Bread and Cheese

Whenever the subject of holidays in France comes up in a conversation you can guarantee that someone will ask what it is about the country that keeps you coming back. The resulting list usually includes French markets, the wine and the bread.

The big difference between the holidaymaker and the ‘immigrant’ resident (people like us) is that when you live here you are experiencing these 'magical 'things on a daily basis

French markets? Well, they still do what it says on the box. They are a great place to observe the ‘Frenchness’ of the French, to buy fresh fruit and great cheeses, to sit outside a café in the sun and watch the endless round of kissing and handshaking that accompanies every chance encounter, and to try and fathom the unfathomable: how, in a European alliance obsessed with health and safety rules and regulations, do the French get away with it? Live chickens stuffed into plastic carrier bags and taken home on a bus. Cubes of cheese, saussison, jambon cru for free tastings sweating in the sunshine on deli counters, having been delved into by fingers that have could been anywhere (don’t even think about it). Stillyards (you know the old spring weight thingy grandma used to weigh the baby with) dragged out from under a table when you ask for ‘livre’ (500 gms) of scabrous, but organic tomatoes from the old crone selling a handful of veggies from her allotment. And on the subject of these ‘dames anciennes’ …. Why,when you ask for a ‘livre’ which strangely turns out to be a kilo, do they suddenly develop a complete incapacity to understand your French when you protest? Apart from that, and a few other things, markets are pretty much as they have always been, which I suppose is why they still figure large on the holiday ‘lurve’ list .

No 2 on the What- I -Love- About- A -Holiday -In -France agenda is the wine. Hmm…well that’s thorny subject. There’ s been a lot of hot air spouted about French wine in the past, some rather difficult publicity about chemical nasties being added to some supposedly high quality wines, and the famous French obstinacy when it comes to modernising their production techniques. Perhaps if they stopped sneering at New World Wines they might learn something useful. And the day of the pichet of lovely cheap plonk in a cosy bistro are long gone, if they ever existed. Cheap French wine can taste like battery acid – or maybe it’s just the effect it now has on my poor old stomach and serially abused liver.

Ah, but what about the bread? Rack upon rack of golden, ramrod straight baguettes, little flutes, huge couronnes, grey pain de siegle….. surely the mysticism of the boulangerie still remains? Well, within a few months of our permanent arrival we were….dare I say it?....totally fed-up with bread that staled as you looked at it, a village bread shop that sold out before you were out of bed, and the sheer immoral waste of several yards of day-old bread being consigned to the bin. I had been given a bread machine as my new French house –warming present . I am now on my second and they don’t owe me a penny.I can make the sort of bread I like, using ingredients such as whole grains and nuts that are never seen in village boulangerie. True, the supermarkets now sell a bigger range but they are so stuffed with chemicals I'm loath to buy them .

Now Steven Kaplan, a professor of European history at Cornell University in New York has fired a broadside at the traditional baguette on the eve of La Fête du Pain (National Bread Week) in France The Times reports today that after a lifetime of studying — and eating — le pain francais, Professor Kaplan says that he has witnessed with despair the slow death of the crust.
“This is a significant and catastrophic trend,” he says “The crust is what stands between France and the Armageddon of soft, mushy, repugnant loaves that we get in the US and you get in Britain, too. A baguette de tradition should be a “voluptuous pleasure and an exulting moment” that speaks to all our senses, but I am getting hacked off because the basic quality is essentially being thrown away.”
The baker’s response is predictable : they are responding to customer demand, who don’t want a well cooked crust. Well that isn’t the case down here in the Haute Pyrenees. The traditional baguette sold in both high class town boulangeries and village depots de pain is a torpedo shaped loaf which tapers to twisted ends and is as hard as hell.The points on the ends could be classes as lethal weapons. Some even more traditional bakers pull the dough up into little spikes before baking them at nuclear heat for as long as possible, removing the loaves from the oven just before they actually combust. Those you could use as a knuckle duster. It could also be used as a hammer. What you can’t do with it, is actually eat it, without losing several teeth that is.
Mr Kaplan poses an interesting question…’Do the French care any more, do they care about taste? When you eat their tomatoes, their carrots and their merlotised wine, you start to wonder. Are they not collaborating in their own cultural demise?”

Hmm ….Answers on a postcard, please.

Sometimes.....!

A Vide Grenier in the Village

Most of the time I love my life in France, especially today when the sun is shining, the cows are manfully (or should that be 'cowfully'?)chomping their way through lush, knee high, buttercup- spattered meadows, and the snow is creeping away from the mountain sides.

