After a Long Absence (can we still blame Covid?!)
I bought a little notebook at Warsaw’s Modlin airport, with the last of my Polish change. We’d travelled together to the airport and I was waiting for my return flight to Beauvais (Ruth had left for London on a much earlier flight to join Rodolfo Mederos, the Bandoneon Maestro and Gustavo Frojan, his friend and agent). We’d flown to Warsaw the week before where Rodolfo had been invited to lead a group of students and their profs at the music department of Warsaw University. Ruth had only learnt of this some 3 weeks previously and managed to get herself invited to join the group (as Bando 5).
Although she just about held her own, she would love to have had the music a few weeks prior to the event. Nevertheless, an extraordinary opportunity, to play ‘under the baton’ of the Maestro for whom Ruth had organised a series of Masterclasses over the past two years via Zoom – this was their first meeting in the flesh.
The Palace of Culture and Science
Our arrival in Warsaw the previous week was quite something. Ruth had found a very reasonable airbnb towards which we were headed once we’d hit Warsaw Central station. If we’d got off at the correct bus stop, we would have missed out on what happened next. We were a few hundred yards walk from ‘our’ flat on the unpronouncable street, Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie , when I spotted a dance hall on the first floor, with gathered, up-lit red curtains.
We stopped on the pavement and watched but, without hearing the music, or seeing their feet, were finding it difficult to make out what they were actually dancing. So, despite being somewhat travel-weary and still carrying our week’s luggage plus Bandoneon, we made our way upstairs to find a Milonga in full swing! We were met by the charming organiser Andrzej and Frank, getting an instant positive vibe from the place, without missing a beat, offered for Ruth to play a tanda on her Bando! Without having any idea of how competent she was, and having consulted with the DJ, he enthusiastically accepted the offer. After a few moments hesitation, the dancers started to clap in time to the music, and after no more than a few bars, the entire group was on the dance floor and revelling in the live music. By the next day, a video had been posted on Warsaw’s Tango FB page, followed by a slew of positive comments.
Despite being invited to a number of other Milongas in the city, the intensity of the rehearsal schedule at the Uni put any further activities on the backburner. However, we did manage to invite the Maestro and his charming agent to dine with us – once at our Airbnb and another time at a traditional Polish restaurant in the old city.
Both these experiences brought us a lot closer, and apart from the final sold-out concert, were the icing on the cake.
Another slice of serendipity came our way when we spotted a Georgian Khatchapuri house and struck up a conversation with the owners, who’d only opened a month or so previously (Georgia is what brought Ruth and I together for the first time, 25 plus years ago). Whilst we were chatting and dredging up our scraps of Georgian, we fell into conversation with a very amiable customer while he waited for his takeaway order. He turned out to be a well-travelled ship’s captain and owner of the tall ship Frederyk Chopyn, a magnificent youth- training, two-master.
We invited him to the concert, and two days later, once we’d recovered, he offered to take us out of the city, to his family home town, where he’d bought and exquisitely done up, an old cinema, and was looking to make it available for events of an as-yet undefined nature.
Ruth, despite herself, was immediately intrigued, and although she’s determined to pull back from organising events herself, was very happy to offer suggestions…
In fact, the amount of time she has spent on the computer since Covid – Zoom courses, Bandoneon events, creating flyers and organising other people’s timetables, has been thoroughly overwhelming. Add to that the four independent and random keyboards of the Bandoneon, which she still practises between 2/3 hrs a day and the more recent commitment to an online BSL course and certificated qualification, it is understandable that she wants to cut down her time in front of the screen. This is one of the reasons that I am happy to ‘pick up my pen’ once again and offer my take on our continued travels and adventures. Our blog silence in no way reflects our movements – since going to Paris in January 2020 and the subsequent lockdown there when we went to look after my stepmother, Betty and then stayed on a further six months after she died, to sort out my folk’s house and affairs and, with the invaluable help of other members of my wider family, got it ready to go on the market.
Earlier this month the sale of the said house in Belleville, Paris finally went through – creatively ‘adorned’ by one of my son Dan’s incredible paste-ups, ‘Nous Sommes Tous des Voisins’ (We Are All Neighbours) (www.dangreen.net)
This Autumn, having qualified for a 12 month, long-term Visa, I have begun the process of applying for a Carte de Séjour, which will allow me to stay in France long enough to put my dossier before a French court and apply for a French passport. This is not without its own complications. Although my mother was born in France and I therefore have a bloodline connection to the country, I had very little contact with her after my parents divorced. An added problem is that this blood link, according to an anomaly in French law, is severed after 50 years and she died in 1973… So the clock is ticking…! Furthermore, my mother died in London and it is incumbent on me to prove she lived in France for the majority of the intervening years between her divorce and her death. One of the obscure pieces of information that my lawyer had asked me to provide her with, was my mother’s Social Security number… I mean, nearly 50 years after her death…! And a few weeks into the current French ‘road-trip’, one of my first searches in the administrative centre of Normandy yielded a direct it….! Sadly, there are many more strands to pull together before I can set foot in a French court, to present my case for citizenship. Let’s hope I’m equal to the task…..
Christmas is almost upon us and despite the cold snap, if we can keep our wood-store full (earlier in the year, when Ruth’s trigger thumb was preventing her from using our bow-saw, we invested in a battery-operated chain saw …WOW, what a huge difference that’s made!) we continue to be very cosy in Emma. She’s very well insulated and heats up in minutes once the wood burner is lit. Our Winter plan is to explore parts of France we’ve not yet discovered, looking for like-minded communities, with music and Tango connections. As ‘foodies’ we’ve always hugely appreciated the open markets crammed with fresh local produce and the French’s reverence for food in general, so we’ll neither be bored nor hungry…!
For those who might be wondering, we have no intentions of putting Emma ‘out to grass’. There are still a fair number of destinations on our radar, not least Georgia, which as I mentioned earlier was the thing that brought our lives together, via the wonderful singer, choir-leader, ethnomusicologist and scholar – Edisher Garakanidze. In fact the first thing we did when we got together 10 years ago, was to fly to Tbilisi, to pay our respects to Edisher’s son Gigi who, like his father, died far too young. To witness his funeral in the then newly built cathedral in the heart of Tbilisi, where a constant stream of colleagues, friends and family filed past his open coffin for more than four hours, accompanied by half a dozen sublime and very different choirs, was an experience neither of us will ever forget….
So, given the pursuit of my French ‘papers’, we probably won’t return to the UK before the Spring. In our absence, may we take this opportunity of wishing all our friends, colleagues and family, despite the truly shocking state of the world, a very festive Christmas and New Year, in the sincere hope that 2023 will be a better year all round….
All our fondest Love
Frank and Ruth xxx
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