Christmas And Food
The French traditionally do much as we do as far as Christmas fare goes, with the exception of Christmas pudding. The French don't have mince pies either although the German stöllen is plentiful in the shops. I find it rather strange that even though preserving fruit is a local speciality there appears to be no kind of local fruitcake. Even more strange, in an area covered in grape vines, grapes (raisins) don't seem to be among the preserved fruits. These latter are apples, pears, strawberries, apricots, melon and figs, plus the pineapples and papaya that come from La Reunion or Mauritius. The preserved strawberries are especially delicious.
A fowl of some sort is the favourite meat and foie gras is the prescribed starter. The shops are full of whole foie gras. The French do have Christmas cake but it is rather different from ours. Theirs is a “galette des rois” (after the three kings) and consists of a light brioche-type cake with large pieces of candied fruit on top and a small crown hidden somewhere within it. The person who gets the piece of cake with the crown in it is king for the moment and is supposed to be treated specially.
Chocolates, I assume, are also consumed in quantity since the supermarket displays of these cover at least six times more shelf-space than they normally do.
Another tradition here in Provence is the 13 desserts, the number signifying Christ and the 12 apostles. The exact nature of the 13 desserts varies considerably but must always include local produce and the colours black, brown and white. The colours represent the those of the robes of the monastic orders that prevail locally (I'm not sure what the orders are and can't be bothered to research them). Anyway, the brown is usually nuts, typically almonds in this area, and the black and white are typically nougat. The colour black can also be provided by olives. Brown, of a lighter hue, is also the colour of the fougasse, which must be included. Fougasse is a type of pastry rather like choux pastry and is available throughout the year in bakeries, usually with olives in it. At Christmas it tends to be served plain. Some preserved fruit, typically figs, is also included.
Last Sunday, the English library in Beaumont de Ventoux (BELL) had its annual Christmas get-together and launched a new version of its cookbook. The previous one had been compiled in 1995. It's one of those things that such organisations, particularly an essentially ex-pat one, do but which struck me as slightly unnecessary, particularly since publishing it works out to be relatively expensive. There are plenty of extensive and inexpensive cookbooks on English and French cooking. In the event I was pleasantly surprised. What I had overlooked was that most of the ex-pat community had travelled widely during their lives and so the recipes in the cookbook originated from all over the world. So it was a worthwhile exercise after all.
I usually take a few things back to England with me at Christmas but, at this time of the year, the possibilities are rather limited. The best of what is produced here is mainly fresh local fruit and vegetables. Honey in jars doesn't travel well in a suitcase, so it's a question of soaps (olive-oil based), flower essences and of course the local donkey sausage, which both of my kids love. Donkeys were used extensively round here up to half a century ago to bring produce from the fields into the village, which posed the question of what you do with an old and knackered donkey that is no longer fit for work. If you're English, you probably make it into a family pet; if you're French, you make it into sausages. I'm also taking back a tin of confit de canard, which is probably available in England but which I haven't noticed in any of my mother's local supermarkets. If I can find any, I may also pack some pâté de coing (quince paste) which isn't in the shops but is made by many people locally and is delicious.
mercredi 15 décembre 2010
mardi 7 décembre 2010
How The Other Half Lives
Weather
In contrast to the reports coming on of snowy chaos in England, our weather has continued to be rather cloudy and wet and temperatures have been on the up, to 15 degrees today. On benefit of this has been the scenery, with cloud descending at times to below 1000ft. Since two of the three ways out of the village involve climbing to 1000ft, I've had the experience of driving through cloud. That only happened to me once before, when on a holiday in Tenerife. I find driving into cloud, above it into the light and then descending into it a striking experience. The cloud tends to gather in layers, at various levels against the hills, which also has some striking effects on the view. The strips of hills visible lower down are grey/brown, the strips in the middle sprinkled with snow and those at the top all white. It sometimes takes an effort of the imagination to link the three as the same hill.
Shopping
My cleaning lady, Patricia, asked me if I would take her into Vaison for some shopping. She has no car and the suppression of the midday bus run means leaving the village at around 7.30 in the morning and not being able to return by bus until after 5.00. I was happy to agree and we were back in the village in just over an hour; but I wondered how she managed generally. She said she shopped for a month at a time and, certainly, her shopping filled the car, with three 20-litre containers of diesel fuel for her heating amongst it. Coming into the village I wondered aloud how we were going to get all her shopping to her house, as she lives in the old mediaeval part and there was no way I could get the car to her house. “Don't worry”, she said, “I'll get my son”. So I parked as near as I could get and she went off, duly reappearing with her son who was pulling a hand cart the size of porters' trolleys on stations in England. We loaded it up and off they went. That was clearly her standard procedure.
Language (Again)
Two neighbours of friend Daniel have been very helpful polishing a translation I did of a short story that I wrote when doing a creative writing course just after I retired. (I did creative writing, chaos theory and conversational French). I hadn't expected to need much help but didn't appreciate the amount of idioms and double meanings I had used. Anyway, during the course of discussion a very interesting point about the past emerged. The neighbours, Jacques and Claudine, hail from Brittany and still have a house there. I was mentioning the longevity of dialects in France and Jacques agreed. He said his grandfather, who lived all his life in Roscoff, spoke two languages: breton and English! He didn't speak a word of French. I was amazed and Jacques explained that his grandfather would go over to England frequently on a boat loaded with fish to sell and then stay on selling onions and garlic. I remember French onion-sellers in Bristol when I was a student in the 1960s but have never seen them since.
In contrast to the reports coming on of snowy chaos in England, our weather has continued to be rather cloudy and wet and temperatures have been on the up, to 15 degrees today. On benefit of this has been the scenery, with cloud descending at times to below 1000ft. Since two of the three ways out of the village involve climbing to 1000ft, I've had the experience of driving through cloud. That only happened to me once before, when on a holiday in Tenerife. I find driving into cloud, above it into the light and then descending into it a striking experience. The cloud tends to gather in layers, at various levels against the hills, which also has some striking effects on the view. The strips of hills visible lower down are grey/brown, the strips in the middle sprinkled with snow and those at the top all white. It sometimes takes an effort of the imagination to link the three as the same hill.
Shopping
My cleaning lady, Patricia, asked me if I would take her into Vaison for some shopping. She has no car and the suppression of the midday bus run means leaving the village at around 7.30 in the morning and not being able to return by bus until after 5.00. I was happy to agree and we were back in the village in just over an hour; but I wondered how she managed generally. She said she shopped for a month at a time and, certainly, her shopping filled the car, with three 20-litre containers of diesel fuel for her heating amongst it. Coming into the village I wondered aloud how we were going to get all her shopping to her house, as she lives in the old mediaeval part and there was no way I could get the car to her house. “Don't worry”, she said, “I'll get my son”. So I parked as near as I could get and she went off, duly reappearing with her son who was pulling a hand cart the size of porters' trolleys on stations in England. We loaded it up and off they went. That was clearly her standard procedure.
Language (Again)
Two neighbours of friend Daniel have been very helpful polishing a translation I did of a short story that I wrote when doing a creative writing course just after I retired. (I did creative writing, chaos theory and conversational French). I hadn't expected to need much help but didn't appreciate the amount of idioms and double meanings I had used. Anyway, during the course of discussion a very interesting point about the past emerged. The neighbours, Jacques and Claudine, hail from Brittany and still have a house there. I was mentioning the longevity of dialects in France and Jacques agreed. He said his grandfather, who lived all his life in Roscoff, spoke two languages: breton and English! He didn't speak a word of French. I was amazed and Jacques explained that his grandfather would go over to England frequently on a boat loaded with fish to sell and then stay on selling onions and garlic. I remember French onion-sellers in Bristol when I was a student in the 1960s but have never seen them since.
lundi 29 novembre 2010
The Inland Revenue
The Inland Revenue, Again
I seem to have a cursed relationship with the Inland Revenue in the UK. When I was working other people would tell me that the Inland Revenue were OK but to watch out for the hard men working on VAT. My experience was totally the contrary; I found the VAT people helpful and the Inland Revenue at times impossible to deal with. Now I'm trying to file my tax return for last year.........
It all started in the late 1980s when the Inland Revenue decided to stick me with a demand for £7000 for tax on “director's emoluments” which I had never taken/received. They had no evidence for the demand but they can do that and it was my job to prove them wrong (prove a negative? .....never mind). As it happened, I had always been in favour of the Inland Revenue having draconian powers provided they could be relied upon to use them sensibly, e.g. to get at money laundering, etc. But can you ever trust a government department to act sensibly? Clearly, they were after all the money I was making from gun and drug running, prostitution, etc, despite the fact that the sums involved were pocket money in their terms.
After over a year of replying to requests for information and piles of correspondence they sent bailiffs to my house to collect their dues. I, with the help of my accountant, appealed to my local MP. He extracted from the Inland Revenue a letter which closely resembled the type of signed confession extracted by tyrannical regimes before they stuck someone against a wall and shot them: “failure to carry out instruction, failure of internal communication,” apologies, etc. All this went on of course with the Inspector of Taxes. I then received a letter from the Collector of Taxes demanding payment of interest on the tax that was now agreed never to have been due in the first place. I pointed out that the tax had never been due and the Collector replied that he operated independently of the Inspector of taxes (as he does) and was entitled to collect the interest he demanded. At this point my accountant stepped in as I could not be relied upon to reply coherently or without uttering threats and simply said that if the Collector of taxes persisted then the matter would again be referred to the MP and, if necessary, the Ombudsman; and he asked for written confirmation that the Collector would cease to pursue the matter. The Collector did cease to pursue the matter but I never got the letter of confirmation.
I applied for tax residence status in France when I left England, completing and signing a form P85 which is supposed to do the job. Dream on. There is much more documentation to be supplied, including an intriguing form R85. This my bank asked me to sign in order to receive (pitiful) interest gross. It's obviously intended for the job but states specifically that it cannot be accepted from anyone resident outside the UK. Catch 22? Anyway, this year (two and a half years later) I had my French resident status for tax purposes accepted by (now) HMRC in a letter which said specifically to fill in on my next tax return only the tax paid on my private pension. Which I duly did, returned the form and duly had it rejected on the grounds that I had filled in only the tax paid on my private pension. I notice that the rejected return had been stamped “SA Stockton Group”. So I'm assuming at the moment that this is a case of outsourcing with, in time honoured government tradition, little or no communication between government and outsourcer(er). If not, here we go again................
I seem to have a cursed relationship with the Inland Revenue in the UK. When I was working other people would tell me that the Inland Revenue were OK but to watch out for the hard men working on VAT. My experience was totally the contrary; I found the VAT people helpful and the Inland Revenue at times impossible to deal with. Now I'm trying to file my tax return for last year.........
It all started in the late 1980s when the Inland Revenue decided to stick me with a demand for £7000 for tax on “director's emoluments” which I had never taken/received. They had no evidence for the demand but they can do that and it was my job to prove them wrong (prove a negative? .....never mind). As it happened, I had always been in favour of the Inland Revenue having draconian powers provided they could be relied upon to use them sensibly, e.g. to get at money laundering, etc. But can you ever trust a government department to act sensibly? Clearly, they were after all the money I was making from gun and drug running, prostitution, etc, despite the fact that the sums involved were pocket money in their terms.
After over a year of replying to requests for information and piles of correspondence they sent bailiffs to my house to collect their dues. I, with the help of my accountant, appealed to my local MP. He extracted from the Inland Revenue a letter which closely resembled the type of signed confession extracted by tyrannical regimes before they stuck someone against a wall and shot them: “failure to carry out instruction, failure of internal communication,” apologies, etc. All this went on of course with the Inspector of Taxes. I then received a letter from the Collector of Taxes demanding payment of interest on the tax that was now agreed never to have been due in the first place. I pointed out that the tax had never been due and the Collector replied that he operated independently of the Inspector of taxes (as he does) and was entitled to collect the interest he demanded. At this point my accountant stepped in as I could not be relied upon to reply coherently or without uttering threats and simply said that if the Collector of taxes persisted then the matter would again be referred to the MP and, if necessary, the Ombudsman; and he asked for written confirmation that the Collector would cease to pursue the matter. The Collector did cease to pursue the matter but I never got the letter of confirmation.
I applied for tax residence status in France when I left England, completing and signing a form P85 which is supposed to do the job. Dream on. There is much more documentation to be supplied, including an intriguing form R85. This my bank asked me to sign in order to receive (pitiful) interest gross. It's obviously intended for the job but states specifically that it cannot be accepted from anyone resident outside the UK. Catch 22? Anyway, this year (two and a half years later) I had my French resident status for tax purposes accepted by (now) HMRC in a letter which said specifically to fill in on my next tax return only the tax paid on my private pension. Which I duly did, returned the form and duly had it rejected on the grounds that I had filled in only the tax paid on my private pension. I notice that the rejected return had been stamped “SA Stockton Group”. So I'm assuming at the moment that this is a case of outsourcing with, in time honoured government tradition, little or no communication between government and outsourcer(er). If not, here we go again................
Intimations Of Winter
Intimations Of Winter
We've started having serious frosts. They've pole-axed the begonias and french marigolds that were the last vestiges of colour in the front of the house and brought down the leaves that were providing an autumn display. The top of Mt Ventoux has had its white winter bonnet for 3-4 weeks but now the snow has descended to around 1500 ft, spreading across Mt Bluye and the hills behind Buis. That's still 1000 ft above the village but here the weather has been overcast for longer periods than usual and it has drizzled with rain quite frequently. In principle, this part of the world doesn't do overcast and drizzle other than for an occasional couple of days but this year has been an exception.
So, no boules for a week now. At the same time, the local cinemas have produced some very uninspiring programmes so social life has been limited to conversation while eating and drinking. One such occasion last week gave me the opportunity to try six people altogether in my kitchen, which actually worked quite well. I didn't think that many would fit in comfortably but they did. On another occasion last week I got to know Robin and Jill rather better. Robin (Marlar) is an ex-Sussex and England cricketer and former president of the MCC and was one of the earliest of the English contingent here. He owns a patch of land on the other side of the river that he'd hoped might become a cricket pitch but there's not a lot of cricket potential around here. I'd said to the boules team at the national tournament that if we won they would have to learn cricket (since I'd learned boules) but there was never much danger of either of those things happening. Robin and Jill had been coming out for just a couple of months in the summer but are now spending much more time here, which is good news as, apart from their both being excellent company, Robin is a fund of information on happenings in the village over the last twenty years or so.
And I received my first Christmas card. The French don't really do Christmas (or birthday) cards: the variety is limited, the quality poor and they are very expensive. So I now rely more on email and do any Christmas posting when I arrive in England before Christmas. I plan to spend two weeks there this year as my mother is increasingly fragile. That will also give me more time to get around and see friends while I am over. And I shall fly rather than drive this year, hiring a car at the other end; a 2500 km round trip on winter roads definitely lacks appeal and I shall have nothing that won't fit in a suitcase to bring back.
And today the Christmas street decorations went up in the village. QED.
We've started having serious frosts. They've pole-axed the begonias and french marigolds that were the last vestiges of colour in the front of the house and brought down the leaves that were providing an autumn display. The top of Mt Ventoux has had its white winter bonnet for 3-4 weeks but now the snow has descended to around 1500 ft, spreading across Mt Bluye and the hills behind Buis. That's still 1000 ft above the village but here the weather has been overcast for longer periods than usual and it has drizzled with rain quite frequently. In principle, this part of the world doesn't do overcast and drizzle other than for an occasional couple of days but this year has been an exception.
So, no boules for a week now. At the same time, the local cinemas have produced some very uninspiring programmes so social life has been limited to conversation while eating and drinking. One such occasion last week gave me the opportunity to try six people altogether in my kitchen, which actually worked quite well. I didn't think that many would fit in comfortably but they did. On another occasion last week I got to know Robin and Jill rather better. Robin (Marlar) is an ex-Sussex and England cricketer and former president of the MCC and was one of the earliest of the English contingent here. He owns a patch of land on the other side of the river that he'd hoped might become a cricket pitch but there's not a lot of cricket potential around here. I'd said to the boules team at the national tournament that if we won they would have to learn cricket (since I'd learned boules) but there was never much danger of either of those things happening. Robin and Jill had been coming out for just a couple of months in the summer but are now spending much more time here, which is good news as, apart from their both being excellent company, Robin is a fund of information on happenings in the village over the last twenty years or so.
And I received my first Christmas card. The French don't really do Christmas (or birthday) cards: the variety is limited, the quality poor and they are very expensive. So I now rely more on email and do any Christmas posting when I arrive in England before Christmas. I plan to spend two weeks there this year as my mother is increasingly fragile. That will also give me more time to get around and see friends while I am over. And I shall fly rather than drive this year, hiring a car at the other end; a 2500 km round trip on winter roads definitely lacks appeal and I shall have nothing that won't fit in a suitcase to bring back.
And today the Christmas street decorations went up in the village. QED.
lundi 15 novembre 2010
Remembering
Remembering
Tonight's pizza evening was especially good and welcome. Rain returned (we seem to be having an usually wet autumn) and so there was no boules afternoon to distract me. But there were a dozen of us at the Bar du Pont for pizza (four English and eight French) and that seemed to be a perfect number for chatting in our usual “franglais”.
A point that came up in conversation was the distinction, if any, between recall and remember in English and rappeler and se souvenir in French. Friend Jo thought there was a temporal distinction between the English words, recalling being more instantaneous than remembering but I couldn't quite see that. In French, according to René and Ahmel, se souvenir applied more to intangible items and rappeler to concrete objects (despite the common “rappel” signs which remind you of speed limits, which aren't exactly concrete). And, they said, se souvenir was tending to disappear in common usage in favour of rappeler. That made the distinction in French clearer but didn't seem to have much light to shed on the English equivalents, except that the nouns recall and remembrance are quite well separated, somewhat along the French intangible/tangible lines. You may recall departed friends/family doing or saying something but you don't recall them in the abstract; you remember them.
