Annual ramblings

Another year of pension: phew! It was frozen this year because of some smoke and mirrors in the RPI. The scheme moves to a more government-friendly index next year, so I must assume that the pension is static, unlike inflation.

What can one say about the new coalition government? Nothing very complimentary, I fear, but then the same was true of the previous Tory-lite regime. The difference is that the coalition has no mandate, since deals between what I’ve heard described as power-hungry individuals (I make no comment) have trashed manifesto promises. It’s hardly surprising, then, to see rioting in the streets. I hate the aches and pains of advancing years, but I’m glad I’m not starting out in education or work now.

Martyn is very busy at work, again because of absences of colleagues. The college is planning how to cut spending, and there might be compensations. It’s a similar story in the Courts service. Because of shortages of legal advisors, two of our nine courtrooms are now ‘dark’. My sittings usually total somewhere in the 50s, but this year so far I think I’m heading for little more than the minimum 26. Each time I sit it feels like the first time, and I’m hardly building my chairmanship skills. (It doesn’t help that my last three sittings were as a winger.) Since youth court business is very slow, I’ve taken the hint and stood down from the yoof panel. I was sitting rarely, I didn’t like the work and others were clamouring for more sittings. So the decision was pretty easy. The cuts mean more work for the union, though, and as I’m now Deputy Chairman of the Kent Branch, what I’ve lost in magisterial expenses I reckon I’m more than gaining in Magistrates’ Association miles.

This was the year I hit 60, so we had a nice gathering in the garden on the nearest Sunday. This was a major piece of luck, since the forecast had been poor. But as ever at parties, you never get a chance to stop and chat with people. Still, it was lovely to get even a fleeting moment with valued friends, and to see them making new friends. The tidal wave of good wishes around the date was quite moving.
On the day itself, I was down at the station early in the morning to get my old geezer discount card – though I don’t think I’ve broken even yet! I was very cross that my bus pass didn’t turn up promptly on the day, though. As a rather snotty council official explained none too patiently, the entitlement is moving back in time with the female state pension age, hence the wait of over three months: I’ve only used it twice so far.

We hope 2011 will treat you kindly, and that the clouds on the horizon will prove to have silver linings for us all.
Martyn & David

Home
We began the year with the chaos of building work – we’d decided to get the shower room refitted. The set-up we inherited wasted an awful lot of space, and the wash basin and shower enclosure were both designed for much smaller people than us. It was also beige to the point of depressing. The work was OK, but the workers real champions, getting here from the south coast every day but one in terrible conditions. In the summer, we had the boiler replaced and the heating system updated, which (the bill aside) was entirely painless – we pushed off to France, leaving the eponymous Mr Waterman with the key.


The garden has been a little disappointing. I suppose that’s a fair reward for the lack of goodness in the soil: we’ll top dress with some good stuff in the spring and hope for better things. Still, there were some successes: the echinaceas started flowering this year, and we had a 33% increase in our Bramley crop: up from 3 to 4.

Wheels
We bit the bullet and replaced Egg1 this year. At five years old, it was starting to get electrical faults. It was in most ways a better car than Egg2 – livelier and much less thirsty. Anyway, its replacement, a VW Tiguan, is turning out OK, even if its general air of refinement is let down by rather agricultural noises when it’s slugging at low revs. As ever, I feel soiled from dealings with the motor trade.
A rented C3 Picasso was an odd mixture – quite lively, but uncomfortable because of the cheap sloppy seats and jerky on/off brakes. It was hard to place accurately on the road, and if one could feel anything through the steering wheel, one was hallucinating.

Egg2, having had a 281 bus wiped along its side outside the chip shop, had to spend a week or so in dock. The bus company’s insurers provided us with an automatic Passat. With a drivetrain almost identical to the Tiguan’s, it also hinted at the nasty noise the latter makes under load at low revs. I have asked the Hauptvolkswagnerei whether they recognise this as an issue, and if so, what they’re doing about it. No reply.

Arrivals
Annie has been to see us in Langton and Lagrasse, and we had a lovely afternoon with all seven Bobbetts in Lagrasse – when they finally found us.


Another 9-couvert Lagrasse lunch, August
They came on one of the warmest days, so appreciated the coolth inside the house and in the river.

The birthday was a good excuse to get a few valued friends round, and we’ve had some smaller gatherings in Langton too. It was great to have a visit from Ria and Jan in July. Ria and I have been pen friends since we were both 12, but I’d never met Jan and Ria hadn’t met Martyn before.

