The Last Ten Days

Computers, Computers
Two failures happened ten days ago. My keyboard started to play up (I've lost several keys on the left-hand side) and I lost my Internet connection. The former means a new machine, I think, as the one I have is five years old and I've already had to replace the DVD R/W. I can get generally get round the lost keys by running CHARMAP, copying and pasting but this is tedious. The Internet connection went out because of a faulty transformer on the wireless box and that is now replaced.

I was surprised by my reliance on the Internet. I've got into the habit of perusing various news aggregator and football gossip sites while drinking my early morning coffee and found that watching news on TV was no substitute. In fact I found that even during the rest of the day I used the Internet far more than I had thought I did. It's been twenty years since my son set up a bulletin board and I first encountered the Internet and in that time my reliance on it has become extreme.

End Of Film
The recording session ten days ago finished my involvement in the film on olive trees. Recording of the English version of the female interviews still has to be done but friend Jo will do that. The final phase of my recording raised one problem and one interesting point.

The problem was that Daniel, when he wrote out the French script, hadn't bothered to write out the interviews word for word but had simply summarised when the interviewee was rambling on a bit. This meant that, when I recorded the English version, it fell woefully short of the length of the French. What we had to do was start the English version a couple of seconds after the interviewee started talking; that is common practice in translation so that worked OK. Then I had to speak slowly and introduce some “ums”, “ers” and pauses until I got the required length. It was actually quite difficult to do.

The interesting point arose when the Head of the Order of Olive Trees in Nyons discussed the celebration of the new year's olive oil. The ceremony is called an “alicoque” after the Provencal words for garlic and bread. Pieces of bread, “coques” in Provencal, are toasted to form croutons, which are then rubbed in garlic, “ali” in Provencal, and then dipped in olive oil and tasted. It was the word “coque” that intrigued me, since “un oeuf à la coque” in French is a boiled egg; i.e. cooked in its shell. But boiled eggs are commonly eaten with pieces of bread, i.e. “coques” in Provencal. So there is this kind of double-entendre. Daniel hadn't made this connection and was intrigued by it.

Water
We have had 4-5 successive days of high heat and humidity. It's caused me to try to find a solution to my problem of finding a long non-alcoholic drink that I really like; effectively, an alternative to beer. Water is fine but gets tedious after a while and I find most fizzy drinks too sweet for me and most cordials not to my liking. After some searching I've decided on a flavoured version of the Badoit mineral water. It tastes as though it's just been exposed to a little lemon zest and is not sweet at all; it's very refreshing.

I normally buy some sparkling mineral water because I like it fizzy and natural fizz is always better than carbonation. However, friend Jo has taught me to be wary of bottled water. I used to drink St Yorre, a water from Vichy, until I found that it contained salts far in excess of the levels allowed in UN tap water regulations. In France, bottled water is regulated to ensure it comes from the spring it is supposed to but not otherwise as to its content (other than it not being overtly toxic). The mineral content of the water has to be stated on the label but is not itself regulated. Caveat emptor.

Wine Tasting
This year for the first time there was a wine-tasting evening in Mollans. There's one every year in nearby Puymeras and also occasionally in other local villages but this was a first for Mollans. The vendors were all from the surrounding area so I was familiar with most of the wine but still managed to find one that was interesting. It was a red, light and fruity wine actually from Mollans that was pleasant rather than really good but notably had a lower alcohol level than most Cotes du Rhones. It's normally difficult to find one that is less than fourteen percent alcohol and this was a couple of percent lower.

The event was well attended, around a couple of hundred people, and provided a good social evening but I find wine-tasting evenings of little practical value. I buy most of my wine in bags-in-boxes as it tends to be cheaper and avoids having half-empty bottles after a meal. Vendors at wine-tasting sessions tend to bring only their bottled wines however, so I have to ask for the closest approximation to their bag-in-boxed offerings and make assumptions from that. Anyway, there was one vendor from Gigondas and, though I wasn't going to buy any, it was good to drink a little of it. It is probably my favourite wine if I'm going to splash out on a bottle for a special occasion.