Bye-bye MMXI

Not planning to take stock of the past year - scroll back to November for the unprinted Christmas card insert.  We're just about done with the festive hostilities (actually, some pleasant times with Martyn's family, and quiet days to ourselves).

I've potted up another batch of New Guinea cuttings, and even picked some flowers from the garden - rudbeckias and some rather confused wallflowers are still showing colour, as are a few pansies.  The hippeastrum that Elizabeth and Peter brought us when they came to lunch is now flowering like mad, and there are still flowers on the orchid that Sue and Robbie brought us ages back

Nice day on Wednesday with Marion, John and Dorothy, with whom we made short work of a little smoked gammon joint supported by carrot, onion and potato mash; haricots verts and curly kale.  And followed by apple crumble. 

Today's post brought a bread recipe book from Annie: I now see why my pains aux raisins didn't quite work: Mr Hollywood calls for 500g of butter to 625 g of flour.  Well, mine needed toasting to be palatable: his seem guaranteed to narrow the coronary arteries.

à la recherche du temps perdu, one way and another....

Great day out on Saturday: Celia and Andy picked us up early if not bright, and off we went to join the train at our semi-homophonous neighbouring town.  The new-build Thompson A1 Pacific pulled in on time leading a rake of 13 coaches, in one of which we proceeded to eat our way to Bath and back.  I’d forgotten how leisurely the departure is behind a steam locomotive: but it did give us a chance to admire the frosty countryside: we were provided with a cloth with which to wipe the condensation off the 1950s windows.  Interestingly, our neighbourhood sheep, well used to electric multiple units, were quite spooked by the steam locomotive, and fled from the trackside.   

We hacked round the South London suburbs and across the river, joining God’s Wonderful Railway somewhere near Willesden, where we had to pause for 20 minutes for the engine to take on a tender of water.  We’d forgotten how steam engines used to replenish their water tanks from supply troughs between the rails: since there is no call for such devices these days, we’d to stop once again on the way out, and twice also on the way back in the evening.  Interestingly enough, the water was supplied from fire engines.  Now, firemen in these parts are said to be great moonlighters, serving their shifts for the most part asleep at the fire station, then earning a second salary as painters and decorators, motor mechanics, roofers or what you will.  An allegation to which I wouldn't for a moment wish to lend credibility.  (A good few serve as Magistrates, I’m bound to say, but that’s a different matter, absent remuneration…)  We speculated jokily on the mechanisms by which money might have changed hands for the refilling of a mainline steam engine.  Whatever, the saps-pomps kept us steamily on our way.   

Bath was lovely.  We had a few drops of rain, and it was damned cold: though we got some fine breaks of sunshine as we went round, we had to spend the last hour in department stores and coffee shops to keep the blood fluid.  We were a bit late out of Bath, and I have an idea that the engine did a whisker over its permitted maximum of 75 mph on the way back east.  Not a bad meal, with a half-bottle of M. Duboeuf's worst (yet drinkable) vin de table per diner.  The Orient Express it ain't, I have to say, but it was a fun day out.

I think you can safely add a further 40 miles to the estimated distance reported in the last posting. We got up on Saturday morning to find an email saying that they’d tried to deliver my parcel on Friday evening (when we were in) and found us out (which we weren’t) and left a card (which was nowhere to be found), and suggesting that we call the courier (I left a text message on Sunday morning – no reply). Rang on Monday morning and left a message. Monday afternoon, door bell rang: a kid in a beat up Suzuki with his child in the front seat: parcel for Mr Bishop. ‘Thanks: got one for me, then?’. Quick rummage in the boot and up popped the item I’d ordered two weeks ago. Phew.

Oh, and as an aside, I've been trying to read Proust, admittedly in translation, which can't help.  But sentences that last a whole page aren't my kind of reading for pleasure, and I found my mind wandering in a manner all too reminiscent of when I had to read a piece by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff back in undergraduate days. 

Modern Times

Since we're treating each other to a fancy train ride to Bath and back tomorrow, Christmas shopping at Forges-L'Evêque this year is confined to stocking fillers.  I ordered one for Management on line on the 4th, and the suppliers (name on application) managed to release it to the arguably helvetically musical delivery company only three days later.  At that point it positively whizzed round the country, from Exeter to Wednesbury to Hailsham in something like fifteen hours.  It then sat in the Hailsham Depot for four and a half days, and then rattled around in the van for another three days.  It then went back into hurtle mode again, leaving Hailsham yesterday afternoon, being re-sealed (ominous...) at Hatfield shortly after midnight, and is now supposedly with a Maidstone courier.  The problem seems to have been that I put in an extra '3' when I was typing in the postcode - or in any case, the file acquired the superfluous digit at some stage.  Odd that no-one actually read the address during the 7 days it was rattling around East Sussex.  Distance from Exeter to Forges-L'Evêque: 206 miles.  Distance actually travelled: 539, plus whatever distance it covered before someone read the address label.  It'll be interesting to see what state it's in when (and if) it gets here.  I read that it went out with a courier 18 minutes ago, so we'll see how long the last 20 miles takes.  It's fascinating that lasers, computers and the bar code on the label let us keep up to date in something approaching real time on the whereabouts of our stocking fillers.  It's a shame they don't use a spot of Mark I eyeball and intelligence as well.  Same might be said of my data input, of course....

Getting wintry

No snow here yet, but the frost didn't lift fully yesterday, despite bright sunshine.  And yet the New Guineas in the hanging baskets are clinging to life: I might even get a few more cuttings from them.  Today it's wet and dreich, with a wind that makes it feel colder than it really is.  I hoovered up a couple of bags of wet leaves from the front yesterday - not a job I relish, but less crippling than doing the job with a rake.

We're chipping away at the Christmas shopping, though with little enthusiasm.  The cards are all away save for those destined for a few art class absentees.  The sitting room is starting to look cheerful, with a festoon of Christmas greetings already round the double door frame.  The Christmas tree seems to have survived in its builder's bucket outside: we plan to turn it out and re-pot it in fresh compost before we bring it back inside. 