But into each life a little rain must fall....and we've just had the wettest month since we came to the village five years ago. That I can put up with, as long as it's another five years before we get an April as wet as this last one.

No, its the dark cloud of customer service that really rattles my cage. We've got used to the two hour lock-down experienced in every French town from 12 to 2 pm, so we adjust our retail expeditions accordingly. We've got so used to it that the speeding cars, and log-jams outside the bakeries are a subject of jokes:-

'Oh that car's just shot the lights, it must be five to twelve.'

'Why are those cars parked all over the road? Has there been an accident ? Oh no, there's a boulangerie over there.'

I'm also accustomed to asking for something in a shop to be told they've sold out, and recieving a shrug of the shoulders when I ask when they will be getting it in again. Four or five months ago Captain Sensible wanted two small replacement wheel for his mower . They had them in just the right size...he was overjoyed, small things please him no end,but there was only one in the display unit. After what seemed like hours I found an assistant. I enquired if they would be having more.

'Mais oui, madame.'

' Ah, bon' (standard reply) 'Quand?'

'N' sais pas .'...shrug

Every time we go past the shop, he insists on stopping to see if the wheels are in. I stay in the car....the shop's a cross between a garden centre and a farmers supplies, it smells of fertiliser and rubber wellies and bores me stiff. I watch him go in, and I watch him come out, still no wheels. The grass is almost high enough to graze those cows on.

Today was a totally new customer service failure. As we walked past the tourist board we thought we'd see what was coming up in the next few weeks. Now, if there's one thing we like to do on a sunny Sunday it's to find a car boot sale, or vide grenier'.... 'attic emptying' is the French term for it. We don't buy much, if anything, but it's fun to see some of the ancient French farm implements, and pointless bric-a-brac. It's also a great way to see more of the area we live in. We've found some beautiful little villages we would never have seen if it hadn't been for the lure of a vide genier.

So, I was really pleased to see a calender of forthcoming car boots displayed on the wall in the entrance to the tourist office. Vide greneirs aren't regular events as they are in Britain, a village is only permitted to have one a year (I think this is the rule, but as with all things in France there is conflicting information on this). This makes it difficult to keep track of them.

The list was photocopied onto a sheet of A4, just the thing to stick next to the kitchen calendar.

I go in to the office..

'Avez une calendreir de vide greniers?'

'Oui madame, sur le mur, a l'entree.'

'Je sais,mais je voudrais un à emporter.'

Désolé'

'Vous n'avez plus?'

'Désolé'

The long and short of it was.. ..yes, they had a list, it was on the wall as I came in, no, they couldn't let me have one as that was the only one they had.

If I'd been in England I would have said;-

'It's a photocopy, for God's sake. How much effort is it going to take to run me one off?'

Sometimes, for the sake of international relations it's a good job my sarcasm doesn't kick in so quickly in a foreign language.

Love Thy Neighbour

A French Refugee Camp for Spanish Refugees

_____________________________

Spanish Refugees entering France February 1939





A couple of days after my last blog, on the death of the trades union stalwart Jack Jones, I read a long article in a local journal on the plight of the Spanish Civil War Refugees who flooded into France in February 1939. After a four year struggle Spanish Republican forces had been overcome, and General Franco declared himself El Caudillo, a position he held for nearly 40 years.

It is the 70th anniversary of that great flood of humanity that poured over the Pyrenees into South West France, known as la Retirada. There have been a crop of books and newspaper articles produced in honour of this anniversary, and as most of them are written for French consumption they are slightly skewed (to say the least) in their analysis of the event. I suppose the expression ‘distance lends enchantment’ can be applied to this reportage. After all, seventy years is a long time, and those, like Jack Jones, who were eyewitnesses to the events of the Civil War are becoming scarcer as these old combatants die off.

In too many cases the warm welcome that the Spanish soldiers and civilians had anticipated from their neighbour was sadly lacking. Instead , the soldiers were immediately marched off to concentration camps on arrival , and those unfortunate civilians who had no friends or family to offer them shelter found themselves in miserable tented camps in the back-end of a bitter winter.

From the last few months of 1938 to February 1939, something like half a million Republican refugees crossed the border into the Basque region of France, where 17,000 were herded into the concentration camp at Gurs; and into the Pyrenees Oriental on the Mediterranean coast where the camp at Prat de Mollo, just inland from the fashionable town of Collioure, was a sea of displaced humanity.

In the months that followed this exodus more than 20,000 emigrated, by various means to America,but when Hitler invaded France thousands were sent to German concentration camps. Many of those that managed to evade the Nazi round-ups joined the French Resistance and continued their struggle against fascism.

