Oh dear, Charles tells me there have been only 2 sightings of the Round Robin this year, so the pressure is on to make it 3 before the year is out.
I do confess to a certain lassitude and ennui this year and can only apologise.
Being sent for those health checks in June was a real jolt, a reminder that I was not, after all, immortal, that the natural order of things that we have expected all year, could, conceivably, be challenged. But we're OK at the moment, and father-in-law is still here, despite everything the doctors said in January. Neither the heart failure nor the aggressive medication have taken their toll on his existence, despite several bad falls when his heart stops, and his insistence on continuing to enjoy the odd glass of wine.
But we cannot leave the house for more than half a day, and the strain of waiting for the inevitable tells. It is particularly hard for Paul, who goes in first each morning.
So we have been so grateful to those who have been to see us this year, especially as family visits were fewer, due to Kerry's pregnancy and Emma's work, - her summer season at Beaulieu was successfully busy. Then there has been the relief of finally making some good friends here and enjoying the yea-ha dance classes and Randonneurs walks, on which talk always, but always turns to food. Such things have been so important for feeling less isolated, as early August was when our last visitors came.
I should then have written about the stunning autumn, (please note folks, September and October are the best months to visit unless you are intent on baking in temperatures of over 90 degrees or on dining at Soumensac, otherwise, May,) I could have written about the mostly excellent French Health Service, but was not sure if you'd really be interested nor if I wouldn't be mis-interpreted as saying 'it's all so-o-o much better here, as happened on another forum.
And I might have covered a couple of extraordinary French lessons at the start of the new term, where I encountered for the first time, the kind of British person I have been told have migrated here, whose conversation begins,
"How England has changed..." and who proceed to voice such stunningly awful generalisations and stereotypes that my jaw dropped, - it did do wonders for my fluency, but I don't think I made any new friends.
And now our plans for the coming months, because of our situation, all seem to be directed towards preparing this house for sale. And then what? It's not that we have become disenchanted with France. How can one be disenchanted with a place where you can eat outside all summer, drive for miles on good roads that are almost empty and walk wherever you please, see the Milky Way and sleep in perfect darkness and silence, hibernate with a woodburner, chestnuts and good local wine? Somewhere where the seasons still give rhythm to life, views can be endless, where your car can gain new dents every time you have parked at the Supermarket and where you can go out to post some cards for 3 January birthdays and go to the bank, (all shops and services have been open since Monday,) and come back with a bag full of oysters and a Galette du Roi for less that 10 euros? It's just that this year has been so without focus, except framed by medical appointments for Des, that we wonder where are goals are now, what we will plan for the New Year.
The best bit of the year came right at the end, when we were able to return to Britain for the birth of our second grandchild, Reuben John, who arrived the night after my birthday. So now I am hoping my birthday might be forgotten so I can remain sixtyumptyoo until I receive my telegram.
So, right, a resolution, I'll blog again soon, with a more amusing theme.
A very happy, peaceful and fulfilling New Year to you all, full of love for you and all your families.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Bob and Bordeaux.
Well, yesterday was just like being on holiday in France!
For a start, the sun was shining, (rather too much acksherley as it was over 30º), something it hasn't done much of through May and June while we collected all your rain.
Then we had a Whole Day to Do What We Liked, not had many of them lately either.
And, THen, we sat outside a café and had a beer, then we got on a tram and then we saw Bob Dylan's 'Never-Ending Tour'!
Buying the tickets in April was the first mini-adventure, as the fnac website that details all tours and concerts in France was having problems with its new booking system, so I had to get on the phone, especially as I feared I had already bought 2 tickets twice over on the misbehaving site, and they weren't cheap. There was the usual menu hierarchy to negotiate, press one for information about this... 2 for that... 3 for the other... 4 to query a booking, 5 to make a booking, (Hooray), then, oh botheration, 1 for one sort of booking, 2 for another, 6 to speak to a person who might give-a-damn...
I explain and ask to book, a question rattles back, I ask for consideration and slo-o-owness and am asked, with a barely suppressed sigh, if I'd like to speak 'wiz my colleague Alex who spik English'
Galling.
Especially as Alex and I start in French, and pretty well continue in it until I have got my tickets, so I managed, all it took was a bloke with a bit of patience, who actually wanted over 100€'s worth of my custom. Their safe arrival by registered post a few days was the sign of success.
When you book up for these things months in advance, one shows such a faith, faith in life goes on, in nothing changes, in things will turn out, in Che sera, sera- but I expect it sera what I expect it to be. But Tuesday 29th of June turned out to have my father-in-law in hospital yet again and me just out, after a routine operation- examination.
But a couple of days not doing too much for me, an earlier-than-usual visit to him with a supply of underpinnings essential to his comfort on release, (today) and the rest of the day was ours, all ours! Polly and Nige arrived mid-afternoon and we drove off to Bordeaux.