Not sure what to make of events in Brussels this week.  It all rather echoes my experience of the UK's relationship with the EU: as a Greek MEP put it years ago, we in the North argue and grizzle about proposed EU law, but once it's in place, we enforce it.  In the south they say yes and sign anything, and then systematically ignore the obligations that they've taken on.  No doubt grossly exaggerated, but I'd be surprised if this difference of attitudes wasn't at the root of the current problems.  But the fact remains that the credit ratings of France and Germany remain (for the moment) higher than that of the USA.

We had a day of takeaways on Friday.  Since we'd  been invited to dinner, hence expected to eat later than we normally do, we had fish and chips from the local chippie at lunch time.  On arriving at our hosts' place, it transpired that they'd completely forgotten they'd invited us, so we (all of us) finished up having a Bangladeshi takeaway from the place near where we used to live.  And the evening was just fine!  Said friends have taken on a vast pile overlooking farm land near the junction of the Hastings and Lewes roads.  It needs huge amounts of work: rather them than us.

A few small achievements lately.  We got the top gutters cleared and repaired for a very sensible price from the chap we collared at the garden shop: particularly since he had to scour three neighbouring towns for a replacement for a broken section of downpipe.  I managed to slither across the grass with the mower one last time, after the majority of the leaves had fallen, so our outlook through the winter will be a little better than it has been in years past. 

We've done some re-planting of containers with good old winter pansies, and will see how they get on.  There are a few last flowers on the rudbeckias and penstemons, but both are closing down for the winter.  The mild weather, though, has prompted some crocuses and daffodils into growth.  Penstemon cuttings seem healthy in the cold frames: perhaps I'd better pot them up before the weather turns naarsty.  Some of the New Guinea impatiens are struggling on outside, but I've taken as many cuttings as I can now, and a lot of those that rooted in water are now potted up in compost and adapting well. 

We had an enjoyable lunch last week here with Elizabeth and Peter.  He has had a rotten time this year, his health having landed him in the Kent & Snuffit Hospital for a long spell.  It was good to see him back on form and taking a spot of nourishment.  We bumped into an art class friend in a local hostelry a few days later.  Obviously still enjoying life and a good lunch, but no longer recognising people or really communicating.  Such a dreadful affliction, Alzheimer's. 

A propos art class, Miss's 'Threads of Feeling' theme is so far failing to inspire me, so on Thursday I belted out a quick sketch of a Cathar castle, and may develop it.  I was using an acrylic pad I bought a while back from the fellow who comes to our class to flog his stuff, and hated it.  I think the last time I used acrylics on paper, I used watercolour paper without difficulty.  You live and learn.  I guess I need to get used to the greater absorption rate of paper compared with a well-gessoed canvas.

Annual Ramblings, 2011

The year’s headline is Martyn’s retirement, following a long and varied career of 39 years. Administration in HM Dockyards, then at the Admiralty Arch; he was promoted into the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity in Bognor and later Kennington; transferred to training, promoted to the Department of Health, then training again for the Benefits Agency until voluntary redundancy; undergraduate study leading to a good 2:1; postgraduate study in education, teaching in a SE London comprehensive, and finally lecturing in further and higher education. As I write, he is already fighting off the head-hunters... Makes me feel a real stick-in-the-mud for staying with one employer for all those years. We are no longer tied to school timetables, so can travel when we feel like it, and do more together at last.

It worries us that there isn’t a political party worth voting for in these parts.  Our party did not put up a candidate for the local elections. There’s no question of our supporting the Tories, far less UKIP, and the LibDems have sold what little remained of their soul.  So for the first time, I endorsed my ballot paper with ‘None of these’.  (I rejoined Labour this year, but am so far unimpressed by the emails from Balls, Hain et al). Where are the statesmen these days?  Not in the Commons so far as I can see.  As for the EU, I start to feel that my emotional attachment to the concept of European Union and the single currency may have been sadly misplaced.  Just as we’re being lectured on austerity, by the way, a French daily reports that David Cameron’s one night in Cannes during the G20 conference landed us UK taxpayers with a bill for €1950.  Sarko’s room only cost us French taxpayers, between €6000 and 7000 for a two-night stay.  Well, that’s all right then.

With investment proving a waste of time, our plan is to have a few more treats in future.  As a wise friend puts it, what’s the point of saving for a rainy day – it’s drizzling now. 

Best wishes for 2012!

Martyn & David

The garden has kept us quite busy this year as usual, and we’re discovering by trial and error what does well and what doesn’t.  Achilleas are fine if you have herbaceous borders the size of those at Chartwell or Sissinghurst, but not a good idea dotted around small borders.  So they’re out.  So are a euonymous by the steps up to the grass, a rather diseased lupin, an ugly laurel against the side fence and sundry other disappointing subjects.  In are a helenium (The Bishop, appropriately enough), a new pink floribunda (The Justice of the Peace, ditto) and two perennial rudbeckias (I failed twice at growing them from seed).

We’ve ordered a few packets of seed for next year, and saved countless more from the garden, so it’s black fingernails in the spring as usual.  We’re hoping for some new colours of oriental poppy, having nicked seeds from Immy and Jon’s. This year’s big success was the crop of cuttings from the New Guinea impatiens that we got last year from our friend Jane when she moved house.  The common or garden busy lizzies, so successful in years past, all turned their toes up – like everyone else’s. 

Wheels

The VW has been back to the garage a couple of times, since there’s a nasty noise from the transmission under load.  Still no fix, so we may have to thole it.  In all other respects, it’s an excellent car, with a very modest thirst given its weight and performance.  It impressed us with its mountain goat insouciance when we threw it at the Canigou.  It’s equally at home devouring the miles on the motorway.  While it was in the garage, I was supplied with a very boring Golf with a small diesel engine and crazily high gearing, plus the initially unnerving stop-start technology.  The rented Mégane was a nice surprise: lively, thrifty and with sports car handling.  We wished it wasn’t so low-slung, and would have preferred fewer gears – and no gearchange prompts.    Guess I’m getting old.

Arrivals ê

We haven’t entertained much this year, but have had a few nice little gatherings at home in Langton and in Lagrasse.  John and Margaret and friends from Australia spent a week or so in Lagrasse in the spring after THE wedding of the year. Mihaela, Roger and Roselynn house-sat for us while we were in the UK in August, joining us first for lunch with  Immy, Jon, and four of their girls.  Lasagne in industrial quantities.  Never fails.