For some reason this made me remember (recall) a conversation ,many years ago with a journalist colleague who trained as a psychologist. He pointed me towards an article in a Canadian psychology journal about response times. A project team of psychologists had been investigating response times in relation to stars in “reaction sports”: tennis, cricket, baseball, etc. A good sample of the stars in these sports at the time had been tested to ascertain their reaction times, which were generally believed to be way above normal. In fact the tests showed that their reaction times were within the normal range, albeit at the high end. What was even more surprising was that, in matches, these players were timed at responses much faster than their tested reaction times. So, back to the blackboard on response time tests? Apparently not; the tests were sound. The explanation that was agreed on was a distinction between what happens in the cerebrum and the cerebellum, in the brain. The former is responsible for what we popularly call instinctive reaction (although psychologists won't accept the validity of the term instinct) and the latter for reactions requiring prior thought. Since a tennis player can't know where a fast serve is going to land (or a cricketer where a fast ball is), the part of the brain involved should have been the cerebellum. But the reaction times indicated that it was the cerebrum that was involved. So what must have been at play was a kind of pattern recognition, with patterns stored in the cerebrum that would forecast where the ball would land. In better players, this pattern recognition was better developed than in poorer players.
This explanation also went some way towards explaining why, for instance, tennis players receiving a simple shot over the net, with their opponent sprawling on the ground, sometimes fail to make the simple shot back into the other half of the court and put the ball out. To make the correct shot, the player has to switch from cerebrum working to cerebellum working and, quite frequently, fails to make the switch. The problem is confusion.
Tonight's pizza evening was especially good and welcome. Rain returned (we seem to be having an usually wet autumn) and so there was no boules afternoon to distract me. But there were a dozen of us at the Bar du Pont for pizza (four English and eight French) and that seemed to be a perfect number for chatting in our usual “franglais”.
A point that came up in conversation was the distinction, if any, between recall and remember in English and rappeler and se souvenir in French. Friend Jo thought there was a temporal distinction between the English words, recalling being more instantaneous than remembering but I couldn't quite see that. In French, according to René and Ahmel, se souvenir applied more to intangible items and rappeler to concrete objects (despite the common “rappel” signs which remind you of speed limits, which aren't exactly concrete). And, they said, se souvenir was tending to disappear in common usage in favour of rappeler. That made the distinction in French clearer but didn't seem to have much light to shed on the English equivalents, except that the nouns recall and remembrance are quite well separated, somewhat along the French intangible/tangible lines. You may recall departed friends/family doing or saying something but you don't recall them in the abstract; you remember them.
For some reason this made me remember (recall) a conversation ,many years ago with a journalist colleague who trained as a psychologist. He pointed me towards an article in a Canadian psychology journal about response times. A project team of psychologists had been investigating response times in relation to stars in “reaction sports”: tennis, cricket, baseball, etc. A good sample of the stars in these sports at the time had been tested to ascertain their reaction times, which were generally believed to be way above normal. In fact the tests showed that their reaction times were within the normal range, albeit at the high end. What was even more surprising was that, in matches, these players were timed at responses much faster than their tested reaction times. So, back to the blackboard on response time tests? Apparently not; the tests were sound. The explanation that was agreed on was a distinction between what happens in the cerebrum and the cerebellum, in the brain. The former is responsible for what we popularly call instinctive reaction (although psychologists won't accept the validity of the term instinct) and the latter for reactions requiring prior thought. Since a tennis player can't know where a fast serve is going to land (or a cricketer where a fast ball is), the part of the brain involved should have been the cerebellum. But the reaction times indicated that it was the cerebrum that was involved. So what must have been at play was a kind of pattern recognition, with patterns stored in the cerebrum that would forecast where the ball would land. In better players, this pattern recognition was better developed than in poorer players.
This explanation also went some way towards explaining why, for instance, tennis players receiving a simple shot over the net, with their opponent sprawling on the ground, sometimes fail to make the simple shot back into the other half of the court and put the ball out. To make the correct shot, the player has to switch from cerebrum working to cerebellum working and, quite frequently, fails to make the switch. The problem is confusion.
lundi 8 novembre 2010
Autumn Watch
Autumn Watch
The autumn colours this year are really doing us proud. It's not an obvious area for autumn colour as there must be at least one evergreen tree for each deciduous one; the vines make the difference. They turn every shade between light yellow to gold, brown and red. Interestingly, I would have thought that the hue they change to would probably depend on the vine variety. Indeed, blocks of vines do change all together to the same colour but, in a sizable minority of cases, there is considerable variation within one block of vines. I've no idea why this is. The whole panorama is enhanced with the many pyrocanthas in the hedge rows. I've been meaning to take my camera out and get some photos but autumn colour is one of those situations where I find getting a really good photo difficult. The problem seems to be that a panoramic view, for one reason or another, doesn't really work and getting a good focal point, with a panorama behind to get the variety of colour, is absurdly difficult.
The weather we have been having is unusual in that it seems to be changing in slots of four days. Ten days ago we had three days solid rain (unusual in itself) followed by an overcast day and then 3-4 days in which the midday temperature reached 24-26 degrees in the sun. I was eating outside at lunchtime and playing boules in just a T-shirt in early November! Now the rain has returned, albeit not as intensely as before, and is predicted to last for the next three days. Anyway, I got the last of my spring bulbs planted, the blue pansies are in place, and the roses have had a dose of slow-action fertilizer so that's about it for the front of the house until next spring. There's still some work to be done at the back.
One of the part-time English residents here, a guy called Alex, turns out to have been at Bristol University at exactly the same time as I was. He was doing economics whereas I did modern languages so perhaps it isn't surprising that I never knew him at Bristol, amongst some 4000 other students at the time. Also, he went there from a public school whereas I did from a state school and there was a very noticeable public/state divide in social life there at the time. Bristol was a dumping ground for public school kids who didn't make it into Oxbridge, so nearly half the students were from public schools, which lent itself to a tendency to a class divide in social life. That was also partly based on how much money one had to spend but that tended merely to reinforce the divide. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that, given our proximity in the past, we should meet up subsequently in a small and somewhat remote French village.
And another interesting statement from the book The Discovery of France (Graham Robb). Around 1860 the average life expectancy from birth of a French person was 38 years, increasing to 55 if you lived through your first five years. That's probably not too different from other major European countries at the time. However, the biggest single cause of death then in France was not starvation or disease but a kind of death wish. In the winter here social life tends to seize up unless you are determined to be active. As mornings and evenings become darker, there are fewer people on the streets and they retreat behind shutters for much of the day. So it's not difficult to perceive that in earlier and harder times this isolation would be accentuated; apparently, inactive peasant farmers rarely sought out an alternative form of labour (e.g. making artefacts) during the winter months. There's even a suggestion that there was a biological reason for this. Inactivity slowed the body's metabolism and made winter stocks of food last longer. However, if a member of a peasant farmer family got sick, they would apparently take to their bed and expect to die, perhaps even as a relief from the hard life that they led. This kind of death wish was reinforced by the family's understanding that a mouth less to feed would make the winter supplies go further. It all sounds rather fanciful in our times but it seems to have had a powerful effect. Assuming that that went on for centuries before 1860, it would have become ingrained and would help to explain some underlying attitudes in the peasant farmer population now.
The autumn colours this year are really doing us proud. It's not an obvious area for autumn colour as there must be at least one evergreen tree for each deciduous one; the vines make the difference. They turn every shade between light yellow to gold, brown and red. Interestingly, I would have thought that the hue they change to would probably depend on the vine variety. Indeed, blocks of vines do change all together to the same colour but, in a sizable minority of cases, there is considerable variation within one block of vines. I've no idea why this is. The whole panorama is enhanced with the many pyrocanthas in the hedge rows. I've been meaning to take my camera out and get some photos but autumn colour is one of those situations where I find getting a really good photo difficult. The problem seems to be that a panoramic view, for one reason or another, doesn't really work and getting a good focal point, with a panorama behind to get the variety of colour, is absurdly difficult.
The weather we have been having is unusual in that it seems to be changing in slots of four days. Ten days ago we had three days solid rain (unusual in itself) followed by an overcast day and then 3-4 days in which the midday temperature reached 24-26 degrees in the sun. I was eating outside at lunchtime and playing boules in just a T-shirt in early November! Now the rain has returned, albeit not as intensely as before, and is predicted to last for the next three days. Anyway, I got the last of my spring bulbs planted, the blue pansies are in place, and the roses have had a dose of slow-action fertilizer so that's about it for the front of the house until next spring. There's still some work to be done at the back.
One of the part-time English residents here, a guy called Alex, turns out to have been at Bristol University at exactly the same time as I was. He was doing economics whereas I did modern languages so perhaps it isn't surprising that I never knew him at Bristol, amongst some 4000 other students at the time. Also, he went there from a public school whereas I did from a state school and there was a very noticeable public/state divide in social life there at the time. Bristol was a dumping ground for public school kids who didn't make it into Oxbridge, so nearly half the students were from public schools, which lent itself to a tendency to a class divide in social life. That was also partly based on how much money one had to spend but that tended merely to reinforce the divide. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that, given our proximity in the past, we should meet up subsequently in a small and somewhat remote French village.
And another interesting statement from the book The Discovery of France (Graham Robb). Around 1860 the average life expectancy from birth of a French person was 38 years, increasing to 55 if you lived through your first five years. That's probably not too different from other major European countries at the time. However, the biggest single cause of death then in France was not starvation or disease but a kind of death wish. In the winter here social life tends to seize up unless you are determined to be active. As mornings and evenings become darker, there are fewer people on the streets and they retreat behind shutters for much of the day. So it's not difficult to perceive that in earlier and harder times this isolation would be accentuated; apparently, inactive peasant farmers rarely sought out an alternative form of labour (e.g. making artefacts) during the winter months. There's even a suggestion that there was a biological reason for this. Inactivity slowed the body's metabolism and made winter stocks of food last longer. However, if a member of a peasant farmer family got sick, they would apparently take to their bed and expect to die, perhaps even as a relief from the hard life that they led. This kind of death wish was reinforced by the family's understanding that a mouth less to feed would make the winter supplies go further. It all sounds rather fanciful in our times but it seems to have had a powerful effect. Assuming that that went on for centuries before 1860, it would have become ingrained and would help to explain some underlying attitudes in the peasant farmer population now.
jeudi 28 octobre 2010
Return From England
Home Sweet Home
I returned from visiting my mother in England last Tuesday. After her stay in hospital she has managed to remain in her own home with carers coming in twice per day. Having witnessed the care service by an NHS assessment team I have to say that it is excellent in every way. Unfortunately they pass over to an agency shortly and I am just hoping the agency staff are as good.
My own home was just as I had left it, a few plants (plumbago, begonias, french marigolds) still blooming in the front and some gallardias doing the same at the back. The chrysanthemums there have yet to get going but are full of bud. I turned the heating on on my return and the house is now warm in the mornings and evenings as well as during the day. The weather wasn't bad while I was in England but the clear blue skies and sunny days since I've been back have reminded me of one of the reasons I opted to move here.
So it's back to boules in the afternoons, with an added bonus. The village powers that be decided to reward the boules team with a cheque for 40 euros each for putting the village on the map; I don't think that indicates a need to get myself an agent yet but it was a lovely gesture.
Structure Of A French Meal
I'm getting too old to appreciate a full French meal very often; it knocks me out for the rest of the day. When eating alone I'll generally just cook the one (main) course à l'anglaise but the full treatment seems to be de rigueur when I have guests. I'm thinking of changing that with some friends by leaving out the starter course. One incentive is that my favourite starter (figs split, goat's cheese inserted, honey drizzled over and the whole placed under a grill for a few minutes) is now out of season; the fig harvest is over. And I don't really see the need for a starter unless the main course is a bit thin. The cheese course allows any hunger remaining after the main course to be assuaged which means that the starter is superfluous unless it serves merely to get the appetite going. But that seems unnecessary in most cases.
I saw a large chunk of stewing beef on the bone for a couple of euros when I did my restocking shopping on my return and so am making my first stew of the winter. I do it over three days, leaving it in the fridge overnight to skim off the fat and allowing the flavour to evolve. I also bought a couple of kilos of shallots which I will turn into pickles onions. The French don't have pickled onions and don't know what they are missing. They don't have malt vinegar either and I find wine vinegar too strong in some cases, of which this is one. So I use cider vinegar instead, plus ginger, chilis, mustard seed and cloves in the final product. The result even goes very well with some French cheeses such as Cantal, Salers and Comté.
The Discovery Of France
I took this book by Graham Robb with me for the journey over to England and managed to find some more enlightening titbits in it. Apparently the French investigated some reluctance among their troops in the first world war and discovered (top secret at the time) a definite lack of patriotism. The problem, it seemed. Was that few troops considered themselves French; they were Normand, Breton, Marseillais, Savoyard or whatever but not French.
This somewhat parochial view explains the difficulty in translating the word “pays”. OK, so literally it can be translated as “country” but the connotations aren't covered by that. Pays is, in the first world war sense, the country of the troops but the country wasn't France; and Normandy, Brittany, etc, aren't countries, except traditionally to their inhabitants.
I'll relate more such insights as I get further into the book.
I returned from visiting my mother in England last Tuesday. After her stay in hospital she has managed to remain in her own home with carers coming in twice per day. Having witnessed the care service by an NHS assessment team I have to say that it is excellent in every way. Unfortunately they pass over to an agency shortly and I am just hoping the agency staff are as good.
My own home was just as I had left it, a few plants (plumbago, begonias, french marigolds) still blooming in the front and some gallardias doing the same at the back. The chrysanthemums there have yet to get going but are full of bud. I turned the heating on on my return and the house is now warm in the mornings and evenings as well as during the day. The weather wasn't bad while I was in England but the clear blue skies and sunny days since I've been back have reminded me of one of the reasons I opted to move here.
So it's back to boules in the afternoons, with an added bonus. The village powers that be decided to reward the boules team with a cheque for 40 euros each for putting the village on the map; I don't think that indicates a need to get myself an agent yet but it was a lovely gesture.
Structure Of A French Meal
I'm getting too old to appreciate a full French meal very often; it knocks me out for the rest of the day. When eating alone I'll generally just cook the one (main) course à l'anglaise but the full treatment seems to be de rigueur when I have guests. I'm thinking of changing that with some friends by leaving out the starter course. One incentive is that my favourite starter (figs split, goat's cheese inserted, honey drizzled over and the whole placed under a grill for a few minutes) is now out of season; the fig harvest is over. And I don't really see the need for a starter unless the main course is a bit thin. The cheese course allows any hunger remaining after the main course to be assuaged which means that the starter is superfluous unless it serves merely to get the appetite going. But that seems unnecessary in most cases.
I saw a large chunk of stewing beef on the bone for a couple of euros when I did my restocking shopping on my return and so am making my first stew of the winter. I do it over three days, leaving it in the fridge overnight to skim off the fat and allowing the flavour to evolve. I also bought a couple of kilos of shallots which I will turn into pickles onions. The French don't have pickled onions and don't know what they are missing. They don't have malt vinegar either and I find wine vinegar too strong in some cases, of which this is one. So I use cider vinegar instead, plus ginger, chilis, mustard seed and cloves in the final product. The result even goes very well with some French cheeses such as Cantal, Salers and Comté.
The Discovery Of France
I took this book by Graham Robb with me for the journey over to England and managed to find some more enlightening titbits in it. Apparently the French investigated some reluctance among their troops in the first world war and discovered (top secret at the time) a definite lack of patriotism. The problem, it seemed. Was that few troops considered themselves French; they were Normand, Breton, Marseillais, Savoyard or whatever but not French.
This somewhat parochial view explains the difficulty in translating the word “pays”. OK, so literally it can be translated as “country” but the connotations aren't covered by that. Pays is, in the first world war sense, the country of the troops but the country wasn't France; and Normandy, Brittany, etc, aren't countries, except traditionally to their inhabitants.
I'll relate more such insights as I get further into the book.
vendredi 8 octobre 2010
Autumn and Boules Championships
Signs Of Autumn
When I got back from the national boules championships in Ramatuelle I found my car covered in splashes of sand, a sure sign that the Sirocco, the warm wind that blows in from the Sahara, had been blowing when it had rained. The little wind that there is now is clearly coming from that direction too as I still have no need for any heating in the house. Leaves are changing colour all around, including some of the vines starting to turn, and they are carpeting the ground. Yet another sure sign of autumn here is the mushroom season. The somewhat despised button mushroom, champignon de Paris, so familiar in England is available at most times of the year in the supermarkets but the better varieties arrive only now: pieds de mouton, chanterelles, trompettes de la mort, girolles, morilles, etc. Time to make mushroom omellettes and risottos!
Boules
In brief, we finished 28th out of 80 teams in the national rural wrinklies championships in Ramatuelle and so honour was upheld. Hardly earth-shattering but not bad for un petit anglais. And we again finished with a higher ranking than any other team from the Drôme or Vaucluse, so no doubt there will be another article in the local paper. The tone was different from that at the regional championships, more serious and intense, albeit still friendly. Matches typically took twice as long as here in the village, an hour or more each, as the pitches were examined in detail and strategy/tactics discussed between throws of the boules. It was a pity then that the pitches weren't better. There's clearly a general problem here, the same as at the regional championships, in that facilities that have the required accommodation (there were around 500 players, other halves and supporters) doesn't have the required number of pitches: 35 were required to complete the tournament over the three days. So temporary pitches are marked out and those at Ramatuelle were under pine trees, providing a very fast surface with many bumps and underlying roots that were difficult to discern in the half-light. It was, of course, the same for everyone but a better surface would have allowed better boules.
We were playing solidly for two days, 8.30 to 18.00, with a two-hour break for lunch (compulsory everywhere in the south of France). On the last afternoon we were finished and so went into St Tropez, to walk round the old harbour (filled with very expensive-looking yachts) and take a boat trip round the bay. The boat trip commentary consisted mainly of pointing out the houses owned by rich luminaries on the hillsides outside St Tropez: Michelle Morgan, Luis Funez, several unfamiliar to me and, of course, Brigitte Bardot. Her house was surprisingly modest in comparison to many of the others, right on the water front but shielded from it by a high concrete wall which was apparently to prevent paparazzi taking photos. After the boat trip we took a look at a Modigliani exhibition in the Annonciade museum in the old port, which I found rather disappointing; few exhibits and mostly ink drawings.
