2,000? and!? Mr G plants over 2,000 spring bulbs every year in his delightful, interesting but not large Leicestershire garden. Well, not him personally, not all of them, although I bet he pokes most of the holes with his stick. Kate will point to the site, he will dib the stick and ‘Garden Boy’ will do the planting, that’s how I see it.
And there I was standing in Homebase while P selected gate latches wondering if a bag of 20 would do plus some crocii, (although would not dream of buying them from Homebase but would go up the lane to Langton Nurseries), I felt obliged to add a nought to that number, but with no time to buy that day as we were off to Frome with fruity mince and apfelküchen to do school runs and feed team T, O being in St Louis at the time.
It was days before we made it to the Nurseries, a messy disorganised heap of a place full of treasures. That day’s haul included local honey for 4 quid, suede garden gloves for 3, mealworms for the robin, loads of cyclamen that have brightened the house for weeks, that I have just planted outside in a freezing wind, and as well as nowhere near 200 bulbs, some paperwhites to plant up for Vik.
Last night we saw Alice Roberts at the Tivoli Theatre talking about her latest book, Tamed, 10 species that changed the world. Despite abysmal lighting and just a few slides on a big screen she interested and intrigued us all with digressions on wolves and wheat, horses and apples, and of course, the human species, mentioning also cats, bees and Michael Gove. (And has there ever been a species quite as weird and destructive as Gove?) She paced about in her usual plumage of Desiguel, silver rings and boots and we were quite star-struck.
This is nothing to do with the title above. This is not what those faithful Round Robin followers shouted as they heard I was about to post after months. No, it was me, punching the air in triumph after tearing my hair out for three days trying to work out the system Google+ is using to confound the users of blogspot since they took it over.
Bloomin’ non-tax paying geeks put on earth to frustrate us.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
Sunday, 19 February 2017
Incoming.. chukachukachuka..
That's me, I'm the sausage....
Feel a bit of a sausage, having almost abandoned the Round Robin now it is no longer in France. Many episodes have been written in my head since the culture shock of the return, some made it into my diary, but even that outlet suffered during the coping months in the rented house, the struggling months of the house purchase and travails with a British builder, the adjustments to almost-town dwelling. And since last June my mind races through themes, topics, opinions, wails, but my hand never wrote them out.
I gave up facebook in despair after so many discussions/arguments with people who didn't use reason or logic, just invective. I look away from the shouty headlines that crow at me from the newspapers racked by the supermarket entrance, peddling myth and ignorance so shamelessly. I have to look elsewhere to recognise the country we left and missed; I'll get there.
Feel a bit of a sausage, having almost abandoned the Round Robin now it is no longer in France. Many episodes have been written in my head since the culture shock of the return, some made it into my diary, but even that outlet suffered during the coping months in the rented house, the struggling months of the house purchase and travails with a British builder, the adjustments to almost-town dwelling. And since last June my mind races through themes, topics, opinions, wails, but my hand never wrote them out.
I gave up facebook in despair after so many discussions/arguments with people who didn't use reason or logic, just invective. I look away from the shouty headlines that crow at me from the newspapers racked by the supermarket entrance, peddling myth and ignorance so shamelessly. I have to look elsewhere to recognise the country we left and missed; I'll get there.
Sunday, 4 October 2015
Migrants
Our swallows left the other day, after days of air displays above the garden, where swarms of flying things spiralled in the warm sunshine. Then more arrived, possibly down from Britain, having a few days R'n'R before their onward flight. Further arrivals since, blackcaps, replacing the redstarts. and the robin and red squirrels are rulers of the garden once more, now the foreigners have cleared off.
Some we are glad to see the back of, hornets both Asian and European, Oriels which squawk at dawn, and a hundred varieties of fly and things that bite. Some we won't see, the wonderful skeins of cranes will be heading South in a month, but we will have gone, flying North.