Food & Drink
My father used to speak of digging one’s grave with one’s teeth. Well, mine (grave and teeth alike) will be well filled. We grew spuds and beans in containers this year: the charlottes did quite well, but the beans were disappointing.
I keep experimenting with bread recipes: we’re currently working on a batch of rolls with chopped olives, and I tried some pesto rolls a while back – luscious! Martyn’s cakes remain his speciality, though he is also gaining fans with his cherry tomato, garlic and basil bruschette. We took a couple of trays of them to Lagrasse neighbour Beverly’s 50th birthday bash. We both like cooking, so tend not to do a lot of eating out. The new owners of the Red Lion in the next village are doing a fine job, though, and it’s within walking distance.

We catered the birthday bash ourselves. You can’t expect a party here not to include the Madhur Jaffrey chickpeas, of course – an odd mix with quiche lorraine, I admit, but tradition oblige. Shame I forgot to serve the naans… Omission more than repaired by Martyn’s magnificent gateaux – effective only as part of a calorie-controlled diet, of course.

And on the drinks front, Château Aiguilloux rules in the Corbières, though for everyday use, Camplong was on better form this year. Their white is also OK, but not really a match for our favourite Picpoul de Pinet. There has been a great crop of sloes in the garden behind the scout hut where art class meets. Stand by for news of the sloe gin!

Clan
Good news: my nephew Richard and Anna are to be married next year. He beats his grandfather Smith’s record by a couple of years, sneaking in a little after his 39th birthday. Pip’s two are keeping the wedding stationers busy: Alan married this summer, and Ceri is to remarry. On Martyn’s side, the good news is that his nephew, Tim, has had a successful corneal graft, and his sight is vastly improved.

Arts
Historia has had a successful first season of Judenfrei, the story of two Jewish lawyers in Berlin in the 1930s, and starts a further run in a Hampstead theatre in January. We saw it in a City church, where the acoustic came close to ruining it. Impressive piece, though.

I went with Annie to see the Cézanne card players exhibition at the Courtauld one wet day in November. I’ve never had much time for Cézanne, but enjoyed this little show very much: his drawing of figures is a bit hit & miss, but his use of colours is terrific. It was my first visit to the Courtauld, and I’ll be back. On a first visit it’s such a surprise to come round a corner and find oneself face to face with iconic pieces like Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe and Renoir’s Bar at the Folies Bergères.

I keep slapping paint about, and have even gone back to watercolours a couple of times. There’s no doubt that acrylics are my thing – I lack the patience and self-discipline that you need to succeed with watercolours.


(Orbieu, autumn: watercolour.)
Whatever I attempt, it rarely succeeds if I spend more than one session on it. My last two efforts in acrylics were rather drawn out and laboured. This little piece – and it’s no more than a sketch, really – took about an hour, plus a few minutes’ fiddling a week later. I spent a messy half hour or so another day with soft pastels, and have played a little with watercolour pencils, but I find the inability to mix colours very limiting, and I’ll need practice to learn how each pigment reacts to the addition of water.

Departures
We’ve been to France a few times this year as usual, and look forward to the day when we are no longer limited by school holidays. Our Easter trip was helped by some good weather – it’s always a mixture early and late in the year, but we had good days for walking, cycling and otherwise enjoying the beautiful countryside of the Corbières, as well as days for reading, painting and model-making. Spring was very late in France as well, and the area had had heavy snowfalls that lay for days. Consequently, there was still mimosa in flower, and it was late in our stay before we could make our annual pilgrimage to see the minute daffodils and irises up on the hill. Yet curiously enough there were hundreds of flamingos on the étangs – and no shortage of mosquitos either.

I spent much of the Easter hols trying – and failing – to get Frogtel to set up the ADSL service I’d ordered on the internet. When I did reach them, the sales people told me I needed to talk to the techies, and the techies reciprocated. At one point, Martyn thought I was about to blow a gasket. None of which produced results, of course.

We came home via a few days at Annie’s house in the Gironde, arriving to find the boiler burst by the frost and the kitchen knee-deep in mouse shit. Annie’s co-owner had left food and dirty utensils in the kitchen when he left, so it was hardly surprising.

The travelling was mixed – leaving on Good Friday was a mistake. The tunnel and the French motorways were heaving with British tourists, and we’d decided on a longer than usual route to avoid bad weather. We stayed the night in a hotel in Fleurie that I used some twenty years ago: quiet and comfortable, and run by two friendly chaps, probably of our persuasion. The journey home was far better – the roads were quieter, so we made a pretty healthy average speed.