Food & Drink

  We had another meal on a Bâteau-Mouche in the summer: still a fine experience, though less impressive this time, and the price had gone up.  Closer to home, we’ve used Terracotta in Cranbrook a couple of times, and dined on Martyn’s birthday at La Dolce Vita in Lamberhurst.  Both excellent: the latter’s rack of lamb, served with spinach and just a few sauté potatoes, was rather special. 

We’ve bought two bread machines this year.  The first Kenwood machine gave up the ghost after only four years.  There’s now a dirt-cheap and correspondingly hideous machine in Lagrasse, and a new Kenwood in Langton.  The olive and walnut rolls are tempting.  The pesto and garlic rolls are quasi-obscene.

Martyn does a fine line in bruschette: olive oil, garlic and basil, halved cherry plum tomatoes.  I’ll sow basil and tomatoes early in the spring! 

We have a weakness for Wiener schnitzel, and indulge it sparingly.  Our preference is for pork fillet; thick slices hammered out to a few millimetres, floured, egged, crumbed and fried, and served with pasta, Neapolitan sauce and salad.  But in a tiny gesture to our BMIs, we sometimes do saltimbocca instead...

Disappointments: the place where we often stop in the Auvergne on the way south.  Awful meal, high price.  The pizza shop over the hills, where the plat du jour, Cannelloni maison turned out to be a sausage of hamburger meat, grossly over-garlicked and under-seasoned, wrapped in a sheet of lasagna and left in the oven for a few hours, sprinkled with gradually hardening grated mousetrap.  I hate being served something that even I can do better myself.  It’s easy now to eat badly in France.  And the tandoori shop near us in UK was poor. 

Work on the kitchen has meant much business for the Rusthall takeaways.  Slight preference for the Happy Valley over the Chippy...

Clan

Richard and Anna were married back in May: it was a lovely day for us all.  It was the first time I’d seen many of Margaret’s family since she and John were married in 1969 (when I was just finishing my first year at St Andrews). 

More weddings in 2012: Martyn’s niece Nina will become Mrs Stephen Smith, and my cousin’s daughter Ceri Mrs Paul Young.  Martyn’s cousin Jan and Mark have married: we’re delighted: they’re lovely people. 

Sad to report, though, that Margaret’s father died this year.  Years of poor health didn’t hinder an active, independent life until the last months.

Arts

Martyn is greatly enjoying his digital piano, which has excellent tone and endless versatility.  (My hands might be better if I started practising my scales....) 

We’ve only been to the theatre once this year, to a peculiar piece: Five Blue-Haired Ladies Sitting on a Green Park Bench, before and after they died....  Been to the cinema a couple of times, though: we loved The Help. 

We’re both reading a lot, having quickly taken to our Kindles.  Martyn has read quite a few biographies (his preferred genre) and I’ve been through this year’s curious Booker shortlist, plus a few classics that I managed to avoid at school, like Cranford, Lorna Doone and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.  On the lighter side, I’ve just finished Jo Nesbo’s Oslo trilogy. 

I’ve played about a little with watercolours again this year.  They force me to be a bit more economical and decisive. 

Orbieu at Lagrasse, watercolour sketch

But I’m more comfortable with acrylics – you can paint over the cock-ups.

Departures ì

We’ve been to Lagrasse three times this year, for Martyn’s last Easter Holiday, for a long spell in the summer and again in November.  At Easter, for the first time, we bought firewood from a fellow near Narbonne who runs a really practical system: you drive on the weighbridge and get out, then fill the car with wood – a mix of chestnut and holm oak as a rule – then weigh the car again and pay for the difference.  The fire works pretty well once it’s warmed through, but it sulks a bit when there isn’t much wind.  A rare problem hereabouts.

We tend to have our favourite outings – pizzas in Limoux, fish at La Franqui, views of the mountains at Bouisse, gentle exercise on the bikes by the Canal du Midi.  Both of our usual  eating places have disappointed us this year – grotesquely over-salted moules (sent back) at La Franqui, and the plat du jour in Limoux that I ate only because I was hungry. 

Years ago, we tried to take a tricky road up the Canigou, but were stopped by a sign saying it was open only if you had four-wheel drive.  Now that we have  the same, we (or rather, I) decided to have a crack at it.  And soon wished I hadn’t.  Narrow, extremely rough  mule track, with jagged rocks on one side, and sickening drops on the other.  The only thing that stopped us turning round and going back was the fact that we knew how awful it had been so far and could only hope for better ahead.  Wrong.  We crept up in first gear most of the way, hoping against hope that we wouldn’t meet anyone coming down.  Fortunately, we’d reached the col before a Land Rover hurtled down the track from the summit and proceeded to hurtle on down the way we’d come.  Gulp!

Managed to connect with a few friends on our travels – Jan and Mark in Puylaroque and Annie in Sigalens.  We also called in on two former colleagues of mine from BT France days, Martin Cooper and François Vivier.  Excellent experiences both: neither had met Martyn, and we hadn’t met Patricia Cooper or Danielle Vivier.  Both took us to local bonnes adresses, where we regaled ourselves with good food, surroundings and company.  We’ll be back!

Oh, and we found a good and reasonable hotel in Paris: the Ibis on the quai in Courbevoie, which was doing a summer special offer at €50-something a night.  It was fine, triple-glazed, spacious enough, free parking and Wi-fi, but a bit of a trek from the métro. 

We also had an enjoyable stay with Annie in Yorkshire, and experienced some local sights like Beverley and York Minsters, the  National Rail Museum and the captivating Spurn Head. 

The journeys there and back were awful, however: next time we’ll take out a mortgage and go by train rather than drive.

We went with friends in October for fish and chips on the Spa Valley Railway.  Fun, but I like my fish and chips a bit hotter! The week before Christmas, we four are treating ourselves to an extravagant day out by steam train from Tonbridge to Bath, with Pullman-style champagne breakfast, and dinner on the way back. 

stop press

The kitchen is at last more or less as we want it: new sink, hob and tiles make all the difference.  Martyn has worked wonders on the tired old beech working surfaces, using a judicious mixture of elbow grease and Danish oil.  I found a third kitchen stool in a charity shop recently, and had just enough of the grey velvet left to upholster it to match the others.  If I find a fourth, it’ll have to be beige tweed all round.

Back to normal...

