Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
Mar. 3rd, 2006 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustIf we had had any sense, we'd have turned for home - maybe not from Hiersac, once we'd stocked up on wine, but certainly when we had slithered into Angoulême along a road on which snow was settling, despite it being a major road. We should have turned for home then and there, while we could. But we were here for the festival, dammit, we thought we'd go to the festival, and we thought that would give the gritters time to get out, and make the roads passable again.
I wanted to hear Enki Bilal. He, too, was someone I'd first encountered thirty-odd years ago in the pages of Pilote, where I read Le Vaisseau de pierre, one of his early collaborations with Pierre Christin. Since then he has gone solo and developed a personal style which I find pretty well opaque, but which has made him a star: I was hoping for an interview which would help me follow him on his trajectory. Too much to ask, obviously, an interview just for me: but the interviewer got up my nose from the start, introducing the session by saying that after a few days at Angoulême we'd had enough of comics, so let's talk about other things (such as Bilal's films)... There was a second interviewer on stage, whose task seemed to be keeping the laptop awake, nudging it each time the screensaver threatened to kick in. He needn't have bothered, because there were only two images on show, and they were there more or less by chance, the covers of two forthcoming translations provided by Bilal's Bosnian publisher. It was a disappointing session, the opportunity to eavesdrop on an intelligent and creative man in conversation, but with nothing really offered to the audience. Not worth getting snowed in for
The snow had continued to fall while we were in the subterranean lecture hall, and there was no sign of any attempt to clear it, or to grit the roads. The positive side of this was that the parking permit displayed on our windscreen, on which the period we had paid for had run out well before our return, was invisible under several inches of snow.
Other than that, it was bad news. We inched home over ice, taking nearly three hours to cover a distance that usually took less than one. It didn't seem like an exceptional fall of snow - France is a continental country, after all, surely they are accustomed to extremes of weather? And the traffic wasn't heavy, we weren't stuck behind abandoned cars (one of the major hasards in Britain). We couldn't quite work out whether the lack of reaction to the snow was because it was trivial, mundane, nothing to get excited about, or whether the roads were left untreated because it was so exceptional that there were no snow ploughs. A bunch of kids in the village of Petit Giget not only lacked the sense to keep well clear of the cars careening through on the icy road, but were actually throwing snowballs at them - they surely would not have survived into their teens if this were a regular occurrence? It was only after we were safely home that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler told me about the downhill where he had realised that he had the wheels locked hard right, and the car was still going straight ahead.
The following morning, Sunday, we abandoned any thought of going back into town, and took ourselves instead for a walk up the lane, across the fields to the neighbouring village of Bonnes. The snow was thick, soft and dry, a pleasure to walk through, not at all slippery. In the village, the café was open, and served us coffee, but apologised that the kitchen was closed: all their bookings for Sunday lunch had cancelled. It seemed disproportionate, a different world to the previous night's journey.
Another day on, and the snow was vanishing fast. On Monday we walked into Aubeterre along the Dronne, pursued by a pair of swans. We left the house in mist almost resolving into rain, but it cleared gradually, and by the time we climbed up the hill on which Aubeterre is perched, it was an effort in the warm sun. We walked home removing our jumpers, glad of a cool breeze, pausing to say bonjour to the man pruning his vines.
I wanted to hear Enki Bilal. He, too, was someone I'd first encountered thirty-odd years ago in the pages of Pilote, where I read Le Vaisseau de pierre, one of his early collaborations with Pierre Christin. Since then he has gone solo and developed a personal style which I find pretty well opaque, but which has made him a star: I was hoping for an interview which would help me follow him on his trajectory. Too much to ask, obviously, an interview just for me: but the interviewer got up my nose from the start, introducing the session by saying that after a few days at Angoulême we'd had enough of comics, so let's talk about other things (such as Bilal's films)... There was a second interviewer on stage, whose task seemed to be keeping the laptop awake, nudging it each time the screensaver threatened to kick in. He needn't have bothered, because there were only two images on show, and they were there more or less by chance, the covers of two forthcoming translations provided by Bilal's Bosnian publisher. It was a disappointing session, the opportunity to eavesdrop on an intelligent and creative man in conversation, but with nothing really offered to the audience. Not worth getting snowed in for
The snow had continued to fall while we were in the subterranean lecture hall, and there was no sign of any attempt to clear it, or to grit the roads. The positive side of this was that the parking permit displayed on our windscreen, on which the period we had paid for had run out well before our return, was invisible under several inches of snow.
Other than that, it was bad news. We inched home over ice, taking nearly three hours to cover a distance that usually took less than one. It didn't seem like an exceptional fall of snow - France is a continental country, after all, surely they are accustomed to extremes of weather? And the traffic wasn't heavy, we weren't stuck behind abandoned cars (one of the major hasards in Britain). We couldn't quite work out whether the lack of reaction to the snow was because it was trivial, mundane, nothing to get excited about, or whether the roads were left untreated because it was so exceptional that there were no snow ploughs. A bunch of kids in the village of Petit Giget not only lacked the sense to keep well clear of the cars careening through on the icy road, but were actually throwing snowballs at them - they surely would not have survived into their teens if this were a regular occurrence? It was only after we were safely home that
durham_rambler told me about the downhill where he had realised that he had the wheels locked hard right, and the car was still going straight ahead.The following morning, Sunday, we abandoned any thought of going back into town, and took ourselves instead for a walk up the lane, across the fields to the neighbouring village of Bonnes. The snow was thick, soft and dry, a pleasure to walk through, not at all slippery. In the village, the café was open, and served us coffee, but apologised that the kitchen was closed: all their bookings for Sunday lunch had cancelled. It seemed disproportionate, a different world to the previous night's journey.
Another day on, and the snow was vanishing fast. On Monday we walked into Aubeterre along the Dronne, pursued by a pair of swans. We left the house in mist almost resolving into rain, but it cleared gradually, and by the time we climbed up the hill on which Aubeterre is perched, it was an effort in the warm sun. We walked home removing our jumpers, glad of a cool breeze, pausing to say bonjour to the man pruning his vines.
