Rust

On Wednesday evening, I caught up. On Thursday, I enjoyed surveying the various bits of rusty metal around the garden and framing some interesting colours and textures for Abstract Thursday - thank you Ingeborg, for an inspiring theme. My favourite images were of the rust inside my wheelbarrow, which is another of my romantic birthday presents from P. I've been using it for at least a quarter century; the tubular legs rusted through completely about five years ago, but were very competently replaced by our neighbour B, who used to own a garage and enjoys occasional welding projects. The extra seems to me to be an abstract evocation of a somewhat fuzzy and fragmented human head, which resonates with me; however, the chance arrival of a rather handsome beetle provided the main photo, which may be less convincingly abstract but has a rather surreal quality which I like. (Edit: I've been trying to identify the beetle: I was hoping it was some kind of ground beetle, but after trawling through lots of photos I think it is a vine weevil, likely to cause significant damage to plants in pots and tubs - help with insect identification is always welcome! Further edit: now that my tentative identification has been confirmed, I've gone off the photo and will swap my main and extra.)

I didn't have time to process these on Thursday evening because it was movie night with J. We watched Le Havre, a 2011 French film made by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki which tells the story of Marcel, a poor shoe shiner in a traditional working class quarter of Le Havre, who takes pity on a young boy from Gabon who arrived in a contained full of trafficked refugees and ran away from the police. Idrissa is trying to reach his mother in London; Marcel, with the help of his community, tries to help him. It's perhaps a somewhat improbably story in some respects, particularly in its reliance on the active collusion of a maverick police inspector, but it's located in a very real world of displaced and marginalised people and I enjoyed the portrayal of Marcel's community and environment. It was nice to see some glimpses of Le Havre too: we stayed overnight once, in a bland hotel close to the port, but saw little of the city, arriving after dark and spending the following morning in the municipal art gallery, which has a number of paintings by Monet, who grew up there and made frequent working visits after moving to Paris. We should have stayed longer: we were en route to Bayeux and the Normandy coast, and did not realise how interesting Le Havre would be. The city was substantially redesigned and built to a cohesive plan in the 1950s, after being almost completely destroyed by British bombing in September 1944, and is now a Unesco world heritage site; I was interested to see the principal architect, Auguste Perret, and some of his key buildings referenced in the film's credits. P and I very much like looking at buildings in general and twentieth century architecture in particular, and it's a place we want to return to and explore when we can.

J and I both enjoyed the film, and indulgently followed it with another episode from the back catalogue of Call the Midwife; and then on Friday evening my laptop was again very difficult to use, so here I am again, trying to upload my Thursday and Friday photos over Saturday lunch. A new laptop is on the shopping list, but a new dishwasher will probably have to take priority.