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.