100% Birthday

April Fool's Day was Richard's birthday. He decided that in order to minimise the possibility of getting overwrought, either before or after his birthday, we would graduate the experience - his birthday eve was 10% his birthday, the day itself was 100%, the day after 50% and day after that 25%. It seemed to work quite well. The evening before we had some Gaulier friends including Alex and Lily round for lasagne. We cooked three kinds - meat, vegetarian and a mix, with feta salad and garlic bread - YUM! Lily and I made brownies which had to go back into the oven after the candles and "Happy Birthday" as they weren't quite done. I then stood by the oven checking every five minutes and marvelling audibly that the passage of time seemed to be having no effect on them, until someone asked tactfully whether the oven was on, which of course it was not. Anyway they were delicious in the end.

We all played a game (it's what we do!): The Hat Game. The rules are as follows:
Everyone writes the names of eight famous people onto eight bits of paper which are folded up and put into a hat. In teams, you explain to each other in a minute as many of these famous people. At the end of one round, names go back into the hat and we start again, this time only being able to use 3 words to describe each name. Then 1 word, then mime. It's very jolly, especially with Gaulier students who do some super face and body wriggling.

On Thursday our friend Elspeth came to stay. The three of us went to the local Alpine Garden in the Jardin de Plantes. I'd been really intrigued to check it out - it's sunken about 10 feet below the rest of the park, and apparently this can result in a temperature disparity of up to 10 degrees farenheit. It got pretty exciting as we walked down through a concrete walkway and it turned very cold - but that was just the shade and emerging into the Alpine Garden the temperature seemed more or less the same. It was extremely pretty and we had a short wander before it closed, and we headed to the labyrinth. This was a little disappointing as it's less of a labyrinth (although that day it did contain a Minor Tor - ho ho!) than a spiral of hedges that you'd have to be seriously remedial to get lost in. There were many passages through the hedges that seemed to have been forced, we th0ught by children perhaps trying to mix the whole thing up a bit.

The next day was sunny and we walked to the Rodin Museum. It is near Invalides which we also popped in to see, and attempted to share some of our Napoleon knowledge around, as he is buried there. The Rodin Musuem is in a large old hotel called Hotel Biron, set in the third largest privately owned garden in Paris. The building itself is rather lovely and smelled of sun and warm wood. There is no furniture but the sculptures by Rodin and a room dedicated to the sculptures of his pupil and lover, Camille Claudel. Her work was lovely, and much of the gift shop was given over to her, too. If I fancied, I could wear almost tip-to-toe CC merchandise - wristwatch, jewellery, t-shirt, bag, all bearing her face. I wonder then if my own face, poking out the top, would somehow be a shock.

There was a very comprehensive and informative leaflet giving Rodin's biography and some history behind the more famous sculptures. Richard read it out to us as we went from room to room. The Rodin of the leaflet was always touchingly pleased when anyone commissioned him to do things, but often sadly seemed to get it a bit wrong, such as doing a memorial sculpture of Balzac in the nude. Which was a very jolly sculpture. I felt I learned quite a bit, and we are going to get a long piece of paper to begin our own timeline of the world. Rodin will get one of the first entries.