Freebie pic of a house on Ile de Ré, at La Flotte

Ile de Ré

The Ile de Ré is just off La Rochelle, and we asked our friendly coffee-roaster what we should be sure to see there if we only had one day.   Don't miss the Phare des Baleines, he said; the whale lighthouse, so off we went and made this our first stop, and drove to the far North-West tip of the island.

The lighthouse is so called because of the number of beached whales that used to arrive there, not for any whaling station or the like.  The museum in the lighthouse is interesting enough, and the views from the top are spectacular.  These pictures show the general view back down the island, and the old, shorter lighthouse that was superceded.

We stopped off for lunch at La Flotte, a small town that must surely be inundated with tourists in high season.  Most of it was pedestrianised, the streets being mostly too narrow for two vehicles, and the roadsides were lush with flowering plants growing from whatever space they could find between the pavement and house walls.  I was particularly impressed by the Hollyhocks.  They grow like weeds at my place, but I have to spray them against rust.  Here, they were free of disease; I wonder if the salt air has something to do with it?

The island generally is flat; it might be the perfect place for a bike-based holiday and a more intimate, slower exploration.

They call me Vélo Yélo

The municipality at La Rochelle seem to be doing their bit to be eco-friendly.  There is a park-and-ride just outside the city, that seemed to be well-frequented, with a little bus that shuttles between all the important stop-offs in the town.

You can rent little electric runabouts (4-door) in a car-share scheme, and there are charging stations available for your use.   The land around is quite flat, and so well-suited to bicycles; these are available to be rented by the hour (the first half-hour is free) and we passed a number of bike parks as we wandered around.   I would think that half an hour would be plenty of time to get between bike parks, so you could probably do everything you needed for free.

There are regular (every hour, but tide-dependent) ferries to shuttle you around the port, and take you to and from the marina.   These are solar powered, you can see the panels on the roof, so no throbbing diesel engines when we got on, and not much noise either, just a gentle glide over the water.

The whole system seems to be branded Yélo, is managed via a yellow smartcard, and the bright yellow colour cheme is used on all the transport vehicles and notices.

Start the day

For me a holiday in France starts with a breakfast coffee and croissant taken at a table outside on the pavement.  Unless of course it's raining or cold.  So the first morning at La Rochelle, being neither, we ambled out of the hotel, along under the arches, towards the market looking for somewhere we could do exactly that.

When I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6 years old, there was a place in Southampton, next to a big department store called Mayes, where they roasted their own coffee.  It's a never-ending disappointment that the drink itself never lives up to the perfume that this generates, but I guess you just have to take things on their own terms.  So anyway I'm a sucker for drinking coffee where they roast it, and there was just such a place right by the market.  Suitably furnished with a croissant from the nearby stall, we had our breakfast while the world went by.

Here's a couple of pics of the town of La Rochelle, around the old harbour.  The two towers mark the sides of the entrance.  A chain used to be hung between them at night to keep out unwanted shipping.

The other picture is a view of the town from the top of the left-hand tower (as seen when approaching the harbour).  There are not many boats in the old harbour; the big (enormous) marina is outside of the main town at Les Minimes, perhaps half a kilometer before you get to the two towers, on your right.

Piracy

I hadn't really understood that piracy on the high seas was a sport of kings.   If you had a boat with guns, you could be a member of your king's team, and go raiding the opposing teams' ships.  Score was kept in terms of ships, personnel and treasure taken.  If you were a legitimate team member you got a proper certificate with stamps and signatures and everything, so that if you were taken by an opposing team you were held as a prisoner of war.   The rules were that as a team member, when you won, you had to turn over your spoils to your king, who then gave you a reward.  But if you raided on your own account, with no certificate, you were classed as a pirate, in which case defeat resulted in death by hanging.

There are three towers in La Rochelle that you can visit.  We got a three-in-one deal ticket, valid for long enough, and spread our visits over the duration of our stay.  This tower is the lantern tower, so called because it was originally a lighthouse before it became converted into a prison.  It held captured pirating team members for a few weeks or months before an exchange deal between kings sent them home again (for legitimate raiders) or until they were hanged (pirates).

La Rochelle

We've just spend a few days on a short break to La Rochelle, a port on the west coast, now mostly a holday resort.  I wasn't impressed at first look; a bit industrial and a bit built up, but it grew on me and I'd be happy to go back and explore more.

The first evening we saw this chap making his way from the shore to his boat.  I can't remember when I last saw single-oar sculling, but he was good at it, going at a reasonable pace and more or less in a straight line. He had a creative way for getting downwind, too.   Unfortunately he lost all his cool points as the wind took him past his destination pontoon, and he had to scull like crazy back upwind to gain his target.

Entertainment value: 9; Style: 7; Cool: null points

Hubble, bubble, toilet trouble

I was told by a French client at the gîte, that the following joke is told by francophone Belgians against the French:

Why is it that when the Belgians answer a call of nature they go to "la toilette" (the toilet, singular) but when the French do, they go to "les toilettes" (the toilets, plural)?   It's because in France you have to check out several before you find a clean one.

I suspect that this is an old joke, and perhaps it was more true in the past than now.  But yes, I do sometimes find French toilets in a bad state, and the dreaded squat bog still lurks in some surprising places.  (Have you ever seen a clean one that wasn't new?)

There are 11 toilets in the gîte and I make sure that they're all clean after each group of clients has left.  We're on a septic tank here, though, and despite notices to this effect, people still flush non-biological things down the loo.  These sometimes get stuck, like happened the other day, and when the guests had departed the routine cleaning revealed an incipient problem.  It was easy enough to sort out, it and happened to coincide with the need to empty the septic tank anyway, so we killed two birds with the one stone.

But it's still noteable that quite a lot of our clients comment that the place is clean; and when they do, they usually refer specifically to the toilets.   It always puzzles me: what do they expect?  Perhaps the joke gives a clue.