I wonder who might be glad to see the back of us? People have been very lovely, we have been hugged and patted at night markets, restaurants and caffs across the terroir, offered and given meals and gifts, and we have a collection of cards with addresses with exhortations to stay when we return as travellers. A corner of my heart will always be French now, but it is my British soul pushing us home.
Home will be, for 6 months, while our house purchase and renovation proceeds,
Damory Court Street, Blandford Forum Dorset, full address in yr email,
after which we move down the road to Lower Bryanston, only a handful of houses there so postie should find us.
I type this in an echoing house which is taking us forever to clean, sooo boring, cleaning, no wonder I haven't been very good at it, clearly. Packing took forever, decisions about discarding, giving away, selling, throwing and I still had sleepless nights thinking it would never fit on the van with all of Paul's precious workshop, but it did, thanks to Flash Gordon's. Those of you who came and stayed, still left us with bottles of strange spirits one third full, tequila, white port, americano, armagnac, Old Nicks. Those of you who never came, You Know Who You Are, have left us with weird cocktails odd compots sweet and savoury and packets of dried peas and beans that might plant a field. Think what feasts you have missed, by never visiting, passing through. I kept telling you how near we were to the Pyrenees and Spain, so you could call in; there, you've missed your chance, we did it often, it was great!
I have fixed up an @gmail.com but how I pick that up with no internet after Thursday 8th October I don't know. If you lose this information don't worry. In the words of the ever-intense po-faced D Day-Lewis, "Stay alive, I will find you".
Some we are glad to see the back of, hornets both Asian and European, Oriels which squawk at dawn, and a hundred varieties of fly and things that bite. Some we won't see, the wonderful skeins of cranes will be heading South in a month, but we will have gone, flying North.
I wonder who might be glad to see the back of us? People have been very lovely, we have been hugged and patted at night markets, restaurants and caffs across the terroir, offered and given meals and gifts, and we have a collection of cards with addresses with exhortations to stay when we return as travellers. A corner of my heart will always be French now, but it is my British soul pushing us home.
Home will be, for 6 months, while our house purchase and renovation proceeds,
Damory Court Street, Blandford Forum Dorset, full address in yr email,
after which we move down the road to Lower Bryanston, only a handful of houses there so postie should find us.
I type this in an echoing house which is taking us forever to clean, sooo boring, cleaning, no wonder I haven't been very good at it, clearly. Packing took forever, decisions about discarding, giving away, selling, throwing and I still had sleepless nights thinking it would never fit on the van with all of Paul's precious workshop, but it did, thanks to Flash Gordon's. Those of you who came and stayed, still left us with bottles of strange spirits one third full, tequila, white port, americano, armagnac, Old Nicks. Those of you who never came, You Know Who You Are, have left us with weird cocktails odd compots sweet and savoury and packets of dried peas and beans that might plant a field. Think what feasts you have missed, by never visiting, passing through. I kept telling you how near we were to the Pyrenees and Spain, so you could call in; there, you've missed your chance, we did it often, it was great!
I have fixed up an @gmail.com but how I pick that up with no internet after Thursday 8th October I don't know. If you lose this information don't worry. In the words of the ever-intense po-faced D Day-Lewis, "Stay alive, I will find you".
Saturday, 29 August 2015
Ingenuity
Several people wondered what it was about the toaster that was 'terrible'. Do you mean to say that you all have good toasters? Toasting quickly, efficiently and evenly? On both sides?
Unless you paid over a hundred quid for it, please let me know make and stockist. And what setting you favour, for on any toaster I have ever had, 3 is barely warmed and 4 equals burnt. Often, in the mornings, from René and Denise's over the lane in Petit Jarletou, wafts the arôme of burnt toast as the Moulinex or whatever strikes again. Have we even got the technology to produce a decent toaster.
That the British and French have command of wonderful technologies is in no doubt. The Millau Bridge. Those airliners they produce jointly in Toulouse. The Caverne Chauvet.
Ou?
Who said Ou?