The countryside around St Tropez had many of the familiar type of pine (must research the name) that one sees everywhere along the Côte d'Azur, with it's naturally rounded, sculpted shape. One could think that a topiarist had been hard at work all along the coast. There were oleanders a-plenty, many palm trees and some magnificent specimens of large plumbago in full flower but no sign of any bougainvillea, which I have always associated with the Côte d'Azur.
All in all, it was a very worthwhile trip and no doubt we'll get around to having a few drinks in the village on our (relative) success.
When I got back from the national boules championships in Ramatuelle I found my car covered in splashes of sand, a sure sign that the Sirocco, the warm wind that blows in from the Sahara, had been blowing when it had rained. The little wind that there is now is clearly coming from that direction too as I still have no need for any heating in the house. Leaves are changing colour all around, including some of the vines starting to turn, and they are carpeting the ground. Yet another sure sign of autumn here is the mushroom season. The somewhat despised button mushroom, champignon de Paris, so familiar in England is available at most times of the year in the supermarkets but the better varieties arrive only now: pieds de mouton, chanterelles, trompettes de la mort, girolles, morilles, etc. Time to make mushroom omellettes and risottos!
Boules
In brief, we finished 28th out of 80 teams in the national rural wrinklies championships in Ramatuelle and so honour was upheld. Hardly earth-shattering but not bad for un petit anglais. And we again finished with a higher ranking than any other team from the Drôme or Vaucluse, so no doubt there will be another article in the local paper. The tone was different from that at the regional championships, more serious and intense, albeit still friendly. Matches typically took twice as long as here in the village, an hour or more each, as the pitches were examined in detail and strategy/tactics discussed between throws of the boules. It was a pity then that the pitches weren't better. There's clearly a general problem here, the same as at the regional championships, in that facilities that have the required accommodation (there were around 500 players, other halves and supporters) doesn't have the required number of pitches: 35 were required to complete the tournament over the three days. So temporary pitches are marked out and those at Ramatuelle were under pine trees, providing a very fast surface with many bumps and underlying roots that were difficult to discern in the half-light. It was, of course, the same for everyone but a better surface would have allowed better boules.
We were playing solidly for two days, 8.30 to 18.00, with a two-hour break for lunch (compulsory everywhere in the south of France). On the last afternoon we were finished and so went into St Tropez, to walk round the old harbour (filled with very expensive-looking yachts) and take a boat trip round the bay. The boat trip commentary consisted mainly of pointing out the houses owned by rich luminaries on the hillsides outside St Tropez: Michelle Morgan, Luis Funez, several unfamiliar to me and, of course, Brigitte Bardot. Her house was surprisingly modest in comparison to many of the others, right on the water front but shielded from it by a high concrete wall which was apparently to prevent paparazzi taking photos. After the boat trip we took a look at a Modigliani exhibition in the Annonciade museum in the old port, which I found rather disappointing; few exhibits and mostly ink drawings.
The countryside around St Tropez had many of the familiar type of pine (must research the name) that one sees everywhere along the Côte d'Azur, with it's naturally rounded, sculpted shape. One could think that a topiarist had been hard at work all along the coast. There were oleanders a-plenty, many palm trees and some magnificent specimens of large plumbago in full flower but no sign of any bougainvillea, which I have always associated with the Côte d'Azur.
All in all, it was a very worthwhile trip and no doubt we'll get around to having a few drinks in the village on our (relative) success.
mercredi 1 septembre 2010
Autumn, Chutney and a Rant
Autumn
Autumn has come slightly early this year. We are only a day into September but the mornings and evenings for most of the last 10 days have been noticeably cool. There's no other sign of autumn, no leaves turning colour or falling but the temperatures are definitely autumn ones. Friend Steve likes to say that at the end of August all the tourists go home and the temperature drops 10 degrees. Well, most of the tourists have gone but the temperatures adjusted themselves earlier. It may be that we'll have a warmer than usual September though usually the days are fine, sunny and warm; the mornings and evenings are the difference.
Chutney
Invited to aperitifs with friends Alan and Margaret today I took along a jar of chutney: my Old Dower House Chutney, based approximately on a recipe from a 1950s Good Housekeeping book. If I say it myself, it's a very good chutney and improves with keeping. The trouble I find with many home-made chutneys is that the desire to make them arises from an overload of tomatoes, apples or whatever. People think: what can I do with all these (tomatoes, apples, etc) and do the best they can with them. The Old Dower House recipe, by contrast, is one that assumes you will acquire whatever is needed to make a good chutney and includes (yes) apples and tomatoes but also onions, plums, garlic, sultanas and a truckload of spices. Actually, when I first made it and tasted it I found it nicely fruity but lacking a certain “bite” (to my taste); so I doubled the amount of spices given in the recipe and found that worked well.
A Rant
My mother has been in hospital for some three weeks and I have been phoning her at her bedside phone. As anyone who has done the same knows, the phone calls are extremely expensive. This, we are told, is because the bedside phone and television service in hospitals has been privatised and the company concerned is (naturally) wanting to get its money back on the equipment installed. Like a number of privatisations, this one has been ill thought out in my opinion. (When I was in hospital here in France, the bedside phone and television was covered by my health insurance – all, even minimal health insurance policies do that – and calls are at the going local/national rate.) I think the cost of this in England is exorbitant but at least that much is open and stated. Even the full minute of banalities you have to listen to before being connected might be expected. What I find totally unacceptable is that before being connected you are told to be patient as the person receiving the call may have difficulty reaching the phone. Fine. The phone then rings just 6 times, after which you are told there is no reply and to wait (interminably) for an operator to try to connect you. I learned to abort the call after 6 rings but this, in my book, is nothing short of a scam to extend your call time, particularly after you have been warned to be patient. I think such scams should be exposed and stopped.
Autumn has come slightly early this year. We are only a day into September but the mornings and evenings for most of the last 10 days have been noticeably cool. There's no other sign of autumn, no leaves turning colour or falling but the temperatures are definitely autumn ones. Friend Steve likes to say that at the end of August all the tourists go home and the temperature drops 10 degrees. Well, most of the tourists have gone but the temperatures adjusted themselves earlier. It may be that we'll have a warmer than usual September though usually the days are fine, sunny and warm; the mornings and evenings are the difference.
Chutney
Invited to aperitifs with friends Alan and Margaret today I took along a jar of chutney: my Old Dower House Chutney, based approximately on a recipe from a 1950s Good Housekeeping book. If I say it myself, it's a very good chutney and improves with keeping. The trouble I find with many home-made chutneys is that the desire to make them arises from an overload of tomatoes, apples or whatever. People think: what can I do with all these (tomatoes, apples, etc) and do the best they can with them. The Old Dower House recipe, by contrast, is one that assumes you will acquire whatever is needed to make a good chutney and includes (yes) apples and tomatoes but also onions, plums, garlic, sultanas and a truckload of spices. Actually, when I first made it and tasted it I found it nicely fruity but lacking a certain “bite” (to my taste); so I doubled the amount of spices given in the recipe and found that worked well.
A Rant
My mother has been in hospital for some three weeks and I have been phoning her at her bedside phone. As anyone who has done the same knows, the phone calls are extremely expensive. This, we are told, is because the bedside phone and television service in hospitals has been privatised and the company concerned is (naturally) wanting to get its money back on the equipment installed. Like a number of privatisations, this one has been ill thought out in my opinion. (When I was in hospital here in France, the bedside phone and television was covered by my health insurance – all, even minimal health insurance policies do that – and calls are at the going local/national rate.) I think the cost of this in England is exorbitant but at least that much is open and stated. Even the full minute of banalities you have to listen to before being connected might be expected. What I find totally unacceptable is that before being connected you are told to be patient as the person receiving the call may have difficulty reaching the phone. Fine. The phone then rings just 6 times, after which you are told there is no reply and to wait (interminably) for an operator to try to connect you. I learned to abort the call after 6 rings but this, in my book, is nothing short of a scam to extend your call time, particularly after you have been warned to be patient. I think such scams should be exposed and stopped.
dimanche 22 août 2010
Life Goes On
Life Goes On......
I tried to sneak three greengages past my intestine yesterday and paid for it today. Which was a pity because neighbour Neville was celebrating his birthday at lunch-time with a grand spread of food and drink. However, I managed to calm the angry intestine by around 2 o'clock with a batch of pills and so was able to participate, if somewhat belatedly. Fruit really is a temptation I find almost impossible to resist, particularly with so much of it around. I've managed to give away a fair quantity of the grapes on my vine although even that hasn't been easy; so many people here have their own.
After two downpours in four days the weather has turned really hot, with temperatures in the high 30s; too hot to do anything much during the middle of the day. One benefit though has been the return of the balmy evenings; it's quite warm enough to sit on my balcony with no more than a T-shirt on until midnight. Another benefit is that it has brought out the boules players in force, though we don't start now until 5.00pm. And I seem to be on form on my resumption; I had feared being rusty after a month off. Picking the boules up is a little difficult so I may invest in a magnet on a string which some of the players use to avoid having to stoop so often.
Just about everybody from the street plus the pizza crowd seemed to be at Neville's party. Neville's partner, Liz, used to be an opera singer and she duly obliged with some arias some time between the cheese and dessert. As friend Jo remarked, who'd have thought a few years ago we would ever be sitting in a garden in the shade on a blisteringly hot day, sipping wine and listening to opera in a little French village? Neville in particular seems to appreciate what we have here, having previously lived in Spain for several years and, despite speaking the language, failed to make close contact with the locals; being condemned to a Brit ghetto was not a stimulating experience, he found.
Joke specialist René was at the party and here is his offering today. A farmer knocked at his neighbouring farmer's door and was greeted by the younger son. The farmer enquired whether the lad's mother or father were there but they weren't. Trying to be helpful, the lad said he knew where all his father's tools were and if the farmer wanted to borrow some he would fetch them. But the farmer replied that that wasn't what he had come about. Still trying to be helpful, the lad asked if there was anything else he could do. No, the farmer replied, the matter I have come about is that your older brother has made my daughter pregnant. Ah, said the boy, I can't help you there; I know my father charges 1000 euros for the bull and 600 for the pig but I don't know how much he charges for my brother.
I tried to sneak three greengages past my intestine yesterday and paid for it today. Which was a pity because neighbour Neville was celebrating his birthday at lunch-time with a grand spread of food and drink. However, I managed to calm the angry intestine by around 2 o'clock with a batch of pills and so was able to participate, if somewhat belatedly. Fruit really is a temptation I find almost impossible to resist, particularly with so much of it around. I've managed to give away a fair quantity of the grapes on my vine although even that hasn't been easy; so many people here have their own.
After two downpours in four days the weather has turned really hot, with temperatures in the high 30s; too hot to do anything much during the middle of the day. One benefit though has been the return of the balmy evenings; it's quite warm enough to sit on my balcony with no more than a T-shirt on until midnight. Another benefit is that it has brought out the boules players in force, though we don't start now until 5.00pm. And I seem to be on form on my resumption; I had feared being rusty after a month off. Picking the boules up is a little difficult so I may invest in a magnet on a string which some of the players use to avoid having to stoop so often.
Just about everybody from the street plus the pizza crowd seemed to be at Neville's party. Neville's partner, Liz, used to be an opera singer and she duly obliged with some arias some time between the cheese and dessert. As friend Jo remarked, who'd have thought a few years ago we would ever be sitting in a garden in the shade on a blisteringly hot day, sipping wine and listening to opera in a little French village? Neville in particular seems to appreciate what we have here, having previously lived in Spain for several years and, despite speaking the language, failed to make close contact with the locals; being condemned to a Brit ghetto was not a stimulating experience, he found.
Joke specialist René was at the party and here is his offering today. A farmer knocked at his neighbouring farmer's door and was greeted by the younger son. The farmer enquired whether the lad's mother or father were there but they weren't. Trying to be helpful, the lad said he knew where all his father's tools were and if the farmer wanted to borrow some he would fetch them. But the farmer replied that that wasn't what he had come about. Still trying to be helpful, the lad asked if there was anything else he could do. No, the farmer replied, the matter I have come about is that your older brother has made my daughter pregnant. Ah, said the boy, I can't help you there; I know my father charges 1000 euros for the bull and 600 for the pig but I don't know how much he charges for my brother.
samedi 14 août 2010
Recuperation
Recuperation Is Sloo....oow
Just out of hospital I felt ready to get my act together again. But it turns out it's not quite like that. There's a period of purgatory that has to be gone through first, what the French call “le contre-choque”. You get worse before you start to get better. The fatigue I expected but not the accompanying kind of Montezuma's Revenge. Given that I've lost a chunk of colon and intestine it may seem obviously to be expected but expect it I didn't.
I mentioned this to the nurse who comes in daily to dress the wound and she asked what I was eating; all the wrong things, it seems. So, no more salad stuff, no raw vegetables and no fresh fruit other than very ripe apricots or peaches; just when the local market stalls are groaning under the weight of all this at knock-down prices. No more charcuterie either and no fatty foods. So what is allowed? Bread, potatoes, rice and grilled meat or fish, fruit compote and yoghourt. Well, I've (more or less) stuck to that for a week now and it seems to be working. The meals I eat, after passing through my stomach, no longer seem to grow spikes to let me know exactly where they are as they progress through the rest of my system. And the fatigue is going. But it does seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time.
If this sounds like a period of unmitigated misery it hasn't been. Friends have been very supportive, I cooked the gammon I've had in my freezer since Christmas, made a batch of chili jam and have just experienced what must be a record aperitif session. The ham (steeped in cider for a week) gave me a small way of paying back some of the favours I have received and was generally greeted with demands for the recipe. The chili jam has turned out even better than I hoped since I had to guess the recipe from the ingredients list on a jar I bought in England. Unfortunately it's on the doubtful list on my current diet but it will keep. The lady who comes in to do some house cleaning for me, Patricia, described it as “spécial”, meaning something like bizarre. The French generally have an aversion to chili, even in jam it seems! And the aperitif record was today. Friend Dominique invited me to “apéros” at midday to celebrate his birthday and I arrived to find tables laid out under tents and a barbecue going. I left eventually at a quarter to six, and then only because musicians were arriving and fatigue was setting in.
The surgeon who operated on me came into my room once when I was playing some Brahms on my computer. He was a fan. He wasn't familiar with the string sextets though so I've ordered a CD through Amazon and will give it to him when I return to the hospital for a check-up in 10 days' time.
Just out of hospital I felt ready to get my act together again. But it turns out it's not quite like that. There's a period of purgatory that has to be gone through first, what the French call “le contre-choque”. You get worse before you start to get better. The fatigue I expected but not the accompanying kind of Montezuma's Revenge. Given that I've lost a chunk of colon and intestine it may seem obviously to be expected but expect it I didn't.
I mentioned this to the nurse who comes in daily to dress the wound and she asked what I was eating; all the wrong things, it seems. So, no more salad stuff, no raw vegetables and no fresh fruit other than very ripe apricots or peaches; just when the local market stalls are groaning under the weight of all this at knock-down prices. No more charcuterie either and no fatty foods. So what is allowed? Bread, potatoes, rice and grilled meat or fish, fruit compote and yoghourt. Well, I've (more or less) stuck to that for a week now and it seems to be working. The meals I eat, after passing through my stomach, no longer seem to grow spikes to let me know exactly where they are as they progress through the rest of my system. And the fatigue is going. But it does seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time.
If this sounds like a period of unmitigated misery it hasn't been. Friends have been very supportive, I cooked the gammon I've had in my freezer since Christmas, made a batch of chili jam and have just experienced what must be a record aperitif session. The ham (steeped in cider for a week) gave me a small way of paying back some of the favours I have received and was generally greeted with demands for the recipe. The chili jam has turned out even better than I hoped since I had to guess the recipe from the ingredients list on a jar I bought in England. Unfortunately it's on the doubtful list on my current diet but it will keep. The lady who comes in to do some house cleaning for me, Patricia, described it as “spécial”, meaning something like bizarre. The French generally have an aversion to chili, even in jam it seems! And the aperitif record was today. Friend Dominique invited me to “apéros” at midday to celebrate his birthday and I arrived to find tables laid out under tents and a barbecue going. I left eventually at a quarter to six, and then only because musicians were arriving and fatigue was setting in.
The surgeon who operated on me came into my room once when I was playing some Brahms on my computer. He was a fan. He wasn't familiar with the string sextets though so I've ordered a CD through Amazon and will give it to him when I return to the hospital for a check-up in 10 days' time.
lundi 26 juillet 2010
Out Of Hospital.......
Out Of Hospital.......
Hospital can be a bit of a strange country, or continent like Africa, if you are not used to it. I have to count myself lucky that my only previous experience of a hospital stay was nearly sixty years ago, a little matter of appendicitis, but that luck made the experience all the more strange.
Anyway, the operation to remove a cancerous tumour from around the join between my intestine and colon was successful and for that I have to thank the medical staff, who were uniformly (no pun intended) excellent in every way. The oncologist said that the type of cancer was hereditary and, since there is no history of that on my mother's side of the family, I presumably have my father to thank for that (though hardly his fault). He, anyway, died too soon for cancer to get him. The surgeon was confident enough of his excision to propose no further treatment.
I really have to thank my GP for discovery of a cancer that otherwise may well not have shown up for a long time. Eighteen months ago, when I had a blood clot in my leg, he insisted that it could be an early sign of cancer. I've no idea how this connection was made but it was the investigations he then instigated that led to discovery of the cancer at a very early stage. I had been hoping he would call a halt when the first investigations showed nothing but am now very glad he persisted.
The food in hospital, unfortunately, was diametrically opposed in quality to the medical staff. Maybe that was to be expected in a hospital but surely not so much in a French one. But then if you take even well cooked food, place a plastic lid over it and leave it for 10 minutes or so, the result might be the same. The stale steamed smell as I took the cover off brought back long dismissed memories of aircraft food at its worst.
But what made the greatest impression on me was my now intimate understanding of the terms “stir crazy” or “cave fever”. And that was after a stay of a mere 10 days, the first four of which were in intensive care and therefore made relatively little impact on my consciousness. My tolerance for boredom isn't generally too bad; I don't find it difficult to drift off into a reverie. However, even with my PC at my side as well as music and books, I found it very difficult to cope with 24 hours a day of relative inactivity. It's not even as though I normally lead a strenuous life; but being tied to a bed, a chair and a room (even a quite pleasant one) and for effectively a week only really did drive me close to stir crazy. It was a new experience for me and made me all the happier to be out of hospital. The feeling of the cool breeze on my face as I took my first steps outside the hospital was something I will remember for a long time.