We have been fussing for a fortnight over this, who would have the dubious pleasure of driving into B and where was this Meriadeck Patinoire anyway and where would we park and should we take a picnic? We are such bumpkins these days, so used to Restaurants taking last orders at 1.00pm and shutting at 2.00pm and not opening again until 7.30, we forgot that in the city things were different and getting a little sustaining something with a glass of vino before 7.00pm would not have been hard!
Paul drove, straight to our favourite car park, ie the one that opened up under our wheels on our very first scary drive into Bordeaux over 6 years ago and that we have used ever since. (Safe, clean, cheap and just, - there,- as you drive along the stupendous waterfront, now a World Heritage site, under the beautiful Bourse building and forecourt. Imagine being able to park under Somerset House on the Embankment easily, for 8 hours, for a few quids.)
A glass elevator lifted us in front of the Bourse, just outside a bar with umbrellas, so we headed for it, each muttering 'level -4, emplacement 031' in the hopes that between us we'd remember where the car was at midnight. A couple of mellowing beers and we were ready for our picnic so we crossed over two tramlines and the road, to the promenade beside the majestic Garonne. There were gardens, with seats, a huge stone clad platform with 6-inch jets of water making an installation on which people paddled happily and strolled through coolly with no elfin safety nonsense and no-one falling over, and lots of vari-coloured plastic cows with fancy titles which are another installation. We picnicked as post-work joggers beat time to their i-pods in the heat.
Right, time to get to Bob. Polly knew how to use the gleaming, purring trams that jingle their way like mini, and slower, bullet-trains around Bordeaux's cobbled streets and eighteenth century buildings. It's that 'buy a ticket outside, use it within a specified time and validate it when you get on', thing, like Italian trains, that I wasn't sure about. But it all worked and Paul and I are tram converts. We got off too soon but found Bob by following 2 people, then 22, then 222 and suddenly there were 2,000 of us waiting to go in.
Biggish place, the Bordeaux skating rink, not an intimate venue, but it held only, maybe, 12, 000? and unfortunately there was no ice, no air conditioning and a lot of hot people. But Bob didn't keep us waiting and there he was; for the third time in my life I've been in the same space as Dylan.
It was a bit 'spot that tune', - the acoustics were not top notch and of course he refuses to play the old stuff in the old way, but by catching the odd line of dialogue we knew we knew quite a lot of the set, Masters of War unrecognisable as heavy metal, Just like a Woman and Rolling Stone really rocked up and no trace of the schmoozy jazzy Cajun vibe (sorry,) of the latest album. Superb band, no flashy laser lights..
The place emptied in civilised fashion, we got on the first tram that arrived and were back on the waterfront at 11.30, strolling along with the crowds.
Here in the Ruralité lights-out is before midnight, the Milky Way glows over the fields and silence reigns. The happy crowds strolling through Bordeaux's warm midnight streets were almost a culture shock. No drunkenness, no swearing, no threat. The children and mothers paddling on the platform were replaced by singing eighteen-year-olds celebrating the end of their Baccalaureate. The café tables were full of smiling chattering couples and groups. I suppose we were older than most - Bordeaux is a big student city - but all generations were there, having a great time together. I would happily walk round this city after dark on my own.
So there we are, my holiday-in-a-day.
This next blog was going to be about the remarkable French Health Service, and why our intimate knowledge of it has led to there still being cardboard on our stairs, but Bordeaux was so much more fun. Meet you there sometime.
For a start, the sun was shining, (rather too much acksherley as it was over 30º), something it hasn't done much of through May and June while we collected all your rain.
Then we had a Whole Day to Do What We Liked, not had many of them lately either.
And, THen, we sat outside a café and had a beer, then we got on a tram and then we saw Bob Dylan's 'Never-Ending Tour'!
Buying the tickets in April was the first mini-adventure, as the fnac website that details all tours and concerts in France was having problems with its new booking system, so I had to get on the phone, especially as I feared I had already bought 2 tickets twice over on the misbehaving site, and they weren't cheap. There was the usual menu hierarchy to negotiate, press one for information about this... 2 for that... 3 for the other... 4 to query a booking, 5 to make a booking, (Hooray), then, oh botheration, 1 for one sort of booking, 2 for another, 6 to speak to a person who might give-a-damn...
I explain and ask to book, a question rattles back, I ask for consideration and slo-o-owness and am asked, with a barely suppressed sigh, if I'd like to speak 'wiz my colleague Alex who spik English'
Galling.
Especially as Alex and I start in French, and pretty well continue in it until I have got my tickets, so I managed, all it took was a bloke with a bit of patience, who actually wanted over 100€'s worth of my custom. Their safe arrival by registered post a few days was the sign of success.