We saw in the paper that the Caverne, discovered above the Ardèche in 1994, by two potholers, M. Chauvet was one, was about to be opened to the public. Well, not the Chauvet cave, but the Caverne du Pont d'Arc. After the Chauvet discovery, the archeologists, anthropologists, scientists, trod, both literally and metaphorically, much more carefully than they had with Lascaux, not wanting to invest the 36,000 year old marvel with the same environmental disaster.
For once, committees and meetings, and government intervention, produced a brilliant solution. Walkways were installed, security systems, some sort of environmental control method, and for a short time, British and French experts recorded every inch of the cave digitally, then the one entrance was sealed. Cameras and police survey it permanently. Scientific visits are allowed for only two hours, five times a year.
Then, after huge investment from the French government, the work began. Sculptors, artists, designers, model makers, began recreating the most significant areas of the cave. Every stalactite and gmite, each quartz pebble, fluted rock towers, rippled wet walls, tilted arches tiny niches, smooth rock pavements and soft sandy floors were recreated in exact detail. (On two different surfaces, an ancient artist had smeared clay to make the relief he needed. We know it was the same artist because his fingerprint on one, matches his print on the other.) a rock formation like an organ. Another like a folded pink curtain.
The amazing paintings of bears, cave lions, rhinoceros were reproduced here, near Bergerac. Many paintings show hunting scenes, and as the animals flee past you, round the rock shoulder and into the cavern, getting smaller the further they are, you realise that these hunter painters had a perfect understanding of perspective. And there are depictions of an owl. A panther, unique in prehistoric art. Handprints of children, teenagers and adults. And in the sandy resin of the floor, beside the bones and teeth of huge animals, a human footprint, deeply moving even though it is a reproduction.
Because you realise that, not far away, the real one exists in the real cave.
All this was built inside a beautiful architectural structure that can be seen from Vallon Pont d'Arc below. So you feel like you are walking around a cave, but you are not below ground, not cold, not stumbling on an uncertain surface.
It is an amazing international cooperative achievement. For this reason, as much as the intrinsic wonder of the original cave, the whole project has been granted World Heritage status by UNESCO. It moves and inspires and makes one wonder why man cannot cooperate like this more often.
Maybe then we could have a better toaster.
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
E.G.B.D.F.
The French do love their acronyms. Quangos, public bodies, utilities, they all have them.
We got a letter from a four lettered acronym, to say that, on the 6th May there would be work going on and we would experience fluctuations in supply and occasional cuts in supply during the day.
I wrote 'Kettle, Pans' across the top in red and pinned the letter up where it could be seen on the 6th.
One early acronym we became familiar with was RIB. That is a piece of paper with one's bank details that everyone seemed to want when we first came here. to connect an electricity supply, EDF; to get water SAUR, to connect the phone, SRF and to join the health service CPAM, to receive payments from our savings, PSIs, 'please attach a RIB'. Then there is ERDF which controls the electricity infrastructure.
And they change, confusingly. CPAM has suddenly turned into AMELI, thus clouding a favourite film.
On the bottom of bills, look out for HT, Hors Taxe, as when the tax is added the bill is much bigger. People used to British customer service will often comment wryly or rudely on HS, hors service, signs. Just means out of order, but lack of service can apply in many situations.
SAMU is important, its emergency number is 15 and is the ambulance service. The ambulance services one sees advertised being nothing like what we mean by ambulance. You can book them for hospital appointments but cannot get one late at night when someone must go to hospital. For that, SAMU are the boys.
Twice I have had to call 15, and a doctor answers, calming, comforting. the doctor triages over the phone and on those two occasions dispatched the emergency team, who were superbly trained and equipped. Totally different from the white coated, heavily smoking taxi driver who once brought Pa in Law and me back from Agen hospital after a check up for Des, and who banged on his blue light and siren at every threatened hold up that kept him from his friday night tipple. And kept chatting on his cb. Radio that is, CB is Carte Bleu or Carte Bancaire.
