With P&P, Peter and Valerie, in the summer kitchen, we were munching Raymong Blong's Lemon cake, with them imparting some juicy gossip about a couple who had viewed our house, (you should have seen my jaw drop and eyes widen dear Reader,) and Peter said,
"Someone should start a blog about all the Aquitaine Ex-pat gossip". They'd be run outta town, bien sur, but then I said, airily,
"Oh I have a blog",. After which I sat there feeling guilty. Not only had I eaten 2 slices of cake but I had laid claim to a blog to which I contribute but fitfully. You lot often chide me about it.. So:
What have the Romans ever done for us? - Given us bluddy purslane that's what. Not content with bestowing their ground elder on South Leicestershire,
" So good, mia amici, with garlic and zees lovely olio from my amphora", but they then decide that hat horrid weed purslane made a good salad ingredient and infect our potager here with the stuff. (have just noticed I have used John Humphries' abhorred historic present.) We could never have eaten all the ground elder we wrestled from under the hedge to stop it getting into the fritillaries, and now we have enough salad thank you. And courgettes. And beans, tomatoes, cucumbers... Squash the size of footballs. 2 months before their harvest is due. Temperatures suddenly rose in mid-July but rain still fell every few days so vegetation went mad.
At least the runner beans find good homes as no-one else round here seems to grow them. Otherwise people arrive at each other's barbeques, soirées gourmandes, meet-up cafés, with droopy carrier bags full of produce that they try to force on other carrier-bag-toters with identical produce.
And I watch people buying courgettes and tomatoes in Intermarché and wonder what they do grow in their own gardens. Of course, they could be holiday makers stocking up. But home cooking is unnecessary at the moment, the tourists soon find all the soirées and night markets where we all eat while our saucepans gather dust. It's a rare chance to eat chips, with duck sausages, or pizza, or fillet steaks you pick and have griddled, or moules...
Did the Romans invent the French fry? Fry, Stephen, thinks not; it was probably a Belgian. Le Sauvetat on Fridays has the best pizzas and tasteful live music, Duras, moules and specialities from Réunion and very loud music of varying standard. The best Duras nights, Thursdays, are when Michel plays, a young accordianist who came 2nd in the French equivalent of X-Factor. Soumensac everything duck-related, on Sundays, no music but you can be pestered by strolling magicians and balloon modellers. And tonight, Tuesday, it's come round to Monteton again, with the butcher from Allemans doing a roaring trade from his van with the only edible beef we've ever had in France. Plus divine desserts and a cheese man who must be visited. And last week a superb young three-piece playing Jazz/ blues. Although all the old hands agree 'Soumensac is so passé...' it has the view, and Brigitte's wine, so, impossible to choose between them.
The shouty English have arrived and have found all these places too. The Scots and Irish holiday early, have gone, and so miss it all. They don't shout, don't impinge, although I was once asked in Leclerc where the porridge was shelved. The English do their supermarket trolley dashes in packs, trailing disgruntled 9-year-olds called Freddy and Meredith or some such. They have just torn themselves from their rented poolsides, thrown on some loose cotton toga-like thing over bikinis and come flip-flopping around the aisles, calling to each other.
"Bryony, do we need pesto?" "Have you found the barbeque spice Naomi?" and in one aisle, "Eoh, it's all English stuff, how funny, why would anyone want Scotts Porridge Oats?" (Clue's in the name, Naomi.)
I wonder would they care if they knew how shocked the French are by their loudness and undress? Chantal told me she and her neighbours consider it 'très impoli'. I try to apologise for them, saying ruefully they wouldn't do it at home. "Alors, pourquoi ici?" she replies.
The Romans would recognise it, the sarong/toga, the sandals, the sense of entitlement.
Sometimes, after 10 years and 8 months I am barely aware that I am living in a different culture until poorer aspects of my own bring me up short.
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
Sunday, 8 June 2014
Oh Here's Summer...
Hot hot hot. This is so sudden; we had got used to grey skies , showers and coolth. After a burst of gardening activity in the two-week spring in April, we left seedlings and plants which were discouragingly slow growing, in the care of a friend who would come over to water if necessary, and set off on our long-promised trip to Sicily.
