Dinner with Danes

The Danes, Froed and Gertrude, invited Barbara and I to dinner. F&G bought the house on rue de l’Egalité that Barbara and I owned years ago, so going to dinner was like going home, despite the renovations they did.

We sat on the stone bench built into the house outside wall and had sangria and blueberry sized olives as Froed told about his winter in Uganda where he is producing a film. Gertrude emerged grey-haired – two years ago she was still dying her hair and the grey looks good – and slim. She is a writer who also does a lot of work nationally and internationally on HIV.

We worked our way inside to the kitchen where I’d played lots of card games, ate many great meals, talked with friends, put down a bowl of steam water mixed with decongestant for my cold-ridden mother and fallen in love with Michel. The table was set next to the window which was filled with flowering plants.

They gave us a grand tour of the place. They’ve removed walls, but kept the original beams. A clay pig head still supported the living room beam. I am glad they kept it. It makes me smile everytime since I was reading under it, and lookedup to really see it for the first time.

A bath and toilet on the third floor would have been appreciated earlier having made my way downstairs more times than I want to count in the middle of the night. There is also the memory of my first night in bed with Michel, a sequence adapted in The Card. I shared this with Gertrude and she said she would buy the book, since her house has been fictionalized in the book.

Froed was the cook, and produced steaks in a nice sauce and to-die-for crisp potatoes baked in oil and spices, and snappable green beans, salad, a selection of cheeses, good wine, mouse/raspberries and ice cream.

The conversation ran a gambit of topics from life in Africa, AIDS, Literature, movies and politics. With all the Danes in town, I try and keep up on their politics so it isn’t only US and EU politics under discussion.

Froed also owns the house directly across the street from me and a grange that he is renovating as well as a place in Barcelona. When he retires he will come back and forth and rent out his misc. places probably to more people in the Danish entertainment industry.

Years ago when I bought my studio in Argelès I thought I would be living in a Catalan community. Instead I have found an artistic community. My friend Bill often accused me of being a cake eater, but in this case, I have my cake and I eat it too. I have a local culture plus an international art community. Life is good.