Lovely & Nice

Towards the back end of the 19th century, as the quaint small fishing harbours and coastal villages of southern France (Provence and Côte d'Azur) started morphing into the famed vacational hotspot now known as the French Riviera, Nice already was at its cutting edge: it had metamorphosed into a pretty butterfly, opening up to the pleasures of the sea and spreading its wings towards the future, embracing the Belle Epoque follies and later Années Folles (Roaring Twenties)... Its seaside mystique and splendour stretched beyond WWII, yet with less of its earlier upmarket gusto and panache, but this is a story for another time.

La Réserve, c.1900: a fantasmagorical - surrealist - folly that could have been dreamt up by Magritte!

Nice by name was Nice by nature back then: an almost pristine natural canvas of dramatic proportions, lending its coves and curves to architectural wonder, integrating the natural environment - its masterpiece - with style and elegance. The reworked landscape became imbued with a tangible frond of the exotic: imported Phoenix canariensis palm trees and other floral exotica that would lend themselves beautifully to the Orientalist trend of the times.  

Saint-Nicolas Cathedral, c.1935: testifies of the importance of the Russian community in Nice

La Promenade des Anglais would come to epitomise the renowned coastal seafront with dreams of odysseys to faraway exotic locales. A French Ipanema, a wide, tree-lined, five-mile sweep of a boulevard which was (and still is to this day) a destination point for leisure pursuits, parades and ceremonies, dotted with elegant Winter homes that later doubled as Summer villas, set in landscaped grounds and a seaview to boot.

Excelsior Régina Palace, 1912: fit for Queen Victoria

The properties unashamedly belonged to British and Russian aristocracy (and later the nouveau riche) who - it seemed - altogether led the way in terms of the resort culture before the French had even conceptualised it, at least outside their colonies. Progressively the Winter resort turned into a seaside resort with the construction of residential apartments, and leisure establishments such as luxury hotels (palaces) and casinos celebrating luxe, leisure, insouciance and joie de vivre. 

Nice, Jetée-Promenade, c.1900: an exotica showcase to itself!

In terms of turn-of-the-century architecture, we find a marked influence towards neo-classicism, with oodles of orientalism and a hint of Victoriana: Le Negresco Hotel is a perfect example. Or how about the (now defunct) Orientalist-inspired casino of the Jetée-Promenade? The concept was influenced by the Brighton Palace Pier, while Crystal Palace was the initial inspiration to the project instigator, marquis d'Espouy de Saint-Paul. The casino was designed by British architect James Brunlers. There is no denying that Brits shaped the French Riviera.

Nice, Jetée-Promenade, 1897: the Orient has landed!

La Promenade would be further celebrated with the advent of the automobile era as a G-spot of sorts. Any show-off driver and social climber worth their salt would make a point of showing up and down the Promenade. Success, it was thought, would rub off if only you showed up on the Promenade, unashamedly pretending to be someone you're not for a part of the action while secretly standing in awe of it all.

Nice unfolds from the Mont Boron, 1891

Only a small number of the original villas are still standing on the Promenade today. Some look sorry for themselves, locked in limbo, in need of refurbishment. Land value comes at a premium on the Promenade and it is likely that some of the older properties are locked down in hostile takeovers, expired leases, inheritance issues, tax conundrum or other legal and financial predicaments, ultimately pending a demolition order to make way for yet another high-rise. In the world of real estate emotion hardly has a say, even less so when the matter at stake is located in a sought-after, world-renowned tourist area.

Nice Opera, 1885: all about flamboyance!

Sorry to rub it in but as it stands today the Promenade has lost its lustre. Now it is easy for nostalgia to cloud one's judgement and I recognise that I sometimes allow it to take over my objectivity, yet I approached this particular subject with an open mind and visited the Promenade on at least three separate occasions that I can recall over the last seven years and everytime the lack (loss) of architectural cohesiveness hit me.

Promenade des Anglais and Palais de la Méditerranée, c.1930: cheek to cheek

Clearly building clearance took its toll. Relentless since after WWII, it has left battle scars in the form of an incongruous mish-mash of styles, some of questionable appeal. Cue the gutted Palais de la Méditerranée, whose Art Déco façade was salvaged at the eleventh hour... in order to be incorporated to the Hyatt behemoth. Elsewhere the Promenade is compromised by styleless cheap-looking condos and other bland hotel chains like Le Méridien (which replaced the stylish Hotel Ruhl). These modern structures may unashamedly steal the seaview; they however steal neither the looks nor the spirit of a time where elegance and refinement were the byword.

Avenue de Verdun, c.1920: just off the Promenade

It is understood that Nice City Council wishes for the Promenade to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site contender, and therefore is currently sprucing up its image. Who are they kidding? In this vanity exercise no amount of landscaping or carpark redesign will compensate for the negative architectural impact caused by waves of property clearances that made way for a non-descript, non-cohesive Promenade.