Plan A had been to drive through Italy then island-hop back to France but in the end we thought we couldn't afford the time, so sadly bidding the hopes of an extra week of proper pizza and pasta goodbye we booked a cheap flight from Bordeaux, and the hire car and Agriturismos of Plan B.
After marvelling at some Greek temples in stunning locations and some weird and wonderful B and Bs, we went hunting for Montalbano. A hotel by the Med was a treat as a base, a sheltered balcony over the sea a luxury. All the time I hummed Joni M, - Carey, 'the wind is in from Africa...'
But there was important tourist business to do so I left my lounger.
A multi-national queue (well, 6 people) politely waited as we all took turns to photograph each other outside Salvo's house at Punta Secca with more arriving as we sat at the café. The house is a B & B, booked up for months ahead, but who would want to sit on that famous breezy terrace whilst privileged Europeans trooped up, snapping away with cameras and phones? The village had clearly benefited from the film-maker's attentions; it boasted (sorry, I've been reading too many estate agent's prose lately,) a well laid car park, clean streets, and neat houses, mostly shuttered up awaiting the season.
In Scicli, he and his assistants would struggle to sweep up to the 'Police Station' in his beat up Fiat as the Station is in fact the Town Hall on a pedestrian precinct, busy with café tables and big umbrellas flapping in the Sicilian wind. Colourful tubs of flowers and lush palm trees gave this place, also, an air more prosperous than much of the rest of Sicily. I expect even that bleak ruined factory on the beach, where so many horrid things seemed to happen, had been glammed up. We didn't seek that location out, although it featured on many postcards along with all the other sites we found, dunno why I bothered taking pictures when I could have bought the card. We didn't find his favourite restaurant where he often ate wonderful seafood in a howling gale either. Shame as the food was variable generally, I kept trying to find the perfect pasta & sardines... well, it's fun trying.
Before we left for inland mountains and a glimpse of Etna we visited Ragusa and Ragusa Ibla, the town split in two by an earthquake in 1693 and the stunning place shown in the opening titles, crazy Sicilian Baroque tilted along a spine of rock with deep valleys on either side.
ps I can recommend the Camilleri books, as wacky and amusing as you'd expect if you watched the tv series; it captured them well.
Now we are back with nightingales, sudden summer, huge amounts of weeding, planting, and our own glamming up to do. We have a viewing on Friday, people are flying out especially to see the house, we have our fingers crossed that it is what they hope to see.
pps Well now I always thought Grandma's Hands was Gil Scott Heron but found out from a very enjoyable prog. on Bill Withers that I stayed up far too late to watch, after getting in from our Dance group's Soirée, that it isnae.
Plan A had been to drive through Italy then island-hop back to France but in the end we thought we couldn't afford the time, so sadly bidding the hopes of an extra week of proper pizza and pasta goodbye we booked a cheap flight from Bordeaux, and the hire car and Agriturismos of Plan B.
After marvelling at some Greek temples in stunning locations and some weird and wonderful B and Bs, we went hunting for Montalbano. A hotel by the Med was a treat as a base, a sheltered balcony over the sea a luxury. All the time I hummed Joni M, - Carey, 'the wind is in from Africa...'
But there was important tourist business to do so I left my lounger.
A multi-national queue (well, 6 people) politely waited as we all took turns to photograph each other outside Salvo's house at Punta Secca with more arriving as we sat at the café. The house is a B & B, booked up for months ahead, but who would want to sit on that famous breezy terrace whilst privileged Europeans trooped up, snapping away with cameras and phones? The village had clearly benefited from the film-maker's attentions; it boasted (sorry, I've been reading too many estate agent's prose lately,) a well laid car park, clean streets, and neat houses, mostly shuttered up awaiting the season.
In Scicli, he and his assistants would struggle to sweep up to the 'Police Station' in his beat up Fiat as the Station is in fact the Town Hall on a pedestrian precinct, busy with café tables and big umbrellas flapping in the Sicilian wind. Colourful tubs of flowers and lush palm trees gave this place, also, an air more prosperous than much of the rest of Sicily. I expect even that bleak ruined factory on the beach, where so many horrid things seemed to happen, had been glammed up. We didn't seek that location out, although it featured on many postcards along with all the other sites we found, dunno why I bothered taking pictures when I could have bought the card. We didn't find his favourite restaurant where he often ate wonderful seafood in a howling gale either. Shame as the food was variable generally, I kept trying to find the perfect pasta & sardines... well, it's fun trying.
