Montreux Jazz - Just a bit too cool for its own good this year

Ok, so I've raved and written about Montreux Jazz festival before because yes, it is in a fabulous setting, yes it does have some great bands and I really like the town. But this year I think it just got a bit too cool for its own good.

Most festivals have the main band with supporting acts that appear before them, which is fine, and these days concerts at Montreux often have two supporting bands which is OK too.

But... when the supporting bands start late and then there is a massive wait between them, it means the main band doesn't come on until really late. Perhaps it's not so bad at the weekend, but during the week when most folk have to get to to work the next day it's tough. As many travel to Montreux from Geneva or Lausanne then it often means they have to leave before the main band has finished performing. Not good when you have paid a small fortune for the tickets, some tickets are 240 CHF.

Case in point. Last week we went to see Jamie Cullen, he was very good but didn't appear until 00:15. As the train for Geneva leaves at either midnight or 01:00 then you either miss him or just get to see an hour and have to leave before he finishes the set. The alternative is the train at 02:00 which stops everywhere, involves changing in Lausanne and doesn't get to Geneva until 05:12. Not good for the workers. Even if you drove, it's still an hour's haul back to Geneva.

When I went to complain about this to the administration they replied with characteristic French Swiss ennui. "Buh, mais c'est Montreux" ie: "we have this great reputation therefore we don't care and anyway how dare you complain?"


Well sorry mate but there were a lot of disgruntled people talking about this on the train on our way home, so next year they may be voting with their feet and simply not going. In these restrained financial times, Montreux should take note.


Sunday night was another example, two supporting bands, one of them Sweet Georgia Brown (she was very good too) but then there was another long gap to wait between bands. Then came a charity auction which lasted half an hour and just seemed to be some promotional outlet for a guy's art gallery (he was a poor auctioneer too, it would have been easier to take a Swiss franc off the ticket price towards the charity). This meant that by the time the great B.B King came on it was once again very late. By that time most people were flagging and fed up.

Claude Nobs may have created a great festival and has put the town on the map and all over the world. He is famed for entertaining all the stars in his lovely chalet above the town during the day, which of course he is entitled to and deserves to do. But if the stars are busy partying away while the punters are waiting patiently below for the bands to start then something isn't quite right.


Montreux is cool, but this year its attitude to its fans left me ice cold.

That's bad... and sad.

Bizarrely I've found myself reading and watching quite a lot about M.J at the moment. I'm even typing this on a Sunday morning watching Larry King on a CNN programme " Remembering an Icon". Crikey, I even spent 8 CHF on Time magazine's tribute issue to him. I didn't expect I'd be doing this, I used to be a fan but had cooled off considerably, all the stuff in the last few years had definitely put me off him.

And then... I came home late one night last week and caught a programme about his early days. An old black and white clip of when he was around 8 or 9, giving such an electric spine chilling performance, I was reminded of why he was so great.

Reminded me why (at my insistance) in the 90's we drove over 4 hours from Paysandu in Uruguay to Buenos Aires to see him perform in the River Plate Stadium. It was rather a bizarre concert to be honest, because Michael Jackson although massively popular, couldn't match the popularity of Maradona. When he walked into the stadium as a V.I.P guest, the roar was phenonemal. The roar for Michael was loud, but not as loud. Jackson may have worn jackets that looked like he was a member of royalty but football is the king in Argentina.

His performance was good, but he kept coming on stage to sing a song and then he disappeared for ages leaving the audience kicking their heels waiting for the next song. This was when all the allegations had started and when he eventually cut his world tour short. To be honest it was a bit tedious.

Despite this, when he was on stage and the first notes of the old favourites started up, "Beat it" "Don't stop" etc, the stadium was rocking.

I'm glad that we went. His steady decline into eccentricity was bad and sad, and probably inevitable, given all the circumstances of his life.

But his music. You just couldn't and can't, beat it.

So that's it then

No more German conjugation prompts on the bathroom mirror



No more school timetable stuck on the back of the kitchen cabinet door

No more philosophy books and various French literature around the house for study purposes

No more files full of notes for exams piling up everywhere

It all stopped last Monday the very last day EVA of school for daughter number one.

13 years of a daughter's education.

Walking her to and from her first playgroup in Uruguay.

Buying her first uniform (green) for her first school in Paysandu.

Sewing name tags on a different uniform (red) for Carleton Primary school in Yorkshire.

Watching her perform as an angel in the nativity play in said school.

Baking cakes and raising money for school playground equipment.

Sewing name tags on a different uniform (blue) for Gullane primary school in Scotland,

Watching school sports day, another nativity play.

Moving to Switzerland, driving her to Geneva English School every day,

Watching her perform in "Oliver", and another Christmas concert.

Then on to Le Rocher her first Swiss school, and now Gymnase, the high school.

Countless parent/teacher meetings, lots of homework, lots of friends, a few tears, some good teachers, some excellent ones, a few dreadful ones, countless school trips to Italy, Barcelona, Rotterdam, India. Brain gym, school projects galore, some involving paper glue and crayons other projects involving just brainpower , countless school photographs, lots of fun, lots of laughter. I could go on.

It has been a joy to be part of it all. I am a little bereft right now as is stopped on Monday. She took her last exam at 16:00 and then got her final result at 18:30 (they are efficient these Swiss)

So that's it. So what's a mother to do now?

I've said it before...

and I'll say it again. This is a great place to live.

