Musical Saturday

Saturday, July 03, 2010 Day 3
It was too hot last night. We went to bed about 11:30, but at 1:00, I got up and spent a bit of time on the computer before returning to bed around 2:00. We struggled most of the night trying to sleep in the heat. It broke some time in the early morning, and when we got up at 8:00, it felt quite nice. It started raining around 9:00 – a slow, gentle rain, accompanied by very little wind. We have the windows wide open. Lovely!

We were going to try to go to a market today but decided against it. At times the rain is heavier than others, and we see little point in going out and getting drenched just for the sake of making our first Paris open-air market. The markets will be there next week and the week after that . . . . Actually, staying in on a rainy Saturday morning has its delights!

This afternoon after a nap, we walked to the Park Georges Brassens again and stumbled upon a bit of serendipity: a concert being set up. We wandered around a bit while the orchestra completed its preparation, and discovered a wonderful toy. It is called a Mifasol (from do re mi fa sol la ti do). There is a central post surrounded by a play mat some 12 feet in diameter. There are seven vari-colored hexagons on one half of it, each representing one of the notes of the scale. There are six hexagons on the other half which represent various percussive sounds. Kids (or adults!) can step or jump on the hexes and create musical sounds. Some of the pads must have been worn, as they were difficult for me to activate, and even harder for kids to get a response from. But a couple of the percussive sounds were readily available and they got lots of workout from the many kids who moved through the park. The sounds are loud enough to carry in the open air, luring other kids to check out the activity. Nifty!

At 15:30 on the dot (immediately after the local clock chimed the half hour), the conductor lifted his baton. The orchestra proceeded to give us a wonderful hour-long concert of marches, folk dances and orchestral music, and ended with the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four”! It is a pity that there were only a handful of listeners. The park benches were not even completely full. There were probably less than 50 who sat through the major part of the concert. Several others paused as they walked or jogged through the park, but the turnout was deplorable for the quality of the music offered. To see pictures of the street band, the Mifasol and the orchestra, check out my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/11200925@N07/with/4757791285/. If you cannot follow this link, go to Flickr.com and search for cspatrick, then click the “People” tab and you should see it there.

After the concert, we wandered toward our apartment. I was famished and spotted some lovely-looking apricots at a greengrocer’s stand. We bought half a dozen. I never said a word to him in English, but as we left, he said “thank you”! I’ll never be French! We then dropped by the apartment and picked up our market bag, made something of a list and headed out. We bought some 3-meat tortellini, cheese, butter, bread, a cantaloupe and some toilet paper and returned to the apartment to prepare supper. When we got home, I realized that we had not purchased onions, peppers or anything else to give our proposed cheese sauce some flavor. I looked around the kitchen and found some dried Judas Ear mushrooms and used them as the base for the sauce, along with a bit of sake, some Moroccan seasoning, cheese, milk and butter. It turned out quite well, but I could never duplicate it!

When we met our landlord and landlady, Ms and Mme. Macé and took possession of the apartment, Mme. Macé warned us that we should not use the stovetop and the electric pot in the corner at the same time, or the electricity would cut out. She is right. We also discovered that it cuts out when we use two of the stovetop burners on near-high at the same time. It would seem that the apartment could stand a re-wiring, but we are only here for two months and will get by. It probably will not take us more than once more of losing electricity to get it right. Fortunately, Mme. Macé showed us where the switches are to get the electricity going again.

We are still working on the vagaries of hot water. I showered and washed my hair this morning, with modest success. I only ran out of hot water once, so I turned the water off for a moment and shampooed my hair. When I turned the water on again, I was rewarded with several minutes of hot water – enough to rinse, shampoo a second time, rinse again, add conditioner and rinse a final time. All this was in rather a rush, but at least I didn’t get a cold water surprise during any of it.

Tomorrow we get to try out the washing machine.