Then there is FNAC, a wonderful site, books, and every concert ticket you could want, SNCF and its super TGVs, but terrible website so we go to the local station to book tickets. Where the service is very helpful I have to admit.
So on the 6th I was blearily making the Assam and caught sight of the piece of paper that had become part of the wallpaper in the intervening days and saw the 'kettle, pans' in red. So I filled a couple of jugs and the 4litre casserole and just for good measure put a filled bucket in the bathroom.
"SAUR may switch off the water later," I reminded Paul.
Then, just as the toast was nicely toasting and the eggs were nicely poaching, (those of you who have stayed here will know that means it was wednesday), just as I was wondering to switch over from JH and politics to 6Music, off went the lights, the cooker, the grill, the radio and the clock.
Not SAUR. ERDF
"Oh well," I thought, "I can always finish the toast off in the terrible toaster."
DER.
The acronym for the terminally bewildered.
We got a letter from a four lettered acronym, to say that, on the 6th May there would be work going on and we would experience fluctuations in supply and occasional cuts in supply during the day.
I wrote 'Kettle, Pans' across the top in red and pinned the letter up where it could be seen on the 6th.
One early acronym we became familiar with was RIB. That is a piece of paper with one's bank details that everyone seemed to want when we first came here. to connect an electricity supply, EDF; to get water SAUR, to connect the phone, SRF and to join the health service CPAM, to receive payments from our savings, PSIs, 'please attach a RIB'. Then there is ERDF which controls the electricity infrastructure.
And they change, confusingly. CPAM has suddenly turned into AMELI, thus clouding a favourite film.
On the bottom of bills, look out for HT, Hors Taxe, as when the tax is added the bill is much bigger. People used to British customer service will often comment wryly or rudely on HS, hors service, signs. Just means out of order, but lack of service can apply in many situations.
SAMU is important, its emergency number is 15 and is the ambulance service. The ambulance services one sees advertised being nothing like what we mean by ambulance. You can book them for hospital appointments but cannot get one late at night when someone must go to hospital. For that, SAMU are the boys.
Twice I have had to call 15, and a doctor answers, calming, comforting. the doctor triages over the phone and on those two occasions dispatched the emergency team, who were superbly trained and equipped. Totally different from the white coated, heavily smoking taxi driver who once brought Pa in Law and me back from Agen hospital after a check up for Des, and who banged on his blue light and siren at every threatened hold up that kept him from his friday night tipple. And kept chatting on his cb. Radio that is, CB is Carte Bleu or Carte Bancaire.
Then there is FNAC, a wonderful site, books, and every concert ticket you could want, SNCF and its super TGVs, but terrible website so we go to the local station to book tickets. Where the service is very helpful I have to admit.
So on the 6th I was blearily making the Assam and caught sight of the piece of paper that had become part of the wallpaper in the intervening days and saw the 'kettle, pans' in red. So I filled a couple of jugs and the 4litre casserole and just for good measure put a filled bucket in the bathroom.
"SAUR may switch off the water later," I reminded Paul.
Then, just as the toast was nicely toasting and the eggs were nicely poaching, (those of you who have stayed here will know that means it was wednesday), just as I was wondering to switch over from JH and politics to 6Music, off went the lights, the cooker, the grill, the radio and the clock.
Not SAUR. ERDF
"Oh well," I thought, "I can always finish the toast off in the terrible toaster."
DER.
The acronym for the terminally bewildered.
Monday, 27 April 2015
Delayed Response..
This is a very delayed response to requests for entertainment. I did sit down on April 11th, but then went for a walk, sat to watch the National, got caught up by the female rowing Blues and that was it, more good intentions out the window.
Three months, well, 14 weeks after an operation on my left foot, when four toes were broken and reset, I am still slightly hobbling about, impatient and looking askance at the axolotl on the end of my leg, now, thankfully, a thinner axolotl than a fortnight back, but wondering if will ever feel like mine.
