Thursday 25th April
My husband Marcel and I fly out to Luxembourg to meet our son Paddy, who started his Erasmus programme in Nancy last January. Paddy is one of those people who make every day better, and he’s been sorely missed. We meet him in Arrivals, and he says he’s on two hours’ sleep as he has been making full use of Nancy nightlife. He’s just had a brownie and an Americano from the airport Starbucks, and he says he is starting to feel decidedly unwell. We say we hope it wasn’t something he ate, that it’s probably the lack of sleep. We pick up our hire car, which is a swanky black BMW sports-looking thing, a free upgrade; this is usually great, but Paddy is going downhill, so I offer him the front seat. Turns out the designers don’t care about the back seat in sports cars and it’s very uncomfortable for a stiffening middle-aged lady. But I sketch Paddy from my cramped back seat. I think you can tell from my drawing that he is feeling poorly.
There are travaux everywhere in central Nancy, and the main street is a long strip of torn-up road, flanked by fencing, workers in flourescent vests doing roadwork stuff, scooping up road with mini-diggers, sweeping mortar into new-laid pavement and, of course, lolling about smoking. The purpose of these travaux is to install new tram lines, electricity infrastructure, plumbing – they’re really going for it, and there are no plans to finish anytime soon. The hotel has warned us (the day before) that their included parking space is closed, and that the roadworks will be very loud, and there’s nothing they can do about it, all of which they definitely knew before we booked, but then again they need to stay open. Into the underground car park goes the fancy car. We plan to take her out for a spin through the surrounding countryside but for now it’ll have to stay put.
Our hotel is perfect. Faded grandeur. Bare chestnut floorboards that were never meant to be seen. Spiral stone staircase. Art Nouveau handrails and stained glass, and ornately-carved wardrobes on the landings between floors that would never fit in a modern apartment.
Thirty years ago I spent a few days in Nancy, presenting a scientific paper (I took the scenic route to a career in art, through a postgraduate degree in geology). The hotel that had been booked for me was shabby and faded in every respect, run by an old couple. In my youth and naïvete I arranged to transfer to the modern chain hotel nearby where some of my colleagues were staying, but before I moved, I saw as if for the first time the dip in the middle of each stone step from centuries of feet stomping up to rooms, the cast iron baths, the internal courtyard full of French-looking plants, the gentle personal touches of the couple who ran it. I stayed put, grateful to have seen sense at the last minute. This hotel reminds me of that one all those years ago, with the addition of ugly fire doors and those false ceilings for ducts and vents, and some (but not all) rather indifferent staff. There are more workmen traipsing through the corridors than guests – by a long way – leaving plaster-stained footprints everywhere, but the rooms are comfortable and clean, with ornately-carved wooden beds and gaps between the floorboards so wide that you daren’t drop anything.
We’re on the first floor and just outside our window is a bar called Bistrot Georgette. By the time we leave Paddy alone in our room – he’s extremely unwell now – we’re a bit late for charcuterie, but we beg the very hipster guys to bring us anything they can find. So we end up with huge slices of local paté, two types of cheese which, the server says apologetically, is Spanish, and some homemade houmous. I add it to my sketch because I am so grateful to have it. Staff and clientele spend much of the time nipping outdoors to smoke, or just stay outdoors, where hip, mostly young people are having a lively time.
The bar staff are in the uniform of the trendy: floppy hair, enormous Hussar moustaches and roundy glasses, floral short-sleeved shirts hanging open, stubble, chinos rolled up at the cuffs to better show the Converse trainers. I feel like sketching and as always I have a wonderful time. Marcel checks a few work things – the trip in Dubai from last week generated such a feeding frenzy that he can’t switch off entirely for these few days, as anyone in the entrepreuneurial sector will understand. Each doing what brings us joy, we are very happy. The beer is delicious, tasting a lot like elderflower, which Marcel tells me is hops, but I don’t believe him. Beer is often made with hops and it doesn’t taste like this. Then again, it’s called Hoppy Road so I suspect someone is pleased with the hop profile.