...or nearly.  We left for the UK last Tuesday pretty much as soon as we'd finished putting the house into hibernation.  We could have done with a bright, blowy day to get the laundry out and dried, but didn't get one, so have a lot of taking down and putting away to do next time we're there: every available indoor line, rail and airer is solid with drying clothes, bedding and towels.  We decided to leave early for the airport and get there in daylight, since the prospect of the Toulouse périphérique in the rain after dark is more than one can contemplate with equanimity.  Fortunately, the café-restaurant in the top floor of the terminal building has now been refitted, and is a very comfortable and pleasant place to spend the odd five hours reading, nattering over a glass of wine and enjoying a leisurely dinner.  It offers a view across the field, and we were amazed at just how busy the airport is with domestic and international traffic, not to mention operations at the Airbus works.  The flight back to Gatwick did what it said it would, but was a stark reminder of how little I like being stuck in an uncomfortable seat in a confined space in close proximity to people sharing inanities too loud in disagreable tones.

Meanwhile, our domestic surroundings improve little by little: we have our new sink and gas hob, and the floor and walls were re-tiled while we were away.  While I was hob-nobbing with wife-beaters yesterday, Martyn was treating the working surfaces with Danish oil, so we're starting to look right posh.    Outside, it's another story.  The grass is too wet now to cut, though the mild autumn means that it's still growing.  I managed to get the worst of the ash leaves up before we went away, but the rest of them are still lying, and the oak is still shedding.  I wouldn't find it so irksome if they were our trees.  Oh well, it's good in the other half of the year to live in leafy surroundings.  I've done a bit of chopping back and dead-heading in the garden, and have re-planted a few containers.  While we were buying potting compost for the latter job, a chap drove into the garden shop car park in a van that advertised gutter-clearing services, so we collared him, and he's coming on Thursday.  So that just leaves insulating the roof, fixing the downstairs loo, getting the drive tarmacked, taking out the hedge and the tall leylandii at the front, decorating and carpeting the hall, stairs and landing, replacing the front door and then we can start all over again.

Visual

We set off for the seaside the other day, but finished up heading for the mountains, since the views were good.  The air was quite clear up at the Château de Quéribus, so we had good views of snowy Pyrenees. 

We finished up in Limoux for a late lunch at our usual place.  Disappointing: we decided against our usual pizzas, and my canelloni maison was awful.  Martyn's steak, ordered à point arrived bleu, but benefited from another wave at the flame.

I've been trying to find subjects that I might like to paint, but the rain has knocked out most of the colour in the vineyards.  A bit late now anyway, since we leave for England tomorrow.  So we've really done rather a lot of not much, or I have at least.  Martyn has been making great strides with his new model railway layout, which is now functioning: he reckons he may have to replace the points, since the short wheelbase engines tend to stop on the dead frogs......ask him...

We've done another trip to the wood yard, since the first lot of wood burned down fast.  We'll have enough left over to give us a couple of nights' fires when we come back in the spring.  It has been very dull and grey, so the fire has been on constantly since we got here.  We're ready to get back to central heating now.

Audio...

The characteristic sounds of France change over time.  For decades, the quality of telephone service was so poor that they used to say it took two years to get a telephone, then two hours each time to get a dialling tone.  When I came to France first in 1966, my host family had no telephone; neither did any of the people we visited.  One went to the Post Office to make a call: the counter clerk set up the call for you, and then sent you to a cubicle to speak to your correspondent.  In much the same way as African countries have leapfrogged fixed telecommunications networks and gone straight to mobile, France pretty much by-passed the slow Strowger exchanges that constituted close to 100% of the UK telephone network, and went straight to the fast electro-mechanical Crossbar type of exchange, and the countryside is liberally strewn with microwave towers, which quickly created a trunk network for them to talk to each other over.  So France never had much copper in the trunk network.  In one way, however, the French PTT resembled GPO Telephones: there was one telephone handset to be had, and the bells all sounded the same.  Rather tinny, but unmistakeably urgent.  I bought one for a couple of Euros from our delightful Post Office counter clerk Jean-Luc when he’d set up a stall outside his house on one of the summer brocante days.  (Judging by the number of handsets he was flogging, I guess he must have swept up all the handsets when they put in a new PBX at the Post Office.)  So I have a telephone with metal bells and a dial.  It’s a pity my register at the exchange doesn’t recognise the old loop-disconnect pulse signalling, but I can take incoming calls, and it emits that tinny ringing that used to be a characteristic sound of France.

Another disappearing sound of France is that of the flat-twin air-cooled motor car engine.  These high-revving unburstable little engines used to provide the motive power for much of rural France, mostly in the Citroën family, but also in the stylish – and fast – Panhards.  Monsieur Poudou, our local beekeeper, used to park his 2CV at the end of our street when he came into town, and his was one of the last of the little thrummers around.  A neighbour has, however, recently bought himself a beat-up Dyane, so until it thrums its last, we have some relief from the now universal diesel noises.  Brings a smile to the face.

A recurrent sound of modern France is me swearing about problems of internet access.  Did all the usual tricks – reboot PCs and router, switch the filter, check and correct router settings.  I’m not certain my blood pressure can stand another round of calls to France Telecom, so maybe I’ll just have to do without the internet for the next 9 days.  Or so I was starting to think.  We got our network password from Frogtel with remarkably little trouble over the telephone – I just had to give details of the bank that pays our monthly sub for ADSL service.  But when I tried to reconfigure the router, guess what?  Internet Explorer cannot connect to this site.  At this point we thought ‘it has to be the router’.  Off we went to the prefecture town, returning with a nice new Belkin router in a pretty box that said ‘easy instant connection to the internet’ or some such which.  It wasn’t till we’d stripped the cellophane off the box and opened it up that we discovered that we needed a separate modem as well. 

