Passing The Time

Film Recording
On Friday I started on the recording of the translation I had done for the commentary on Daniel and Martine's film of the world of the olive tree. The obvious incentive for Martine was to have an English version of the film available for sale when the tourists arrive en masse. So we've just started on it and should have it finished by the time the tourists have all gone home. That's called Provencal marketing nous.

Martine has a studio at the top of her house equipped with a full-blown, modern film-editing system. I was impressed with the fine granularity with which editing could be done, down to the level of individual syllables. The recording was slow at first because it took me time to get the neutral tone and even flow of words right. Also, I found that though I had tried to produce spoken rather than written phraseology when I had done the translation some phrases still seemed awkward when spoken, so I ad-libbed at times. Another problem was to time the spoken English to closely the same length as the French. One of the scenes was of an olive oil expert making points while counting them out on his fingers and so the the English version had to keep in synch with his fingers. It's all new to me and an interesting learning process. We were doing it for a couple of hours and got about a tenth of the commentary done so it will take quite a few more sessions to finish the job. In part of the film there is an interview with a woman and we decided a woman's voice will be preferable so I will ask friend Jo if she will do that.

Saturday Market And Film
The Saturday evening summer markets have now started and will continue through to early September. During the rest of the year there are just a paella stall and a fruit/vegetable stall on Saturday mornings but in the midsummer months a fuller market spreads over both sides of the bridge. I went to get some fruit as my contribution to the street meal which takes place in my road tomorrow. I bought some apricots and melons and a variety of peach that I've never seen anywhere else; it is shaped like a doughnut or bagel, complete with a depresssion in the middle where the former would have a whole; the peaches are delicious. I also noticed a variety of tomato, called “allongé”, that I've never seen anywhere else; it is shaped like an irregular sausage, 4-6 inches long.

My conribution of fruit is now an annual regular. Having had to put up with a lot of extreme feminism in my time, I'm pleased to have found a female prejudice that works in my favour. When I first bought the house and hadn't yet got the kitchen in order I brought a bowl of fruit to the street meal somewhat apologetically. However, I've found that none of the women in the street expects men to cook. It's expected that they will buy something to bring along. In this case,I'm happy to go along with expectations.

In the market I met Mana who said there was an interesting film showing in Buis that evening that had won the Palme D'Or at the last Cannes festival, so I went along with her and Patricia. It was entitled “Tree of Life”. I wondered afterwards why Mana had wanted to see it and, sure enough, she hated it; she is averse to religion in any shape or form. I found the photography and some of the imagery compelling but it was too long and the main argument seemed to be that as the world was such a beautiful place there had to be a God. I suppose it did also pose a number of the questions that Christians must ask themselves from time to time but that had little interest for me. Patricia, on the other hand, found the film wonderful, conforming as it did to her theistic beliefs: there is no God as such but God is in everything. I find that rather vague but it does correspond fairly well with my idea that if we are “greater than we know”, as Wordsworth would have it, then the universe is probably a sub-atomic particle in something so immense we couldn't possibly conceive of it. But I'm not sure what that has to do with religion.

Victorian Pharmacy
I quite often turn on the television when I have my evening meal, usually to watch sport. However, no sport being available the other evening I turned to a programme on Victorian pharmacies on the Yesterday channel and found it highly interesting. The amount of mercury, arsenic and opiates being dished out was horrifying, a case of the cure being more dangerous than the complaint. In fact, apparently it often was. Poor families with multiple children used to go to pharmacies to get a potion to keep the youngest children quiet, a “calmant”. This consisted of opiates which depressed the children's appetites to such an extent that they died of starvation, a principal cause of infant mortality in the era.

The multiplicity of dangerous mixtures reminded me of the time I started chemistry at school and was bought a chemistry set. This reminded my grandmother that my uncle had had one which was in a cupboard under her stairs. She gave it to me to add to my collection of chemicals. In it I found some potassium ferrecyanide with which I tried to make prussic acid (as boys of 12 are wont to do). Fortunately the local chemist would sell me only dilute acids so my experiment didn't work, otherwise I might not be writing this blog.