Friday 26th April
The guys are still in bed: Paddy has had a terrible night and is very ill. He bitterly regrets drinking the coffee: he says he knew it was dodgy even as he drank it, but drank it anyway. We’ve all done that, I think, but we usually get away with it. I have a year’s study of microbiology in uni, and I got two points off a first-class honour in that subject, so I am somewhat knowledgeable on pathogen transmission (no one I know accepts this and tells me I am annoying, but I can’t help it if I had good lecturers and access to good textbooks, and am extremely clever, can I? Unjust in the extreme). Or it might be the vomiting bug that’s doing the rounds in Nancy, it’s hard to say.
I nip downstairs and make myself comfortable in the tiny foyer. I start the sketch in supergranulating watercolour, which is great if you want to in a little slowly, as the colours are muted, but I finish it a few days later in normal watercolour. The gutter down the centre of my sketchbook is the edge of the wall separating the lobby from the entrance, but that’s not very clear from my sketch. Just as I finish, Paddy sits beside me in the sofa, and you can see his outline in brown ink, which isn’t expertly done but it’s Paddy, and that’s all I need.
As I sketch, workmen come in and out. In comes a toilet in a big box. In comes a wooden palette bearing hotel-room necessities. It occurs to me that every single modern convenience in this old hotel next to the city’s cathedral, on a paved square, must arrive through this small entrance. Four or five hotel staff, all in their twenties, gossip around the front desk. They don’t acknowledge me or ask what I am doing, and I listen to their conversation, a fly on the wall. Sketching is great for earwigging, but they say nothing of interest, and spend much time nipping out to smoke.
Marcel and I leave Paddy in the hotel – he can’t move – and head out to nearby Place Stanislas to get breakfast. We are committed intermittent fasters but have decided to fall off the wagon for the duration of our holiday. We order croissants and café crèmes. The waiter is young (40s? Oh dear) bald, smiling and friendly. With Marcel’s blessing I start sketching – I don’t want to a sketching bore for this holiday – but it quickly starts to rain. We move backwards, under an umbrella. My subjects, the woman and her companion in the right-hand foreground, are not under an umbrella, and, unaware that they are temporarily my subjects, have the temerity to leave before I have completed them. Now I am in a pickle! The sketch will be a disaster if I leave it like this. But the rain dries up and people start milling about in the square, and my page is dry enough to add windows and little statues on my buildings. I have overcome many typical sketching challenges with this simple composition, and although much of the success of it is due to chance – it might have continued to rain – I think it’ll make a great class when I’m back in Ireland.
Paddy tells us about a wonderful sandwich he had a few days earlier. It was from a place specialising in pastrami. Paddy has a healthy appetite (when he’s not horribly sick) and living in France has helped him to finally get the idea of what I have told him for years: don’t eat nonsense that isn’t food. Marcel and I head off for lunch, leaving Paddy to sleep. (I know it sounds so sad, that our short holiday was marred by Paddy being sick, but we spent many hours lying together on the big beds, laughing ourselves silly at the funnier aspects of French TV, and things in general, and times like that are rare when your child is grown, and it was beautiful.)
We come across the pastrami joint, and take a seat. I watch the guy behind the counter slicing the meat and making sandwiches. He’s young and handsome. I like his taste in his playlist, giddy and dancy, like my own Spotify choices. He’s dancing as he works, I catch his eye and he gives me the biggest smile. Nice guy. We tell him how delicious the food is and he brings Marcel a bowl of meat scraps. Isn’t that lovely? We tell him our son Paddy told us about this joint, and that he’s ill or he’d be with us now. The man immediately grabs a Pickles branded mug from a shelf, stuffs it with a few hilarious die-cut stickers of his pickle mascot and plonks it on our table. “Thank you!” says Marcel. “That’s for our son!” Afterwards, I ask him if it’s a chain. This what he says.