Before we left for inland mountains and a glimpse of Etna we visited Ragusa and Ragusa Ibla, the town split in two by an earthquake in 1693 and the stunning place shown in the opening titles, crazy Sicilian Baroque tilted along a spine of rock with deep valleys on either side.
ps I can recommend the Camilleri books, as wacky and amusing as you'd expect if you watched the tv series; it captured them well.
Now we are back with nightingales, sudden summer, huge amounts of weeding, planting, and our own glamming up to do. We have a viewing on Friday, people are flying out especially to see the house, we have our fingers crossed that it is what they hope to see.
pps Well now I always thought Grandma's Hands was Gil Scott Heron but found out from a very enjoyable prog. on Bill Withers that I stayed up far too late to watch, after getting in from our Dance group's Soirée, that it isnae.
Saturday, 26 April 2014
now that april's here..
Now that April's here I have yet to make any sourdough but have cleaned the oven. (Hooray for Oven Pride.)
From the mundane to the sublime.
- Now this will sound impossibly affected and in the worst style of all those books (written by women, I'm sorry to say, who go and live in Tuscandordogneshire and grow lemon trees,) that end up in heaps on the second-hand book stalls in Eymet market. But it's true.
Until a few days ago when April returned, we had the most perfect weather, and every evening when I closed the shutters, I stepped outside to listen to the nightingales and gaze at Mars, so large and red(ish) in the South East sky. Magical. Clear air, vast dark ink sky with stars coming out, glowing planets then that magical sound. The birds had given our garden a miss for a couple of years so I was thrilled that they have returned this year.
There are far fewer goldfinches than usual, no long tailed tits seem to have flitted through, hardly any sparrows, so although there are few changes in this area of vines, pasture and woodland, somehow the environment for many creatures is changing. But we have wrens nesting in the woodshed wall and in the ivy round a plane tree, robins squaring up to each other in the figs, blue and great tits, blackbirds and thrushes and now the glorious nightingales in the big ash tree at the east end of the garden. The orioles will be here soon too, but I can do without their catty screech at dawn!
Then a couple of nights back, instead of the nightingales it was the toads singing so I knew it must soon rain. Over the lane live Rene and Denice and the underground stream that runs from Mathilde and Francis' up the track, under our far well, (once the water source for the house, see much earlier blog,) goes down through their garden and opens to the world in a most wonderful fairy grotto, all crumbled rock outcrops, dripping trailing ferns and grasping twisted tree roots. And in the pool at its foot are natterjacks, sounds like hundreds of them chirruping away.
And now indeed we have rain, just like last weekend. The first barbeque invitation had arrived, an Easter get together for 12 of us to admire a friend's new gas effort, v posh. And although we had to eat in the garden room a jolly time was had, one of the social occasions that have made retirement here most enjoyable! We have managed 1 BBQ of our own too, one Friday lighting the twigs in the outside cheminée and cooking too much meat, why do we always do that at barbeques?
A bit more fine would be good as there are still garden jobs to do to smarten up in case we get any house viewings. Jarletou is back on the market after 6 months and the replacement of the roof. (Except one agent, we discovered, had not removed it, as
"It seemed such a shame to take it off when you were going to put it back on; we might have found you a buyer" ! Cheek of it.)
I doubt it, surrounded as we were for the whole of February by scaffolding, cement mixers, rubble, an enormous lorry with two massive braced arms supporting a huge extendable crane like a hooked red claw, a couple of skips and a carpet of blue plastic tarpauline to keep entrances 'clean'. And during it all, 3 guys working through showers and downpours, although they did give up during the deluges, standing under our veranda drinking café noir and eating carrot cake, brownies and sticky date cake. It would have taken a buyer with a great deal of determination and imagination.
The inside became as mucky as out. (Sitting in our courtyard on a sunny afternoon a few days ago with the golfing pal of a friend in Devon, I was, bizarrely I thought, conversing about hoovering and how in these old stone houses you spend as long hoovering walls and beams and ceilings as you do floors. He had brought us some chilli plants and deserved more interesting chat, hey ho.)