The Civil War itself drew sympathisers from all over the world. One of the many women who volunteered to join the International Brigades as nurses was a girl from. England. - Lillian Urmston.

Born in 1914, Lillian lived in Stalybridge and attended St. Paul's Elementary School. She trained as a nurse at Lake Hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne and at the age of 22, in 1936 Lillian applied to the Spanish Medical Aid Unit after reading how Government troops were short of doctors and nurses. In June 1937 she left for the Spanish Medical Aid in London where she and another nurse left for Paris and journeyed through France to the Aragon front in Spain, where they rendered medical assistance to injured government troops and civilians.
In September 1938, Lillian returned to England to raise funds for medical supplies and food for the wounded in Spain. She was sent with an ambulance, from which she addressed many groups in surrounding towns. Some were very sceptical, even when they saw the ambulance, but she had deliberately left it as it was; blood stained inside.
In response, the people of Stalybridge started the ‘Nurse Urmston Fund’ in support of the Spanish Medical Aid Unit. There were house to house collections and money was donated at various meetings; the fund itself raised approximately £700.
Lillian accompanied some of the refugees into France where she herself was interned and she recorded her thoughts in a collection of writings from women who served at the front in the Civil War:

The things seen during the last days of our retreat from Spain, and the experiences undergone in the concentration camp of St Cyprian, near Perpignan, I shall never forget... The last few days spent in Spain, working close to the front, yet within sight of the Pyrenees, were utterly ghastly. Operating work was done, and efficiently, just inside houses by the roadside. In innumerable instances, we came upon families of refugees wounded whilst fleeing to safety. We cared for them and kept them with us if they were seriously wounded... On the late evening of the 8th we received orders to go into France. Although sad at leaving our Spain, we all realised that this had to be and looked forward to a rapid reorganisation in France which would result in our going back to another sector of Spain to carry on the struggle against Fascist aggression.
But we were soon disillusioned... We were led to believe that France had opened her frontiers to receive our soldier refugees and wounded, thus preventing a complete massacre. We expected sympathy and humane treatment. We had neither. The vigilance of hundreds of armed guards made sure that all people entering France entered the concentration camp. Ours was a stretch of sandy desert land, surrounded by the usual formidable barbed wire. Wounded men were even without treatment for about six days. We were not allowed to tend our sick comrades. One small spring supplied water for about 15,000 to 20,000people. Food was not supplied until the fifth day... Men attempting to dodge out to buy bread and send letters were treated brutally by the guards. Our comrades received bayonet wounds at the hands of these soldiers of the French army.
My friends turned to me and said: 'Would we be treated like this in England?' And I wonder, would they? Spanish soldiers told our men to return to Franco Spain and then they would get away from all this. Our soldiers felt deeply about this, and called out to those men who were collected to be sent to Barcelona, deploring their conduct. Then the camp resounded with 'Viva la Republica! Viva nuestra Independencia!'


Extract from Lillian Urmston from the book ‘Voice of Women’

Hero, or Dinosaur ?

The Valley of the Fallen The Escorial

Do you ever hear on a news item that someone has died who you imagined had died some time ago? That happened to me this week when I heard of the death of Jack Jones.
Born on the eve of the Great War of 1914-18 Jack was one of the last ‘old style’ union leaders; some would say a political dinosaur, but I would prefer to call him a true Socialist, a vanishing breed in the UK perhaps, but unlike the dinosaur, not quite extinct.

Whatever one’s own politics Jack Jones’ solidarity to a cause was something you just had to admire. He doggedly resisted the lure of champagne socialism, the chattering classes of Hampstead Heath, and trendy wine bars so beloved of New Labour. Instead, at trade unions conferences in particular, he shunned the four and five star accommodation of his fellow delegates and stuck to his favourite B&Bs in Eastbourne, Blackpool or wherever, travelling back and forth to the conference hall by bus. His familiar cloth cap wasn’t something invented by spin doctors, it was Jack being Jack,

When he retired from the hurly-burly of the trades union world he still couldn’t leave it entirely, and he became the senior citizens champion, riding into battle for pensioners rights and becoming the first president of the National Pensioners Convention.

In the mid 1930’s Jack’s left wing politics were to take him far from his Liverpool roots, across the Pyrenees to Catalonia where he joined the International Brigade and fought for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. He was eventually wounded in the battle of Ebro, repatriated and spent the rest of the war organising aid for the Republicans.

His loathing of Franco and the Nationalist government was to endure until the General’s death in 1975, and he was vociferous in his condemnation of Labour and TUC leaders who took holidays to Spain while the Franco regime was in power.