A few more tries with the original wireless router, then we were in the car, back to said prefecture town, having decided to get a router from Frogtel.  Good job it wasn’t raining: you have to queue down the street to see the triage nurse, as it were, and he then takes a note of what you want on a high-tech pad of scrap paper, and tells you to go and wait in a corner.  Well, half an hour later, we emerged with the router, after a nice chat about old times at Frogtel with one of the clerks thereof.  Think, though: when did you last see a BT shop that you could walk into and transact with?  Next port of call, E. Leclerc, from whom we’d bought the misleadingly packaged router earlier.  All explained to receptionist 1, who sent me to receptionist 2 to get an ‘avoir’ (credit note).  Goes without saying that she send me back to receptionist 1, who...  By the time I was at deuce in the ping-pong match between receptionists, which gets a bit bruising when you’re the ball, I started to get assertive.  Can I use this in any E. Leclerc?  No, this shop only.  Not even at your petrol station?  No: if it’s a credit for a purchase in the shop, it can only be redeemed in the shop.  All in tones that put me, the customer, firmly in the wrong.  Well, sez I, that’s no good to me: I’m not here very often (laying on the foreign accent even more thickly): can’t I have a refund?  A phone call to a Higher Power, and authority was finally given for a cash refund.  From another desk, of course.  Well, once all that was out of the way, and my wallet was rather fatter than when we first left home (they plainly couldn’t be arsed to do the admin for a Visa card refund), off we jolly well set on our second ride home. 

Only to face exactly the same frustrations as we’d had with the old router.  Cutting a long and hypertensive story short, I set up the new device upstairs, and it works with the laptop.  Which we could probably have done with the original router.  Paciência.  If I feel strong tomorrow, I’ll have a further crack at hooking up the desk computer.  But the chances are that it’s a fault with the telephone socket which, after all, spent a while under water in 1999.

The weather is mild, but damp, so we have kept the fire burning since we got here.  It’s doing pretty well, but I think we’ll have to go and buy some more wood, our reserve stock and a first car load being much depleted after just five days.  We quite like this errand: you weigh the car before and after filling it yourself with firewood, paying for the difference.  Not cheap, however: but then, nothing is these days in France. 

Back to civilisation

Hardly a civilised start to the day, though, with a drive to Gatwick on dark wet roads.  But tea and a bacon sandwich, exorbitant airport prices notwithstanding, tend to restore one's sang-froid.  Flight unexceptional, Toulouse nice and mild, hire car serviceable if very shabby - it's worth going round it to spot the new dents and scrapes: ever the conspiracy theorist, I suspect they declare two dents on the contract, then expect the current renter to pay again for five more that the previous renter picked up.  Cela dit, the car is competent once you've found out that the 'on' switch for the cruise control is in the armrest - though, as Martyn pointed out, the Toulouse rocade is not really the place to try to workout where the minor controls are.

 A 5:00 am start followed by two airport experiences are enough for Day 1, so we haven't ventured far afield today since we arrived.  A little stroll up to the girls' shop on the Prom for essentials like saucisson, and jambon de pays for tomorrows saltinbocca. Firewood trip tomorrow, and a visit to our favourite Cave Co-op in Camplong.  I have paints, brushes and canvases, so have diversions planned for the forecast days of wet weather.  Not sandbag filling just yet, though neighbouring départements are on flood alert.

Where do the weeks go?  Well, we’ve been out and about, spending a long weekend with Annie in Yorkshire.  It's been an ambition to go to Spurn Head since I first saw and read about it in the Nat Geog.  The fragile promontory lies an hour or so from Annie's at the mouth of the Humber, and we headed off there on Sunday, with a picnic and a flask of tea.  It’s a captivating place, even on a day when the sun was a bit sulky.  Long beaches with the rollers breaking on them on the east side, with three or four levels of tide marks in places ; calm waters and wading birds on the west.  Enormous skies.  I was surprised at the amount of traffic entering the estuary: the pilot cutter was busy all the time we were there.  At one point the sand spit is very low and narrow, and there are often warnings during the winter storms that it’s at risk of breaching, as indeed it has at intervals over the centuries.  Evidently, there used to be a railway all the way to the coastguard station at the point, and a spot of googling reveals that they even had a couple of sail bogies, to take advantage of the wind that nearly always blows there.  There are stories of near-disasters, such as when drunken soldiers ‘borrowed’ a trolley one windy night and lost control!

On Monday we did Beverley things: visits to the Minster and St Mary’s, and to an exhibition of painting and sculpture by Jacqueline Stieger.  I can’t link to it, unfortunately, because the art gallery web site is way out of date.  A casualty, no doubt, of the cuts.  All impressive stuff, I assure you: she masters several media perfectly, from oils to bronze via any number of imaginative materials along the way.

We spent a day in York as well, visiting the National Railway Museum, the Minster and the tiny and ancient Holy Trinity Church in Goodramgate.  When we picked our dates for the trip, we’d quite forgotten that it was half-term week: consequently, the museum was jumping with sprogs and pretty noisy.  The rolling stock collection is remarkable, but I think I was more attracted by the stack of other memorabilia, like old station and locomotive name plates, dining car and railway hotel furniture and table settings.  They also have an ample collection of chamber pots, stored in a cupboard clearly labelled ‘Empty Before Moving’.  Quite.

The fact that it was half-term may have accounted for the awful travelling conditions on the way there and back.  A stretch of the M11 was closed, so we finished up heading in to the North Circular, and bitterly regretting it.  We ultimately abandoned it and groped our way through Palmer’s Green, Southgate, Cockfosters and places like that.  We’d been three hours on the road by the time we were outside the M25.  The return was a bit less worse, though conditions on the M25 forced us to head way out east on the M20 and hack our way home along the country lanes.

I wasn’t really sure I was in the mood for Thursday’s art class, but set off anyway with my two current canvases.  I did some final fiddling on the latest landscape, then quickly slapped on some varnish before I could change my mind.  I also did a bit more on a still life of autumn flowers, and left feeling happier than when I arrived.

We’d a bit of fun in  the evening, though: four of us took the little steam train that runs nearby and were served (lukewarm) fish and chips.  Actually my third lot of fish and chips in the same week; shame on me.

The garden is starting to look a bit bedraggled, but I paid a bit of attention to it yesterday.  My new rose arrived during the week, and is now planted, replacing a rather overgrown euonymous, which yielded only to blood, toil, tears, sweat and a pickaxe.  The rose has been bred to mark the 650^th anniversary of the Magistracy, and mine looks like a healthy example.  So together with Edna, an English rose ( actually named after Geoff Hamilton) that I bought for Martyn just after his Mum died, it will guard the steps up to the grass.  Or as I put it rather more succinctly on facebook, I’ve dug a big hole and put a Justice of the Peace in it.  I managed to slither across the grass behind the mower as well yesterday, so it’s looking a little better than it usually does at this time of year.  The main problem is leaves from the neighbours’ ash tree.  The grass is already well carpeted with leaves again even though I cleared a lot of them yesterday afternoon.  If we get a couple of dry days, I’ll get out with the mower again.  But I notice that the October-April quagmire is starting to get established again.  Such is clay.