We routed via Berne for our summer trip: the laptop I’d bought in Fribourg in 1995 had become very unreliable, so I decided to get a decent machine as a birthday present to myself. We rather miscalculated the route, wrongly assuming that there was much more completed motorway through the Jura. So it was well after dark when we reached Pam and Geoff’s. Next time, we’ll grin and bear Basel.
As to computer shopping, we went to the new Media Markt in Gümligen, where ‘spricht jemand hier gerne Englisch?’ quickly resolved the language problem. Having researched at length and decided on a Sony or a Tosh, I came out with a Hewlett-Packard. The next task was to get it speaking to the world from Lagrasse. When we arrived, the router could see the ADSL service, but not the internet. A neighbour having given me the phone number for Frogtel’s anglophone help desk, I finally got a call back from a helpful young man who talked me through what had to be done to get the router correctly programmed. Now that that’s done, the service is vastly superior to what we get in the UK.


2010…

Unlike some years, the summer in Lagrasse was not too hot. We had a couple of warm days at the beginning of our stay, but for the rest of the time it was unspectacular, and cool enough for one or two bits of maintenance. And the paint was still on the door when we went back in October.
This came as a relief, since a week or so before we went south for half-term, I spent an anxious few hours watching the water level of the Orbieu rocketing up. You can watch it in real time on the internet: a gauge on the new bridge sends readings at frequent intervals to the Météo France website. When I checked it at around 6:00 am, the level had risen over four metres in less than twelve hours. When it reaches 7, the house floods, and the forecast was for further torrential rain. With a strong wind from the east and high waves on the Mediterranean, the Aude couldn’t exhaust quickly enough into the sea. Well, by around 8:00 I started to see a slight downward curve in the graph, and a more distinct curve in the reading upstream at Saint-Pierre des Champs. So we were lucky this time.

St Andrew's Day...

...ah, bitter chill it was. Hang on: that's not right. Honorable mention for whoever matches the right saint to the quote. Don't suppose one can blame one's patron saint anyway for the fact that it has been snowing all night and all day.

I headed out early for provisions, and soon appreciated having power to all four wheels. The car plodded gently uphill while others were slithering all over the place. I quickly abandoned Plan A, though: traffic on the road into town moved only when someone did a 3-point turn, as I soon did. This left me with the choice of shopping at higher altitude in the next county or trudging into the village daily in wellies until it thaws. On choosing the former, I found that the queue I'd left stretched right through the village and beyond.

I got to an uncharacteristically quiet Fortnum's easily enough, and stocked up for a siege. Only to find, when I went to load up a barrow-load of shopping, that the car didn't unlock in response to the remote control. So, with no visible keyhole on the outside of the car, I'd to ring for help. VW Assistance couldn't estimate how long it would take to get someone to me, but did reveal in the process that they worked through the RAC. I'd by then shoved my trolley back into the shop, and was starting to breakfast on milk and mini-stollen (from said trolley) when I spotted an RAC van in the filling station opposite. I squelched out across the road and grabbed him just in time, whereupon my phone rang to say that the RAC man assigned to my case was an hour and a half away in Chatham, in four inches of snow. Anyway, the excellent Shane soon got the show back on the road. My remote control was emitting no signal, but he knew (and I now know) the secret of finding the old-fashioned keyhole, so could open the car and start it the traditional way. Except for the shrieking of the alarm, which seems to have frightened the remote control back into action. It's an ill wind: Shane's next job was to have been closer to Chatham, hence an easier job for the man assigned to my breakdown, and the next job assigned to Shane was nearby, and closer to home.

Winter

Each year the idea of hibernation becomes more attractive. The temperature has not risen above zero for three days, and we're expecting flurries of snow on and off all day today. Headlines like 'Freeze Could Go On For Weeks' hardly improve the spirits. Still the skies have been generally pretty bright, which is better than the dark grey wet days of earlier in the month. We knocked off most of the Christmas shopping on Saturday in Rye, anad found a good address in the process - Fletcher's House in Lion Street, near the church: local sausages and mash, and a glass of pinot grigio per man. I suppose sitting by a blazing fire enjoying a nice meal and watching the snow falling outside should bring on an attack of festive spirit, but I'm bound to say it eluded me.

nice peaceful village

Read in the local rag that the two brothers who run the chippie in the village have gone Not Guilty to beating up the greengrocer next door. Better make sure I'm not on that trial. With interpretation from Turkish, it could be heavy going.