Nice from the Jetée-Promenade, c.1900: a view at your beck and call

The Nice seafront is certainly a tale for the unashamed: bold and beautiful yesterday, bland and brash today. What remains of its bygone golden age, if not found in pockets in-situ, will be appreciated pictorially in the comfort of your home. Prolific and talented French photographer Jean Gilletta (1866-1933) made sure of that by taking thousands of pictures that wrote all to themselves an anthology to Nice, Marseille, the Riviera as a whole, the southern Alps and further afield! He followed the muse and she never left him! His photography froze people, places and time for posterity, immortalised a depiction of Nice that is both haunting and promising, an epoch where all seemed possible...

Motorcar, c.1925: sweet and fancy!

Source: All photography by Jean Gilletta. Take a peek at his impressive collection... and sweet dreams to you! Hey, happy shopper: all the (repro) prints featured are for sale by the way!

'Bateaux dans le Port de Nice', by Tony Minartz (1870-1944)

Further Reading:

• [English edition] La Promenade des Anglais, by Paul Tristan Roux, published by Editions Gilletta (July 2016), 64 pages
• [in French] La Promenade des Anglais, by Nice City Council
• [in French] Le Casino de la Jeté-Promenade, by Jean-Paul Potron, published by Editions Gilletta (October 2014), 176 pages.

Awesome Acts of Kindness for the Earth!

No better way to kick the New Year into shape than with La Baguette Magique! In this mini-series, we have it all covered: Self, Others and good old Mother Earth! In our previous article, I gave you 3 Hints 'N' Tips to make the friendlier You: getting back in touch with a long-lost relative or friend, treating your loved ones with one of your creations, and connecting you to the local community with a little banter...

Now how about addressing what good we can bring to the Earth, in three easy steps...

'Gathering', oil on canvas by Martin Wittfooth, 2015

For the Earth #1:

•  Make it last! If your fixtures, fittings and homewares are not plagued by the dogma of planned obsolescence, you should be able to get some mileage out of them. Thus go easy on style fads and trends that encourage us to constantly reinvent our surroundings by replacing the old with the new. As long as that kettle is still in working order, or that family heirloom sofa still looks and feels good, why give in to the temptation of replacing them? Give the Earth - and your purse - a hand by making your belongings last longer.

For the Earth #2:

•  Don't be owned by objects! This is an extension of #1. Basically less is more. The model wants us to keep buying and we may have Father of Public Relations Edward Bernays to blame for this, but can we not just shop with our eyes sometimes? Bernays engineered the desire and compulsion to buy and linked pleasure with purchase. Up to us to put the brakes on. Another good point for the earth - and the purse!

'Dukkha', limited edition print by Lindsey Carr, via Etsy

For the Earth #3:

•  Leave nature alone! That sounds like a given but we need to state it loud and clear, especially as regards those sensitive natural areas of the world, with fragile and threatened ecosystems. They are paying the price for their beauty by attracting hordes of tourists. Even if tourism is branded as ecotourism, it still puts undue pressure on the environment. Those cruises to the Arctic 'to watch the melting icebergs before it's too late' is short of vain and self-centred! It is a full-blown aberration!

There you have it, my friends. Our list of Acts of Kindness for Self, Others and the Earth is far from exhaustive. It is a taster, a starting point to a form of contentment in life and to a thought process. If you seek further inspiration, do check my Inspire-Aspire series. Have a wonderful year!

The (Late) Lowdown on London (Part 3)

So then what do I make out of my nine-day London city break? In an ideal world I might have made more of an adventure out of it rather than stick to the roads well travelled that span an area comprised between Covent Garden and Oxford Street but on this particular occasion I realised that I was more after a break than an actual city break.

I still managed to stretch my comfort zone to a long walk across The Mall and down The Embankment on that glorious Spring day, play the tourist with my latest digital camera in tow, massage my ego down Bond Street, pay Fenwick a visit and lose myself in the Britishness of Fortnum & Mason. I purchased some of my all-time favourite Charbonnel & Walker chocolates and Farrah toffee, succumbed to the joys of high tea served in plush tea rooms, treated myself to coffee & walnut cake - my favourite British delicacy. I sampled those already familiar little bits of (eye) candy that make Britannia what it stands for in my mind: well-packaged, delicate and exquisite. The devil was in the detail.

Down the line I even took the time to strike up lovely conversations with some lovely folks and even won a huge box of Thorntons chocolates from a random HSBC branch I was randomly walking past! These all made my day in their own special way!

London in a nutshell was a breath of fresh air for the city girl in me who had been living the rural island life for over two years now and who had been banging on about the buzz, the pulse, the vibe, the visual identity of the big city. I needed that. I needed to immerse myself in it, go crowd surfing, dizzily transported past tall elegant architectural buildings with things to notice, people to watch and a nod to familiar concepts from my career past: brand identity, retail theatre and consumer behaviour. Yeah as cliché as this may sound, you can take me out of marketing but you can't take marketing out of me!

