G’day again, petals.
Who says research was fun?
Well, I will.
Y’see, I always thought of Thomas a’ Becket as a
rather short, swarthy, dark visaged ascetic….( Richard Burton in the film “Becket”
with Peter o’ Toole as Henry II).
Not true, possums…turns out that Thomas
"….. was very tall and slim with dark hair, (got the the dark hair bit
right …) finely chiselled features, an aquiline nose and rather effeminate
tapering hands.
He was a good conversationalist, despite a
slight stutter, and had great charm of manner.
Like Henry, he was a man of enormous energy and
versatile talent whose chief pleasures were hunting, hawking and chess although
unlike Henry, having taken a vow of chastity as a youthful deacon, he avoided
encounters with women….
...was witty, generous, vain, ambitious...
And thrived when chancellor “in throwing off the
deacon” … loved extravagant clothes and living.….but took things to extremes,
being wilful, obstinate, manipulative and uncompromising…
..a consummate actor able to play the martyr…. The
perfect courtier!
(Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Vintage)
I rather suspect Possums that his descendent now
works in PR for a large commercial art gallery specialising in photography .
And that rather than hawking, he and his coterie
write anonymous critiques of the baristas of Brunswick St. for the
Melbourne Times!
I have also discovered that the present mayor of
the little town of Montaillou, (Languedoc-Roussillon) is probably a descendant
from the family of the priest who was burned as a Cathar heretic C 1320.
(Montaillou, The Promised Land of Error. Le Roy Ladurie: Braziller)
Hmmm…. Perhaps the Cathars’ were correct in
their predestination theories…. which might also explain why Catholics like
Tony Abbot, Christopher Pyne, and that excuse for an immigration spokesman for
the Liarbils are soooo un-christian in their sentiments and relentlessly
bang-on about having the “will”, the “Kill-Factor” “…always going for the
jugular”.. It really seems that, what goes around, comes around.
I found the books, the reading ones, not the picture (arty) ones after looking
at maps and discovered in them something I think the French call “terroir”:
a sense or taste of place, (something of which the muddy trail-bike bogans have
absolutely no ken) and which I think might be essential to begin feeling
affinity with a “place” visited. Otherwise there’s no point in visiting, is
there?
The state I am trying to describe was expressed
many years ago when as a callow art student our class had been assigned by Lou
Kuppers, (the sculpture lecturer), a project of modelling in clay, in a day,
a small figurative sculpture “in-the-style-of”... from a variety of periods of
art.
It was Classical Greece’s turn; and I had spent many hours researching and reading about (Kitto: "The Greeks", was brilliant).
After an absorbing few hours modelling, Kuppers went around the class, individually discussing with the students their interpretations of 6th BCE sculpture.
Arriving at my stand he slowly turned the work
around, around and around, and around once more finally looked at me and said,”
You speak Greek!”
I know I will be just anotherbloodytourist but I hope that I will have opened up enough to absorb much of what France is and more importantly, why France is, through its past and present culture.
It would only be polite.
particularly if you enjoy being four metres tall!
Hoo-roo,
Shane