Friends
Two brilliant friends, Steve and Jo, not only saw me to and from hospital and visited me there but organised an email round-robin to provide news of me for other friends in the village, most of whom phoned or visited. It was a wonderful idea of theirs, one that worked extremely well. I suppose that, given the number of successful web enterprises designed to bring friends and acquaintances together, it shouldn't surprise me that it worked so well. Perhaps it shows that, despite having worked virtually all my life in IT, I am not really as much in tune with the new electronic age as I should be.
I returned to find the grapes overhanging my balcony almost ripe and showing a bumper crop. I shall sit on my balcony and enjoy them this year much more than in previous years. Steve and Jo also kept my plants watered while I was away and seem determined to ensure that I recuperate as prescribed rather than in the more haphazard way that is my wont. This evening, my cursory TV viewing was interrupted by Montserrat Vilalta, a neighbour (and originally a refugee from Franco's Spain) who insisted I come to lunch with her after she has been to the Buis market on Wednesday, to see that I am properly feeding myself. She must be nearly 20 years older than me.
What it is to have friends!
Hospital can be a bit of a strange country, or continent like Africa, if you are not used to it. I have to count myself lucky that my only previous experience of a hospital stay was nearly sixty years ago, a little matter of appendicitis, but that luck made the experience all the more strange.
Anyway, the operation to remove a cancerous tumour from around the join between my intestine and colon was successful and for that I have to thank the medical staff, who were uniformly (no pun intended) excellent in every way. The oncologist said that the type of cancer was hereditary and, since there is no history of that on my mother's side of the family, I presumably have my father to thank for that (though hardly his fault). He, anyway, died too soon for cancer to get him. The surgeon was confident enough of his excision to propose no further treatment.
I really have to thank my GP for discovery of a cancer that otherwise may well not have shown up for a long time. Eighteen months ago, when I had a blood clot in my leg, he insisted that it could be an early sign of cancer. I've no idea how this connection was made but it was the investigations he then instigated that led to discovery of the cancer at a very early stage. I had been hoping he would call a halt when the first investigations showed nothing but am now very glad he persisted.
The food in hospital, unfortunately, was diametrically opposed in quality to the medical staff. Maybe that was to be expected in a hospital but surely not so much in a French one. But then if you take even well cooked food, place a plastic lid over it and leave it for 10 minutes or so, the result might be the same. The stale steamed smell as I took the cover off brought back long dismissed memories of aircraft food at its worst.
But what made the greatest impression on me was my now intimate understanding of the terms “stir crazy” or “cave fever”. And that was after a stay of a mere 10 days, the first four of which were in intensive care and therefore made relatively little impact on my consciousness. My tolerance for boredom isn't generally too bad; I don't find it difficult to drift off into a reverie. However, even with my PC at my side as well as music and books, I found it very difficult to cope with 24 hours a day of relative inactivity. It's not even as though I normally lead a strenuous life; but being tied to a bed, a chair and a room (even a quite pleasant one) and for effectively a week only really did drive me close to stir crazy. It was a new experience for me and made me all the happier to be out of hospital. The feeling of the cool breeze on my face as I took my first steps outside the hospital was something I will remember for a long time.
Friends
Two brilliant friends, Steve and Jo, not only saw me to and from hospital and visited me there but organised an email round-robin to provide news of me for other friends in the village, most of whom phoned or visited. It was a wonderful idea of theirs, one that worked extremely well. I suppose that, given the number of successful web enterprises designed to bring friends and acquaintances together, it shouldn't surprise me that it worked so well. Perhaps it shows that, despite having worked virtually all my life in IT, I am not really as much in tune with the new electronic age as I should be.
I returned to find the grapes overhanging my balcony almost ripe and showing a bumper crop. I shall sit on my balcony and enjoy them this year much more than in previous years. Steve and Jo also kept my plants watered while I was away and seem determined to ensure that I recuperate as prescribed rather than in the more haphazard way that is my wont. This evening, my cursory TV viewing was interrupted by Montserrat Vilalta, a neighbour (and originally a refugee from Franco's Spain) who insisted I come to lunch with her after she has been to the Buis market on Wednesday, to see that I am properly feeding myself. She must be nearly 20 years older than me.
What it is to have friends!
jeudi 24 juin 2010
First Day Of Summer?
Le Feu De La St Jean
Tonight was the celebration of the first day of summer, Le Feu De La St Jean. As I may well have commented before (can't be bothered to go back and check) for some reason this is not celebrated on the 21st of June (technically the first day) but on the 23rd. As it has been for the last several years except that, this year, for some reason I am not aware of, it was the 24th and not the 23rd.
Anyway, it was the usual event of the village letting its hair down in a very acceptable and agreeable way, all ages (and pets) participating. The fire is now permanently based on the river bed. The first time I witnessed this celebration, the fire was on the bridge that spans the two halves of the village and the local fireman had to put it out. Now it's down on the river bed, which affords a good view from the bridge, and always has a dry stone bank on which to burn it. And it can be left to burn itself out safely. The stone banks move every year according to how the winter “floods” have rearranged them but there is always a stone bank. This year it was in the middle of the river between two branches of water either side. Kids were down on the stonebank gleefully helping to light the fire.
I wandered amongst the villagers assembled on the bridge variously muttering "Pauvre Jeanne d'Arc" and "Que Jeanne d'Arc brule bien", getting some laughs but also some odd looks.
The entertainment was provided by two guitarists playing mostly Spanish songs and my eye was focused on two girls of about ten years old who merrily bomped away to the music, stopping occasionally to pick up younger brothers/sisters and continue bomping while carrying them. That's what I love about this event. All the family joins in and, one way or another, they all look after one another to see that they all have a good time. And kids are omni-present, not yet so locked up with computers and playstations that they can't be torn away for some more primitive entertainment.
Arriving back at my house I was waylaid by the crowd renting the house adjoining mine and invited to have a drink with them. They were an extended family of mixed Irish/Geordie background and very good company. Questions about what I was doing in Mollans gradually turned to football and we had a great time reminiscing about Chelsea and Newcastle teams of the mid-1950s through the 1960s. Milburn, Mitchell, Scoular, Harvey and Bentley, Greaves, Osgood, Hudson, Houseman, etc. Those were the days.....(my friends)...........
My question as to how they had found Mollans was answered by the appearance of Andrew and Petra, an Englishman and Dutch lady, who live in nearby Propiac and whom I had encountered from time to time but never really got acquainted with. It seems we may have various things in common, including wide travel experience, so I hope I will get to know them better.
Tonight was the celebration of the first day of summer, Le Feu De La St Jean. As I may well have commented before (can't be bothered to go back and check) for some reason this is not celebrated on the 21st of June (technically the first day) but on the 23rd. As it has been for the last several years except that, this year, for some reason I am not aware of, it was the 24th and not the 23rd.
Anyway, it was the usual event of the village letting its hair down in a very acceptable and agreeable way, all ages (and pets) participating. The fire is now permanently based on the river bed. The first time I witnessed this celebration, the fire was on the bridge that spans the two halves of the village and the local fireman had to put it out. Now it's down on the river bed, which affords a good view from the bridge, and always has a dry stone bank on which to burn it. And it can be left to burn itself out safely. The stone banks move every year according to how the winter “floods” have rearranged them but there is always a stone bank. This year it was in the middle of the river between two branches of water either side. Kids were down on the stonebank gleefully helping to light the fire.
I wandered amongst the villagers assembled on the bridge variously muttering "Pauvre Jeanne d'Arc" and "Que Jeanne d'Arc brule bien", getting some laughs but also some odd looks.
The entertainment was provided by two guitarists playing mostly Spanish songs and my eye was focused on two girls of about ten years old who merrily bomped away to the music, stopping occasionally to pick up younger brothers/sisters and continue bomping while carrying them. That's what I love about this event. All the family joins in and, one way or another, they all look after one another to see that they all have a good time. And kids are omni-present, not yet so locked up with computers and playstations that they can't be torn away for some more primitive entertainment.
Arriving back at my house I was waylaid by the crowd renting the house adjoining mine and invited to have a drink with them. They were an extended family of mixed Irish/Geordie background and very good company. Questions about what I was doing in Mollans gradually turned to football and we had a great time reminiscing about Chelsea and Newcastle teams of the mid-1950s through the 1960s. Milburn, Mitchell, Scoular, Harvey and Bentley, Greaves, Osgood, Hudson, Houseman, etc. Those were the days.....(my friends)...........
My question as to how they had found Mollans was answered by the appearance of Andrew and Petra, an Englishman and Dutch lady, who live in nearby Propiac and whom I had encountered from time to time but never really got acquainted with. It seems we may have various things in common, including wide travel experience, so I hope I will get to know them better.
samedi 19 juin 2010
Lunches and Reminiscences of Kid's Behaviour
Lunches
On Friday I invited Steve and Jo to try out a new restaurant in the village for lunch with me. Called Chez Miche, the proprietress and cook is a woman who used to cook the lunches at The Cafe Des Sports in the village and who had evidently come to the same conclusion as we three had: that the village needed a restaurant where you could get a good but unfancy meal for a very reasonable price. Chez Miche turned out to be just that for a more than reasonable price (aperitifs, amuse-bouche, four courses, wine and coffee for around £14 per head). I think it's going to become a regular for me.
My existing standard lunch appointment is with Daniel on Saturdays. Daniel doesn't cook but often gets invited to eat with various friends and so reciprocates by buying paella from the man who sells it in the Saturday morning market and inviting friends around. This has become such a fixture that Daniel and I have decided that it has the nature of a ritual and the Gods will be displeased if the rite is not enacted every week. There could be storms, floods or plagues visited upon the village if the rite is not observed. At the moment we have none of these but the weather is nothing like as good as it should be at this time of year so we probably aren't eating enough paella.
Kids' Behaviour
On Saturday, after seeing a film “La Tête En Friche” in Vaison (a good film by the way, with something of the flavour of 84 Charing Cross Road) Daniel, Michèle, Chantal and I went to the local restaurant La Loupiote to eat. Next to us was a table with an extended family, or family and friends, that included four young girls, three by the look of them aged 11-13 and one some six years younger. On being seated, the three older girls rushed out to play outside and the youngest made to follow. She was held back by her mother to put on her anorak, as it was chilly outside. The four eventually returned to their table, the youngest holding firmly onto the hand of one of the older girls. This behaviour was repeated several times during the meal, the youngest one each time returning holding the hand of the same older girl. The older girl could have been the older sister of the youngest but, anyway, there was clearly a kind of hero worship relationship between the two.
This immediately reminded me of something I had witnessed while a teacher at Summerhill. A girl of 12/13 brought up a boy of 9/10 before the school tribunal for pestering her for attention. She wanted the pestering stopped. The assembled kids debated this and one pointed out that while the girl was undoubtedly pestered by the boy some of the time, at other times, when the girl could not play with the older girls at the school, she encouraged his attention to her. What the kids had noticed was that the girl was virtually alone at her age and between groups of girls aged two years younger and two years older. She wanted to hang out with the older ones, when included in their activities, but when excluded encouraged the hero worship of the younger boy. The kids' debate exposed this relationship and the tribunal's verdict was that they should kiss and make up. At the time, I was astounded at the perspicacity of the other kids and the wisdom of their verdict. I was sure then, and remain so to this day, that no adults would have been able to unravel the dynamic of the relationship as they had done. I was always unconvinced of A S Neill's dictum that adults are not wise enough to tell children what they should do, at least in very many instances, but in this case he was surely right.
On Friday I invited Steve and Jo to try out a new restaurant in the village for lunch with me. Called Chez Miche, the proprietress and cook is a woman who used to cook the lunches at The Cafe Des Sports in the village and who had evidently come to the same conclusion as we three had: that the village needed a restaurant where you could get a good but unfancy meal for a very reasonable price. Chez Miche turned out to be just that for a more than reasonable price (aperitifs, amuse-bouche, four courses, wine and coffee for around £14 per head). I think it's going to become a regular for me.
My existing standard lunch appointment is with Daniel on Saturdays. Daniel doesn't cook but often gets invited to eat with various friends and so reciprocates by buying paella from the man who sells it in the Saturday morning market and inviting friends around. This has become such a fixture that Daniel and I have decided that it has the nature of a ritual and the Gods will be displeased if the rite is not enacted every week. There could be storms, floods or plagues visited upon the village if the rite is not observed. At the moment we have none of these but the weather is nothing like as good as it should be at this time of year so we probably aren't eating enough paella.
Kids' Behaviour
On Saturday, after seeing a film “La Tête En Friche” in Vaison (a good film by the way, with something of the flavour of 84 Charing Cross Road) Daniel, Michèle, Chantal and I went to the local restaurant La Loupiote to eat. Next to us was a table with an extended family, or family and friends, that included four young girls, three by the look of them aged 11-13 and one some six years younger. On being seated, the three older girls rushed out to play outside and the youngest made to follow. She was held back by her mother to put on her anorak, as it was chilly outside. The four eventually returned to their table, the youngest holding firmly onto the hand of one of the older girls. This behaviour was repeated several times during the meal, the youngest one each time returning holding the hand of the same older girl. The older girl could have been the older sister of the youngest but, anyway, there was clearly a kind of hero worship relationship between the two.
This immediately reminded me of something I had witnessed while a teacher at Summerhill. A girl of 12/13 brought up a boy of 9/10 before the school tribunal for pestering her for attention. She wanted the pestering stopped. The assembled kids debated this and one pointed out that while the girl was undoubtedly pestered by the boy some of the time, at other times, when the girl could not play with the older girls at the school, she encouraged his attention to her. What the kids had noticed was that the girl was virtually alone at her age and between groups of girls aged two years younger and two years older. She wanted to hang out with the older ones, when included in their activities, but when excluded encouraged the hero worship of the younger boy. The kids' debate exposed this relationship and the tribunal's verdict was that they should kiss and make up. At the time, I was astounded at the perspicacity of the other kids and the wisdom of their verdict. I was sure then, and remain so to this day, that no adults would have been able to unravel the dynamic of the relationship as they had done. I was always unconvinced of A S Neill's dictum that adults are not wise enough to tell children what they should do, at least in very many instances, but in this case he was surely right.
vendredi 11 juin 2010
Bread, Vinaigrette and Cousins
Bread
At the BELL (Beaumont English Language Library) celebration mentioned previously, chatting with one of the participants, I mentioned the difficulty of translating “terroir”. She was English but had lived in France a long while and spoke very good French. At first, she couldn't see my point; as she pointed out, several English words will serve. But she eventually agreed that the connotations posed a problem. It's somewhat the same way with bread. It's easily translated as “pain” but the cultural implications are then not apparent since the English don't use bread in the way that the French do. In much the same way, we don't even have to translate pasta from the Italian since we use the same word but the cultural implications are different.
For instance, my friend Daniel is totally incapable of eating a meal without bread. Serve him a stew with potatoes and dumplings and he'll still want bread. And, if a small village or hamlet in France has only one shop it will be a bakers. Fresh bread each day is a paramount requirement and the price of a basic loaf is still regulated. It reminds me of a story told me by a friend of Irish descent (yet another culture) about a dinner he cooked for his father. He cooked a spaghetti Bolognese and, on seeing the dish in front of him, his father said: “Where are the potatoes then?”
I don't think there is a solution to the problem of translating the connotations.
Vinaigrette
Vinaigrette is a similar case in point. In England I hardly ever made vinaigrette; like most other people I knew, I used salad cream. By contrast, vinaigrette is ubiquitous in France and I have yet to meet any French friends who use a ready-made variety out of a bottle; they all make their own. However, when I or others I knew in England did make vinaigrette we were far more adventurous than any of the French I have met. The vinaigrette everyone seems to make here comprises mustard, olive oil, salt, pepper and vinegar, the taste differing only according to the proportions of each. I usually add some garlic and sometimes substitute walnut oil for olive oil. Balsamic vinegar is widely available but seldom used. It seems strange to me that everyone here takes the trouble to make their own vinaigrette but no one seems to want to experiment.
Cousins
A consequence of my being part of the successful boules team was that people have been saying, kindly, that I am now a real Mollanais. Except that................I must have a cousin in Mollans to be a true Mollanais since all true Mollanais do. And what follows is some (generally ribald) banter as to who could possibly be my cousin. The point is that all true Mollanais really do seem to have a cousin (or indeed many) in the village. This, it would seem, is a consequence of a specific attitude to liaisons in the past. On the one hand it was very restrictive: keep it in the village. On the other hand, it was very free: as long as it is in the village, you can play around as much as you want.
At the BELL (Beaumont English Language Library) celebration mentioned previously, chatting with one of the participants, I mentioned the difficulty of translating “terroir”. She was English but had lived in France a long while and spoke very good French. At first, she couldn't see my point; as she pointed out, several English words will serve. But she eventually agreed that the connotations posed a problem. It's somewhat the same way with bread. It's easily translated as “pain” but the cultural implications are then not apparent since the English don't use bread in the way that the French do. In much the same way, we don't even have to translate pasta from the Italian since we use the same word but the cultural implications are different.
For instance, my friend Daniel is totally incapable of eating a meal without bread. Serve him a stew with potatoes and dumplings and he'll still want bread. And, if a small village or hamlet in France has only one shop it will be a bakers. Fresh bread each day is a paramount requirement and the price of a basic loaf is still regulated. It reminds me of a story told me by a friend of Irish descent (yet another culture) about a dinner he cooked for his father. He cooked a spaghetti Bolognese and, on seeing the dish in front of him, his father said: “Where are the potatoes then?”
I don't think there is a solution to the problem of translating the connotations.
Vinaigrette
Vinaigrette is a similar case in point. In England I hardly ever made vinaigrette; like most other people I knew, I used salad cream. By contrast, vinaigrette is ubiquitous in France and I have yet to meet any French friends who use a ready-made variety out of a bottle; they all make their own. However, when I or others I knew in England did make vinaigrette we were far more adventurous than any of the French I have met. The vinaigrette everyone seems to make here comprises mustard, olive oil, salt, pepper and vinegar, the taste differing only according to the proportions of each. I usually add some garlic and sometimes substitute walnut oil for olive oil. Balsamic vinegar is widely available but seldom used. It seems strange to me that everyone here takes the trouble to make their own vinaigrette but no one seems to want to experiment.