The kitchen is still a  bit of a mess pending tiling, But Paul’s coming to make a start on Wednesday, and will do most of the work while we’re in Lagrasse for an autumn break.  Martyn, meanwhile, has repaired the base of the cupboard beneath the sink, propped it up on new telescopic legs and fitted it out with a new set of shelves.  Next, a shelf in the boiler cupboard to take the cookery books, then we’ll start to feel we’re on the way back to some kind of order.

Chaos diminishing

It's an inordinate joy to have a working sink again, and to able to run the dishwasher.  The latter was at capacity yesterday by the time it was re-connected to the drain.  Our intrepid Mr Waterman, who had agreed to do the sink for us, wished he hadn't: the job was awkward in the extreme, and cutting through inch-thick beech was quite a test for our DIYer-grade jigsaw.  Mr W specialises in central heating systems, so, as I remarked to him, getting him to fit a sink is a bit like asking a neurosurgeon to lance a boil. 

Paul, who refitted the kitchen at the old house, will make a start on the tiling on Monday: we shall be away from home while the really horrible task of lifting the floor tiles is in progress.  Good planning, eh?

The local takeaways will start to feel the draught, however, now that we (almost) have a fully serviceable kitchen.  We could have cooked at home last night, but, it being Martyn's birthday, we had dinner at La Dolce Vita in Lamberhurst, and it was excellent.  Generous amuse-bouche, lightly battered fried fish starter and racks of lamb with spinach and a small serving of sauté potatoes.  A nice touch is the listing of alcoholic strength in the copious wine list: we chose an Apulian red at 12.5% (noting, with no intention of ever trying it, another wine on the list at a whopping 16%).

Chaos

Even superficial work on the kitchen is enough to throw the whole house into chaos.  We've taken off the wall tiles, and Martyn has sanded down the beech working surfaces.  Our environment is consequently a miasma of fine sawdust and grit from disturbed plaster and tile cement.  We've ordered a new sink and gas hob: the latter at the second attempt.

We went into Currys and chose a hob we liked.  The one visible assistant was busy, so we decided after a quarter of an hour to go home and order it on-line.  Mistake.  It arrived damaged, and Martyn has had the devil's own job getting them to take it back.  The first call ended, after bum-shuffling across three departments, with a promise of a call back, which didn't materialise.  The second call dropped out while he was on hold in the third department he'd been shunted to.  The third call resulted with instructions to ring again and press the star key twice.  The fourth call, in which he followed those instructions, failed completely.  The fifth eventually elicited the information that the hob we wanted was out of stock.  They are to call us to arrange a collection appointment, and will refund the money once they've got the damaged hob back.  So, we've ordered a different hob from a different firm.  This all sounds hideously familiar.

We have a lot of preparation to do for decorating: we discovered when we took down the ugly cornices from the tops of the cupboards that the extractor fan ducting was not connected, so the grease of ages is decorating the ceiling, walls and plaster coving, and I suspect sugar soap won't be up to it.

So, the point at which we couldn't cook for fear of getting grease into the stripped beech or wet coats of Danish oil was not really the best time to find that the barbecue had burned out.  The local takeaway shops are putting the flags out.  Neither is it a great time for our local rubbish dump to have closed for roadway repairs.  Fortunately, there's another one at Crowborough, so we clanked and clattered down there yesterday with a car full of dead barbecue and computer, disused computer desk and several lengths of greasy mdf cornice. 

A bright glimmer in the gloom was lunch yesterday with Barbara at a pub in the South Downs behind Brighton.  Beautiful drive, good sound food in a comfortable pub, and excellent company.

October?

We abandoned the plan to have lunch outside yesterday because we couldn't find a space on the terrace to put the table in shade from the hot sun.  Ain't complainin' - I've had breakfast and lunch in the fresh air a few times in the past week.  This includes chewing my sandwich while pacing up and down the car park at the courthouse: I usually refer to it as the exercise yard. 

Back to art class on Thursday: I slapped a bit more paint on a little piece I started while we were in France, and am instructed by Miss that I'm allowed one more session on it, maximum.  I think that'll just about do it: there are a few mistakes to correct, and it needs a bit more light and shade.

We'd a trip to London last night for another 60th birthday party, this time at a gentlemen's club in Mayfair.  It helped that the railways were in a state of chaos as they cram in the weekend maintenance jobs before the weather deteriorates: trains from our neck of the woods were going into Victoria rather than Charing Cross, and that suited our purpose well.  Excellent do, with the birthday boy accompanying two operatic soloists at the piano in a nice medley of arias from Mozart to Massenet, including some favourite lollipops.  I'd never seen the cats' duet (attrib. Rossini) performed before, though I've heard the de los Angeles/Schwarzkopf recording often enough.  Elizabeth Llewellyn and Hannah Pedley are definitely names to watch: they both gave excellent performances of a very diverse programme.

The car is back, swept, washed and with a clean pan of oil, but otherwise unchanged. The coarse noise from the transmission is now said to be a 'characteristic' of that combination of engine and gearbox. I've responded with 'not good enough: if I'd wanted a car that sounds like an army lorry I'd have bought a Land Rover'. Watch space, but keep breathing meanwhile.

Our next brush with Trade is due presently: another of our kitchen window seals has failed, causing a build-up of condensation between the panes. The kitchen door is now quite unpleasant to operate, and is just within its 10-year guarantee, so the representative of Jokers Я Us Home Improvements is briefed to look at both while he's here this afternoon.  Might show him the peeling veneer on the front door as well. 

We’re on the cusp of autumn, sure.  And you can tell by morning and evening mists, and the dew that stays on the grass until well into the afternoon.  The foliage by the roadside is showing it too.  I’m really not a fan of autumn, beautiful though it can be, because I’m all too conscious of what comes next: short days, frost and snow, and centrally heated stuffiness.  But carpe diem and all that.  We’re having a striking Indian summer in these parts – a highly respectable 23°in the shade as I write, and quite warm nights.  I was awakened around 3:00 am by wildlife noises from outside.  Unfortunately I didn’t have a torch to hand.  The basket by the front door is doing really rather well: cuttings from Jane’s New Guinea impatiens, plus Unwin’s sapphire trailing lobelias.

