Author: THE HOBBLEDEHOY

Michael Stevenson, aka Dai Bando, Johnny Foreigner, Monsieur Pas De Merde, is a blogger of French and British culture. His blogs "Pas De Merde" and "The Hobbledehoy" have been called "marvelous" by some, and "meh" by others.

Moriarty “Jimmy”

Jimmy won’t you please come home?
Where the grass is green and the buffaloes roam
Come see Jimmy your uncle Jim
Your auntie Jimmie and your cousin Jim
Come home Jimmy because you need a bath
And your grandpa Jimmy is still gone daft
Now there’s buffalo Jim and buffalo Jim
And Jim buffalo now didn’t you know
Jim Jim Jimmy its your last cigarette
But there’s buffalo piss and it’s all kind of wet
Jambo Jimmy you’d better hold your nose All roads lead to roam with the buffaloes
And the Buffaloes used to say
be proud of your name
The Buffaloes used to say
be what you are
The Buffaloes used to say
roam where you roam
The Buffaloes used to say
do what you do
Well you’ve gotta have a wash but you can’t clean your name
You’re now called Jimmy you’ll be Jimmy just the same
The keys are in a bag in a chest by the door
One of Jimmy’s friends has taken the floor
Jimmy won’t you please come home
Where the grass is green and the buffaloes roam
Dear old Jimmy you’ve forgotten you’re young
But you can’t ignore the buffalo song
And the Buffaloes used to say
be proud of your name
The Buffaloes used to say
be what you are
The Buffaloes used to say
roam where you roam
The Buffaloes used to say
do what you do
If you remember you’re unknown Buffaloland will be your home

Monsieur
Pas de Merde

I was introduced to Rosemary Standley’s music a few years back in her collaboration with Brazilian cellist Dom La Nena “Birds On a Wire” – a fine tribute to Leonard Cohen. I loved Standley’s voice, which reminded me a bit of the plainly beautiful vocals of the late Kate McGarrigle (listen to “Talk to Me of Mendocino”).
Crazy, that I somehow had bypassed Standley’s work as lead singer for the Paris-based band Moriarty, which is now my favorite. I say “crazy,” since I listen to French music and Americana music all the goddamn time – often switching from a Francis Cabrel CD to a Lucinda Williams.

Now, I’m catching up as quickly as possible to the band, which is now over 20 years old. YouTube and Spotify Moriarty binges have been a daily exercise. The band’s Live double album Echoes From the Borderline shows the band at the top of their game. Recorded in 2017 (Moriarty regards it as their 10th anniversary album) there’s 24 songs recorded all about the globe – and they are all fucking fantastic.

I have to see this band live – perhaps in Paris or New York? Hell, I’ll even take Fall River!

Berthe Morisot au musée d’Orsay : une rétrospective rare d’une grande artiste

Grâce à de nombreux prêts, le musée d’Orsay propose une rétrospective exceptionnelle de Berthe Morisot, un des grands noms de l’impressionnisme

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) is not a dilettante painter, who would have exercised her talent as a bourgeois woman educated in the arts, in the shadow of Manet, Renoir and Monet, but a true professional painter, a founding figure of the Impressionism which exercised an art full of daring and modernity: this is shown by an exceptional exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay , which had never devoted a retrospective to him.

This is an event because of the 75 or so works collected at the Musée d’Orsay, half (37) come from private collections, only a dozen from French museums, the others are lent by foreign museums. Indeed, French public collections have been slow to take Berthe Morisot seriously and have very few of his works, while collectors and American museums have quickly bought his paintings. The exhibition shows paintings that have never been seen in France for decades.

Berthe Morisot, \ "Autoportrait \", 1885, Paris, Marmottan-Claude Monet Museum, Denis and Annie Rouart Foundation, Annie Rouart bequest, 1993
Self portrait

Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges in 1841 into a bourgeois family (her father, then, is prefect). Her future wife and mother at home are all drawn. But his mother, open to the arts, teaches music and painting to her three daughters. It is not a career, but the two younger girls, Berthe and Edma, show a talent that leads them from a particular course to a certain Geoffroy Alphonse Chocarne to the Louvre where they copy the classics, from 1858. There they meet Henri Fantin-Latour, before meeting Corot. 

Continue reading “Berthe Morisot au musée d’Orsay : une rétrospective rare d’une grande artiste” →

Chanson du Jour: “LES MOULINS DE MON COEUR”

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mindLike a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mindKeys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Paris eyes vegetation to beat the urban heat

Paris authorities have been implementing a strategy to use increased vegetation to beat the urban heat effect caused by overcrowding and land surfaces covered by asphalt.

With the mercury soaring to 42 degrees Celsius, Paris authorities are turning to trees for a cool-off solution.

“Trees have this great characteristic of being evapo-transpirators: they absorb water from the soil through their roots, transmit it through their trunks, branches and leaves, where it escapes through pores. When it escapes, the water cools the ambient air,” explains Olivier Papin, an environmental engineer.

With his infrared camera, Papin measures the differences in temperature in direct sunlight, and under the shade of the surrounding trees.His aim is to map the capital’s hottest points.

“You see, the bitumen road in the sunlight rises up to 50 degrees Celsius. But when in the shade, it cools down to 35,” he explains.

The lack of vegetation, coupled with land surfaces covered with construction material such as bitumen and asphalt, results in a phenomenon known as the urban heat island, which makes cities hotter than neighbouring rural areas.

“The fact that underneath [the roads], you have dense concrete only make things worse. It acts like a giant heat reservoir, and when night falls, all the heat that has built up [during the day] is released in the atmosphere,” explained Julien Bigorgne, an engineer at APUR (Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme).

Engineers recommend the streets’ coating be replaced by cobblestones, porous concrete or stabilised soil, a mix of sand and gravel, mostly used in parks.

Watch the video at FRANCE24: Paris eyes vegetation to beat the urban heat