Cousins
A consequence of my being part of the successful boules team was that people have been saying, kindly, that I am now a real Mollanais. Except that................I must have a cousin in Mollans to be a true Mollanais since all true Mollanais do. And what follows is some (generally ribald) banter as to who could possibly be my cousin. The point is that all true Mollanais really do seem to have a cousin (or indeed many) in the village. This, it would seem, is a consequence of a specific attitude to liaisons in the past. On the one hand it was very restrictive: keep it in the village. On the other hand, it was very free: as long as it is in the village, you can play around as much as you want.
lundi 7 juin 2010
Celebrations
Celebrations
On Saturday neighbour Marie-Elisabeth called round to say she was having a birthday party that evening and could I come. She had just arrived from England for a short stay with American partner Mark. Both are working in England at the moment, she an interior designer and he a film production manager. The dozen or so invitees were mostly neighbours from along the road. Marie-Elisabeth and Mark had decided on Mexican food, tacos and tortillas with the usual fillings. What surprised me was that none of my French neighbours had apparently eaten thus before and they simply stared in perplexity at the food. It fell to me to show how to fill and roll up a tortilla. The others then thoroughly enjoyed the food, although noticeably avoiding the hotter chili sauces. I was interested because I had thought of preparing something similar one day, because it's simple, but hesitated because I was not sure how it would be received. Now I know.
Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the English library at Beaumont. A bit of a knees-up had been organised and it all went off very well. The library has progressed from being a single room in a house owned by Pat and Brian Stapleton, two former employees of the British Council, to now occupying two large rooms housing some three thousand books. And the inventory is now computerised. The handful of initial members has grown only to several dozen but there are plans to stock the English section in the Mollans library (when they get some shelves) and to make the database available to colleges in Vaison, Carpentras, Avignon and even further afield. At the moment broadband hasn't reached Beaumont; the commune has only some 300 inhabitants scattered in three hamlets. When broadband arrives, the database will be made available over the Internet, although there are no plans to provide a postal service.
And A Joke.......
From René, of course, at the pizza evening today. A small boy was playing in his parent's bedroom when his mother unexpectedly arrived home. So he hid in the wardrobe. His mother had come back with her lover. Soon after, they were interrupted when his father also returned home, so his mother hid her lover in the wardrobe. Seeing he had company, the boy said: “It's dark in here”. The lover agreed. Then the small boy said: “I've got a football to sell, for 250 euros”. The lover said: “250 euros! That's robbery!” “Yes,” said the boy, “but if you don't buy it I'll have to tell my father what you have been doing.” So the lover agreed.
A few weeks later there was the same scenario. The boy said it was dark in the wardrobe and the lover agreed. This time the boy had a pair of trainers to sell, for 150 euros. Again the lover had to agree.
A few days after that the father said to the boy: “It's a lovely day, get your trainers and football and we'll go out and play.”
“We can't”, said the boy. “I've sold my trainers and the football, for 400 euros.”
“400 euros!” exclaimed the father. “That's robbery! You must come with me immediately to the church and confess”.
So the father drags the boy off to the church, puts him in a confessional box and closes the door. The boy says: “It's dark in here”.
“Oh no!” says the priest. “Don't start that again; I've already paid you 400 euros and that is enough”.
On Saturday neighbour Marie-Elisabeth called round to say she was having a birthday party that evening and could I come. She had just arrived from England for a short stay with American partner Mark. Both are working in England at the moment, she an interior designer and he a film production manager. The dozen or so invitees were mostly neighbours from along the road. Marie-Elisabeth and Mark had decided on Mexican food, tacos and tortillas with the usual fillings. What surprised me was that none of my French neighbours had apparently eaten thus before and they simply stared in perplexity at the food. It fell to me to show how to fill and roll up a tortilla. The others then thoroughly enjoyed the food, although noticeably avoiding the hotter chili sauces. I was interested because I had thought of preparing something similar one day, because it's simple, but hesitated because I was not sure how it would be received. Now I know.
Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the English library at Beaumont. A bit of a knees-up had been organised and it all went off very well. The library has progressed from being a single room in a house owned by Pat and Brian Stapleton, two former employees of the British Council, to now occupying two large rooms housing some three thousand books. And the inventory is now computerised. The handful of initial members has grown only to several dozen but there are plans to stock the English section in the Mollans library (when they get some shelves) and to make the database available to colleges in Vaison, Carpentras, Avignon and even further afield. At the moment broadband hasn't reached Beaumont; the commune has only some 300 inhabitants scattered in three hamlets. When broadband arrives, the database will be made available over the Internet, although there are no plans to provide a postal service.
And A Joke.......
From René, of course, at the pizza evening today. A small boy was playing in his parent's bedroom when his mother unexpectedly arrived home. So he hid in the wardrobe. His mother had come back with her lover. Soon after, they were interrupted when his father also returned home, so his mother hid her lover in the wardrobe. Seeing he had company, the boy said: “It's dark in here”. The lover agreed. Then the small boy said: “I've got a football to sell, for 250 euros”. The lover said: “250 euros! That's robbery!” “Yes,” said the boy, “but if you don't buy it I'll have to tell my father what you have been doing.” So the lover agreed.
A few weeks later there was the same scenario. The boy said it was dark in the wardrobe and the lover agreed. This time the boy had a pair of trainers to sell, for 150 euros. Again the lover had to agree.
A few days after that the father said to the boy: “It's a lovely day, get your trainers and football and we'll go out and play.”
“We can't”, said the boy. “I've sold my trainers and the football, for 400 euros.”
“400 euros!” exclaimed the father. “That's robbery! You must come with me immediately to the church and confess”.
So the father drags the boy off to the church, puts him in a confessional box and closes the door. The boy says: “It's dark in here”.
“Oh no!” says the priest. “Don't start that again; I've already paid you 400 euros and that is enough”.
mercredi 2 juin 2010
Gardens
Gardens
Some friends, Jean-Marc, Florence, René and Ahmelle, came round for aperitifs this evening and all admired my back garden. Which was nice, obviously, but all made the same remark as other French friends had before. It was a “jardin anglais”, could have been made only by an Englishman. What they meant was that there was no formality or discernible structure in it; it just was. But it nevertheless looked good to them. It's a bit like the French attitude to Shakespeare; he's great but he doesn't observe any of the (French/Greek) theatrical conventions.
I've probably commented before on the French passion for formal structure in gardens. I think that can work fine if you have a chateau and a few hundred acres to play with but doesn't work well in relatively small spaces. I always despaired of the gardens I sometimes found in suburban England which had a rectangular lawn fringed by rectangular flower beds planted with flowers in symmetrical rows. I couldn't say they looked bad but they certainly lacked any kind of soul. Someone once said that there are no right angles in nature and, despite probably many exceptions to that, I believe that should be true of gardens. And I have another objection: for me, gardens have to evolve over time; some plants die, some become rampant and have to be curtailed and the resultant spaces don't have to be filled with the plants that were there before. So, over time, the garden changes shape and character. Within a formal structure, this is very difficult if not impossible to effect.
Anyway, René pointed out to me that there was a garden programme on French television this evening that had a significant English content; so I duly tuned in to it. It was a good programme but I was alarmed at first at the English contribution because the programme makers had gone to Blenheim Palace of all places: a chateau and several hundred acres looked like confirming the French approach. Fortunately, they then went on to Michelin starred chef Roux and his Manoir à Quartre Saisons just outside Oxford, a good French reference, who was very passionate about a very English garden he had created there. He said all the things I would have wanted to say about creating a garden.
As a kind of footnote, there is an American architect called Christopher Alexander who had a significant impact on IT thinking about how to create and amalgamate computer programs through his books “Notes on the Synthesis of Form” and “A Pattern Language”. I have found his thinking on the design of what should go into spaces works equally with gardening.
On a less formal note, I pointed out to neighbour and artist Florence this evening the quite large and very white walls in my terrace room and suggested that some of her paintings (far outside my budget) would look good there. She is currently preparing for an exhibition in Aix but kindly said that she would lend me some after that. I'm not sure that I am likely to have any visitors who would justify that from a commercial point of view (I don't have many rich friends) but maybe it will save her some storage space!
Some friends, Jean-Marc, Florence, René and Ahmelle, came round for aperitifs this evening and all admired my back garden. Which was nice, obviously, but all made the same remark as other French friends had before. It was a “jardin anglais”, could have been made only by an Englishman. What they meant was that there was no formality or discernible structure in it; it just was. But it nevertheless looked good to them. It's a bit like the French attitude to Shakespeare; he's great but he doesn't observe any of the (French/Greek) theatrical conventions.
I've probably commented before on the French passion for formal structure in gardens. I think that can work fine if you have a chateau and a few hundred acres to play with but doesn't work well in relatively small spaces. I always despaired of the gardens I sometimes found in suburban England which had a rectangular lawn fringed by rectangular flower beds planted with flowers in symmetrical rows. I couldn't say they looked bad but they certainly lacked any kind of soul. Someone once said that there are no right angles in nature and, despite probably many exceptions to that, I believe that should be true of gardens. And I have another objection: for me, gardens have to evolve over time; some plants die, some become rampant and have to be curtailed and the resultant spaces don't have to be filled with the plants that were there before. So, over time, the garden changes shape and character. Within a formal structure, this is very difficult if not impossible to effect.
Anyway, René pointed out to me that there was a garden programme on French television this evening that had a significant English content; so I duly tuned in to it. It was a good programme but I was alarmed at first at the English contribution because the programme makers had gone to Blenheim Palace of all places: a chateau and several hundred acres looked like confirming the French approach. Fortunately, they then went on to Michelin starred chef Roux and his Manoir à Quartre Saisons just outside Oxford, a good French reference, who was very passionate about a very English garden he had created there. He said all the things I would have wanted to say about creating a garden.
As a kind of footnote, there is an American architect called Christopher Alexander who had a significant impact on IT thinking about how to create and amalgamate computer programs through his books “Notes on the Synthesis of Form” and “A Pattern Language”. I have found his thinking on the design of what should go into spaces works equally with gardening.
On a less formal note, I pointed out to neighbour and artist Florence this evening the quite large and very white walls in my terrace room and suggested that some of her paintings (far outside my budget) would look good there. She is currently preparing for an exhibition in Aix but kindly said that she would lend me some after that. I'm not sure that I am likely to have any visitors who would justify that from a commercial point of view (I don't have many rich friends) but maybe it will save her some storage space!
lundi 31 mai 2010
Strawberries and a Sad Note
Strawberries Etc
Local strawberries (from Carpentras) are now in full flood in the shops and markets. The first melons, from the same place, and cherries are also appearing and herald my favourite season when peaches and apricots join them and the fruit season really takes off. The apricots here can be the size of small apples and are rich in juice and flavour. Add to that the asparagus that is still plentiful and you really have summer eating.
I was thinking of this while sitting on my balcony, taking in the scent of the honeysuckle, eating strawberries and drinking a glass of rosé wine. It's the last point that brings home that summer is coming. Rosé wine is something of a saviour here for the local vignerons. Good red wines abound in the world and competition is fierce and thus prices to the growers and vintners low. I now love Côtes du Rhône wines but can easily appreciate those from many other parts of the world. Good rosés are much harder to find and this area produces some of the best. However, for me, rosé wine is a summer drink. I hardly drink a single glass in winter. In the summer, outdoors, it seems the ideal drink for lunch or as an aperitif. Rosé wine and strawberries on the balcony in the sunshine is a hard act to beat.
A Sad Note
Sylvère, whom I've mentioned before several times, died last Thursday and was buried today. He was a village character, well liked and generally looked after by the village. The mayor, in a speech at the graveside, summed him up well. He had had a hard life, a foundling from Marseilles, placed when very young with a farming family not far away and exploited by them. He came to the village in his twenties and continued in agricultural work, often taken advantage of because he was something of a simpleton, but latterly watched over and taken care of by the village. He remained single all his life so the village looked after his funeral too. Around a hundred or so attended a short service at the St Marcel chapel and walked with the coffin to the cemetery.
I remember him as good natured, a boules player who could be brilliant or atrocious, more often the latter, for which he was frequently jided but which he always took in a good spirit. He loved to have a mischievous dig at people. Knowing I was English he always asked if I was American and he would often talk to me in provencal knowing I'd have a job understanding. One of his favourite phrases, throwing a decent boule after a bad one, was “es miou” (c'est mieux), or “ben juga” (bien joué).
Mana, who attended the funeral, wondered why there had to be a ceremony at the chapel since Sylvère had never been religious. This raised a point in my mind that I had often pondered. One is always supposed to have respect for others' religious beliefs and, except in extreme cases, that is a simple enough courtesy to extend. However, the same courtesy never seems to be extended to agnostics or atheists and their beliefs. In the absence of anyone to defend them, they are liable to have religion thrust upon them. And this is accepted.
Footnote 1
Friend Steve has pointed out that in my list of generally eaten river fish I omitted to mention pike, or pike-perch as they are often referred to here. A serious omission; pike can be delicious and is often found on local menus.
Footnote 2
St Marcel is the village patron saint. However, there are two St Marcels. One of them is not only a saint but was also a pope. The village, centuries ago, opted for this one on the grounds that a pope saint would probably offer better protection than a mere saint.
Local strawberries (from Carpentras) are now in full flood in the shops and markets. The first melons, from the same place, and cherries are also appearing and herald my favourite season when peaches and apricots join them and the fruit season really takes off. The apricots here can be the size of small apples and are rich in juice and flavour. Add to that the asparagus that is still plentiful and you really have summer eating.
I was thinking of this while sitting on my balcony, taking in the scent of the honeysuckle, eating strawberries and drinking a glass of rosé wine. It's the last point that brings home that summer is coming. Rosé wine is something of a saviour here for the local vignerons. Good red wines abound in the world and competition is fierce and thus prices to the growers and vintners low. I now love Côtes du Rhône wines but can easily appreciate those from many other parts of the world. Good rosés are much harder to find and this area produces some of the best. However, for me, rosé wine is a summer drink. I hardly drink a single glass in winter. In the summer, outdoors, it seems the ideal drink for lunch or as an aperitif. Rosé wine and strawberries on the balcony in the sunshine is a hard act to beat.
A Sad Note
Sylvère, whom I've mentioned before several times, died last Thursday and was buried today. He was a village character, well liked and generally looked after by the village. The mayor, in a speech at the graveside, summed him up well. He had had a hard life, a foundling from Marseilles, placed when very young with a farming family not far away and exploited by them. He came to the village in his twenties and continued in agricultural work, often taken advantage of because he was something of a simpleton, but latterly watched over and taken care of by the village. He remained single all his life so the village looked after his funeral too. Around a hundred or so attended a short service at the St Marcel chapel and walked with the coffin to the cemetery.
I remember him as good natured, a boules player who could be brilliant or atrocious, more often the latter, for which he was frequently jided but which he always took in a good spirit. He loved to have a mischievous dig at people. Knowing I was English he always asked if I was American and he would often talk to me in provencal knowing I'd have a job understanding. One of his favourite phrases, throwing a decent boule after a bad one, was “es miou” (c'est mieux), or “ben juga” (bien joué).
Mana, who attended the funeral, wondered why there had to be a ceremony at the chapel since Sylvère had never been religious. This raised a point in my mind that I had often pondered. One is always supposed to have respect for others' religious beliefs and, except in extreme cases, that is a simple enough courtesy to extend. However, the same courtesy never seems to be extended to agnostics or atheists and their beliefs. In the absence of anyone to defend them, they are liable to have religion thrust upon them. And this is accepted.
Footnote 1
Friend Steve has pointed out that in my list of generally eaten river fish I omitted to mention pike, or pike-perch as they are often referred to here. A serious omission; pike can be delicious and is often found on local menus.
Footnote 2
St Marcel is the village patron saint. However, there are two St Marcels. One of them is not only a saint but was also a pope. The village, centuries ago, opted for this one on the grounds that a pope saint would probably offer better protection than a mere saint.
vendredi 28 mai 2010
Summer Firsts
Summer Firsts
Last Monday was the first pizza evening of the year that we ate outside on the Bar du Pont terrace. It really is a landmark because, coming later in the year than usual, it will now be the norm until September, barring rain. And I find it adds a lot to the evening, particularly as the evening wears on and the air becames balmy.
Anyway, it sparked me to invite half-a-dozen people to eat on the Thursday and half-a-dozen more to have aperitifs with me on the Friday. Time to get my terrace room going and do more eating and drinking outside. There was more clearing up to be done than I had supposed but it got done and I decided to cook a curry, to make a change for my French guests. Fortunately it went down well and no one left much before midnight. For me, it was a chance to try out the terrace room with the sliding doors back, the fountain going and, hopefully, the scent of honeysuckle drifting on from the terrace.
The honeysuckle has now started blooming, both on the terrace and by the balcony at the front of the house and it really makes a difference to the experience of sitting out in either place. The jasmine is also about to break into flower so there should be lots of pleasant evenings ahead.
Friday began with a trip to Savoillan high in the hills behind for a lunch organised at the auberge there by the Amitié Mollanaise, the village club which had organised the bloules trip. I had been told I had to go to it and found out why when there. The club president got up when everyone was seated and said how proud they all were by the boules team which had finished as top team in the Vaucluse. And I and the other team members were presented with three bottles of wine in a presentation pack. Also, it was pointed out that a photo of the team and a short article were published in the local newspaper, La Tribune. Obviously, this felt great but I couldn't help thinking that it was a bit over the top; after all, we had finished only seventh. The psychology of it seems to be that finishing above all the Vaucluse teams was what was important; it was the Drôme giving two fingers up to the Vaucluse, a bit like winning a derby match.
I had to leave quickly after the (lengthy) lunch in order to get the terrace room ready again for the people coming for aperitifs. That evening also went well but it has been a learning experience for me and I now have a much clearer idea of what is involved in using the terrace room. Firstly, I need more cutlery, plates and glasses stored in the room, to avoid too many trips up and down three flights of stairs. Secondly, I think that ten people is probably the maximum that can comfortably be entertained there. Seating and table space dictate that. Besides which, that is about as much washing up as I am prepared to do at one time!