I have long had a sort of morbid fascination with the Spanish Civil War, ever since my first visits to the country in the early 70’s. In the centre of the country, not far from Madrid, is the Valley of the Fallen, or the Valle de los Caidos. It’s difficult to describe the effect this monolithic monstrosity has on the unwary visitor. You really have to know the background to this bloody episode in Spanish history to appreciate just how unwittingly this piece of grandiose mawkishness illustrates the oppressiveness of the Franco regime

You can see the building miles away; it’s difficult to miss a 500 ft concrete cross. It stands atop a huge crypt carved out from granite cliffs by the losing side (the Republicans) after the Civil War, and is the final resting place of El Caudillo …Francisco Franco. Some tomb!

It is now classed as a national monument, and it can be combined with an excursion to the Escorial, the huge palace built by Philip II of Spain, as the two places are only a few miles from each other. It is worth a visit if only to provide time for reflection on the futility of war, and the complete madness of civil war.
Jack Jones’ journey from the International Brigade to the National Pensioners’ Convention was a long and momentous one, and the next time you use your free bus pass, or receive your winter fuel payment remember who it was who pushed the government to make life a bit easier for senior citizens, and say …’Thanks, Jack’

Something to Make Your Mouth Water

Last week we had a flyer in our mailbox advertising the annual hunter’s lunch next Saturday. These lunches occur all over rural France at the end of the hunting season, and, in our case they are long, multi-coursed and alcohol driven.

Like everything else in France the price has crept up, this year to 20€ ,but for that you get six courses and as much to drink as can be considered polite. And entertainment.

It’s mostly of the impromptu variety, fuelled by several glasses of wine and a fire-water digestif and it can go on a bit. There are hunting songs, and mountain choruses that I quite enjoy. In fact, the shepherd songs can be beautiful, especially when sung by our local male voice choir, the Chanteurs de Mont Royal. A ancient old boy always totters to the microphone and sings an obscure ditty with at least ten verses, and choruses to which everyone (except us) joins in - con brio !

It’s when one of the local ladies decides (as she always does) to give us her tribute to Edith Piaf that it all begins to soar into the realms of farce. We try not to wince as she renders (murders) ‘La Vie en Rose,’ and then find ourselves heading for the door as, to tumultuous cheers, she launches into ‘Mon Legionnaire’.
We are usually amongst the first to leave, at about four o’clock, but, as we live close to the Salle de Fete we are still seeing people drifting home at six.
This year’s menu, which is always included on the flyer is as mouth-watering as ever .:

Salade Gasconne
Panache de salads,tomates, gésiers,lardons et magrets fumés
Salad of duck gizzards, bacon pieces and smoked duck breast.
_____________________

Pavé de Saumon sauce paprika et estragon
Fillet of salmon with tarragon and paprika
______________________

Civet de Sanglier et pomme de terre vapeur
Wild boar casserole with mashed potatoes
________________________

Cuisse de canard confit et ses legumes
Duck leg confit and vegetables (usually the ubiquitous haricot vert)

__________________________

Fromage de pays
Local cheeses
_________________________

Tarte aux Pommes tiède et sa glace vanille

Warm Apple pie with vanilla icecream
________________________

Café
_________________________

Digestif

__________________________
Vin rouge et rosé
Vin mousseaux
Aperitif tout inclusive.

I mustn’t forget to stock up on the indigestion tablets.

Where Does the Time Go?

All though I have three calenders in the kitchen time still seems to run away with me. I've only to look at the date of my last blog to prove that to myself. I haven't been idle though.

After 25-30,000 words I seem to have driven the plot of my thriller into a cul de sac and at the moment I can't seem to back it out, so I'm going to have to let it sit there until I can start the engine again - or I'll have to call the breakdown vehicle and get it towed away to the scrap yard. Fellow writers will know what I mean!

To relieve the tension I started to to jot down some humorous recollections of my adolescence... a teenager in the late fifties and early sixties. I had been listening to Emma Kennedy's new book, 'The Tent, The Bucket and Me'. on Radio 4's Book of the Week. It was hilariously funny, and for once, very popular with the listeners....just lately some of the choices have been panned on the R4 message board and not without justification.

Ms. Kennedy's book had a very simple premise which could be a bit of a turn-off for readers, including me.Family holidays!