The Covent Garden Academy of Flowers

The (Late) Lowdown on London (Part 2)

Sorry Mr Lou Reed but when in London I didn't "walk on the wild side". Rather I took the road well travelled. Staying so close to what the capital city has to offer in terms of "mainstream" action, I even had the luxury to be able to walk here, there and everywhere. No need for the Tube, for buses, carts or horses, yay!

This was one of the advantages about the Kingsley by Thistle Hotel, Bloomsbury Way. As you step out, you turn right and carry all the way up. Or you might nip to the back like I did and wander down the back streets in order to avoid the heavier traffic, past the British Museum, down Charlotte Street, and end up towards Harley Street (if vanity is your thing!). I actually had a bit of a field day down the Charlotte Street area, past the media agencies and advertising studios. That took me back years when I used to work in the industry.

As long as your London tastes are pretty tame, you will find the Kingsley Hotel to be at the heart of the action in relation to London's main shopping venues including Oxford Street and Covent Garden, museums (British Museum, Tate Britain) and entertaining hotspots (The West End). The beauty of it was that I could even nip back to the hotel during the day if I wanted to put my feet up for a while, change shoes, brew up a coffee or whatever tickled my fancy. This was no rock'n'roll city break, and this is probably why I got bored somehow!

In terms of refreshments taking you from AM to PM, there's only so many Starbucks, Prêt A Mangers and Costa Coffees you can handle. They have watered down the high street to saturation level and if you are telling me their expansionist mission has not yet reached its peak I scream!

On the retail front, some stores had me wobbly with anticipation but sadly didn't live up to my (somewhat inflated) expectations. Anthropologie (on Regent Street) was one of them. As much as I find the brand identity cool online, it fell pretty flat on the high street, in terms of store design and display. The wares looked lost in store. Interestingly I am told that Regent Street used to be a pretty exclusive shopping destination, once boasting an array of high-end one-of-a-kind flagship stores whereas now it seems to be nothing more than an extension of Oxford Street, pure and simple.

Kate Spade London (Covent Garden)

Talking of Oxford Street, I was left disappointed by another American brand that had me raving years ago when I first discovered it on a trip to Santa Barbara, CA: Urban Outfitters. The one on Oxford Street failed the test. The store design was a shambles and no wares actually caught my eye. I left empty-handed. Where are those cool vintage tee-shirts?

A trip to London wouldn't have been so without Liberty and Selfridges on the list. Liberty is still packed-full with style and character, despite my initial fears. Their stationery department is a treasure trove, and the iconic Liberty floral fabrics still have that magnetic hold on visitors.

Liberty's fresh flower stall

Selfridges is one big high-end shopping mecca, a house of mostly luxury brands that enabled me to get close and personal with the likes of Christian Louboutin and wonder what this is all about, unless you are planning to trade your looks as Belle de Jour... I wandered down the Tiffany aisle and then even treated myself to a deluxe microdermabrasion facial at Groom.

While I was at it, I even booked a hair colour from the Toni & Guy Academy (New Oxford Street) across from my hotel. I might as well have. The colour was fabulous and it made me feel good for the rest of my stay. (to be continued)

The (Late) Lowdown on London (Part 1)

Crikey, here is a piece I had planned to write on my return from London at the end of March! I got sidetracked somehow. I wish I had a valid excuse as to why I couldn't deliver the goods there and then rather than five months later, almost as an after-thought, but erm actually I don't have any excuses. Will you ever forgive me though?

There's probably a hidden message there somewhere. Sure there is. London was London, I just wasn't me for the whole nine days I was there. When I go to England, I go 'home' to Manchester, my hometown of 16 years. I just slip into that comfort zone, the familiar haunts, familiar faces, recapture memories and let my moods tickle my fancy.

London just isn't home. Nobody forced me to go to London, I just went along an idea I'd had with a girl friend of mine, Isabelle, and off we went.

The London I had experienced years ago had been exhilarating. The London I experienced back in March was... erm flat boring. I wanted excitement. I imagine the lack of it was a bit like how an out-of-body experience must feel: you are somewhere else but know you are not supposed to be there, your heart's not in it.

I stayed in luxury in a Bloomsbury hotel, but I'd had more fun times staying in grotty B&Bs those years back. Back then London was full of opportunities and possibilities to me. Now there was nothing it could offer me that I was looking for. No happiness, no satisfaction. No contentment. I tried to amuse myself with the London shopping experience, but once the initial awe had subsided after I stepped into Selfridges and Bond Street, I couldn't help but feel lonely, feel at odds with it all.

I became moody. I didn't like my own company anymore. I started missing people and that wasn't a good sign. Isabelle and I who should have got on like a house on fire, ended up avoiding each other and go our separate ways. As much as I love and cherish England, as much as I am a fan of London, on this occasion I wanted to go home.