All in all it has been a hectic 48 hours but a rewarding time.
Last Monday was the first pizza evening of the year that we ate outside on the Bar du Pont terrace. It really is a landmark because, coming later in the year than usual, it will now be the norm until September, barring rain. And I find it adds a lot to the evening, particularly as the evening wears on and the air becames balmy.
Anyway, it sparked me to invite half-a-dozen people to eat on the Thursday and half-a-dozen more to have aperitifs with me on the Friday. Time to get my terrace room going and do more eating and drinking outside. There was more clearing up to be done than I had supposed but it got done and I decided to cook a curry, to make a change for my French guests. Fortunately it went down well and no one left much before midnight. For me, it was a chance to try out the terrace room with the sliding doors back, the fountain going and, hopefully, the scent of honeysuckle drifting on from the terrace.
The honeysuckle has now started blooming, both on the terrace and by the balcony at the front of the house and it really makes a difference to the experience of sitting out in either place. The jasmine is also about to break into flower so there should be lots of pleasant evenings ahead.
Friday began with a trip to Savoillan high in the hills behind for a lunch organised at the auberge there by the Amitié Mollanaise, the village club which had organised the bloules trip. I had been told I had to go to it and found out why when there. The club president got up when everyone was seated and said how proud they all were by the boules team which had finished as top team in the Vaucluse. And I and the other team members were presented with three bottles of wine in a presentation pack. Also, it was pointed out that a photo of the team and a short article were published in the local newspaper, La Tribune. Obviously, this felt great but I couldn't help thinking that it was a bit over the top; after all, we had finished only seventh. The psychology of it seems to be that finishing above all the Vaucluse teams was what was important; it was the Drôme giving two fingers up to the Vaucluse, a bit like winning a derby match.
I had to leave quickly after the (lengthy) lunch in order to get the terrace room ready again for the people coming for aperitifs. That evening also went well but it has been a learning experience for me and I now have a much clearer idea of what is involved in using the terrace room. Firstly, I need more cutlery, plates and glasses stored in the room, to avoid too many trips up and down three flights of stairs. Secondly, I think that ten people is probably the maximum that can comfortably be entertained there. Seating and table space dictate that. Besides which, that is about as much washing up as I am prepared to do at one time!
All in all it has been a hectic 48 hours but a rewarding time.
mardi 25 mai 2010
The River and Reflections Thereon
The Ouvèze
Some time ago, whilst I was sitting with the usual boules crowd before playing, Guy Fabre was reminiscing about the river Ouvèze which flows through the village. Guy, at 93, qualifies probably as the Oldest Inhabitant in the village. Anyway, he remembered swimming as a youth in the river. Looking at it now, that is difficult to imagine. It's a couple of feet deep, maybe three, normally in places but mostly runs a few inches deep over stones. When there's significant rainfall here or upstream, it can rise by six inches or so but that is about it; it certainly, even at its fullest in winter, never looks swimmable.
Daniel came round to eat this evening and also reminisced about the river. What he remembered as a child was eating “fritures” from it. I first came across fritures in Corsica, basically small fry caught locally and deep fried; doused in lemon juice and with some pepper, they taste great. But those I had in Corsica, and have had subsequently, have always been from the sea. It never occurred to me that you might do the same with river fish. But Daniel remembered eating gudgeon, sticklebacks and other small river fry as fritures. His father caught them and his mother cooked them. Trust the French to find some tasty way of eating anything.
There are still plenty of fish in the river but I have never seen a mass of small fry that you might, even if the thought occurred to you, catch and...... well, fry. In general, as I understand it, river fish other than salmon, trout and eels are best avoided. They tend to have a lot of bones and taste of mud, which is more than enough to put off most Englishmen. I do know that the Poles traditionally eat carp at Christmas, but they don't bath for a week beforehand because the carp is occupying the bath being de-muddied. There is a species of carp around here called a “sandre” that is prized and appears on restaurant menus but I presume that also is demuddied somehow before being cooked and served. Daniel didn't mention anything about demuddying the small fry so I presume they hadn't lived long enough to pick up the muddy flavour.
Anyway, it appears that the problem with the river is that more and more water is being taken from it upstream before it reaches the village. I hope someone is monitoring that because it would be awful to contemplate the village bisected by only a dry river bed.
Reflections Thereon
Daniel reckons the problem is too many people, hence more demand for water. It's probably true, although there is no industry upstream to make large demands on water supply, but agriculture of one sort or another may be making significant inroads. However, that is difficult to square with the relatively sparse (for Europe) population around here and abundance of natural springs. If it's true here, it must be true of many, many places in Europe.
I do remember a case where this was certainly true, in my very much earlier meandering from Afghanistan into Pakistan and India. In Afghanistan there were villages of a few dozen or hundred inhabitants with a river/stream as their main source of water and they washed in it, did the laundry in it, pissed in it and drank from it with apparently no ill effect. Across the border into Pakistan and India, the sole difference was that the dozens or hundreds of inhabitants had to be counted in their thousands and the result was typhoid, cholera, etc. Pressure of population. But what do we (can we) do about it?
Some time ago, whilst I was sitting with the usual boules crowd before playing, Guy Fabre was reminiscing about the river Ouvèze which flows through the village. Guy, at 93, qualifies probably as the Oldest Inhabitant in the village. Anyway, he remembered swimming as a youth in the river. Looking at it now, that is difficult to imagine. It's a couple of feet deep, maybe three, normally in places but mostly runs a few inches deep over stones. When there's significant rainfall here or upstream, it can rise by six inches or so but that is about it; it certainly, even at its fullest in winter, never looks swimmable.
Daniel came round to eat this evening and also reminisced about the river. What he remembered as a child was eating “fritures” from it. I first came across fritures in Corsica, basically small fry caught locally and deep fried; doused in lemon juice and with some pepper, they taste great. But those I had in Corsica, and have had subsequently, have always been from the sea. It never occurred to me that you might do the same with river fish. But Daniel remembered eating gudgeon, sticklebacks and other small river fry as fritures. His father caught them and his mother cooked them. Trust the French to find some tasty way of eating anything.
There are still plenty of fish in the river but I have never seen a mass of small fry that you might, even if the thought occurred to you, catch and...... well, fry. In general, as I understand it, river fish other than salmon, trout and eels are best avoided. They tend to have a lot of bones and taste of mud, which is more than enough to put off most Englishmen. I do know that the Poles traditionally eat carp at Christmas, but they don't bath for a week beforehand because the carp is occupying the bath being de-muddied. There is a species of carp around here called a “sandre” that is prized and appears on restaurant menus but I presume that also is demuddied somehow before being cooked and served. Daniel didn't mention anything about demuddying the small fry so I presume they hadn't lived long enough to pick up the muddy flavour.
Anyway, it appears that the problem with the river is that more and more water is being taken from it upstream before it reaches the village. I hope someone is monitoring that because it would be awful to contemplate the village bisected by only a dry river bed.
Reflections Thereon
Daniel reckons the problem is too many people, hence more demand for water. It's probably true, although there is no industry upstream to make large demands on water supply, but agriculture of one sort or another may be making significant inroads. However, that is difficult to square with the relatively sparse (for Europe) population around here and abundance of natural springs. If it's true here, it must be true of many, many places in Europe.
I do remember a case where this was certainly true, in my very much earlier meandering from Afghanistan into Pakistan and India. In Afghanistan there were villages of a few dozen or hundred inhabitants with a river/stream as their main source of water and they washed in it, did the laundry in it, pissed in it and drank from it with apparently no ill effect. Across the border into Pakistan and India, the sole difference was that the dozens or hundreds of inhabitants had to be counted in their thousands and the result was typhoid, cholera, etc. Pressure of population. But what do we (can we) do about it?
dimanche 23 mai 2010
Boules Tournament in Chorges
The Expedition
Seven of us in three cars set off for Chorges in the Hautes Alpes, not far from Briançon and the Italian border, to participate in the annual regional Ainés Ruraux (rural wrinklies) boules tournament. We set off more in hope than expectation, a first team of Daniel Sue (not my usual friend Daniel), Michel and myself, and a last-minute scratch team of Daniel's wife, Dany, Chantal and Michèle, with Michel's wife Chantal as chief supporter. The women had decided at the last moment that rather than be supporters and wear miniskirts and pom-poms (as I had suggested) they would form a scratch team for the tournament.
And we had a very enjoyable three days, the more so as they were blessed with good weather, great mountain scenery and some success in the tournament. We stayed in a holiday village just outside Chorges, overlooking the large Serre-Ponçon lake and surrounded by snow-covered peaks rising from 9000ft to 12000ft. The first evening after our afternoon arrival, a journey of some 2.5 hours, was simply convivial. The next day was nose-to-the-grindstone boules, the following day we explored the area and then we meandered back to Mollans, picknicking on the way. Here's how it all happened.
Boules
The boules tournament was the object of the exercise, although we were all fairly relaxed (externally) about our chances of achieving anything. It was the first time Mollans had entered a team for the tournament so nothing much was expected of us against other teams from the PACA (Provence, Alpes, Côte d'Azur) region, grouped into teams from the Vaucluse, the Var, the Hautes Alpes, the Alpes Maritimes, Haute Corse and Corse du Sud. Since technically Mollans is in the Drôme Department and part of the Rhône Alpes region rather than PACA, we were lumped in with the teams from the neighbouring Vaucluse. The problem with our being in the Rhône Alpes tournament, as we should have been, is that we would have had to travel much further. Mollans is a little outpost in the far south of the Drôme, surrounded by the Vaucluse.
Anyway, there we were and we did better than expected. The women's scratch team which seemed sure to finish last actually finished 24th out of 30 teams, which rewarded their courage in entering. We finished 7th, which was higher than we ever thought we would and could have some significant implications. Our position was higher than any of the other teams from the Vaucluse, which technically means we should represent the Vaucluse in the national tournament which takes place just outside St Tropez in October. However, we are not (technically) in the Vaucluse. I can foresee more than a few Clochemerle moments coming up. No one is easily going to take from us the opportunity of a trip to St Tropez in October; on the other hand, I can foresee the other teams from the Vaucluse having the same desire and objecting that since Mollans is not in the Vaucluse, it can't represent it. We also have a slight problem in that one of our team members feels that we will be slaughtered at national level and doesn't want to be part of that. I think he may be right but think also that the opportunity to play at national level can't be passed up. We shall see..........
I personally was pleased with the kindly meant insults and praise I received from teams we played against: “ces sacrés anglais qui viennent nous embêter” and “le roi des pointeurs”, the latter a bit over the top. We all got cups, mine a vulgarly large one, and went home feeling the exercise from a boules point of view had been worthwhile.
Exploring The Area
We went first to see a 12th century abbey, the Abbaye de Boscodon. It has apparently had a chequered history. It functioned as an abbey until around 1770 when it turned into a forestry centre. Then it was sold after the French Revolution as a state asset and became a small hamlet in its own right, with some 20 families living in it. Finally it was bought in 1972 by an association dedicated to restoring it and is now mostly restored and occupied by a mixed lay and clerical community. The massive architecture and pure uncomplicated lines of its original mediaeval design were certainly worth seeing.
We then went on to see the Demoiselles Coiffées, a number of earth and rock pillars topped by boulders that stand in a small wood. They look striking, if somewhat precarious. The boulders atop the pillars clearly indicated glacial action and they are in fact the result of a former glacier melting. What intrigued me though was how the pillars came to be; it seemed unlikely that they could have formed just because harder rock had resisted the erosion all around. Apparently the glacier melting causes salts to rise by capillary action in certain places and create a form of cement which holds the compacted earth and rock together and resists erosion. Hence the pillars; the boulders on top were simply left there as the glacier melted and the surrounding area eroded. Most of the pillars themselves are now significantly eroded and some of the demoiselles are already “décoiffées”. So the sight won't be around for much longer.
Meandering our way back we stopped for a while in a gorge of the river Méouge. The river is a placed one for most of its length but tumbles down at one point through a gorge where it is spanned by an old bridge that was once part of a mule trail. There was a waterfall and it was easy to see that the river could become quite dangerous there if it flooded; as it did apparently in 1909, sweeping away a mill that stood beside the bridge and of which only a few bits of wall are still visible.
So, a very enjoyable three-day excursion from Mollans,
Seven of us in three cars set off for Chorges in the Hautes Alpes, not far from Briançon and the Italian border, to participate in the annual regional Ainés Ruraux (rural wrinklies) boules tournament. We set off more in hope than expectation, a first team of Daniel Sue (not my usual friend Daniel), Michel and myself, and a last-minute scratch team of Daniel's wife, Dany, Chantal and Michèle, with Michel's wife Chantal as chief supporter. The women had decided at the last moment that rather than be supporters and wear miniskirts and pom-poms (as I had suggested) they would form a scratch team for the tournament.
And we had a very enjoyable three days, the more so as they were blessed with good weather, great mountain scenery and some success in the tournament. We stayed in a holiday village just outside Chorges, overlooking the large Serre-Ponçon lake and surrounded by snow-covered peaks rising from 9000ft to 12000ft. The first evening after our afternoon arrival, a journey of some 2.5 hours, was simply convivial. The next day was nose-to-the-grindstone boules, the following day we explored the area and then we meandered back to Mollans, picknicking on the way. Here's how it all happened.
Boules
The boules tournament was the object of the exercise, although we were all fairly relaxed (externally) about our chances of achieving anything. It was the first time Mollans had entered a team for the tournament so nothing much was expected of us against other teams from the PACA (Provence, Alpes, Côte d'Azur) region, grouped into teams from the Vaucluse, the Var, the Hautes Alpes, the Alpes Maritimes, Haute Corse and Corse du Sud. Since technically Mollans is in the Drôme Department and part of the Rhône Alpes region rather than PACA, we were lumped in with the teams from the neighbouring Vaucluse. The problem with our being in the Rhône Alpes tournament, as we should have been, is that we would have had to travel much further. Mollans is a little outpost in the far south of the Drôme, surrounded by the Vaucluse.
Anyway, there we were and we did better than expected. The women's scratch team which seemed sure to finish last actually finished 24th out of 30 teams, which rewarded their courage in entering. We finished 7th, which was higher than we ever thought we would and could have some significant implications. Our position was higher than any of the other teams from the Vaucluse, which technically means we should represent the Vaucluse in the national tournament which takes place just outside St Tropez in October. However, we are not (technically) in the Vaucluse. I can foresee more than a few Clochemerle moments coming up. No one is easily going to take from us the opportunity of a trip to St Tropez in October; on the other hand, I can foresee the other teams from the Vaucluse having the same desire and objecting that since Mollans is not in the Vaucluse, it can't represent it. We also have a slight problem in that one of our team members feels that we will be slaughtered at national level and doesn't want to be part of that. I think he may be right but think also that the opportunity to play at national level can't be passed up. We shall see..........
I personally was pleased with the kindly meant insults and praise I received from teams we played against: “ces sacrés anglais qui viennent nous embêter” and “le roi des pointeurs”, the latter a bit over the top. We all got cups, mine a vulgarly large one, and went home feeling the exercise from a boules point of view had been worthwhile.
Exploring The Area
We went first to see a 12th century abbey, the Abbaye de Boscodon. It has apparently had a chequered history. It functioned as an abbey until around 1770 when it turned into a forestry centre. Then it was sold after the French Revolution as a state asset and became a small hamlet in its own right, with some 20 families living in it. Finally it was bought in 1972 by an association dedicated to restoring it and is now mostly restored and occupied by a mixed lay and clerical community. The massive architecture and pure uncomplicated lines of its original mediaeval design were certainly worth seeing.
We then went on to see the Demoiselles Coiffées, a number of earth and rock pillars topped by boulders that stand in a small wood. They look striking, if somewhat precarious. The boulders atop the pillars clearly indicated glacial action and they are in fact the result of a former glacier melting. What intrigued me though was how the pillars came to be; it seemed unlikely that they could have formed just because harder rock had resisted the erosion all around. Apparently the glacier melting causes salts to rise by capillary action in certain places and create a form of cement which holds the compacted earth and rock together and resists erosion. Hence the pillars; the boulders on top were simply left there as the glacier melted and the surrounding area eroded. Most of the pillars themselves are now significantly eroded and some of the demoiselles are already “décoiffées”. So the sight won't be around for much longer.
Meandering our way back we stopped for a while in a gorge of the river Méouge. The river is a placed one for most of its length but tumbles down at one point through a gorge where it is spanned by an old bridge that was once part of a mule trail. There was a waterfall and it was easy to see that the river could become quite dangerous there if it flooded; as it did apparently in 1909, sweeping away a mill that stood beside the bridge and of which only a few bits of wall are still visible.
So, a very enjoyable three-day excursion from Mollans,
mercredi 5 mai 2010
A Thought-filled Day
Wine
The trip to the vineyard in Cairanne duly went ahead this evening with Marcel Richaud, the “vigneron”, proving very hospitable and his wine very good. The evening did raise a few issues, though, regarding good wine. His wines are not in fact denied the AOC Cairanne label because the vines are outside the designated area, as I had surmised, but because he chooses not to make them according to the AOC prescriptions. One thing we easily agreed on then is that the AOC labeling now serves no useful purpose. He has no problem selling his wines because enough hoteliers and restaurateurs appreciate them to buy them, at significant prices, even without the AOC certificate.
I think this raises a problem for people outside the area (e.g. in the UK) looking for some guarantee of quality. How do you know the wine is good unless you can taste it? Wine tastings in England are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are here. I suspect that, in the future, we will (have to ) rely on critics, trusted merchants or word of mouth to sort this out. Since the ultimate test is one of personal taste, that is perhaps as it should be. Anyway, even in France, the AOC ticket is definitely dead. Formally killing it will, I assume, mean scrapping a significant number of entrenched jobs so that may take some time to happen.