I write all that horribly conscious that one fan of this blog would wonder what I'm whingeing about, but as he makes jokes about the one-legged robin in his garden, I'll press on.
That's what Dr Beauchamps said, after one month,
"Press on it, Madame, poussez". And after two,
"Marche, Madame, marche". I don't think this familiarity indicates that he now regards us as friends, I think it's an order.
So I keep on, up the lane past Mathilde's organic smallholding, into the woods where Francis says there are 64 varieties of edible mushrooms, hesitantly up the track which disintegrates into soft ruts filled with water and along to the back vineyards and plum orchards.
I'm not sure if it is my foot proper doing the walking, or my stout boot. I looked online at Dr Foot where I discovered that after six months I will be
"..back to normal and able to start jogging again." This is good, as I have not been jogging for 21 years, since our GP told me I might prefer to have the use of my hips and knees when I was 80 and since I was neither unfit nor overweight (then) I'd do better to stick to walking.
But it seems ages since these boots were tramping over the Pyrénées foothills in the beautiful Béarn with J and B, only six months ago, or strolling down short tracks in the Black Forest where we couldn't make head nor tail of the inadequate map we'd been sold so chose to do lots of short routes and scurry back to the car at the café for coffee and apfelkuchen. And it is forever ago since we returned to our regular home from home in the Lakes; goodness I miss those Fells now.
It is hard to avoid nostalgie the longer we wait for the house to sell. We are faced with a third summer of filling tubs with geraniums, planting flowers by the gates, and now plan to revamp the big, unused salon next door, even though that means getting rid of the 'old people's furniture' that some viewers have been unable to see round, and buying replacements. All in search of the sale that eludes so many people now in a property market full of ancient stone monuments like Jarletou!
Many compensations, the turning of the seasons is always enjoyable: summer evenings in our courtyard with visitors and at the producer's markets with tables full of friends, the autumn atmosphere; hunts, gunfire up in the woods and deer and boar running through the vines opposite the kitchen then emerging smugly at sunset when the chasseurs have given up and gone home, and the sun flames on the turning trees and vines. the peace of winter, frozen geraniums hanging from pots looking like trailing seaweed, iced roses, the garden filling with robins, tits and finches, including, sometimes, a rare hawfinch.
Now it is Spring again, the Agents all promising to bring potential buyers. Despite the bargains to be had by sterling zone buyers, it has been American, Belgian and French who have come recently. We are told we are on shortlists. We wait.
The changeable weather gives us excuses to carry on some winter pursuits sometimes, me a tapestry, the ipad, Paul a bit of tool-making in the workshop, as we watch the April downpours drench the chestnut candles. Rain keeps us from the lopping, weeding, strimming and mowing that will be continually necessary until the heat stops the rampant growth.
My photo for the day was to have been a carpet of 'Snow in Summer' but today it would be 'Rain on Snow In Summer'.
I have pretty well given up on social media. Fewer of you than ever are on Facebook, where, lately, I am bombarded by political sheets from 38 Degrees, and Amnesty and Open Democracy make moral demands to Share, Share; where I find I am feeling more and more argumentative with people I don't know in various Groups, and where something written by a total stranger on one of the above political pages was used by people I knew and had thought friends to make ridiculous accusations about me. And I can't make head nor tail of Twitter. Listening to Cerys as she described 'following a conversation' about a blues singer, I thought, 'Conversation? How are any Tweets a conversation?'
I'd rather have a proper conversation with you lot by email. And we have facetime now (just warn me if you are going to Facetime me so I can comb my hair,) and I suppose this blog is a bit of a one-sided conversation, until some of you reply. I love getting your replies. Most of you have been friends for so long, Marian, Bar, Dr M B, PH, TF SH-B for 50 years, most others for 40, wonderful. Thank you. Miss you.
Three months, well, 14 weeks after an operation on my left foot, when four toes were broken and reset, I am still slightly hobbling about, impatient and looking askance at the axolotl on the end of my leg, now, thankfully, a thinner axolotl than a fortnight back, but wondering if will ever feel like mine.