:”No, it’s just me. My father is Spanish, my mother Italian, and we have an Italian restaurant here in Nancy. My father always wanted to make pastrami, but never did it. Then, during the confinement [lockdown was severe in France] I practiced making pastrami. I made such mistakes in my first attempts, but in the end I got it right. And five months ago I opened this place. Come and see my special oven!”
We follow him into the kitchen, as the restaurant is quiet for the moment. The fellow shows us a huge oven, sleek and shiny, with a tiny screen for humidity and temperature – Marcel says later he found it disappointing, as he was hoping for valves and switches and nozzles – and the chap is clearly very proud of it. He says he’s the only person in France with this pastrami machine. He tells us how it adjusts itself according to the weather, that if it’s raining it acts accordingly (he lost me there). We’re so impressed by his entrepreneurial spirit, a man after our own hearts. Marcel shows him my Sketchpocket, which is, as always, slung over my shoulder. This is cringe as I save my evengelising for classes, books, blog, instagram broadcasts, my podcast, YouTube…nothing much. The man is called Pierre Emmanuel (“all my friends call me PE”, pronounced Pay-Uh in French).
I tell PE I’ll be back to sketch his place, and he’s thrilled. In the hotel room I draw the sandwich from my photo – while I have a golden rule never to sketch from photos, it is even more of a sacrilege to let good food get cold – and when Paddy needs to sleep again, I go back and do just that. I put it up on Instagram and tag PE and he’s delighted.
Saturday 27th April
Next day we pay a second visit. Paddy gives it a go and we’re sitting at a table outside. I go in to greet PE.
“I was in the WC and I was thinking of you!” he says. “Okaaaayyy…?” I say. “Vous savez pourquoi? ” he continues. “Do you know why? I was thinking, why didn’t I ask her to draw something on the wall!” He brings me into the loo. It’s got a large blackboard by the jacks. I ask him if he has anything to draw with. Of course he does! This is PE we’re talking about! Not only does he have something to draw with but he has the best possible items – two packs of Posca pens in all the right colours. I nip out to the guys and tell them I’ll be back in a minute. In I pop to the bathroom, whip out the Poscas and draw a jar of pickles, the pickle mascot, his catchphrase (“Envoie le Cornich’!”) and the cute “P” typeface.
Five minutes later I am back with the guys, and Paddy, who is suffering another wave of nausea, excuses himself to use the bathroom. He returns. “Mum,” he says, “I looked to my right and I saw your signature and this drawing and I thought, what the – ? But I am not one bit surprised. That’s so you – to meet this guy in his restaurant and then one day later there’s a drawing by you, in the jacks. How does that work? How do you just talk to people like that?” I explain that after a certain age you’re unembarrasable. That it’s a wonderful thing. And I say to you, now, that I think life is short, and just say yes to everything – and of COURSE to take up sketching because it opens all these doors to meeting beautiful people.
PE comes out to chat. It turns out his people came from Syria to Spain but got turfed out by Franco and went to Tangiers. Then his grandfather came to Nancy and became the top marble cutter. Then they opened restaurants. (I knew he was Syrian, and had said as much to Marcel! Why did I guess Syrian, in a.city full of Arabs and black-haired, black-bearded people? What can I say, but extreme cleverness? Then again, he’s not just Syrian, he’s French, Spanish and Italian. A bit like me – Canadian, English, Irish. We’re proof that it is wonderful being a mixture). He presents us with a brown paper bag, in which is a sous vide packet of pastrami, a packet of homemade “chips” (crisps) a bottle of hot sauce and lots of cool die-cut stickers. Back in Ireland, I draw them, but I don’t include the packet of pastrami because it looks a bit ugly, like the plastic-wrapped turkey gizzards you get at Christmas.