La Réunion
Back at the ranch and over curry after the wine tasting, conversation between Daniel, his son Kevyn and I turned to La Réunion; I can't quite remember why. Anyway, it proved interesting on several counts. I enquired how people lived with the volcano (the island is essentially just a volcano cone rising out of the sea) and, as I suspected they must, the lava flows always descend down just one side of the island. The islanders and their habitat are on the other side. Daniel said, however, that there was a church in the line of the lava flows that was protected by a barrier that diverted the lava round the church. Most interesting was the church name: Saint Expédite. It, and various local chapels of the same allegiance that had been spawned off it, were all renounced by the Catholic church. Why? Well, it seems that in the dark past some relics had been sent to the island to be placed in the church. However, all that was decipherable on the box that contained them when they arrived was the word “expéditeur” (sender) or part of it. So the islanders naively but in good faith assumed these must be the relics of a Saint Expédite. Never has a saint been so simply cannonised and, what's more, it is a saint exclusive to the island. If you ever have a letter or parcel returned to you in the post, you can thank Saint Expédite.
A further reminiscence of Daniel was that his grandmother had said “l'argent blanchit” (money whitens). The phrase had stuck with him and I can easily understand why. It has almost a double meaning. It was uttered at a time when marriage between “natives” and their colonial masters was generally frowned upon. However, mixed marriages happened. In particular, they could, in the extreme at the time, be sanctioned between very rich locals and a white woman. Significant wealth in an indigenous person meant that he (and it was always a “he”) was partially accepted in the colonial community. So, in a sense, it made him whiter. Also, though, any offspring would presumably be likely to be of lighter skin than their father and so the phrase was true in that sense too. It turns out to be quite a profound statement.
The final reminiscence of Daniel's of note concerned vanilla. Apparently vanilla pods don't naturally carry the familiar vanilla flavour; they have to be tricked into doing so. The man who discovered the trick, in the early 18th century, was one Edmond Albius, a native of La Réunion, who became quite famous as a result and has streets in La Réunion named after him today. I didn't know that. And it seems apposite that the name Albius is not that far from the Latin for white, which is the colour we associate with vanilla.
Computers
Writing of reminiscences and given my computing background, I was reminded of a couple of prophecies by Professor Iann Barron, of various claims to fame. At the time (in 1970), he headed up a company that had designed the first British minicomputer, the Modula One. I was involved in organising a future-looking conference at which he was invited to speak. He had three (correct) prophecies to offer. Firstly, that IBM would rule the computer world for the foreseeable future, secondly that magnetic disks would remain the principal storage medium for the foreseeable future and, thirdly, that everyone would have to learn to use a keyboard. I was reminded of these predictions because I'm sitting at my PC keying and storing this post.
The second two forecasts are, in retrospect, truly remarkable. At the time, you could buy a very expensive (several thousand pounds) report from a renowned American soothsaying company, which shall remain nameless, that stated positively that bubble memory would replace disks before the 1970s were out. Can you even remember having heard of bubble memory now? At the time, keyboards were very much the preserve of predominantly female secretaries and typing pool operatives. Who could ever have imagined, then, the explosion of PCs, mobile phones and other hand-held keyboard devices that both sexes use routinely today? Everybody (virtually) has learned to use a keyboard.
Iann Barron went on to various professorial chairs and deserved acclamation in his field.
The trip to the vineyard in Cairanne duly went ahead this evening with Marcel Richaud, the “vigneron”, proving very hospitable and his wine very good. The evening did raise a few issues, though, regarding good wine. His wines are not in fact denied the AOC Cairanne label because the vines are outside the designated area, as I had surmised, but because he chooses not to make them according to the AOC prescriptions. One thing we easily agreed on then is that the AOC labeling now serves no useful purpose. He has no problem selling his wines because enough hoteliers and restaurateurs appreciate them to buy them, at significant prices, even without the AOC certificate.
I think this raises a problem for people outside the area (e.g. in the UK) looking for some guarantee of quality. How do you know the wine is good unless you can taste it? Wine tastings in England are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are here. I suspect that, in the future, we will (have to ) rely on critics, trusted merchants or word of mouth to sort this out. Since the ultimate test is one of personal taste, that is perhaps as it should be. Anyway, even in France, the AOC ticket is definitely dead. Formally killing it will, I assume, mean scrapping a significant number of entrenched jobs so that may take some time to happen.
La Réunion
Back at the ranch and over curry after the wine tasting, conversation between Daniel, his son Kevyn and I turned to La Réunion; I can't quite remember why. Anyway, it proved interesting on several counts. I enquired how people lived with the volcano (the island is essentially just a volcano cone rising out of the sea) and, as I suspected they must, the lava flows always descend down just one side of the island. The islanders and their habitat are on the other side. Daniel said, however, that there was a church in the line of the lava flows that was protected by a barrier that diverted the lava round the church. Most interesting was the church name: Saint Expédite. It, and various local chapels of the same allegiance that had been spawned off it, were all renounced by the Catholic church. Why? Well, it seems that in the dark past some relics had been sent to the island to be placed in the church. However, all that was decipherable on the box that contained them when they arrived was the word “expéditeur” (sender) or part of it. So the islanders naively but in good faith assumed these must be the relics of a Saint Expédite. Never has a saint been so simply cannonised and, what's more, it is a saint exclusive to the island. If you ever have a letter or parcel returned to you in the post, you can thank Saint Expédite.
A further reminiscence of Daniel was that his grandmother had said “l'argent blanchit” (money whitens). The phrase had stuck with him and I can easily understand why. It has almost a double meaning. It was uttered at a time when marriage between “natives” and their colonial masters was generally frowned upon. However, mixed marriages happened. In particular, they could, in the extreme at the time, be sanctioned between very rich locals and a white woman. Significant wealth in an indigenous person meant that he (and it was always a “he”) was partially accepted in the colonial community. So, in a sense, it made him whiter. Also, though, any offspring would presumably be likely to be of lighter skin than their father and so the phrase was true in that sense too. It turns out to be quite a profound statement.
The final reminiscence of Daniel's of note concerned vanilla. Apparently vanilla pods don't naturally carry the familiar vanilla flavour; they have to be tricked into doing so. The man who discovered the trick, in the early 18th century, was one Edmond Albius, a native of La Réunion, who became quite famous as a result and has streets in La Réunion named after him today. I didn't know that. And it seems apposite that the name Albius is not that far from the Latin for white, which is the colour we associate with vanilla.
Computers
Writing of reminiscences and given my computing background, I was reminded of a couple of prophecies by Professor Iann Barron, of various claims to fame. At the time (in 1970), he headed up a company that had designed the first British minicomputer, the Modula One. I was involved in organising a future-looking conference at which he was invited to speak. He had three (correct) prophecies to offer. Firstly, that IBM would rule the computer world for the foreseeable future, secondly that magnetic disks would remain the principal storage medium for the foreseeable future and, thirdly, that everyone would have to learn to use a keyboard. I was reminded of these predictions because I'm sitting at my PC keying and storing this post.
The second two forecasts are, in retrospect, truly remarkable. At the time, you could buy a very expensive (several thousand pounds) report from a renowned American soothsaying company, which shall remain nameless, that stated positively that bubble memory would replace disks before the 1970s were out. Can you even remember having heard of bubble memory now? At the time, keyboards were very much the preserve of predominantly female secretaries and typing pool operatives. Who could ever have imagined, then, the explosion of PCs, mobile phones and other hand-held keyboard devices that both sexes use routinely today? Everybody (virtually) has learned to use a keyboard.
Iann Barron went on to various professorial chairs and deserved acclamation in his field.
mardi 4 mai 2010
Back Again
Oh To Be In England.......
Well I was, and in April too. Having been warned of a mini heat wave which was top hit the country the weekend I arrived I took only one sweater; which proved to be just about enough. However, my mother's birthday went well and during my stay I managed to buy her quite a lot of plants and also to plant them. Her garden is looking good and she seems pleased with it. It's important because that and the birds that come to feed there are her main source of entertainment now.
I expected to see lots of spring flowers on my drive from Southampton airport and did but to my surprise they were cowslips rather than primroses and in abundance. When I was young and in the Chiddingfold area, primroses were common and cowslips quite rare. The reverse seems now to be true or is this just an exceptional year? There were wood anemones also, and I managed to see some bluebell woods before I returned home. Primroses we have here but not cowslips, wood anemones or bluebells.
I had noticed on my drive down to Avignon airport that the Judas trees and tamarisks there were all showing their colours and, on my return, they were back in the village too. The coronilla filling the wayside and hillsides with yellow have been joined now by broom and so the broom will continue for another couple of months as the coronilla give up. Also on the wayside are abundant purple salvias, white campion, red poppies and lime green euphorbias. The latter two look great when growing together.
People passing by still compliment me on the front of the house but it's looking a bit sad to me, with the bulb flowers now all dying. My pansies too seem to have contracted some sort of pansy rot, a thin film of mildew on the leaves. However I shan't do anything about them until I return from the Great Boules Contest in the Alps starting in ten days' time. The women coming with us have said they will act as cheer leaders so I've told them I expect to see miniskirts and pom-poms on all of them. And we need a chant of some sort, such as “Mollans, Mollans, on gagne tout le temps”. (In my dreams!). I won't record some of the more scurrilous chants thought of.
Avignon airport, by the way, is a dream; the way every airport should be. It does depend somewhat though on having only two or three flights a day coming and going (absolute maximum, and that is in peak season). The airport building is little larger than my house, you can park right outside for a week for a pittance and if you have to wait more than 10 minutes for your luggage or there are more than three people in front of you to check in then it's obvious that something is terribly wrong. There can be a slight downside; my plane arrived about a half-hour early once and, since the customs people weren't supposed to be on duty until the scheduled arrival time, they refused to let the passengers in until then. So we waited outside the arrivals entrance until we were due to be there. Only in France......
Friends Steve and Jo kindly ensured my seedlings were watered while I was away; they now need potting on or transferring to where they are to grow and I need to get that done quickly so that they are able to look after themselves before I leave. But the weather here continues to be inconsistent so it's a question of dodging the showers to get them in.
This afternoon I went to the Rieu Frais vineyard in St Jalle to try to get some Viognier in bag-in-box. Not only did they not have any but they said they wouldn't have any this year as the harvest had been 20% down last year. They have it in bottles but at 6.90 euros per bottle it's not for everyday drinking. The Domaine Durban in Beaumes de Venise has a respectable Viognier at a couple of euros less so that will have to be it. At Rieu Frais they haven't yet used the English translation of their brochure that I did for them last year; said they were very grateful but hadn't had the time (with the tourist season already started). Well, we are in Provence.
On my way back I noticed some small flowers that looked interesting by the wayside, one lot pink and the other lot blue. I have no idea what they are but they are clearly alpines and they were on the St Jalle side of the mountain; I've not seen them this side. I then found to my chagrin that I hadn't got the usual trowel in the boot of my car so there was no chance of digging up a sample to plant in my garden; plants like that here all have long tap roots to take them through the summer and there's no chance of getting the root up without a trowel or similar. Jo gave me a small penknife to attach to my car keyring for just such an occasion but I'd taken it off to travel to England (no chance of getting it through airport security) and hadn't put it back on. Tough.
Daniel called round this evening for a whisky after working on his film on olives this afternoon. He invited me to go with himself and Kevyn to visit a vineyard that Kevyn knows in Cairanne tomorrow evening. I've already tasted the vineyard's top of the range wine at Daniel's and it's very good but expensive for a table wine at around 7 euros per bottle. Presumably the vineyard is outside the designated AOC area. When France gets around to it (next century?) it will drop the AOC system. It no longer serves any useful purpose that I can see. Nobody now produces plonk and expects to be able to sell it in an increasingly discerning market. The market for the Algerian/Moroccan red that was cheap enough to take to a party and aunty's Blue Nun have now gone. The best value wines around in France tend to be those that fall outside AOC areas and therefore can't command the AOC premium price but are often better than their AOC neighbours. How you find these, other than by tasting, is another question. Anyway, the visit should be suitably liquid and I've invited Daniel and Kevyn back here to eat afterwards. I feel a curry coming on......
Well I was, and in April too. Having been warned of a mini heat wave which was top hit the country the weekend I arrived I took only one sweater; which proved to be just about enough. However, my mother's birthday went well and during my stay I managed to buy her quite a lot of plants and also to plant them. Her garden is looking good and she seems pleased with it. It's important because that and the birds that come to feed there are her main source of entertainment now.
I expected to see lots of spring flowers on my drive from Southampton airport and did but to my surprise they were cowslips rather than primroses and in abundance. When I was young and in the Chiddingfold area, primroses were common and cowslips quite rare. The reverse seems now to be true or is this just an exceptional year? There were wood anemones also, and I managed to see some bluebell woods before I returned home. Primroses we have here but not cowslips, wood anemones or bluebells.
I had noticed on my drive down to Avignon airport that the Judas trees and tamarisks there were all showing their colours and, on my return, they were back in the village too. The coronilla filling the wayside and hillsides with yellow have been joined now by broom and so the broom will continue for another couple of months as the coronilla give up. Also on the wayside are abundant purple salvias, white campion, red poppies and lime green euphorbias. The latter two look great when growing together.
People passing by still compliment me on the front of the house but it's looking a bit sad to me, with the bulb flowers now all dying. My pansies too seem to have contracted some sort of pansy rot, a thin film of mildew on the leaves. However I shan't do anything about them until I return from the Great Boules Contest in the Alps starting in ten days' time. The women coming with us have said they will act as cheer leaders so I've told them I expect to see miniskirts and pom-poms on all of them. And we need a chant of some sort, such as “Mollans, Mollans, on gagne tout le temps”. (In my dreams!). I won't record some of the more scurrilous chants thought of.
Avignon airport, by the way, is a dream; the way every airport should be. It does depend somewhat though on having only two or three flights a day coming and going (absolute maximum, and that is in peak season). The airport building is little larger than my house, you can park right outside for a week for a pittance and if you have to wait more than 10 minutes for your luggage or there are more than three people in front of you to check in then it's obvious that something is terribly wrong. There can be a slight downside; my plane arrived about a half-hour early once and, since the customs people weren't supposed to be on duty until the scheduled arrival time, they refused to let the passengers in until then. So we waited outside the arrivals entrance until we were due to be there. Only in France......
Friends Steve and Jo kindly ensured my seedlings were watered while I was away; they now need potting on or transferring to where they are to grow and I need to get that done quickly so that they are able to look after themselves before I leave. But the weather here continues to be inconsistent so it's a question of dodging the showers to get them in.
This afternoon I went to the Rieu Frais vineyard in St Jalle to try to get some Viognier in bag-in-box. Not only did they not have any but they said they wouldn't have any this year as the harvest had been 20% down last year. They have it in bottles but at 6.90 euros per bottle it's not for everyday drinking. The Domaine Durban in Beaumes de Venise has a respectable Viognier at a couple of euros less so that will have to be it. At Rieu Frais they haven't yet used the English translation of their brochure that I did for them last year; said they were very grateful but hadn't had the time (with the tourist season already started). Well, we are in Provence.
On my way back I noticed some small flowers that looked interesting by the wayside, one lot pink and the other lot blue. I have no idea what they are but they are clearly alpines and they were on the St Jalle side of the mountain; I've not seen them this side. I then found to my chagrin that I hadn't got the usual trowel in the boot of my car so there was no chance of digging up a sample to plant in my garden; plants like that here all have long tap roots to take them through the summer and there's no chance of getting the root up without a trowel or similar. Jo gave me a small penknife to attach to my car keyring for just such an occasion but I'd taken it off to travel to England (no chance of getting it through airport security) and hadn't put it back on. Tough.
Daniel called round this evening for a whisky after working on his film on olives this afternoon. He invited me to go with himself and Kevyn to visit a vineyard that Kevyn knows in Cairanne tomorrow evening. I've already tasted the vineyard's top of the range wine at Daniel's and it's very good but expensive for a table wine at around 7 euros per bottle. Presumably the vineyard is outside the designated AOC area. When France gets around to it (next century?) it will drop the AOC system. It no longer serves any useful purpose that I can see. Nobody now produces plonk and expects to be able to sell it in an increasingly discerning market. The market for the Algerian/Moroccan red that was cheap enough to take to a party and aunty's Blue Nun have now gone. The best value wines around in France tend to be those that fall outside AOC areas and therefore can't command the AOC premium price but are often better than their AOC neighbours. How you find these, other than by tasting, is another question. Anyway, the visit should be suitably liquid and I've invited Daniel and Kevyn back here to eat afterwards. I feel a curry coming on......
mercredi 21 avril 2010
Gardening
Gardening
Since I go on about gardening a lot I thought my faithful readers might like to see some of the results. Being one of the verbally rather than visually oriented generation, I tend to neglect pictures. So above is a photo of the back garden behind and above the small terrace.
There will be more in the future. At the moment, the front of the house is between stages: the daffodils and narcissi are starting to die and the summer planting has yet to be done. I'll get down to it when I return from England. The blue pansies though should be good for another month.
samedi 17 avril 2010
More On Translation, etc
More On Translation
It's always words with Daniel. He got me to proof read his series of parodies of La Flèche's speech to Frosine about Harpagon in Molière's play L'Avare. He's written them for the “Lire En Mai” book festival in Nyons in the first week of June, of which he is one of the organisers. It's certainly true that it's always better to have someone else proof read whatever you have written. He wants to publish these himself and also asked me for some help with formatting.
So I duly went to lunch with him today and I had a task for him. I find it difficult to sort out which lines of activity change the word in French according to the gender of the activist and which don't. For instance, a primary teacher, an “instituteur” becomes an “institutrice” if the teacher is a female but a secondary school teacher is always a “professeur”, masculine or feminine. I had a whole list for him to go through and advise me on. Contrary to my expectations, most of the words do change according to the gender of the activist. I didn't know (or expect) that you could have a “bouchère”. Most of the list I was uncertain about; for instance, “électricienne” and “vigneronne”. They turn out to be OK. “Plombier”, it seems, doesn't change but we couldn't think of many others that didn't. One surprise was “chauffeuse” which my trusted dictionary allows as a female chauffeur but Daniel insisted was always and not just also a piece of furniture.
This reminded me of previous scribblings about true/false friends in language and humbling mistakes waiting to be made. Friend Steve had commented at the time that I'd omitted the obvious example, which was “baiser”. I had and it was surprising because I had had a real-life example of this. “Un baiser” is a kiss but the verb “baiser” is rather more. Back in the 1970s I was invited to give a talk at Rennes University by John Laski (brother of Marghanita, another wordsmith), who happened to be teaching there at the time. John's grasp of French was nowhere near as good as his grasp of computing. The computing department at Rennes University had acquired a very pretty new secretary whom John wanted to introduce me to and he did so in his melodramatic manner taking her hand, kissing it and saying: “Comme elle est belle; je veux la baiser”. This was quite possibly what he actually wanted to do but it wasn't what he actually intended to say. The girl fortunately understood the mistake and shrugged off the intended compliment, laughing. “Bises”, even “grosses bises” or bisous” are much safer words in polite company.
