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.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Monday, 8 November 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.
Thursday, 28 October 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.
Friday, 8 October 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.
Wednesday, 1 September 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.
Sunday, 22 August 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.
Saturday, 14 August 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.
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