“Paddy,” he says, “if you ever need anything, if you’re ever in trouble, just come to me. This is my town. You’re family now.”
Then the men shake hands all around and I get a lovely hug – no, it wasn’t my idea! – and we go our separate ways.
Sunday 28th April
It’s Sunday, and in France Sundays are for rest. That should really be written REST. To spend time with the family. Tourist? Hungry? Tough. No, not really, you just have to look a bit harder. It’s cold and raining and we go to a café on Place Stanislas for our breakfast. Paddy joins us when he’s well enough. Tall, thin waiters dash around, and ours is extra-manic. Every time he presents a perfectly-frothed café crème on a table he says very loudly “UN JOLI PETIT CAFÉ CRÈME!” and you get the feeling you better enjoy it. Enjoy it all we do, and go for a second. Another roared announcement from the speeding waiter as it is placed on the table. You can see two of the staff behind the counter at the back, who are brown, but all the waiters are white and “French”.
Marcel watches me drawing. “What’s stopping you drawing that lady on the right?” “I’m waiting for her to settle so I can catch her,” I say. “Oh, like a mosquito?” he says. I tell him yes, exactly like a mosquito. He is delighted with this analogy and chuckles away to himself.
Marcel remarks sotto voce that the croissants are a little overdone. I say yes, but sometimes they’re just like that. The relentlessly positive waiter passes a moment later. “DES BEAUX CROISSANTS AUJOURD’HUI!” he shouts as he races past. He couldn’t have heard us – could he?
After the wonderful breakfast, we head into the building right beside us – which is open – it’s the Musée des Beaux Arts de Nancy, an amazing art gallery. We see a Picasso, some Dufys and a whole host of other works by painters of huge reknown. I am going to be annoying again: I have been at this drawing-from-life thing for so long that it’s very easy for me to spot mistakes, as opposed to deliberate choices. I see a great many in artists who are regarded as untouchable, which I keep to myself because it’s a downer for everyone to hear my nit-picking. But I have my thoughts.
I discover Émile Friant, who was clearly a prodigy from a young age (look for the self-portrait he did at 15). I am baffled as to how I don’t know of him. I follow what I can about his life: I buy a book in the gift shop and I start to read between the lines. Google “Émile Friant gay” and you will come up with nothing. But look closely at his work and you see sailors, youths in sleeveless tops with a certain way of standing, groups of men. Nothing unusual there, for the time, although one painting I am thinking of is like a 19th-century still from a Village People video. Then you can’t find any mention of a wife or children. And you realise how unacceptable, illegal even, it was to be gay until recently. It’s not for me to speculate on a man’s private life, but I speculate anyway. It might explain why he was fêted during his lifetime, and slid into relative obscurity after he “fell to his death” in 1932. Or, it could be that he was a realist painter at a time when it was all about cubism and fauvism and being modern and he may have been out of step. That’s probably all it is. But look up Jeune Nancéienne, and you will be as moved as I was, prompting me to buy a postcard of it, which I am going to frame.
In the afternoon Paddy, Marcel and I stumble across a vintage car rally through the archway in Place Stanislas that you can see here. It brings back fond memories of Marcel’s father, and mine, both of whom owned classic Citroën DS cars in the 70s. Our past is displayed in front of us: Renault 4s, Spitfires, Triumphs TR6s.
Later, I go back and draw the archway, because Paddy says it’s his favourite view in Nancy. I have a delicious, hoppy beer that tastes of elderflowers and as usual I am in heaven to be there, all on my own, sketching. Marcel joins me after a bit – Paddy is poorly again – and has a beer with me while I finish off the sketch.
Monday 29th April
We check out of our hotel. Marcel argues with the hotel staff about the city tax, as he thinks he’s alrweady paid it, and even though it’s pennies, he is arguing on principle. He does this in a very French way, with a lot of shouting. The young staff member remains calm. She’s probably used to it. There are people nearby eating breakfast and I can’t take it any more, so I slip out, quickly followed by Paddy. “You know what I said about being unembarrassable,” I say to Paddy, “I was wrong.”