Then as soon as I landed back on French soil, I got busy, I got caught up in life... Better, faster, shinier things to do and experience I guess than finalise that post about London... I put the blog on hold. I understand now that I had to come full circle before I could come to terms with that journey. As much as a geographical trip, it had been a personal journey, a life journey. I was lost and it took me five months to refocus my energy and determine where I stand in life. I am in a better place today and there is no stopping me! (to be continued)

End of Season

The season was brief this year, 5 weeks if that, from mid-July. Hordes of tourists pouring onto every beach, every coastline path, every scenic spot, camper vans, motorbikes, family cars converging towards every resort across the island, traffic jams, heatwave, full-on madness.

Us year-long residents get caught into that big holiday buzz that gives off that artificial happy vibe although we are not part of it. Tourists and residents glide past each other, each to their own with no or little interaction unless you are a tourist-based service provider. The buzz just ceases as quickly as it fused in the first place. A mirage all to itself.

The vast majority of tourists and visitors are now gone, and it feels eerily silent. Not that we felt part of the buzz in the first place as I said, just that we got caught in it through our daily lives. To me it feels like I have been beached. They've all gone back to the reality of modern urban life, their hectic lifestyle in the city, their careers, their fast-paced social activities that I can't help but embellish in my mind and envy... Up in the sticks on the island I feel totally out of it, totally left out, like I am missing something, like I am stuck in a bubble.

I am a city girl at heart who happens to live on an island. I've been here for two and a half years now and I am still adjusting. Island life deserves a blogpost all to itself and I will let out some steam about it in the coming weeks, no doubt.

Tourists love it: the hot weather, the profusion of beaches, water sports, trendy bars and clubs, music festivals, tanned chicks with foreign accents strolling past wearing little more than insouciance, a heady cocktail of sea, sex and sun. They love it so much that they don't wanna leave, but they always do though. City life beckons. They come here for the good times, but don't necessarily want to know about the reality of it 365 days a year, when you lot end up finding yourself stuck with that same old clique of locals, going round in circles in your head and in your car (it's an island, man!), the dragging October-March months that cut you off the rest of the world. The internet might be a godsend but it is hardly a substitute for life...

Yeah people do get lonely in cities, I agree. Now how about lonely in the countryside, I'm asking you? Lonely sat on that great stretch of sandy beach, lonely standing on that mountaintop with commanding views across the island, lonely down that bucolic forest path, in the middle of that charming village square, in your lovely little house up the hill...

Every week-end I get invited to parties and I turn most of them down. Not sure what the reason for the parties is, there is usually no birthday nor engagement nor divorce nor job promotion in sight, nothing worth celebrating. It's more to do with people wanting to get together, to kill time, forget their problems with booze and try to find themselves in this common denominator of solitude. There is an air of defeat about. Some individuals have indulged for so long now that they are paying the price and are well on their way of losing the plot altogether. One or two even look like they have never come down since ten solstices ago. Some believe they are still in Koh Phi Phi. One Iggy Pop-lookalike even calls himself a guru. It's unnerving. This is not my scene. I choose life.

I know some natives old enough to be my parents who have spent their whole lives silently suffering solitude and physical and mental isolation. They tell me no-one can get used to this, so it's best to just resign oneself to the idea, yet they are incapable of locking that front door one last time and board the next mainland ferry once and for all to experience something else out of life!

As for me, I'm gonna do something about it. I have a plan.

Ill-Fated Journeys (Part 2)

I set off on the second leg of my journey at night fall, slightly apprehensive. Yep, some of us call it a gut feeling. It seemed that everything was too good to be true. I tried brushing off any fear or self-doubt, and just place my trust in the birthday friend who should have been wise enough to ensure his guests had the basic information they needed in order to attend his party, as in where and when. Hmm... And the basic information in my possession was as vague as the promise of a lottery win.

'Winter Morning in Corte, Corsica', by Patrick Morand

I got to Corte at 7:00pm. I had two options: either head for the old fortified town and its array of steep narrow streets or take a more conservative approach via the university quarters. I was only trying to be practical: parking areas would be more readily available in the new town than the old, also I assumed that the pulse of the town would resonate off the student area like it does - let's say - in Manchester, UK (my former stomping ground). How wrong could I be! It looked eerily quiet and by then I was becoming too worried about that party to even search further for that elusive student life and student bars I had heard about.

Last time I had been in Corte was probably two decades ago, in the Summer, on a quick two-hour tourist tour of the citadel with my parents and brother. Now it was a different kettle of fish: on my own on a Saturday night, all dressed up and with that increasing feeling that I had been taken for a ride. Or at least that's the way it felt to me. I tried ringing my birthday mate and all I got was his voicemail. I tried ringing his best mate and then again I was faced with a frustrating recorded message. I hanged up.