Money ill-spent

The bench dinner last night was enjoyable in most ways, but that couldn't be said for the food and drink. Our tickets got us an apéro and three courses. The white wine was thin and acidic, the soup bland, tepid and served with croûtons that weren't crisp even before they were dropped in the soup too early. The main course was OK-ish - not much you can do to ruin a loin of pork, really, except to leave it to dry out, and it must be said that it was on the edge of that. Fortunately the vegetables were of the energy-saving rather than school-dinners tendency. Pudding was sickly sweet, and the wine was mediocre and over-priced. Conversation was all but impossible over the noise of 100 or so judicial delinquents. Apart from that...it was nice to see friends, but I'd rather have had them round here for a bowl of decent soup...

...such as I served up at lunch time yesterday after a meeting with the Administration in the neighbouring county town. Cuts, cuts and more cuts to come, so my colleague and I were ready for a comforting bowl of lentil soup afterwards. Pleasant drive, though, amid the last of the superb autumn colours we've had this year. Today, since we have it to ourselves, is resolutely grey and damp, so it has been a day for more heart-warming soup (spiced butternut squash, bacon and potato) and a siesta. Upon which I shall presently engage.

More concessions, more Courtauld

At Martyn's suggestion, we went to Eltham Palace on Sunday. Wow! (an interjection I'm not greatly given to using.) I was last there in the late 70s for a nice little concert in the Great Hall thereof, introduced by the miraculously plain and utterly charming Dame Flora Robson. I wasn't aware then of the extraordinary house next door, built by Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. The house, seen from outside, is very handsome, though it was raining so hard that we didn't hang around to admire it. The interior is fabulous, if your tastes run to the Art Deco, as ours do. The only other place I have seen for myself such superb ocean-liner interiors was on Court N°3 at Bow Street, now no longer operating as such. I signed us up for English Heritage membership as we left, and by signing Martyn up with me, got him in at the concessionary membership rate. Does this make him an honorary old geezer?

A less attractive aspect of passing 60 is that one is invited to take part in the bowel cancer screening exercise. The process is one that repels squeamish blokes like me, but I finally steeled myself to the task earlier this month, and have been rewarded with a normal result.

Collected Egg2 from the repairers this morning. When I arrived, I found the newly repaired door slightly damaged. I then stumped off to do the shopping, snarling that I'd be back in between half an hour and an hour. They seem to have touched it in capably, and applied and cured the clear coat. According to Mr Painter, the door had been rehung wrongly, so that it conflicted with the trailing edge of the front door, and he was as disappointed as I was to see his work thus undone. It looks as if they have done a decent job, after final adjustments, but it did mean that I've effectively lost a few hours of my precious retirement. But we appear to have got a new tyre out of the process - I'd have been happier still if the tyre they replaced had been approaching my cranial condition.

Domestic violence court yesterday. Memo to colleagues: please use your sentencing guidelines when you ask for a pre-sentence report. It is frustrating to have to give a drunken wife-beater 50 hours' unpaid work because of your PSR instructions when the custody threshold has clearly been crossed. Snarl. SNARL!!

Culture and concessions

Annie is with us this weekend, so on Thursday, when she arrived from Hull, I took a ride up to a wet and windy London to meet her at the Courtauld Institute. It currently hosts an exhibition of Cézanne's card players. Just one room, but as well as the famous card player paintings, there's also a good collection of sketches, studies and finished portraits of the workers on his family's estate who modelled for the more famous pieces. Delightful collection. Annie is a frequent visitor to the Courtauld, but it was my first time there. The feel of the places is intimate, since it's on a modest scale as art collections go. And it's strange to turn a corner in the permanent collection to find yourself facing a world famous piece like Manet's Déjeuner sur l'Herbe or Renoir's Bar at the Folies Bergères. (Having made a major mistake with a reflection in a piece I've just put in for framing, it's nice to see that Renoir wasn't above playing fast and loose with the laws of physics.) The Courtauld also has a good collection of Degas bronzes of dancers and horses. So go if and whenever you get a chance. I certainly shall.

It's a comforting factor of advancing years that these little trips attract the odd concession or two - £3.60 off the train fare, £1.50 off the gallery entrance and free rides on the buses. (My bus pass finally arrived last weekend, to mark my 60 years, 3 months and 15 days. The age at which one qualifies for a pass is being moved back in line with movement in the female state pension age.)

what's left in the freezer?

