Second-Hand Books Heaven in Paris – Shakespeare & Co

Inside of Shakespeare & Co, looking at Notre Dame

During my recent visit to Paris I met with a friend in front of Shakespeare & Company, the most amazing bookshop anywhere (except for Powells in Portland, Oregon, obviously!).  It is the sort of bookshop we used to have in Oxford but have since lost.  Rents are just too high, and people seem to prefer to buy books on-line.  Personally I love the romance of second hand books, the way they handle, the slightly musty smell, the notes scribbled on the margins by previous owners – I used to spend entire days in second-hand bookshops! Looking at new books just isn’t the same, so since the grand old bookshop near the train station closed all the book-shopping I ever do is a quick nip in and out of the Oxfam shop.

Same view higher up

Apparently in Paris bookshops are subsidised, they are such a tourist attraction!  One would have thought that Oxford would do the same thing, but no such luck.  So I have to top up my book supplies whenever I am in Paris.  Oh, did I mention that most of the books are in English?  The bookshop is famous for letting aspiring writers sleep in the shop in exchange for helping to run it.  Scattered throughout the shop are thinly disguised beds, typewriters (yes, real ones, not PCs) and even a piano.  While I showed my friend around a tourist from Japan played on the piano, and very good she was, too.

Close up view of Notre Dame, from same vantage point

 

After checking out the bookshop we drifted down the river until we happened upon a rather amazing museum.  It is amazing in the sense that it has a roof terrace where you can have a drink and take in the view of Paris from the 14rth floor.  Unfortunately the weather was overcast, so my photos aren’t up to much.  Still, you get the idea.

 

 



Then we visited several of the Love-Lock encrusted bridges of Paris.  You know the sort of thing; the lovers plight their troth by buying a lock with three keys.  They write their names on to the lock, secure it on to a railing of some sort, and then each keeps one key while the third is thrown into the Seine.  There are several bridges which are literally groaning under the weight of these love tokens.  The craze started about fifteen years ago, the modern equivalent of engraving your names inside a heart onto a tree.  I dare say the trees prefer this modern way of swearing eternal love!

 

 

 

 

 

The weather was rainy but quite warm.  I hope it will be colder during my next visit, seeing as I plan to frequent the Christmas market in the Champs Elysees!

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_and_Company_(bookstore)

 

http://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUpSR9fhQDM

 

An Old-fashioned Treat - Seedcake

My new curtains put me in a nostalgic mood and awakened my desire for a calmer, slower, less complicated, more comforting world than the one we currently inhabit.  So I baked a seedcake.

Seedcake is the sort of cake that used to be served in nurseries.  It is very simple to make – no rare ingredients to track down for this cake – and has a solid, dependable sort of character.  You may remember that it is the cake that Bilbo Baggins had baked for his after supper morsel just before the dwarves descended upon him and changed his life forever!

Seedcake is almost impossible to buy these days, despite being so simple to make and satisfying to eat.  To make it, you need very few ingredients:

250 gr butter (room temperature)

250 gr sugar

500 gr flour

5 eggs

baking powder (mixed in with the flour)

caraway seeds

You whisk the butter until creamy, add the sugar, then the eggs one by one, then the flour spoonful by spoonful, then the seeds.  If the batter is too stiff you may want to add another egg, or a bit of milk.  Then pour batter into a cake form and bake at 175 C for one hour.

 

This is a very basic recipe.  You can make a Madeira cake instead by replacing the seeds with candied citrus fruit, or you can add nuts or raisins or pieces of chocolate instead.

The cake is best if wrapped in aluminium foil and left for a day or two; it becomes more moist that way.  How many seeds you put in depends on how much you like caraway seeds; I adore them, so I put in lots!

I had the first slice or two this afternoon, reading – what else – the first few chapters of The Hobbit.  Seedcake and The Hobbit go very well with William Morris type curtains…..

A Peaceful Saturday …….

Today was the first Saturday since my return from La Bourboule that I didn’t have to work.  I am still rather exhausted, so had a lazy peaceful day.  I started the day with hot buttered toast for breakfast while listening to the news, accompanied by streams of hot milky tea.  Then I did a bit of tidying up, and went to the Saturday Farmers’ Market just around the corner, where I bought two types of bread, a dozen eggs, a bag of apples, and a pot of honey.

I should have stopped there, but as is my wont drifted into the local charity shops, only to discover curtains in my favourite William Morris fabric at a ridiculously low price.  My dining room chairs are upholstered – by myself! – in the same fabric, so I thought I could go all matchy matchy downstairs. 

But alas and alack!  The shop assistant was a bit on the daft side – she claimed the curtains were 20 feet long – 92 inches!  In fact they were about 7.5 feet long, which was too long for downstairs.  For some weird reason the ceilings upstairs are half a foot higher than downstairs, and the curtains cast waves on the dining room floor which were insupportable.