'See No Evil', Photographic Journal by Ben Merrington, via Tumblr

Sat alone in one's car facing some battered iron fence with a row of austere-looking student halls stretching at the back was probably the last sight one would contemplate on a Saturday night. I rang my parents to say everything was ok, I was about to join the party. I had to save face. I rang back the birthday boy, not once but three or four times, left voicemails, then launched into a frenzy of texts.  By then one hour had painfully elapsed. I was feeling the cold from the dropping temperatures. I was feeling hungry too. All of a sudden the whole party scenario seemed foolish.

Then I got annoyed. I felt like I had been stood up. I felt like I should have asked more questions rather than blindfully place trust into someone who had the reputation for being a happy-go-lucky scatter-brain. The situation was totally uncool. The party was over. (to be continued)

Misguided by the Guide

Take the average holidaymaker. Give them a holiday guide. The paperback kind. What do you get? A long wondering thought... A thought that says something down the lines of how was it like before the holidaymaker and the holiday guide became an item?

'The Sleeping Gypsy' by Henri Rousseau (1897), via MoMA

Ninety seven percent of visitors to our garden preservation society come on their guide's recommendation. Whether said guide is called Guide du Routard, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides or else. Wow! That's big business! You just secretly hanker after the thought that they did a Lonely Planet guide to the cool blogs out there and hey presto yours would turn popular in no time, generating cool advertising revenue in the process and liberating you from the constraints of the day job for the lucrative joys of the dilettante!

If you titillate the inquisitive side of life like La Baguette, you'll even start wondering what happened to the spirit of holiday adventure pioneered by our elders who went on vacation before guides had been made compulsory or at least before they became diluted down the mainstream like they now have. I'm not exactly an elder, yet my idea of a holiday has never involved the safety of a guide either, telling you in different levels of subjectivity where to go, where not to go, what to see, what not to see, what to eat and what not to eat. Rather a holiday needs to conjure up an adventure, a personal experience, a trip on the edge of the unexpected in all good measure. I wouldn't be daft enough as to encourage blissful ignorance and choose to get lost in the Borneo jungle or ramble carefree across Nicaragua!

'Mist-covered valley, Corsica', by Stéphane Victor, © Lonely Planet Images 2011

With me by your side, you don't want to look like your average tourist. You make sure you take your tickets, your wallet and passport and a good map. If you wanna feel smart, maybe trek down the local library prior to departure to soak in the flavour of the place to be visited, yet generally have faith in your own streetwise approach and capabilities as an explorer and authenticity-seeker, mastering those positive energy vibes in the process! Because what would go wrong if you did miss out on that holiday guide?

A few years back I travelled to Havana, Cuba, with nothing more than a very succinct pocket guide (thirty pages of it if that, and mostly pictorial!) and just planned my stay once I was there. I didn't miss out on anything a holiday guide might offer. In fact, my days were action-packed and the only time I ever glanced at the pocket guide was on the outbound flight from London, albeit distracted by the airline entertainment on tap, from the irrelevance of Miss Congeniality to the more topical Buena Vista Social Club pet sounds seeping through my headphones.


Buena Vista Social Club, via Amazon

I repeated the pattern with California! This time I only packed two simplified fold-out downtown maps of Santa Barbara and San Francisco and bobbed down the 101 like a local, with that Californian carefreeness. When in Rome, do as the Romans do... If I wanted to see the real Cali, man, I made sure I'd stay clear of the holiday guides. Simple as.

Back to our garden preservation society, the holidaymakers I have seen lately come accompanied by the guide, whose contents they all seem so evangelical about. They know how long the visit takes, the opening hours, the highlights, the lowlights, and the rest of it. In fact some of our visitors refuse to hear our garden presentations on the pretence that their guide does it for them. Blimey! There is only a thin demarcation line between the holiday guide and the bible methinks.

'Conoco, Albuquerque' (1969) by Ernst Haas

Some 'pilgrims' go even further, following religiously the guide's recommendations. Here at 9:00am, gone at 10:00am, reaching a new destination for noon, before embarking upon a new discovery mission later in the afternoon. Military precision. I thought holidays were supposed to be fun, unpredictable and relaxed. By the look on the face of some of those 'pilgrims', this sounds more like a military campaign doubled as a tick-box exercise. The hordes of tourists end up congregating down to the same places of pilgrimage. The secret coves of yesteryear have now become interplanetary bases, and the quiet country lanes have morphed into crowd-surfing spots, with our guys holding their guides to their hearts. At least - for once - it's not their Blackberries!

Meanwhile the locals have had to source new out-of-bound places that they keep to themselves for peaceful enjoyment, only until the next publication. As for the guided tourists, are they not simply putting themselves at risk of being misguided by those very guides they so religiously follow? By seeking to be smart, have they not simply just given up on any spirit of adventure, exploration and opinion, even kudos? In other words, how much is too much information, especially when handed to you on a plate? And after all, is ignorance not bliss? Hmm... So then... free yourself from the guide corseting your every move, and start living your holiday instead. Here's a sure first step towards freedom!