It is raining like the days before the ark floated. Lunch: miscellaneous veggie soup, home made rolls (au choix: plain ciabatta, ditto with capers and sundry tomatoes or half-wholemeal with poppy, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, turmeric and garam masala). Dinner: Bobbett's leeky bangers with carroty mash, latter nudged along with gros-grain mustard and, if it's still useable, crème fraîche. Let it rain, I say!

a quiet week

For me anyway, though it was back to work and then some for Martyn, who has had to cover for a missing colleague, losing his usually free Wednesday daytime. His car has now gone in for repair, and he is swanning around in a rather smart VW Passat, paid for by the insurers of the bus that wiped itself along the side of Egg2. When I drove the Passat, which has much the same engine and transmission as my car, I noted a hint of the same odd noise that mine makes under load. It wasn't altogether a surprise, then, to get a call from the garage to say that they had tested another like mine and found that it makes the same noise. So it seems not be be a fault so much as a design error. I shall fire off a note to the Obervolkswagnerei and see what they have to say.

Next door's ash tree has shed all its leaves now, I think, and most of them on our back grass as usual. The other neighbour's oak has a bit more dropping to do. I tried the leaf blower/vacuum sweeper on the fallen leaves with some success, but was not unhappy to stop when the rain came on. Once the oak has done its stuff, I'll take a stroll over the grass with the lawnmower. Otherwise, the garden is starting to look rather tired. The echinaceas have all died back, though the last of their rudbeckia cousins are still showing colour. The penstemons have been a bit feeble this year: I think they are protesting at the poor soil. Must get some muck in there next spring, when I may cut them back a little less severely than I did last year. Indoors, Jane's New Guinea busy lizzies are doing well - when I remember to water them. I've taken a few cuttings and put them in water on the kitchen window ledge, and if they show signs of rooting, I'll take a lot more. I know it's only early November, but I'm already starting to ache for the spring so I can start coaxing plants and seeds into life again. True, this year's autumn colours have been unusually spectacular. But to me they just signal the end of the show and the beginning of the long dark months to come.

home

We closed the house up yesterday, then ambled north to Puylaroque for dinner with Jan and Mark and an overnight stay. Not a bad drive, though the weather was pretty poor: we'd a heavy shower as we skirted round Mazamet, and a lot of drizzle the rest of the time. We turned into the airport at Castres, thinking it might be more pleasant to sit indoors to have our sandwiches. It was closed for lunch: not exactly the most active of airports, evidently. A bit later, we took the road along the gorge of the Aveyron, and enjoyed it: it would have been less impressive without the glorious autumn colours, of course. Lovely evening with our hosts, who have been working like mad on the lower floor of their now not so little house. They have made a fifth bedroom out of a former store room, and are talking about digging a ten-metre swimming pool next year.

Toulouse airport today was pretty bearable, as such places go. The new wing is bright and airy, and rather than queuing on a horrible dark corridor for security checks, you now line up alongside what looks like one of those steel cafeteria counters where you slide your tray along, adding dishes, until you get to get to the till. Only in this case, as you shuffle along, you put the laptop in one tray, watches, keys, the phone and loose change into your jacket which goes into another, together with your belt, and then you shuffle through the metal detector. For this last step I had to wait a moment while a now-ennobled Tory ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer was sent back and forth through the arch, finally having to be rubbed down by one of the security people. I said to him as we reassembled our belongings side by side that I always expected my teeth to set off the alarm, at which he chuckled, saying, 'Oh it's my metal knee that does it: I come through here every week and it always sets it off!'. He looked pretty fit for his 78 years, but has got a little of his weight back - maybe his daughter cooks the dinner now and then.

Gatwick was quite tolerable too, if third-world shabby as usual. At least it wasn't too busy. Our car park bus was there within a minute of our reaching the bus stop, and we were into the car and away in no time: a whole lot more quickly than if we'd been in the regular long-term car park. (I'd booked so late that there was no price advantage.)

It's always a shame to come to the end of a holiday, but we love our place here, so it's a pleasure to come home again. Of which fact I shall try to remind myself as I try to clear the grass of the tons of ash leaves that have fallen on it while we were away. Stand by for snarls this coming week or so, when we are to be subjected again to the attentions of the motor trade. Martyn's car goes in for repair on Wednesday, and mine for further Nasty Noise chasing on Friday.