I write all that horribly conscious that one fan of this blog would wonder what I'm whingeing about, but as he makes jokes about the one-legged robin in his garden, I'll press on.
That's what Dr Beauchamps said, after one month,
"Press on it, Madame, poussez". And after two,
"Marche, Madame, marche". I don't think this familiarity indicates that he now regards us as friends, I think it's an order.
So I keep on, up the lane past Mathilde's organic smallholding, into the woods where Francis says there are 64 varieties of edible mushrooms, hesitantly up the track which disintegrates into soft ruts filled with water and along to the back vineyards and plum orchards.
I'm not sure if it is my foot proper doing the walking, or my stout boot. I looked online at Dr Foot where I discovered that after six months I will be
"..back to normal and able to start jogging again." This is good, as I have not been jogging for 21 years, since our GP told me I might prefer to have the use of my hips and knees when I was 80 and since I was neither unfit nor overweight (then) I'd do better to stick to walking.
But it seems ages since these boots were tramping over the Pyrénées foothills in the beautiful Béarn with J and B, only six months ago, or strolling down short tracks in the Black Forest where we couldn't make head nor tail of the inadequate map we'd been sold so chose to do lots of short routes and scurry back to the car at the café for coffee and apfelkuchen. And it is forever ago since we returned to our regular home from home in the Lakes; goodness I miss those Fells now.
It is hard to avoid nostalgie the longer we wait for the house to sell. We are faced with a third summer of filling tubs with geraniums, planting flowers by the gates, and now plan to revamp the big, unused salon next door, even though that means getting rid of the 'old people's furniture' that some viewers have been unable to see round, and buying replacements. All in search of the sale that eludes so many people now in a property market full of ancient stone monuments like Jarletou!
Many compensations, the turning of the seasons is always enjoyable: summer evenings in our courtyard with visitors and at the producer's markets with tables full of friends, the autumn atmosphere; hunts, gunfire up in the woods and deer and boar running through the vines opposite the kitchen then emerging smugly at sunset when the chasseurs have given up and gone home, and the sun flames on the turning trees and vines. the peace of winter, frozen geraniums hanging from pots looking like trailing seaweed, iced roses, the garden filling with robins, tits and finches, including, sometimes, a rare hawfinch.
Now it is Spring again, the Agents all promising to bring potential buyers. Despite the bargains to be had by sterling zone buyers, it has been American, Belgian and French who have come recently. We are told we are on shortlists. We wait.
The changeable weather gives us excuses to carry on some winter pursuits sometimes, me a tapestry, the ipad, Paul a bit of tool-making in the workshop, as we watch the April downpours drench the chestnut candles. Rain keeps us from the lopping, weeding, strimming and mowing that will be continually necessary until the heat stops the rampant growth.
My photo for the day was to have been a carpet of 'Snow in Summer' but today it would be 'Rain on Snow In Summer'.
I have pretty well given up on social media. Fewer of you than ever are on Facebook, where, lately, I am bombarded by political sheets from 38 Degrees, and Amnesty and Open Democracy make moral demands to Share, Share; where I find I am feeling more and more argumentative with people I don't know in various Groups, and where something written by a total stranger on one of the above political pages was used by people I knew and had thought friends to make ridiculous accusations about me. And I can't make head nor tail of Twitter. Listening to Cerys as she described 'following a conversation' about a blues singer, I thought, 'Conversation? How are any Tweets a conversation?'
I'd rather have a proper conversation with you lot by email. And we have facetime now (just warn me if you are going to Facetime me so I can comb my hair,) and I suppose this blog is a bit of a one-sided conversation, until some of you reply. I love getting your replies. Most of you have been friends for so long, Marian, Bar, Dr M B, PH, TF SH-B for 50 years, most others for 40, wonderful. Thank you. Miss you.
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
What have the Romans Done For Us?
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.
"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.
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