I Want to Believe

I work in a customer-facing environment and I get to meet individuals from all walks of life on a daily basis, and especially more so right now, during the tourist season. The other day a lady tourist came down to the boutique. She was charming and she was charmed. In fact, she was entranced by Corsica, the beauty and variety of the scenery, the idyllic landscapes, the choice in places to visit and explore, the wilderness always - it seems - a stone's throw away. "It's lovely!", she kept on saying, carrying on with herself.

Aliens reached cult status thanks to The X-Files (image source)

I'd been pretty silent all the way through, occasionally nodding in approval. And then I don't know what got me but I broke her dream. Maybe I was only trying to be honest but it came out wrong, maybe it just wasn't my day, maybe it even had something to do with the time of the month, but I just spoilt if for her, and in retrospect I wish I hadn't.

In the conversation I casually mentioned the winters known to be deceptively long and drab. I went on a quick rant about the state of the roads, the slow post, the lack of retail choice, the scarcity of employment opportunities... As if this weren't enough, I went on complaining about the sudden power cuts and power surges that knacker many a domestic appliance (in my parents' case, a washing-machine and a flat TV set this year alone!). The outdated electricity network in this part of the island whose domestic output barely scrapes over 203 volts on a good day, and which paralyses an already slow broadband internet connection. I could have illustrated this with how an average blog update would have taken me half an hour back in the UK, while it routinely takes me up to 4 hours here. Four hours! Talk about devotion.

'Corsica Corte', by M.C. Escher (1929), via WikiPaintings

While I was at it, I was going to have a go at the water supply too. Instead I just suddenly fell silent. The look on the lady's face made me stop. She was looking at me like a rabbit caught in the headlights, gawping. "Yes but... Yes but..." She turned hesitantly towards her husband who'd remained silent throughout our consecutive monologues, and then she turned back towards me and ventured in a murmur, clutching at her straw hat: "Yes but... but it's lovely here! It's lovely though, isn't it?" I had to save the day, her day. So I just smiled, cracked a joke and nodded in approval when she forced a smile.

Yes but... dear readers! Faced with this textbook case of grass being greener, of this beautiful tourist candour, of tourist under the spell of the place they came to visit (and we all fall victim to this ourselves as tourists at least once in a lifetime), and in my humble defence, I must add that loveliness is sometimes not enough. I communicated this in my own way to the lady but this taught me one good lesson in return: to shatter a tourist's dream and their idea of perfection will in no way restore any sense of that already elusive loveliness!

A Week-End Wonderweb 19-02 (Corsica)

More than just "une montagne dans la mer" (a mountain surrounded by sea), the aptly named "Ile de Beauté" (Beauty Island) commonly known as Corsica is multi-faceted in terms of scenery, a reminiscence of Italy, Switzerland, Côte d'Azur, Normandie, Ireland, Scotland, California and Argentina; follow the road less travelled for a discovery journey that will marvel your senses!

Sources (top page down):

• 'Le Tour du Cap Corse', first produced in 1923 by French graphic artist Roger Broders, is available to purchase as a poster print from Art.com and/ or via Amazon.com
• France for Visitors, Corsica > Nebbio > Farinole, pictured by Dominique Tison
• Corsica For Hikers, the scenic village of Evisa, near Porto, pictured by ©Pierre Bona (2005)
• Emma Keens, Aiguilles de Bavella (Sept 2007), via Flickr 
• Jean-Jacques Mattei, Palombaggia (Apr 2010), via Flickr.

The Quest for a Streamlined Corsica (Part 3)

The Fading of Local Knowledge: My grandma and her generation of villagers were rich sources of local information. Their passing away is - to paraphrase an Arab proverb - likened to a burning library. It helped that my grandma, until her very last day, had an acute memory and was clear-headed about who was who in the village, their next-of-kin and ancestors, who owned which bit of land, who did what for a living back in 1932, local traditions and customs, beliefs and myths, crafts and other manual skills etc. She brimmed with anecdotes, some very witty and funny, which she vividly recounted on late evenings for our pleasure.

Most of her knowledge had been passed down to her by her elders and family friends, and she had built her knowledge from there. Village society at the time was united (despite the odd feud), neither fragmented, nor individualistic and certainly not indifferent like modern society has turned out to be. Back then everyone knew everyone and took a real interest in who and what surrounded them in the microcosm of the village. People made their own evening entertainment by going round houses/ inviting relatives and neighbours around, for a chat about life and storytelling. Back then, books and newspapers were rare, radio a definite luxury, theatre and cinema mostly confined to the towns, and TV's foray into the home didn't become widespread until the 1960s.