It has certainly been the weather for gardening: I have taken seed from various rudbeckias (this year’s Unwin’s Rustic mix has been terrific), and several dozen cuttings: five colours of penstemon, three of potentilla and two of cistus.  Earlier honeysuckle self-layerings have rooted very well in pots, so we’ll get them planted out over the next few days.

The car went in yesterday for its first annual service (a bit late) and for further investigation of the naarsty noise I complained about when it was new.  The mechanic I took for a test drive yesterday reckoned it comes from the gearbox, which would have to be taken out and replaced in toto.  I can’t imagine VW UK agreeing to that without a bit of a fight.  Watch this space.  Meanwhile, I’m bopping about in an over-geared and underpowered 1.6 diesel Golf, which doubles as a peripatetic advertising placard for the local VW dealership.  Competent little car once you get the hang of it, but it has this curious reluctance to change gear by itself.  Must be something to do with that mystery pedal on the left. 

+ve experiences

We were at a 60^th birthday party last night at a nearby golf club (like you do...), and had a glorious time.  Birthday girl Dawn had organised a dinner dance for upwards of 80 people, and hadn’t stinted on the wine.  Having designated myself as driver, I nursed a very modest amount over four and a half hours, so was in good shape to ferry us and three friends home afterwards.  But I don’t dance, and hate being in a noisy room, so elbowed into the conversations of some smokers at the back door for the last hour or so.  Having tried to make conversation over the din of the disco, I’m distinctly poany (a little hoarse) this morning.

Today’s good experience was the repair of a windscreen chip we’d picked up on Wednesday on the way north.  Booked on the internet, the Autoglass man arrived well inside the allotted time slot, parked alongside the car on the drive and set to without even the need for a power supply.  The repair is as near as dammit invisible – the best of a number we’ve had to have done over the years – and the cost is already factored into my insurance premium, so nothing to pay. 

It’s bright and breezy here today, and I’ve been out in the garden, dead-heading and staking.  The rudbeckias are putting on a fine show: I was just saying to Martyn that I really ought to grow something else, but they do give a terrific range of yellows, oranges and reds.  I’ve been sizing up likely-looking seed heads with a view to next year’s.  Might try cosmos next year: we’ve seen some fine displays on the way up through France. 

Home

Sunday: Pretty good drive from Bayonne to Sigalens, without benefit of péage.  Google maps showed that the time using D roads was little longer than the motorway itinerary, hence by definition it was shorter and less fuel hungry.  We’re tending to find that we prefer this approach: the motorways are getting very busy, and they’re not a nice place to be when HGVs are kicking up a lot of spray.  By the time we got to Sigalens, it was a fine sunny day, though not quite warm enough to sit outside for lunch, and we’d a few showers as the day progressed. 

Annie did some delicious pork chops for dinner, floured and sealed then baked over softened chopped onions with some pink wine, then served with gently sautéed mushrooms in a cream sauce.  Careful note taken.   

Monday:  We did quite a bit of sitting and watching the rain.  We went into Marmande and fuelled the car, doing a bit of shopping while we were there.  The avenue of plane trees at Sainte-Bazeille was looking superb.  It reminded me of the nave of the Sagrada Familia, making me think that Gaudí must have visited and been inspired by it.  Tea in the afternoon with friends from Cocumont.  Ah, this demanding lifestyle... 

Tuesday dawned rather brighter, and though it wasn’t a breakfast on the terrace day, it was clear and pleasant, with a gentle breeze.  We went for coffee/tea with Christine and Jacques, and it was good to have some intelligent conversation in French.  They are both on great form, despite the fact that Jacko is still waiting to start radiotherapy for prostate cancer.  He has had some months of hormone treatment to shrink his prostate, and has had his tattoos done prior to treatment, though he’s still waiting for a start date.  It sounds as if the French medical system, for so long so admirable, is turning into a culture of long waiting times.  But he’s as vigorous and positive as ever, so far as I could tell.  He has a 1943 Dodge fire truck (‘It’s a year younger than me!’) that comes into its own when he has to go and cut wood from sloping ground – and it has a working winch that is handy when his friends finish up in the ditch on the way home.  Unfortunately, the brakes are in bad shape – the cylinders have rusted up, and he’s buying replacements over the internet.   

Wednesday: we had planned to take two days for the journey home, so left at a reasonable hour and ambled up via Marmande, Bergerac, Périgueux and Limoges.  We took the (free) motorway from Limoges to Vierzon, and then paid for a bit through the Sologne and round Orléans, before striking off for Chartres, Dreux, Evreux and Rouen.  This wasn’t a brilliant move, since the roads were busy (it being evening going-home time), hence slow.  We’d omitted to research hotel possibilities, and the only Ibis we found in Rouen was full.  At this point, we thought ‘the hell with it!’, and set off for Calais.  Whereupon the heavens opened (at dusk), and we were confronted with a lengthy detour to by-pass motorway road works.  Once past that, we paused for a sandwich and a quantity of water, and set off.  At Coquelles, whence we were booked to depart the following afternoon, we checked in at 22:24, were instantly offered a 22:50 departure, and were on the Shuttle (with maybe as many as 15 other cars) and moving by 22:46.  This is the kind of travelling experience I like! 

No bad surprises on arriving home, so we had a relatively restful Thursday, going no further than the sorting office to collect my new French Visa card, and the next-door M&S for a few bits to eat.   

The long road home.

It's always sad to close up the house after a lengthy stay: and to leave behind the good weather and drive into drizzle and low cloud.  But even in filthy weather the beaches of Biarritz, teeming with surfers, are mightily impressive.  Not a bad journey: we cut the corner south of Toulouse on the beautiful road from Villefranche du Lauragais, via Nailloux, Auterive and Saint-Sulpice-sur-Lèze.  But  with the low cloud, the spectacular views we sometimes get of the Pyrenees were just not to be had.