So I had to take them down and put up the old curtains again, with much moaning and groaning – putting up curtains is one of my least favourite jobs.  Upstairs, the Nostalgia Studio had been subsisting on a diet of blackout curtains, which is fine for Summer but now that the Autumn chills have once again settled around the Little House something more substantial was called for.  So I put up the new curtains there.

But drat and doubledrat, I was foiled again!  Although the curtains were just the right length, the fact that they consisted of one long curtain, rather than two separate ones, presented me with a problem.  When drawn they looked great, but when pushed to one side there was simply too much material – they continued to obstruct part of the window.  While taking them down again, an evil plan hatched in my mind.

I cut them in half!  Then I hung the cut side to the ends, where the edge is obscured – by now I had been working for three hours and was not in the mood to spend a few more putting a proper hem on the cut curtain.  I can do that at some later stage, when I feel industrious.  As a matter of fact I contemplated stapling them, but since I have lost my stapler that clever plan couldn’t be put into action.

By now dusk had fallen.  I drew my new – to me – curtains, turned on the lamp, and admired the new look of my studio while drinking tea and listening to Nocturne No 2 by Chopin.  A deep peace fell upon me, and all was well in my little universe.

May you all have equally lovely curtains to soothe your weary hearts when necessary!

Hedgerow Haunting

Hawthorn berries

I live within fifteen minutes walk of hedgerow country.  Whenever I feel the need to hunt & gather, all I need to do is pick up my pail and meander into the country side.  That's what I did yesterday!  I felt the strong urge to get out and about, and since the crabapples are ready to harvest I decided to pick a peck of them to make crabapple pickles.  I had a simply wonderful time, and took lots of photos as I walked along, so you can walk next to me virtually and enjoy a warm sunny autumn afternoon ....

Crabapples, now pickled in glass jars awaiting their fate as Christmas presents

Rosehips, there were loads of them - great for jam!

Blackberries had a bumper year as well

Hawthorn - beautiful but taste insipid

Sloes - sloe gin anyone?

 

 

 

Old fashioned turnstyle - keeps out the cows!

Le Reve de Gloria – Designed by Australian Artist

Gloria Petyarre is an Autralian aborigine artist famous for her paintings that incorporate images of the Australian bush.  The scarf she designed for Hermes, Le Reve de Gloria (Gloria’s Dream) depicts special leaves with medicinal properties, which are used by the Aborigines to treat many ailments.  She is the first Australian artist ever to design an Hermes scarf.

Mrs Petyarr lives in the remote desert community of Utopia, some 250 km northeast of Alice Springs.  She has no telephone, and can only be reached via a personal visit.  She has travelled and exhibited all over Australia as well as overseas, and won one of Australia's most prestigious art awards, the Wynne Prize, in 1999.

I decided to post photos of this scarf, which I own in the red and brown and black leaves on a white background with a red border version, because there is very little information about it out there.  It seems to be nobody’s ‘Grail’ scarf, and there are few photos.  While researching it I found any number of photos purporting to be of Le Reve de Gloria which were actually photos of a different scarf – Faubourg Express!  I am posting lots of photos here, to help anyone wanting to buy one second hand authenticate it. 

The scarf was brought out in 2009.  There is also a grey colour-way, also a blue one and what appears to be a fuchsia/purple one.  I have not found a complete list of colour-ways.  The scarf looks like it is very easy to fake, and when I bought mine - from an Ebay seller with only 3 feedback points and few photos, so I stuck my neck out a bit there – I was seriously worried that I might be landed with a fake.  I gave it a chance because this scarf shows up so rarely on Ebay, and I was quite keen to have it.  I was lucky and the seller turned out to be honest, albeit inexperienced.  Hopefully my photos will show any potential buyer what to look for if they find a Le Reve de Gloria scarf they want to buy.  Of course it may be that the forgers never bothered to fake this scarf, given the lack of interest shown by the scarf collecting community!

There is no name on this scarf.  There is just the name of the artist, simply GLORIA at the very top of the scarf near the border, in the centre, written in caps.  At the bottom of the scarf is written, in similar free style, though not in caps, Hermès - Paris.  There is also a copyright sign @ Hermès, hidden in the foliage in the top right quarter – close to the border and about 9 inches below the GLORIA; it is upside down when viewing the scarf with the GLORIA at the top.  The label is small and white, and located in the left top corner, as per the photo below. 

This is a very beautiful and interesting scarf, very different from the ones I usually buy.  If one looks at the leaf pattern long enough they start to move!  I bought this scarf because I have been coming home with a headache every single night because of the new database at work – the less said the better.  Lesser mortals would have taken a painkiller, but as usual I self-medicated by buying a scarf.  Considering that the leaves depicted are medicinal, it was a very apt purchase, I believe!



See the copyright?

Copyright at right hand side, one cm above bottom of photo

Copyright symbol again