Marcel is a fantastic person to spend time with in a French city: he is English, and as witty as an Englishman can be, especially about the French. On the other hand, he has a French soul (an opinion with which he strongly disagrees), the son of a quintessentially French Franco-Mauritian, and in his every gesture and action Marcel is a Frenchman. Once again, for the record, Marcel thinks this is nonsense. However, French-souled people have their faults – like all of us – and making a scene AT WILL is one of them.
We head to Place Stanislas for breakfast again. I have a blank space on the right of a page. On the left are three perfect French women, straight out of Central Casting. Thety have hennaed hair, red lips, no eye make-up, sallow complexions, sunken cheekbones, cigarettes and more cigarettes, aquiline noses, red accessories and black clothes. It is my joy and privilage to sketch them. I take a photo of the, pretending it’s Paddy I am photographing, in case I want to tough up my drawing (I don’t and it’s just as well, as you’re almost guaranteed to ruin the freshness if you retouch from a photo). But now I have a lovely photo of Paddy with a big smile, even if it was a fake smile for a fake photo.The ladies smoked all the way through our quiche lorraine and burger lorrainois (I made up that name, it was just a burger) but drawing them keeps me calm about that, which, I can assure you, is quite the feat, from a lifelong chastiser of smokers.
With an hour left in the city I see this wonderful man smoking a fat cigar. He is dressed so beautifully, and I have this blank page just crying out for its twin fabulous French person to be depicted there. I move tables and order another coffee just to have an excuse to sketch him. Along comes a fresh joli café crème from the manic waiter and I get going. This time I can’t just photograph him even though any man on his own dressed like that is dressed to be noticed and I think he’d like the sketch.
Marcel and I have decided we’d like to buy a tire bouchon, a corkscrew, while we’re here. Now Marcel wants to go and hunt for one, and he wants me to come with him. But Paddy is with him and I want to go into the gift shop in the art gallery where we were the day before – the lady behind the desk was closing when we were visiting – of course she was! – and I didn’t get a chance to browse. He is cross, and storms off. Paddy says calmly that I can catch up in a few minutes. I buy my book on Friant. Then I see the sun is shining – almost the first time since Thursday – and I can’t resist a sketch of the ornate fountain in the corner of the square. The best advice I have ever been given, for negotiating a harmonious marriage, was “ask for forgiveness, not permission” and I get the sketch done. However, the people on the Ryanair desk aren’t going to be accommodating to my sketching needs, so I stop after half an hour, feeling very smug at how amazing my Sketchpocket is for rapid, snatched sketching moments. The sketch isn’t much really – but it’s a memory of that moment, and doing my own thing when I have been expressly told not to by my husband.
We collect our swanky car from the underground car park, where it has been clocking up euros but no miles, and drive back to Luxembourg Airport. We have lunch – Paddy is better AT LAST – which is extremely expensive but top-notch, reflecting the clientele, EU workers on expenses, who pass through the airport all the time.
I make a reprt to the airport Starbucks to let them know they should check their systems, just in case. Then it’s time to say goodbye. I have a cool cover on my Macbook Air made of walnut. Marcel jokes that any day now he’s going to chop carrots on it. The man in Airport Security telling everyone to put their laptops in separate trays remarks that’s it’s beautiful and very cool. “C’est vraiment chouette,” he says. I guess the Luxembourgish, like the French, are people of taste and style.
Tuesday 30th April
I draw the hot sauce, PE’s homemade chips, the Comté cheese and fennel sausage from the market, and I enjoy every second of it. We have them with a lovely Italian red that evening in front of the latest Liam Neeson movie and life is good. La vie est belle.
And I can be contacted 24/7, should you have an offer of a job and an apartment in Nancy.