But now the grit in the house has been hoovered and the outside is restored and the roof, source of so many sleepless worried nights in the last two years looks amazing, I hope someone will see the 'potential'.
The housing market is, we are told, picking up, with French, Belgian and Russians house-hunting in the area as well as British. But prices are not picking up, every buyer is expecting bargains and deals, we are going to be lucky to break even. < sad sighing face thingy > The possible house and garden in Dorset/Somerset is shrinking every day.
But as Paul regularly says,
"There are worse places to be stuck", and breathing our clear air, and looking forward to dinner at Mama Chow's with friends, (oo good, chilli hit,) I know he's right.
From the mundane to the sublime.
- Now this will sound impossibly affected and in the worst style of all those books (written by women, I'm sorry to say, who go and live in Tuscandordogneshire and grow lemon trees,) that end up in heaps on the second-hand book stalls in Eymet market. But it's true.
Until a few days ago when April returned, we had the most perfect weather, and every evening when I closed the shutters, I stepped outside to listen to the nightingales and gaze at Mars, so large and red(ish) in the South East sky. Magical. Clear air, vast dark ink sky with stars coming out, glowing planets then that magical sound. The birds had given our garden a miss for a couple of years so I was thrilled that they have returned this year.
There are far fewer goldfinches than usual, no long tailed tits seem to have flitted through, hardly any sparrows, so although there are few changes in this area of vines, pasture and woodland, somehow the environment for many creatures is changing. But we have wrens nesting in the woodshed wall and in the ivy round a plane tree, robins squaring up to each other in the figs, blue and great tits, blackbirds and thrushes and now the glorious nightingales in the big ash tree at the east end of the garden. The orioles will be here soon too, but I can do without their catty screech at dawn!
Then a couple of nights back, instead of the nightingales it was the toads singing so I knew it must soon rain. Over the lane live Rene and Denice and the underground stream that runs from Mathilde and Francis' up the track, under our far well, (once the water source for the house, see much earlier blog,) goes down through their garden and opens to the world in a most wonderful fairy grotto, all crumbled rock outcrops, dripping trailing ferns and grasping twisted tree roots. And in the pool at its foot are natterjacks, sounds like hundreds of them chirruping away.
And now indeed we have rain, just like last weekend. The first barbeque invitation had arrived, an Easter get together for 12 of us to admire a friend's new gas effort, v posh. And although we had to eat in the garden room a jolly time was had, one of the social occasions that have made retirement here most enjoyable! We have managed 1 BBQ of our own too, one Friday lighting the twigs in the outside cheminée and cooking too much meat, why do we always do that at barbeques?
A bit more fine would be good as there are still garden jobs to do to smarten up in case we get any house viewings. Jarletou is back on the market after 6 months and the replacement of the roof. (Except one agent, we discovered, had not removed it, as
"It seemed such a shame to take it off when you were going to put it back on; we might have found you a buyer" ! Cheek of it.)
I doubt it, surrounded as we were for the whole of February by scaffolding, cement mixers, rubble, an enormous lorry with two massive braced arms supporting a huge extendable crane like a hooked red claw, a couple of skips and a carpet of blue plastic tarpauline to keep entrances 'clean'. And during it all, 3 guys working through showers and downpours, although they did give up during the deluges, standing under our veranda drinking café noir and eating carrot cake, brownies and sticky date cake. It would have taken a buyer with a great deal of determination and imagination.
The inside became as mucky as out. (Sitting in our courtyard on a sunny afternoon a few days ago with the golfing pal of a friend in Devon, I was, bizarrely I thought, conversing about hoovering and how in these old stone houses you spend as long hoovering walls and beams and ceilings as you do floors. He had brought us some chilli plants and deserved more interesting chat, hey ho.)
But now the grit in the house has been hoovered and the outside is restored and the roof, source of so many sleepless worried nights in the last two years looks amazing, I hope someone will see the 'potential'.
The housing market is, we are told, picking up, with French, Belgian and Russians house-hunting in the area as well as British. But prices are not picking up, every buyer is expecting bargains and deals, we are going to be lucky to break even. < sad sighing face thingy > The possible house and garden in Dorset/Somerset is shrinking every day.