We found François on splendid form.  Danielle, whom I hadn't met before, was very tired after a day of mud baths and pummeling in Dax, but had laid on a copious and delicious apéritif.  She didn't feel up to coming out to dinner with us, however, so it was just us three chaps.  François took us to Le Roy Léon in Petit Bayonne, and I'm happy to say that his celebrated gift for finding good addresses is every bit as good as when I worked with him twenty years ago.  We had txakoli as an apéritif, and Irouléguy with the meal, so François tells us we now know all there is to know about Basque wines.  The former is from 'the other side': the part of the Basque country that lies in Spain, Irouléguy from 'this side'.  Both very drinkable, we thought.  On to the Gironde tomorrow for a few days' radio silence at Annie's.  More news once we're home in the UK.

Lunch at the seaside - yet again.

We opted for the Villerouge-Termenès-Albas road this morning.  We hadn't noticed the trials bike track shortly after the junction at Villerouge, and presume this was an investment by Kate and John, who like this road - we could visualise them leaping over the humps on their Mobylettes Pegasus and Bucephalus respectively.  More motor sport further down: we came round a bend to meet a net stretched across the road by a couple of old hippy types.  They obligingly hoiked it out of our way, nattering into a walkie-talkie (NB: French translation is talkie-walkie.  You might predict it, não é?).  Curiosity suitably pricked, we interrogated the next w-t/t-w wielder, who told there that there was a racing car coming up, but not to worry: they wouldn't send it off till we'd gone through.

At the end of the section, we found the arrêté municipal ordering the closure of the road for 15 minutes at a time between certain hours on specified days.  Plus a gaggle of identically-uniformed VW Motorsport technicians poring over a small vehicle normally originating from the Mladá Boleslav factory (among many others) but in this instance almost certainly  breathed on vigorously in Wolfsburg.  Their French minders approached us to say 'photos interdites'.   'Par qui?'  'Volkswagen.'  'Pfff...'.  Damned if I'm going to be told by a bunch of teutonic grease monkeys where I may or may not take photographs in my back yard, specially since I'm a customer of theirs, and have myself been doing a bit of VW Motorsport lately.  Said French minders were somewhat in tune with my f***-em attitude: I'd love to have poured them a few pastagas and found out how they felt about their employers.  Anyway, the little car burped and farted off the mark, but once it was up on the cam, it sounded like a receptive alley cat on LSD. 

Lunch was something of an anticlimax.  Martyn's entrecôte was broadly OK, but my moules marinières were grotesquely over salted, and went back.  The replacement shark steak was a bit ho-hum, and swimming in oil.  Guess the usual chef had phoned in sick.

We paddled gently in a warm sea, slightly disappointed that we hadn't brought swimming togs.  The wind-surfers and kite ditto were entertaining, though more so from the restaurant as we lunched than when seen from closer quarters.  But to be in shorts and at risk of sunburn in mid-September is not to be sneezed at.

It’s a strange visit when we don’t take a trip to Gruissan, often for Sunday lunch.  Our main purpose was to see whether the flamingos were still around, and indeed they were, on the étang de Bages.  A few rewarded us by taking off and flying to another feeding ground – they are an amazing sight.  As we stood and watched, there were definite sounds of fish hitting the surface to feed on insects.  (Loud applause, given how often I get bitten to hell when we’re by the water thereabouts.)  We stopped further along to get a closer view of some flamingos, and saw fish leaping clear out of the water to feed.  Big chaps; possibly bass.

Other forms of hunting are of course in evidence.  The chasse begins on the first Sunday after the 15 August holiday (elegantly described in German as Mariahimmelfahrt).  We’ve heard a few rifle shots from home, and one of our neighbours drives past the house every Sunday morning during the season with two or three dogs in his van barking blue murder.  One day as we headed out for lunch, we crossed the path of a convoy of hunters, one of whom had tied a huge wild boar across the front of his 4x4.

Returning to Sunday, one of our usual lunch venues was closed, so we tried one of their neighbours, Le Mouton de Panurge, and weren’t disappointed.  €16 for a decent, if limited, 3-course menu, decent wines by the glass, friendly service and a view of the yacht harbour.  We’ll be back.

Today we finally gritted our teeth and tackled the Canigou – by car, of course: don’t be silly!  A few years ago, on going in search of views, we were thwarted by a sign at the bottom of the road up into the Massif, saying that access was restricted to 4x4s.  This was not entirely absent from our minds when we bought the current vehicle.  Well, today dawned fine and clear, so off we went, finding a new sign at the foot of the hill, saying no access without a permit in July and August, 4x4s only, no access at night or during rainfall, very narrow roads etc, etc.  We should have got the hint, really.

The road is classified by Michelin as ‘difficult or dangerous’.  The last time I used such a road was in the Vercors, years ago, when I took one of those roads that were rebated into vertical cliff faces to transport timber to the markets of the Rhône valley.  Frightening, but paved and safe.  If you’re advised to try the Escala de l’Ours, please don’t.  It’s little better than a mule track: narrow, rocky and with vertiginous drops.  Well, we crept up the mountain tracing our way between boulders and water courses, and a few times I was deterred from giving up only by the idea of having to face such awful tracks a second time, and by the shortage of turning places.  The only experience that comes remotely close in awfulness was picking my way up packed snow on an alpine road in an over-powered Alfa-Romeo on summer tyres.  All we met on the way up was a handful of walkers and a couple of mountain bikers.  I was really worried that we’d meet an enthusiastic Land-Rover driver hurtling round the hairpins.  Fortunately, he didn’t materialise until we’d just reached the col.....

We eventually reached the col at 2055 metres, breathing a very small sigh of relief, the air being on the thin side for my liking at that altitude.  The road down the other side was a little better – wider at least – and our worst problem was a rather peculiar family driving mules, donkeys and a nanny goat down the hill.  The good side of it all is that we have got it out of our systems, and had some fantastic views in consequence.  From the highest point we reached, we could easily see the Montagne d’Alaric, our very own back-yard mountain, from a good 50 miles away.

Have to say that the car behaved really well.  With a younger and more capable driver, it would have been up there like a mountain goat, sure-footed and predictable, with the oil and water temperatures remaining well within safe limits.  Very good downhill as well, with bags of engine braking in first and second, so I didn’t cook the brakes. 

So, back home safely.  I acceded to Martyn’s offer to take over the driving just this side of Narbonne, shortly after I’d tried to set the cruise control by turning on the right indicators.  Dinner of saltimbocca, oven wedgies (home made) and ratatouille (ditto).