Mémé and my mum (Nice, July 1957)

Land Planning: For this section, I will take us back to that 'little slice of suburb in the sun' allegory. No disrespect to home-owners who have bought into the dream, but we need more public concertation and the issuance of stricter architectural guidelines dos and don'ts that will help harmonise style across the suburbs, without that impression of a disjointed mish-mash sprawl...

Under its various denominations (POS, PLU, PADDUC, Loi Littoral et al), land planning at large appears bureaucratic, complicated, illogic in places and mostly misunderstood by Joe Public. Too many legalities, too many amendments, too many personal interests at stake, too many loopholes and too many exceptions to the rules lead to incomprehension, unpopularity and distrust. Another case of 'who's right, who's wrong?' How about make good use of our top public servants' time and (re)write a plan that will be unified, unbiased, forward-thinking, easy to update and clear enough to be understood and interpreted by all. That will be the naive in me hoping!

Off the Bend: Road improvements have always been a welcome necessity in Corsica, to ease communication between secluded, hard-to-reach villages. However in the last ten years, when roads have been widened, dynamited à-gogo, bends softened, even obliterated altogether, corners might have been cut in the process - so to speak, i.e. by playing down the impact that such drastic redefinition would have.

The fact that whole rock chunks were blasted has weakened the structure of certain cliff faces to the point of compromising exposed soil with every heavy rainfall and strong wind, which is particularly apparent in the Cape where parts of the redesigned coastal road have caved in. Costly repairs have stabilised the damage, yet being more respectful of the local geology and typography may have helped avoid the problem in the first place, with the defacto acceptance that Corsica's mountainous terrain implies that those bends and curves simply come with the territory...

Techno-Flops: Already touched upon here, I'll keep it short and sweet with one simple question: how can you smoothly run an internet business, or even a straightforward weblog, from the villages when low voltage or even power cuts incapacitate technology?

Conclusion: The making of the future is rooted in today's work in progress and is built on the foundations of today and yesterday as today's past. We need to make sure that those foundations are solid enough for the future to hold, take root and become in turn tomorrow's present. Corsica benefits from a fabulous potential, but before putting the hard hat on, we need to pause and consider whether we should head for the port or back inland, where the story of Corsica began, ease the past into the future with financial collateral and labour resources. Then redefine our vision of tourism, balance out work and leisure industries, aim for a society where inhabitants, workers and visitors alike can each find their feet, their place and a purpose in the grand scheme of things. A place for all. Failing that, just call me an idealist...

Further browsing: Domaine de Murtoli, a successful eco-tourism compromise between past and present.

The Quest for a Streamlined Corsica (Part 2)

The Tourist Trail - Holy Grail?: In addition to the fact that tourism only directly benefits certain industry sectors and not the local population at large, I am no advocate of unbridled tourism. I believe there is a necessity to redefine and then capitalise upon the tourist demographic that will be most beneficial to the island's future, based on the cold facts of tourist spend per head.

First question: is the emphasis upon port developments the end-all-and-be-all solution for moving forward? From recent reports in local newspaper Corse Matin, it seems that cruise passengers on a Calvi stop-over do not disembark en masse with a view to flock down to the local boutiques and cafés. Rather they seem to be whisked off on day trips in the surrounding villages. In the same vein, private yachts stopping over in the island ports on their way from/ to Portofino, Puerto Cervo or elsewhere will have the larders full and be rather selective as to which restaurant - if any - they will be ready to spend their cash in.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the travel scale, self-contained self-catered camper vans and their 'savvy' middle-class occupants coming off the ferries are in for a holiday on the cheap, as I've had the opportunity to witness throughout the Summer. This means no (or hardly any) food shop, no local souvenirs, no restaurant dining, no camping fees... In my experience, coach passengers are equally reluctant to spend much, especially if they are on a full/ half-board accommodation basis. The number of 'one apple + one Carambar' I have witnessed being purchased at the local grocer's cannot seriously constitute a valuable spend per head.

Interestingly, four- and five-star Corsican hotels have been struggling this season (and the season past). Is tourism on the cheap the solution when there is potential for upping the ante and taking advantage of underused 4- and 5-star infrastructures? Maybe the focus on French clientèle (renowned for its cautious spending and lack of tipping largesse) is not necessarily one to aim for as a de-facto priority.

The Slow Death of the Past: The picture below is that of Ste-Claire chapel in Rogliano. This grand religious édifice sadly embodies everything that is unfair about disparity in the preservation of built heritage (with tough competition across Corsica for meagre subsidies). The bumpy journey to salvation begins (if it ever does in the first place for some monuments) with the building's historical acknowledgement and assigned level of importance and significance from a local, regional or national perspective (and the forecast economic impact via market study), and then onto the next level of salvage/ preservation/ consolidation/ restoration (or, failing that, further laissez-faire into decline!), facilitated by (tight) public budget subsidy and/ or private donations.