'Oh, another self-indulgent ramble', I thought. We'd had a few of those in the past few months as BOTW....usually upper class somebodies who could take six months off and wander around Europe, India, Outer Mongolia with 6 kids, a backpack, and a desire to 'find themselves'. Oh, and sell the resulting book to a publisher who happens to be a friend/ close relative, when they get back. ( I'm just jealous really)

But it was the way in which 'The Tent' was written that made it stand out from the rest. It was just so funny, and self deprecating. I do like people who 'self-deprecate' rather than write some precious book about how wonderful it all was, and how enlightened all their children had become from the whole life-changing experience. When we all know the kids had spent most of the time plugged into their MP3 players, bemoaning the fact that they couldn't keep in touch with their friends on Facebook, and why isn't there a Macdonalds in the Hindu Kush? Well I'm sure that's what most of them do...kids are kids after all.

Some of Ms. Kennedy's mishaps had happened to me....her parents were avid campers ( that scenario's got plenty of mileage in it for a writer )...mine were of the caravanning variety but we shared similar toilet incidents.

And this set me off on a journey of my own. When I started, I thought it would be hopeless as I grew up in probably the most boring town in Britain, and I seemed, on the face of it, to have a fairly averagely boring childhood, but the further I've got into it the more I've discovered that, written as a comedy, it actually works.
Far from being stuck for what to write next, the incidents just keep coming.

The fact that I had a mother who was to cooking as Les Dawson was to piano playing, gives me quite a lot of material to work on. She was also one of those delightful working class snobs who considered herself to be 'upper working class' to lower middle. Oh, it's all wonderful grist to the mill.

I've no time for the current thirst for 'misery memoirs' Ms. Kennedy could be starting a trend for 'merry memoirs' so I'm going to join the crowd. And it's pretty good therapy as well as going back fifty years and recalling incidents one had thought forgotten is a great exercise for the brain. So even if it all comes to nought(as it probably will) at least it can be filed under 'Self Improvement' so all is not lost.

Winter Visitors

At this time of year, even a shopping trip can be an ornithologist’s delight. The French have long been accused of eating all their small birds, and to a certain extent this has been the case. Nevertheless, France has come into line with general thinking and small songbirds are not slaughtered in the numbers that they were thirty years ago. Old habits (or cuisines) die hard however. As recently as 1996, a dying Francois Mitterand (the former French President) ordered a dish of ortalon as a final treat.

This lovely little songbird, a member of the bunting family, was considered the 'hautest' of haute cuisine, and as such its capture and cooking was shrouded in tradition and myth. I'll not sicken you with the details of the preparation, but for some bizarre reason, which seems to have no sensible explanation, the dish is eaten whilst the diner covers his head with a white cloth. Legend has it that a gluttonous priest, who was anxious that God should not recognise him, first practiced this. He must have missed the vital piece of information in his theological teaching that nothing can be hidden from God.

Fortunately, these barbarically arcane traditions only survive now amongst the very oldest French gourmands. In nearly ten years, I have never come across thrush pate or lark's tongues on a village meal menu. Thank God!

But to return to our shopping trips. We are almost guaranteed to see a couple of heron, usually in the same place...a field bounded by a swift running water channel that takes the snow melt from the mountains, and for the last two winters our cattle have been joined in their pastures by an influx of cattle egrets. They spend a few weeks with us every winter now, and the cows seem very unfazed by them. I wonder why they choose to share accommodation with such big animals? They're never seen with the sheep, or in a field of horses, cattle are obviously their soul mates. Very strange.

The colder, snowy foothills of the Pyrenees bring down the birds of prey at this time of year. There really does seem to be a buzzard on every telegraph pole. The red and black kites circle endlessly round, as they do in the summer, but in winter, they seem to be higher in the sky.

There's quite a few small birds around too, fieldfares swooping and swarming, and of course the starlings who seem able to survive anywhere. We were lucky enough to see a swarm one day as we were driving towards Narbonne. What I thought was someone burning old tyres was in fact a cloud of starlings performing an aerial ballet over the flat terrain of the Minervois vineyards.

We never see any gulls as we're too far from the coast. For this reason, we never see wild duck or geese. I do miss the geese. The eerie sound of a skein of pinkfoot heading inland on the North Norfolk coast (to drive farmers ballistic!)is one of those experiences you never forget however far away you travel.

Another visitor in the skies over us isn't a bird, but nearly as exciting, well to Captain Sensible of course. It's rather larger than a bird; in fact, the Airbus 380 is rather larger than any other plane. So frequently does it appear that I hardly bother to look up now when I hear it droning over en route to the mountains, where the crew test the cockpit instruments for magnetic interference. We actually saw it on its maiden test flight. Well, I saw it ... in the distance. The Captain didn't because he was driving at the time. I said nothing for fear of looking stupid (I have been known to confuse large birds with planes and vice versa due to my short-sightedness) so it wasn't until I saw it on the telly that night that I realised what I had been looking at.
"I saw that this morning on the road from Le Cuing" I said. I was not popular.