Two weekends ago brought it home to me when I was at the Geneva Writers' Group. Petina Gappah, one of our members, was giving a reading from her book, An Elegy for Easterly, a selection of short stories set in Zimbabwe (where she grew up).

She then recounted of how she wrote the book, getting up at 04:30 to write here in Switzerland before putting a full day's work in as a lawyer (she is also a mum with a young son). Her dedication and hard work have paid off as the book has received rave reviews and she has just been on a whistle stop promotional tour. She had interesting stories to tell about meeting other writers, many of them famous. Read her post on her blog from the 3rd May, names like Michael Ondaatje and Colm Toibin and Vikas Swarup are peppered in there. She is even going to featured in Oprah Winfrey's magazine. Gosh, we (the group) are proud of her.

Petina touched on a little bit about the political situation in Zimbabwe and how Zimbaweans are resilient; "we laugh at funerals for heaven sake". She also said that at her graduation a few years ago, Robert Mugabe was at the ceremony to cap the new graduates. At one stage she wrote on the back of her graduation photo, "the President of Zimbabwe capping the future President of Zimbabwe" as at that time she thought she would go into politics. Nowadays she has no interest in being a politician, writing (along with holding down a full time job), is her life.
As she was speaking the sunlight came though the windows of the Press club and shone onto the fuschia and orange colours on the beautiful scarf wrapped around her head.

Just that morning I had come in on the train from Nyon, the Alps and Mont Blanc had both been looking particularly glorious. Lots of lovely sights all in the space of a few hours. After the workshop more writers from our group joined us at our "end of summer " potluck meal. They missed hearing Petina because they had just been a few kilometres down the road listening to Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was in Geneva speaking at the Geneva Forum on Social Change.

There is always so much happening in this area, so much to choose from (more text after the photos)

Pettina with Susan Tiberghien - founder of the Geneva Writers' Group. Thankyou to Alistair Scott for the photos. He has written about taking them in a post in his photography blog.

Here is Petina below at our Geneva Writers' conference last year with Melissa (another writer to watch) Of course our group has lots of other great writers within its membership, lots of them working away on masterpieces right now, but for the moment, its Petina's time to shine.

The weather continued to remain lovely all week and and I then went to Caribana

the first of the summer music festivals in Nyon. As the sun set on Mont Blanc and the lake glistened behind the stages each night, I rocked with the Lovebugs on Wednesday danced and sang, sang, sang along with Fran Healey of Travis on Thursday.....


and reggaed to UB 40 on Friday. All this within the space of seven days.

Last weekend the FT, put Geneva at number 24 in the ranking of most liveable cities in the world.

I know why.

From the top of a Lisbon bus

I am taking a bit of a photography course at the moment with this very clever photographer (see his site). There are others of us on the course and last week we went out and about in the vineyards of Vaud, looking and learning about shots with close ups and photos taken from different view points etc. The vineyards of Vaud are not a bad place for a classroom.
Here's one of a dandelion against the sun. Spot those insects crawling inside.


Last weekend D and I were in Lisbon so I decided to take all the photos from high up. I've always thought those open top bus tours looked a bit naff, and to be honest the guide on this one was rubbish, and the driver drove like a bat out of hell. He was obviously anxious to get to his next fag break, which meant that as soon as I was ready to press the shutter, he revved up and whizzed off, so some of the shots were blurred. But being high up did mean I got an interesting view of the city and let's face it, Lisbon although lovely, does have lots of steep hills, so it saved on lot of leg work. Anyway here is the city seen from a top deck.

And finally snuck in this photo you will see the reflection of two bloggers. Me and Lucy Pepper.

Now that was a very good part of this trip. A fantastic female fellow blogger. A big obrigada Lucy for your hospitality.

Silver service indeed

We are staying in rather a posh hotel at the moment in Lisbon. D and I both need to work a bit while we are here, so both have brought our laptops. I have a small battery on mine to make it lighter and to prevent backache when I'm lugging it around. So inevitably it runs down after a a while which it did today, even though I brought the cable for it, I forgot to bring an adaptor for Portugal . So I asked the hotel if they had one. They had.

A member of staff wearing white gloves brought it to me on a silver tray............


As soon as he walked towards me I could feel a blog post coming on.

They say you've arrived when.....

You have your own car parking space. (CNP is the acronym of my surname).

After all, this area is acronym land personified. Have a conversation around here and it often goes like this. Who do you work for?

er... W.H.O I.M.O W.I.P.O I.U.C.N U.N W.W.F I.L.O U.N.C.H.R, agh the list goes on. I'm sure some of my fellow bloggers in Geneva and environs could add a gazillion more.

Talking of fellow bloggers. Check out this brand new one, by a crafty Canadian who is rather good at public speaking (he's won a few awards along the way). He's recently written a post on where do you stand on Power Point presentations?

No, not how you feel about them but where do you physically stand ie: which is the best side of the screen to stand? I've done a few PPP, but not many and all on the subject of expatriate living. Most of them went OK, but one had potential for disaster as I spilt a cup of tea down my blouse a nano-second before I went on....... fortunately a jacket covered it up but it threw my nerves somewhat. I'm sure John will cover such issues in his blog at some stage on how to get out of sticky situations. Or maybe its only me that is dumb enough to want to slurp hot tea before standing up in front of a few hundred strangers.

Oh and that car parking space, nah it wasn't for me, it was for the Club Nautique de Prangins
(sailing club of Prangins)

One day, one day.