But as Paul regularly says,
"There are worse places to be stuck", and breathing our clear air, and looking forward to dinner at Mama Chow's with friends, (oo good, chilli hit,) I know he's right.
Thursday, 2 January 2014
Happy New Year
Three resolutions so far:
To watch less rubbish TV. (Especially anything purportedly for adults that features ex-Blue Peter presenters who still think their audience are twelve, and need everything explaining in words of one syllable).
To have a go at making sourdough bread.
To clean the oven. Soon.
Ah-ha, see, nothing about keeping the blog up to date. Nicola asked why I don't seem to write it so often. I thought it was because I needed the outlet; it let me put a distance between me and all the puzzling, sometimes challenging aspects of living somewhere different, to laugh, albeit wryly, at things. It kept me in touch when I was homesick, and let me let off steam when I found the proximity of the in-laws an infringement. As time went by and we became more settled, routines and involvement grew, there were fewer hours in the day to stop and stare. But I do find myself still, caught by something,
"Oh I must blog about that", and then letting it go by and regretting doing so.
So many things to do, aren't there? Not just cleaning the oven. I have a lifetime of being a non-macaroon eater to make up for, for example, having discovered them in Perigueux last Christmas.
And I was so relieved on New Year's Eve to take my last 'Photo of the Day'.
It seemed such a good idea when Vik mentioned it, to take a picture each day of the year. But one day last January, when I had already taken 2 pictures of Paul's heavily bandaged foot, one in the hospital and one in front of the woodburner, and was reduced to taking a picture of a cauliflower as we were house-bound by his incapacity, I realised its tyranny!
But a few days later we left on one of our Pyrennean jaunts to meet Jan and Bob so there were pictures of snow and glasses raised in jolly tapas bars.
After that was another routine period, pics of sunsets and plants emerging and of bits of the house cleaned up for once for another house viewing, until a wealth of photos in April. The mason who built up the barn had described his bi-annual drive to see his mum in Morocco. He'd convinced us how easy it was to do, and that we'd love it. Well we baulked at driving there and back, so I found a ferry that left from Barcelona (just 6 hours drive from us) for Tangier and off we went. It was a wonderful trip, through the Rif Mountains, down to fabulous Fès, through the Middle and High Atlas to the Sahara, up the dramatic Dades Gorge, and eventually back over the High Atlas to mad Marrakech. Sometimes frightening, often challenging but always amazing, we did everything we could as we thought we'd go only once. Now we can't wait to go back. (Some of you have seen some of the photos on Faceache.)
Then it was back to keeping the place up to spec for more pointless house viewings, until we had a houseful for the ol' Ruby Wedding. I remember Paul's parents' Ruby Wedding, thinking how I could not imagine that far in the future, that we should be that old! And there we all were, children with partners, grandchildren, friends, in such summer heat so we were virtually living outside around the big table in the summer kitchen, and the 'pool'. Others told us we should have gone to Venice on a fancy train, to New York, to Macchu Pichu. Well they are still on my bucket list but we'd spent our Silver in a tent in France and don't seem to be able to plan big trips. It is such a delight being able to decide to go to Switzerland, to the so-near Pyrenees, to the Italian Lakes and just go, and driving through France to do those things is so hassle-free. I am not sure we will cope with British traffic.
Another gap with pictures of vegetables followed, until we thought we'd sold the house in September and it fell through the night before the signing at the Notaire, so we were so 'pushed' off we decided to do the trip to Sicily we'd been thinking about. But the ferries had stopped and the drive there and back would be nearly 4 000k so, on the spur, and following hearing Stevie Nicks on Woman's Hour, I bought tickets for Fleetwood Mac and for the TGV and we were off to Paris. P had never been before and I have to say, for a city-hater, he displayed pleasing enthusiasm. We stayed in St Germain, walked miles and had just the best time.
Winding down now. The last photos were mainly in the UK, pre floods and then we were back for Christmas with friends here, having expected, this time last year, to be back there. We did miss the Christmas of last year, when the family, from 2 years to 82, hired a mini bus and all filled this house so it looked and sounded and felt like it should. House, empty and uninhabited but for our part, is off the market now, until the roof is repaired, (soon, so I should have some more blogs about merry artisans, just like 9 years ago). Blogger seems to change every time I 'go on' but I will try to post some of the photos and now go and clean the oven. Perhaps.