When you book up for these things months in advance, one shows such a faith, faith in life goes on, in nothing changes, in things will turn out, in Che sera, sera- but I expect it sera what I expect it to be. But Tuesday 29th of June turned out to have my father-in-law in hospital yet again and me just out, after a routine operation- examination.
But a couple of days not doing too much for me, an earlier-than-usual visit to him with a supply of underpinnings essential to his comfort on release, (today) and the rest of the day was ours, all ours! Polly and Nige arrived mid-afternoon and we drove off to Bordeaux.
We have been fussing for a fortnight over this, who would have the dubious pleasure of driving into B and where was this Meriadeck Patinoire anyway and where would we park and should we take a picnic? We are such bumpkins these days, so used to Restaurants taking last orders at 1.00pm and shutting at 2.00pm and not opening again until 7.30, we forgot that in the city things were different and getting a little sustaining something with a glass of vino before 7.00pm would not have been hard!
Paul drove, straight to our favourite car park, ie the one that opened up under our wheels on our very first scary drive into Bordeaux over 6 years ago and that we have used ever since. (Safe, clean, cheap and just, - there,- as you drive along the stupendous waterfront, now a World Heritage site, under the beautiful Bourse building and forecourt. Imagine being able to park under Somerset House on the Embankment easily, for 8 hours, for a few quids.)
A glass elevator lifted us in front of the Bourse, just outside a bar with umbrellas, so we headed for it, each muttering 'level -4, emplacement 031' in the hopes that between us we'd remember where the car was at midnight. A couple of mellowing beers and we were ready for our picnic so we crossed over two tramlines and the road, to the promenade beside the majestic Garonne. There were gardens, with seats, a huge stone clad platform with 6-inch jets of water making an installation on which people paddled happily and strolled through coolly with no elfin safety nonsense and no-one falling over, and lots of vari-coloured plastic cows with fancy titles which are another installation. We picnicked as post-work joggers beat time to their i-pods in the heat.
Right, time to get to Bob. Polly knew how to use the gleaming, purring trams that jingle their way like mini, and slower, bullet-trains around Bordeaux's cobbled streets and eighteenth century buildings. It's that 'buy a ticket outside, use it within a specified time and validate it when you get on', thing, like Italian trains, that I wasn't sure about. But it all worked and Paul and I are tram converts. We got off too soon but found Bob by following 2 people, then 22, then 222 and suddenly there were 2,000 of us waiting to go in.
Biggish place, the Bordeaux skating rink, not an intimate venue, but it held only, maybe, 12, 000? and unfortunately there was no ice, no air conditioning and a lot of hot people. But Bob didn't keep us waiting and there he was; for the third time in my life I've been in the same space as Dylan.
It was a bit 'spot that tune', - the acoustics were not top notch and of course he refuses to play the old stuff in the old way, but by catching the odd line of dialogue we knew we knew quite a lot of the set, Masters of War unrecognisable as heavy metal, Just like a Woman and Rolling Stone really rocked up and no trace of the schmoozy jazzy Cajun vibe (sorry,) of the latest album. Superb band, no flashy laser lights..
The place emptied in civilised fashion, we got on the first tram that arrived and were back on the waterfront at 11.30, strolling along with the crowds.
Here in the Ruralité lights-out is before midnight, the Milky Way glows over the fields and silence reigns. The happy crowds strolling through Bordeaux's warm midnight streets were almost a culture shock. No drunkenness, no swearing, no threat. The children and mothers paddling on the platform were replaced by singing eighteen-year-olds celebrating the end of their Baccalaureate. The café tables were full of smiling chattering couples and groups. I suppose we were older than most - Bordeaux is a big student city - but all generations were there, having a great time together. I would happily walk round this city after dark on my own.
So there we are, my holiday-in-a-day.
This next blog was going to be about the remarkable French Health Service, and why our intimate knowledge of it has led to there still being cardboard on our stairs, but Bordeaux was so much more fun. Meet you there sometime.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Why am I sitting at the keyboard when I should be out putting the Acanthus Mollis in the perennial bed, finish planting the last seeds, popping a few lettuce in where the butternut squashes will be?
Cos it is RAIning and blowing a GAle and beLOW 10 degrees See that is why.
Will someone remind me why we came to France?
Do I blame the volcano?
Or the interminable winter when the sun disappeared in early December and, apart from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when we weren't here, didn't re-appear until mid-March, around the same time that the North wind set in?
I am not moaning, really, as hibernating like the French can be pleasurable. Light the woodburner, make soup, listen to wall-to-wall Radio 4 - or 6Music when it's the Afternoon Play or the journos get too excited about the Election...
But it is a too-sudden return to enclosure just as all the Events started, the interesting and varied DIY entertainments that are crammed into the 4 fine-weather months.
