It's an odd thing.
Finding the flower for the Wildcat took me to the World Iris Foundation, no less, where the lilas mauve that I sought goes by the name of Katinka.
But while it bears little resemblance to what I thought I was after, this will do me and today's "hidden" message nicely.
By Monday night, my 'phone was behaving more strangely than ever. And soon the line was no more.
On Tuesday morning, my mobile 'phone packed in.
At about the same time, my internet connection became so sluggish that it wasn't worth using at all.
That evening the lamp I bought in the summer to brighten these damp cold autumn days switched itself off with an explosive fizz and pop. A bulb can be replaced, but not a deep-fried halogen socket.
Yesterday, the adored iPod made a nasty noise, then refused even to "mount" -- or show up on the computer desktop -- for repair.
The police left a note stuck in my door seeking any kind of assistance regarding a "serious incident" in the district.
I learned at the Canteen that while we were enjoying Verdi on Monday, a man was shot dead in a bar just across the road from my flat. Seven bullets in the back, according to perhaps exaggerated accounts.
Contact with the rest of the world was restored by last night, both telephones fixed. That way, I was able to listen to 20 messages. The earliest had been sitting on the France Telecom end of the answering machine since September 2nd.
And a shaken Wildcat was able to tell me that RFI journalist Jean Hélène had been summarily executed by a policeman in Abidjan. I knew him only by name and a very strong reputation. She'd had occasion to work alongside Jean for a week when her own career called for it.
All told, once the wonder of Monday's music was over, life took a very dismal turn. Once the Kid was able to contact me, she asked whether she could come over until early next week. Mid-term hols.
I said that Dad would be absolutely delighted to see her, but had been plunged into isolation and an increasingly foul and miserable mood.
But my latest série noire of events, uncomfortably echoed in the lives of people dear to me, was nothing compared to the most recent murder of a journalist for doing a good job...
The iPod story was one of those pains where a shop sent me to Apple Centre, the far side of town, where an offhand shit sent me back to another branch of the retailer in central Paris. They, more helpfully, gave me 'phone numbers.
Eventually, an Apple techie actually called me from Ireland. He talked me through a successful repair of the damaged hard disk, and told me how I could fix a faulty contact until a free replacement of the defective part arrives.
An internet technician arrived this morning and I'm back on line. I hope that friends with the same ISP and similar difficulties are also able to work and play again.
When I asked a girl at Noos to give me at least a 'phone number for a superior I could berate, she said no such contact was allowed.
"So the directors of Noos refuse to answer or give their contact details to the clients to whom they are responsible," I said. "Is that company policy?"
"Yes," she said. "That's company policy. Precisely."
I hope for her sake that the conversation wasn't being recorded the way Apple records theirs.
The Kid has improved my mood. And so has the Wildcat.
I'm delighted she had a lovely long weekend. But I had to confess that I missed her voice quite appallingly badly, though it had been just a few days.
This may be a bad sign. She really is a heart-thief!
She's talented at changing the subject as soon as I tell her such things. Indeed, she's excellent at changing subjects full stop. In about 90 seconds this evening she managed a seamless transition through four subjects from how to translate a technical industrial term to the relative cost of hairpins in three major European cities. My 'phone told me how long it took her.
For such butterfly gifts I love her.
But were I to give some of the other reasons, I'd be in even more serious trouble. So we'll have to settle for the flower.
I'd still like to know why she didn't like 'An Equal Music', however.
London. Vienna. Venice.
Michael Holme, second fiddle in a string quartet, has fonder memories of Vienna than a friend who found the city an absurdly expensive, heavily charmless heap of stones, any remnants of imperial majesty faded into a dull provincialism.
But for Michael, the Austrian capital saw the birth of an enduring, unforgettable love he walked out on. To be regained in London, many years later, then lost again in Italy.
Most reviews of Vikram Seth's book (Phoenix, 1999) give away Julia's secret. Some rave about it, saying that the author achieves more than one of the best novels about music and musicianship, by producing music itself.
I wouldn't go that far. And I found some of Seth's prose too purple to achieve poetry, too obscure. But I enjoyed my mum's birthday present to me, found it very moving.
The main characters, disliked by some readers commenting at the linked Amazon page (without spoilers), reminded me of people I once knew and parts of a life I virtually abandoned altogether in coming to France, things that I let slide away like a cliff-face tumbling into the waves.
To thank Seth for helping give me back such essentials, I couldn't resist doing a long supermarket shop tonight engrossed in one of one of the two versions of Bach's 'The Art of Fugue' on the iPod.
And this, heart-stealer, all arises in a strange letter. When I've told you about that, you can help me decide if it's safe to make another change in the lifetide more widely known....
9:34:15 PM link
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