To watch less rubbish TV. (Especially anything purportedly for adults that features ex-Blue Peter presenters who still think their audience are twelve, and need everything explaining in words of one syllable).
To have a go at making sourdough bread.
To clean the oven. Soon.
Ah-ha, see, nothing about keeping the blog up to date. Nicola asked why I don't seem to write it so often. I thought it was because I needed the outlet; it let me put a distance between me and all the puzzling, sometimes challenging aspects of living somewhere different, to laugh, albeit wryly, at things. It kept me in touch when I was homesick, and let me let off steam when I found the proximity of the in-laws an infringement. As time went by and we became more settled, routines and involvement grew, there were fewer hours in the day to stop and stare. But I do find myself still, caught by something,
"Oh I must blog about that", and then letting it go by and regretting doing so.
So many things to do, aren't there? Not just cleaning the oven. I have a lifetime of being a non-macaroon eater to make up for, for example, having discovered them in Perigueux last Christmas.
And I was so relieved on New Year's Eve to take my last 'Photo of the Day'.
It seemed such a good idea when Vik mentioned it, to take a picture each day of the year. But one day last January, when I had already taken 2 pictures of Paul's heavily bandaged foot, one in the hospital and one in front of the woodburner, and was reduced to taking a picture of a cauliflower as we were house-bound by his incapacity, I realised its tyranny!
But a few days later we left on one of our Pyrennean jaunts to meet Jan and Bob so there were pictures of snow and glasses raised in jolly tapas bars.
After that was another routine period, pics of sunsets and plants emerging and of bits of the house cleaned up for once for another house viewing, until a wealth of photos in April. The mason who built up the barn had described his bi-annual drive to see his mum in Morocco. He'd convinced us how easy it was to do, and that we'd love it. Well we baulked at driving there and back, so I found a ferry that left from Barcelona (just 6 hours drive from us) for Tangier and off we went. It was a wonderful trip, through the Rif Mountains, down to fabulous Fès, through the Middle and High Atlas to the Sahara, up the dramatic Dades Gorge, and eventually back over the High Atlas to mad Marrakech. Sometimes frightening, often challenging but always amazing, we did everything we could as we thought we'd go only once. Now we can't wait to go back. (Some of you have seen some of the photos on Faceache.)
Then it was back to keeping the place up to spec for more pointless house viewings, until we had a houseful for the ol' Ruby Wedding. I remember Paul's parents' Ruby Wedding, thinking how I could not imagine that far in the future, that we should be that old! And there we all were, children with partners, grandchildren, friends, in such summer heat so we were virtually living outside around the big table in the summer kitchen, and the 'pool'. Others told us we should have gone to Venice on a fancy train, to New York, to Macchu Pichu. Well they are still on my bucket list but we'd spent our Silver in a tent in France and don't seem to be able to plan big trips. It is such a delight being able to decide to go to Switzerland, to the so-near Pyrenees, to the Italian Lakes and just go, and driving through France to do those things is so hassle-free. I am not sure we will cope with British traffic.
Another gap with pictures of vegetables followed, until we thought we'd sold the house in September and it fell through the night before the signing at the Notaire, so we were so 'pushed' off we decided to do the trip to Sicily we'd been thinking about. But the ferries had stopped and the drive there and back would be nearly 4 000k so, on the spur, and following hearing Stevie Nicks on Woman's Hour, I bought tickets for Fleetwood Mac and for the TGV and we were off to Paris. P had never been before and I have to say, for a city-hater, he displayed pleasing enthusiasm. We stayed in St Germain, walked miles and had just the best time.
Winding down now. The last photos were mainly in the UK, pre floods and then we were back for Christmas with friends here, having expected, this time last year, to be back there. We did miss the Christmas of last year, when the family, from 2 years to 82, hired a mini bus and all filled this house so it looked and sounded and felt like it should. House, empty and uninhabited but for our part, is off the market now, until the roof is repaired, (soon, so I should have some more blogs about merry artisans, just like 9 years ago). Blogger seems to change every time I 'go on' but I will try to post some of the photos and now go and clean the oven. Perhaps.
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