Wednesday 14 February 2018

My Valentine

A rare departure today and a focus on a living relative.


Indulge me if you will, because my darling husband gave me the sweetest gift last year by promising me that we could get married on 14th August so that our half year anniversary will always fall on 14th Feb and ensure that we never have to 'go in for all that' ever again.
What a guy!

***********************

Christophe was born to Vincenzo Lombardi and Christiane Rameau in Paris on Sunday 15th September 1968. He was the baby of three boys and the younger of two surviving.

He and his brother grew up in the 10th district, where in a foreshadowing of his future professional life, they would play dress-up


He began his school career at l'Ecole Maternelle Jeanne d'Arc.
Then, after three years of école primaire, the brothers transferred to Ecole Notre-Dame de la Gare, a private school run by monks, where their parents felt they would receive a better education.

It was while singing in the school choir that his choir master picked him as a boy alto for the children's choir Les Petites Enfants à la Croix Brûlée. They sang for a variety of audiences, including a visit to the city of Tours and this television performance recorded in Paris for Christmas alongside the Philharmonic Orchestra of Paris and the Golden Gate Quartet, as well as the trumpet player Maurice André:


After five years, Christophe transferred to the Lysée Claude Monet where Italian lessons were available. Teachers also encouraged him to take Latin, assuming that as a half-Italian he would have a natural skill for it. However he was so bad at it that he was one of three boys permitted by their Latin teacher to quietly play table-top roleplaying games quietly in the back during lessons.

At 15 he opted for a technical Bac at boarding school, but flunked badly and he was offered a choice between secretarial college, interior design, and hairdressing at BEP level. 

He opted for secretarial training and found himself as one of only two guys in a class with 25 girls, which he enjoyed immensely.

He dropped out of college and spent some time working in several positions, including as a stone mason's assistant.

National service beckoned at age 20 and initially opted for long service of 18 months in order to go into les Départements d'Outre-Mer et Territoires d'Outre-Mer (DOMTOM) for a chance at some sunshine rather than the cold of Eastern France or Germany.
Initially he really enjoyed the physical side of things and aspired to special forces for a while.

After two months basic training in Perpignan, with all the places in Tahiti gone, he opted for New Caledonia so as to still get to visit Polynesia.

On arrival he was assigned to the BCS and offered the post of Secretary to an Adjutant third in command of the base.



He made friends with another of the Adjutants and together they formed a small musical act singing in restaurants on the weekends.

After 14 months abroad he returned to Paris and found a job as a security guard in the business district while putting himself through classes at
Paris drama school 'Les Cours Simon'.

Eventually on the back of a four page handwritten letter of application, he found work in the Ardèche as a stablehand and logistics assistant for a horse trekking holiday company in exchange for board, lodgings, and free lessons in horse riding and tractor driving.


At the end of the summer season, the boss' son-in-law, who was a shepherd, offered a winter season working alongside him.

In 1994, during a visit to his Mum in Cosne, he auditioned (and failed) for the local radio station but was taken on by a medieval summer camp in the countryside near Bourges.
The boss, Thierry de Fontenay, was preparing to move the project to a new location in Les Cévennes, so Christophe relocated once again in time to open for the summer season.

Based in a forest clearing, living in tents about 10 minutes from the equestrian centre, days were spent mentoring up to 20 children a day. Morning sessions consisted of workshops in sword fighting, archery, jousting training exercises, then lunch cooked over the campfire. Then afternoons consisted of a LARP style interactive adventure quest to recover a magical sword. Evenings were spent sharpening archery and sword fighting skills, as well as
Tai-Chi Chuan.

In 1995 he applied to a youth scheme in Montpellier who put him forward as a part of the French delegation to a 30 days international arts exchange between France, Senegal and Germany.

In 1997 he felt the call and followed his instincts to Ireland, arriving on Saturday April 5th with his backpack, a pair of bamboo fighting sticks, his guitar and 30 punts in his pocket.

After a few days in Wexford staying with the St Vincent de Paul, he was directed by one of the guys to go and see a friend of his called Kevyn Tuohy who was working as a stained glass artist outside of Galway, so he hitch-hiked his way up the West coast.

It was while he was staying with Kevyn that he found work through the local jobcentre with Italian circus Il Florilegio, who needed a french speaker.
His performance background meant that he was taken on as both a general hand
and as Pucinella in the show.

At the end of June he realised that the circus schedule would never allow him to see anything of the places you pass through, so he left the circus and returned to Cork and took a room in an apartment with a friend he had made.

In July, after several weeks playing tourist, his friends took him to see the Galway Arts Festival.

By the autumn, he was living in Leitrim where he would spend the next 17 years honing his skills first as a street performer, fire dancer and fire display fighter, appeared as a fighter in children's television programmes "Tx" and "The Mystic Knights of Tír na nÓg", then as a magician, auditioning successfully as a member of the Society of Irish Magicians.


In 2010 he opened his own business, Trapdoor Entertainment and in the Christmas season of 2012 toured his own card-based magic show 'A la Carte' in both Ireland and the UK.

In 2014 he relocated to the Irish Midlands with his family in search of a better balance between their commute to Dublin and the North, while still maintaining a rural lifestyle at home.

After a period of further professional development he also returned to acting and currently works primarily in film and TV.



He married his fiancee of five years on 14th August 2017.



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