Etc
I've been pinching bits of the road again but this time only a few centimetres. There's a kind of concrete box to the side of my front door which has been partly broken by a lilac tree growing though it. I've been looking at a small hole with cracked concrete around for some time, wondering whether I can get a honeysuckle plant in there, So today I removed a piece of the cracked concrete and found the hole is not quite big enough; there's too much lilac tree in it. However, moving the cracked concrete out into the road by just a few centimetres allowed me to get a honeysuckle plant in. So now I have a cementing job for tomorrow to get the concrete pieces reset around the somewhat larger hole. I don't think anyone will notice and, more importantly, I don't think they will care. They'll just enjoy the honeysuckle when it blooms. It will climb up the lilac tree along with a clematis I planted last year and which is already established.
The weather here continues to be mixed, mostly sun (around 20 degrees) with small storms in the late afternoon. The storms dictate when the boules sessions end and I'm not doing so badly now; five straight wins today. It seems the people who put the drains underneath the boules pitch are coming back to fill in a rather large depression under which the drains lie. That should rectify some of the more difficult places to play.
It's back to England next week for my mother's birthday. Spring was always my favourite season in England and I shall go the rounds of the garden centres to get some colour into my mother's garden.
It's always words with Daniel. He got me to proof read his series of parodies of La Flèche's speech to Frosine about Harpagon in Molière's play L'Avare. He's written them for the “Lire En Mai” book festival in Nyons in the first week of June, of which he is one of the organisers. It's certainly true that it's always better to have someone else proof read whatever you have written. He wants to publish these himself and also asked me for some help with formatting.
So I duly went to lunch with him today and I had a task for him. I find it difficult to sort out which lines of activity change the word in French according to the gender of the activist and which don't. For instance, a primary teacher, an “instituteur” becomes an “institutrice” if the teacher is a female but a secondary school teacher is always a “professeur”, masculine or feminine. I had a whole list for him to go through and advise me on. Contrary to my expectations, most of the words do change according to the gender of the activist. I didn't know (or expect) that you could have a “bouchère”. Most of the list I was uncertain about; for instance, “électricienne” and “vigneronne”. They turn out to be OK. “Plombier”, it seems, doesn't change but we couldn't think of many others that didn't. One surprise was “chauffeuse” which my trusted dictionary allows as a female chauffeur but Daniel insisted was always and not just also a piece of furniture.
This reminded me of previous scribblings about true/false friends in language and humbling mistakes waiting to be made. Friend Steve had commented at the time that I'd omitted the obvious example, which was “baiser”. I had and it was surprising because I had had a real-life example of this. “Un baiser” is a kiss but the verb “baiser” is rather more. Back in the 1970s I was invited to give a talk at Rennes University by John Laski (brother of Marghanita, another wordsmith), who happened to be teaching there at the time. John's grasp of French was nowhere near as good as his grasp of computing. The computing department at Rennes University had acquired a very pretty new secretary whom John wanted to introduce me to and he did so in his melodramatic manner taking her hand, kissing it and saying: “Comme elle est belle; je veux la baiser”. This was quite possibly what he actually wanted to do but it wasn't what he actually intended to say. The girl fortunately understood the mistake and shrugged off the intended compliment, laughing. “Bises”, even “grosses bises” or bisous” are much safer words in polite company.
Etc
I've been pinching bits of the road again but this time only a few centimetres. There's a kind of concrete box to the side of my front door which has been partly broken by a lilac tree growing though it. I've been looking at a small hole with cracked concrete around for some time, wondering whether I can get a honeysuckle plant in there, So today I removed a piece of the cracked concrete and found the hole is not quite big enough; there's too much lilac tree in it. However, moving the cracked concrete out into the road by just a few centimetres allowed me to get a honeysuckle plant in. So now I have a cementing job for tomorrow to get the concrete pieces reset around the somewhat larger hole. I don't think anyone will notice and, more importantly, I don't think they will care. They'll just enjoy the honeysuckle when it blooms. It will climb up the lilac tree along with a clematis I planted last year and which is already established.
The weather here continues to be mixed, mostly sun (around 20 degrees) with small storms in the late afternoon. The storms dictate when the boules sessions end and I'm not doing so badly now; five straight wins today. It seems the people who put the drains underneath the boules pitch are coming back to fill in a rather large depression under which the drains lie. That should rectify some of the more difficult places to play.
It's back to England next week for my mother's birthday. Spring was always my favourite season in England and I shall go the rounds of the garden centres to get some colour into my mother's garden.
mercredi 14 avril 2010
Spring Events
Blossom Time
There's been blossom around for almost a month now. The first trees around to come into bloom are the almond and the winter cherry. They are followed by the peach, fruiting cherry, apricot and plum (and apple) and that is now happening. There aren't so many peach trees locally but all the others are adding their blooms and, within a week or so, the whole area will be ablaze with fruit tree blossom.
I've taken a number of photos of acres of fruit trees in the past but never yet got one that really did justice to the scene. The problem seems to be that you need either to be above the trees looking down or in amongst and under them. Otherwise what you get is a thin line of blossom in a much larger scene. I'll be trying again to capture what the (selective) eye sees. It's strange in a way because I have several shots of fields of poppies that really work and that, on the face of it, is a similar challenge. It probably needs someone much more adept at photography than me to resolve the problem.
Village Events
The Bar du Pont has duly changed hands and the seemingly perennial Jacques and Monique have been replaced by new owners. The ten days the bar was closed were put to good effect as the beer barrels and freezer have now disappeared from view, resulting in much more space in the bar which has been welcome for the last two crowded pizza evenings. Also, a redecoration job has made the bar a lot lighter and a big new TV screen (ready for the World Cup?) and a subscription to Eurosport have added to the new image. And the new owners have been going out of their way to be welcoming.
The change of ownership of the hairdressers doesn't happen until next Saturday (apéro in the Salle de Fêtes that evening) but the library (sorry, médiathèque) was duly officially opened the Saturday before last. This needs some explaining unless you are used to municipal cock-ups.
The inauguration itself was uneventful in the extreme, in that people went into the library and and wandered around it and then were asked to go outside for the official opening and cutting of the ribbon to allow entry. What ensued was some 90 minutes of every conceivable person involved at local, departmental and regional level giving speeches as a result of which I understood what a book was and that the Internet was important too. By the end it was starting to rain and people were disappearing so I think I twigged the purpose of all this. There was a free apéro offered after the speeches and the length of the speeches ensured that few enough people hung on to fit within the free apéro budget.
Budget was certainly a pertinent point. The new building is nothing less than magnificent and apparently cost around 700,000 euros, financed at various levels in the local government hierarchy. It was mentioned during the speeches that alternative projects considered included the possibility of a covered boulodrome, so I'm not sure they got their priorities right; but I suppose that is arguable. However.............there is a remarkable lack of book shelves and books in the library; strange, for a library. Also, the impeccably furnished multimedia room lacks any computers. It appears the budget didn't stretch to such lesser items. These will follow......? It seems crazy but I suspect that, within a year or maybe a year and a bit, there will be a good library here. One thing I've learned here is to trust evolution. It takes time to get things right but they eventually seem to happen. It reminds me rather of a (sarcastic) cartoon that was pinned up in an office I worked in which showed two elephants mating and had the caption: around here things happen at a high level, involve a lot of noise and trumpeting and it takes two years to get a result. There's a follow-on project to put up a good website for the village (with me as official English translator) so we shall see......
Following on from the opening of the library there was a Saturday morning exhibition for the “writers of Mollans”. I duly attended with the (obsolete) computer books I have written and a selection from the hundreds of press articles I have kept. The principal interest seemed to be in the photos of computers in the first book I wrote, machines much less powerful than the modern PC and that would easily have taken up most of the space in the new library building. For anyone unfamiliar with the computing scene in the early 1960s (only 50 years ago), the machines appear antediluvian. Some visitors also tried out their English on my press articles and commented (variously) on the associated photos of me in earlier years. The other writers had mostly written autobiographical accounts of their lives in and around Mollans, some of them very interesting.
Translating Websites
I commented previously on translating the Chateau du Cros website and noticed recently that they had not incorporated my translation. A quick query produced the response that, as a result of being in dispute with the culprits of the original translation, they were having to create a completely new website. Hence the delay.
In the meantime, friend Michèle has managed to incorporate my translation of her gîte website (www.lariaille.com) via her son (an IT worker) and is delighted. So that's one good job done. And I'm now out of Viognier wine and so will have to go to the Rieu Frais vineyard to get some more and, while there, see if they have used my translation of their brochure. Could be worth a discount or a bottle or two more...........................
There's been blossom around for almost a month now. The first trees around to come into bloom are the almond and the winter cherry. They are followed by the peach, fruiting cherry, apricot and plum (and apple) and that is now happening. There aren't so many peach trees locally but all the others are adding their blooms and, within a week or so, the whole area will be ablaze with fruit tree blossom.
I've taken a number of photos of acres of fruit trees in the past but never yet got one that really did justice to the scene. The problem seems to be that you need either to be above the trees looking down or in amongst and under them. Otherwise what you get is a thin line of blossom in a much larger scene. I'll be trying again to capture what the (selective) eye sees. It's strange in a way because I have several shots of fields of poppies that really work and that, on the face of it, is a similar challenge. It probably needs someone much more adept at photography than me to resolve the problem.
Village Events
The Bar du Pont has duly changed hands and the seemingly perennial Jacques and Monique have been replaced by new owners. The ten days the bar was closed were put to good effect as the beer barrels and freezer have now disappeared from view, resulting in much more space in the bar which has been welcome for the last two crowded pizza evenings. Also, a redecoration job has made the bar a lot lighter and a big new TV screen (ready for the World Cup?) and a subscription to Eurosport have added to the new image. And the new owners have been going out of their way to be welcoming.
The change of ownership of the hairdressers doesn't happen until next Saturday (apéro in the Salle de Fêtes that evening) but the library (sorry, médiathèque) was duly officially opened the Saturday before last. This needs some explaining unless you are used to municipal cock-ups.
The inauguration itself was uneventful in the extreme, in that people went into the library and and wandered around it and then were asked to go outside for the official opening and cutting of the ribbon to allow entry. What ensued was some 90 minutes of every conceivable person involved at local, departmental and regional level giving speeches as a result of which I understood what a book was and that the Internet was important too. By the end it was starting to rain and people were disappearing so I think I twigged the purpose of all this. There was a free apéro offered after the speeches and the length of the speeches ensured that few enough people hung on to fit within the free apéro budget.
Budget was certainly a pertinent point. The new building is nothing less than magnificent and apparently cost around 700,000 euros, financed at various levels in the local government hierarchy. It was mentioned during the speeches that alternative projects considered included the possibility of a covered boulodrome, so I'm not sure they got their priorities right; but I suppose that is arguable. However.............there is a remarkable lack of book shelves and books in the library; strange, for a library. Also, the impeccably furnished multimedia room lacks any computers. It appears the budget didn't stretch to such lesser items. These will follow......? It seems crazy but I suspect that, within a year or maybe a year and a bit, there will be a good library here. One thing I've learned here is to trust evolution. It takes time to get things right but they eventually seem to happen. It reminds me rather of a (sarcastic) cartoon that was pinned up in an office I worked in which showed two elephants mating and had the caption: around here things happen at a high level, involve a lot of noise and trumpeting and it takes two years to get a result. There's a follow-on project to put up a good website for the village (with me as official English translator) so we shall see......
Following on from the opening of the library there was a Saturday morning exhibition for the “writers of Mollans”. I duly attended with the (obsolete) computer books I have written and a selection from the hundreds of press articles I have kept. The principal interest seemed to be in the photos of computers in the first book I wrote, machines much less powerful than the modern PC and that would easily have taken up most of the space in the new library building. For anyone unfamiliar with the computing scene in the early 1960s (only 50 years ago), the machines appear antediluvian. Some visitors also tried out their English on my press articles and commented (variously) on the associated photos of me in earlier years. The other writers had mostly written autobiographical accounts of their lives in and around Mollans, some of them very interesting.
Translating Websites
I commented previously on translating the Chateau du Cros website and noticed recently that they had not incorporated my translation. A quick query produced the response that, as a result of being in dispute with the culprits of the original translation, they were having to create a completely new website. Hence the delay.
In the meantime, friend Michèle has managed to incorporate my translation of her gîte website (www.lariaille.com) via her son (an IT worker) and is delighted. So that's one good job done. And I'm now out of Viognier wine and so will have to go to the Rieu Frais vineyard to get some more and, while there, see if they have used my translation of their brochure. Could be worth a discount or a bottle or two more...........................
vendredi 2 avril 2010
Happy Times
Phil's Birthday
Friday evening I was invited to Philippe's party to celebrate his 75th birthday, together with his other friends from along the road and one or two strays. It was what is called here an “apéro habillé”, supposedly less than a dinner but food with drinks. We drank a sparkling muscat throughout the evening and were regaled with what in Spain would be called “tapas” but which were definitely French in nature. Brilliant food which Simone, Philippe's wife had organised, and it kept coming and coming.
With everyone replete and well oiled a bit before midnight, Patrique got out his guitar and we got down to singing; Brassens of course (mostly). I tried to think of how a similar evening in England might have ended with songs but couldn't think what the songs might be. True, some English friends and I had ended an evening singing pop tunes of the 1950s (see a January posting) but somehow it wasn't quite the same. Two things were different; Brassens songs are undemanding of the singer. At my previous pop evening we had sung badly (I certainly had) but nobody minded. You can't really sing Brassens badly; all you generally need is a low growl interjected with an occasional high note which you don't have to hit (Brassens himself never did). And the lyrics are totally different. I commented before on the banality of the lyrics in 1950s pop and the lyrics of Brassens' songs are anything but banal: many are taken from poems from the likes of Prévert and Louis Aragon. If I'd been at a similar evening in England, what would we have sung that had any kind of equivalence? Probably the ubiquitously murdered “I Did It My Way”, maybe “On Ilkley Moor Bartat”, maybe some traditional rugby club songs, maybe some old East End favourites like “My Old Man's A Dustman”. These have their own cachet, if you can call it that, and are certainly redolent of a time and place but they don't have anything like the flavour of Brassens. And the French all seem to know their Brassens. If the French had tests of “Frenchness” as a prerequisite for acquiring nationality, as are being proposed in Britain, surely one of them would be the ability to know a Brassens song or two by heart..
Footnote On The Camargue
I forgot to mention salt production in my previous posting on the Camargue. It always was, and still is, a major industry in the area. And with food aficionados getting into different varieties of salt, Camargue salt has its own place amongst the varieties.
Another point I omitted to mention was the “gardians”. These are the people who herd the black bulls of the area. In times past it was mostly children who kept an eye out for where sheep or cattle went and the “gardians” were simply responsible for branding the bulls, a claim on ownership. In more recent times fencing has more or less eliminated the need for both but the branding and “gardians” persist as a tradition. The “gardians” also have a traditional garb that seems to owe more to Spain than France, although there is no evident Spanish influence in the area. Maybe it comes from the Italian workers who were drafted in during the wine bonanza or, perhaps more likely, it is a gypsy influence congruent with the former lifestyle. Whatever, “gardians” is not a French word other than in this special case and the plural “lou gardianoun” even less so. It's pure occitan.
Friday evening I was invited to Philippe's party to celebrate his 75th birthday, together with his other friends from along the road and one or two strays. It was what is called here an “apéro habillé”, supposedly less than a dinner but food with drinks. We drank a sparkling muscat throughout the evening and were regaled with what in Spain would be called “tapas” but which were definitely French in nature. Brilliant food which Simone, Philippe's wife had organised, and it kept coming and coming.
With everyone replete and well oiled a bit before midnight, Patrique got out his guitar and we got down to singing; Brassens of course (mostly). I tried to think of how a similar evening in England might have ended with songs but couldn't think what the songs might be. True, some English friends and I had ended an evening singing pop tunes of the 1950s (see a January posting) but somehow it wasn't quite the same. Two things were different; Brassens songs are undemanding of the singer. At my previous pop evening we had sung badly (I certainly had) but nobody minded. You can't really sing Brassens badly; all you generally need is a low growl interjected with an occasional high note which you don't have to hit (Brassens himself never did). And the lyrics are totally different. I commented before on the banality of the lyrics in 1950s pop and the lyrics of Brassens' songs are anything but banal: many are taken from poems from the likes of Prévert and Louis Aragon. If I'd been at a similar evening in England, what would we have sung that had any kind of equivalence? Probably the ubiquitously murdered “I Did It My Way”, maybe “On Ilkley Moor Bartat”, maybe some traditional rugby club songs, maybe some old East End favourites like “My Old Man's A Dustman”. These have their own cachet, if you can call it that, and are certainly redolent of a time and place but they don't have anything like the flavour of Brassens. And the French all seem to know their Brassens. If the French had tests of “Frenchness” as a prerequisite for acquiring nationality, as are being proposed in Britain, surely one of them would be the ability to know a Brassens song or two by heart..
Footnote On The Camargue
I forgot to mention salt production in my previous posting on the Camargue. It always was, and still is, a major industry in the area. And with food aficionados getting into different varieties of salt, Camargue salt has its own place amongst the varieties.
Another point I omitted to mention was the “gardians”. These are the people who herd the black bulls of the area. In times past it was mostly children who kept an eye out for where sheep or cattle went and the “gardians” were simply responsible for branding the bulls, a claim on ownership. In more recent times fencing has more or less eliminated the need for both but the branding and “gardians” persist as a tradition. The “gardians” also have a traditional garb that seems to owe more to Spain than France, although there is no evident Spanish influence in the area. Maybe it comes from the Italian workers who were drafted in during the wine bonanza or, perhaps more likely, it is a gypsy influence congruent with the former lifestyle. Whatever, “gardians” is not a French word other than in this special case and the plural “lou gardianoun” even less so. It's pure occitan.
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