The neglected Corsican heritage is set against the unfairness of wealth distribution of a wider scale (the multi-million-Euro grants and subsidies allocated to the ports, roads and airports, for instance). In the face of economic reality and in the harsh light cast by return on investment figures, heritage crumbles irrevocably into less significance - if not insignificance - as a parent pauvre (second-class citizen). And with this, dozens of religious and disused public/ military buildings are falling further into more costly disrepair with each passing year.

Our case study, Ste-Claire, closed its doors after mass for the last time in Summer 1979. With the shrinking number of priests and parishioners and the French Catholic Church's reported financial disarray, it might be utopic to pray for the chapel's doors to ever re-open as a church. Meanwhile local councils, who are in charge of church stock built prior to 1905 (while post-1905 churches fall in the remit of the Catholic Church itself), are struggling enough as it is to keep open churches in working order, without the 'further burden' of those abandonned churches...

Back to Ste-Claire, how about rehabilitate it as a village hall, public building of some sort, and get the local CFA's (Centre de Formation d'Apprentis) building trade college involved in its restoration as an on-going learning project? Remains the all-important funding matter, where in this case 200,000 Euros would just about address the basics (just think of the leaking roof for starters).



A successful church conversion in London SW, featured on Film Locations UK

As a last but probably best resort, how about follow in Britain's footsteps and sell off those abandoned churches to private individuals keen to give them a second lease of life as a home/ office/ arts studio, instead of us standing there as powerless witnesses to further structural degradation while hoping for some elusive miracle or lottery grant... (to be continued)

The Quest for a Streamlined Corsica (Part 1)

After exploring land, cultivation and property development in Corsica, we'll round off our observations with what the future - in my opinion - may hold for the island, and any potential implications.

No matter how upbeat modern Corsica may appear to the outsider/ holidaymaker/ visitor, it is nonetheless faced with a variety of challenges. As an average inhabitant, with the added insight of having travelled and spent most of my life out of the island, I have been able to identify areas for improvement.

In the same breath I do agree with any potential detractor about the fact that it is far easier to criticise from a distance than deal with the problems head-on and implement solutions. Well, I am not part of the political scene, I have no super-powers, no say in public budget spending, and I am no know-it-all guru - only a humble observer... This article is not aimed as a whinge-for-whinge's sake. Rather it should be perceived as constructive criticism and I do apologise if it is not perceived as such. I love Corsica and my intention has never been to put her down.

It's so Political: Political passion is a renegade from the past and still has a potent hold on town and village life alike. I am flabbergasted by the fact that every villager seems to know which party/ candidate their neighbours vote for. Before the election even takes place, everyone has a pretty accurate idea of who will win the election, and by how many votes. Controlled democracy with a strong clan mentality is not necessarily beneficial to village progress and forward thinking.

L'Incivisme: This could be translated as 'lack of citizenlike behaviour'. Reported countless times in the local press and decried by local mayors, this malaise has been exacerbated in recent years and manifests itself in a variety of more-or-less politically-driven actions that negatively affect a municipality (and is not solely found in Corsica of course): fly-tipping, criminal damage to public property, various acts of pollution, refusal to abide by citizen duties (ex. for a private land-owner to clear scrub off their land in direct proximity to the village so as to limit the spreading risk of wild fires, etc.). In any case, these foolish acts affect everybody down to the perpetrators who, to put it simply, saw the branch on which they are sat.

Ports, Ports and More Ports: France is the second country in the world, after the USA, for its number of marinas, from the northern tip of the English channel down the Atlantic coastline border with Spain, plus the span of its whole Med front across to Corsica. The romantic image of the picturesque fishing harbour with a handful of sailing ships seeking solace is long gone and has now been replaced by a more fitting description of floating carparks, with row after row after row of pleasure boats of all sizes, shapes and price tags. Irrevocably this concentration of boats within man-made port enclosures, added to the Summer heat and the virtually non-existant tidal movements of the Med encourage water stagnation, pollution and algae proliferation. What is left of the original beach suffers from coastal erosion (which, I admit, is not solely limited to the Med regions).

As a fitting illustration of this, the once-beautiful Macinaggio sandy beach (pictured below) is now a narrow strip of shoreline clogged up with banquettes de posidonie (heaps of algae), all year round. The configuration of the port prevents the algae from shifting by itself with the winter storms like this would have occurred before the port was extended. Meanwhile sand and pebble banks have been displaced by the changed underwater currents and by further human action (diggers scraping the algae off the beach in late Spring and in good faith, so as to make it 'look more attractive' although funnily enough the algae happens to buffer the beach against further erosion).

However despite the threat of coastal erosion and sea pollution, port expansion is set to carry on across the island, with already 35 million Euros in the pipeline for the proposed Carbonite Port just south of Bastia to welcome more ferryboats from the continent and cruise ships. Add to this a further 2 million Euros for the proposed modernisation of the recently-built Toga Port, just north of Bastia, and you get a better grasp of the financial stakes. (to be continued)