We kicked off with the first Soirée of the year held by the Aquitaine French/English cultural social group. Bring and share food and wine and dance from 7.00 til 11.00pm. The dances are Line Dances, (my how the French love 'Danse Country', they dress up and everything,) but the music is jiveable, jiggable, twistable, so around the edges of ragged, hopping lines, peeps do their own thing, happily colliding as lines suddenly grapevine into them.
The next day, getting up and down the stairs, (still cardboarded, another story I may get to,) was a tad difficult, but off we went to the French Vignerons who are Easterly neighbours, for their open day.
1st of May, le premier Mai, Porte du Bonheur, when men give their ladies Lily of the Valley and the good weather switches on.
Well it sort of did, bright and breezy, cool after a summery week. We didn't join the dozens eating at long tables in the vines, but looked at all the craft stalls and bought the aforementioned acanthus, or Bear's Breeches, and a hawthorn called Paul's Scarlet, then back for a cuppa before setting off West for our English Vigneron neighbours at Domaine Chater, (google 'em,) for a Quiz Night.
Les Quizerables, as our team are known were miffed not to win as
a) we often do, and
b) the prize was a crate of the Chater's best wines.
The following day, a Vide-Grenier, literally 'Empty Attic' in English, a Car Boot, at Soumensac, but rain chilled our enthusiasm for abandoned household effects and rusting farm tools and we set off for a drive, in the vague hope of finding a beer. but it being Sunday, Lot-et-Garonne was shut. It's the children that mystify us, how do the French keep their children shut up all day? Why are there no 12 year-olds riding around in decreasing circles on bikes? Where are the little ones playing on the garish plastic swings that litter gardens? How do les Ados get together for a whine, a whizz about on those annoying mopeds and a crafty smoke?.
The next Vide-G is next Sunday, at Agnac, after a Saturday Fete Day of walks, boules and cyclo-cross and a lot of eating and drinking; I hope it gets fine for them
Right, Eddie Mair is on and he is my signal to cook dinner, (6.00pm here,) so I'll post this - the cardboard on the stairs saga will have to wait.
Cos it is RAIning and blowing a GAle and beLOW 10 degrees See that is why.
Will someone remind me why we came to France?
Do I blame the volcano?
Or the interminable winter when the sun disappeared in early December and, apart from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when we weren't here, didn't re-appear until mid-March, around the same time that the North wind set in?
I am not moaning, really, as hibernating like the French can be pleasurable. Light the woodburner, make soup, listen to wall-to-wall Radio 4 - or 6Music when it's the Afternoon Play or the journos get too excited about the Election...
But it is a too-sudden return to enclosure just as all the Events started, the interesting and varied DIY entertainments that are crammed into the 4 fine-weather months.
We kicked off with the first Soirée of the year held by the Aquitaine French/English cultural social group. Bring and share food and wine and dance from 7.00 til 11.00pm. The dances are Line Dances, (my how the French love 'Danse Country', they dress up and everything,) but the music is jiveable, jiggable, twistable, so around the edges of ragged, hopping lines, peeps do their own thing, happily colliding as lines suddenly grapevine into them.
The next day, getting up and down the stairs, (still cardboarded, another story I may get to,) was a tad difficult, but off we went to the French Vignerons who are Easterly neighbours, for their open day.
1st of May, le premier Mai, Porte du Bonheur, when men give their ladies Lily of the Valley and the good weather switches on.
Well it sort of did, bright and breezy, cool after a summery week. We didn't join the dozens eating at long tables in the vines, but looked at all the craft stalls and bought the aforementioned acanthus, or Bear's Breeches, and a hawthorn called Paul's Scarlet, then back for a cuppa before setting off West for our English Vigneron neighbours at Domaine Chater, (google 'em,) for a Quiz Night.
Les Quizerables, as our team are known were miffed not to win as
a) we often do, and
b) the prize was a crate of the Chater's best wines.
The following day, a Vide-Grenier, literally 'Empty Attic' in English, a Car Boot, at Soumensac, but rain chilled our enthusiasm for abandoned household effects and rusting farm tools and we set off for a drive, in the vague hope of finding a beer. but it being Sunday, Lot-et-Garonne was shut. It's the children that mystify us, how do the French keep their children shut up all day? Why are there no 12 year-olds riding around in decreasing circles on bikes? Where are the little ones playing on the garish plastic swings that litter gardens? How do les Ados get together for a whine, a whizz about on those annoying mopeds and a crafty smoke?.
The next Vide-G is next Sunday, at Agnac, after a Saturday Fete Day of walks, boules and cyclo-cross and a lot of eating and drinking; I hope it gets fine for them
Right, Eddie Mair is on and he is my signal to cook dinner, (6.00pm here,) so I'll post this - the cardboard on the stairs saga will have to wait.
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