38. It's a sign!

Sitting in traffic this evening I felt my attention being drawn to a hypnotic green neon sign for a Pharmacie (chemist). The green cross design was sequencing through a mind-boggling series of rotations and flashes, including displaying the time and the temperature before going back into the flashing cycle. It reminded me of yet another difference in daily life between this side of the Channel and the other. Some French shopping institutions have evolved their own particular street signs - here are a few for the pharmacy.

The other distinctive ones I can recall are for Tabac (Tobacconists) and (this is where it gets slightly curious) Chevaline - horse butchers. You might wonder why they bother but if you happen to be looking for a specific type of shop they do make finding one that little bit easier.

I was trying to think of the UK equivalents.. and all I could come up with was the red and white spiral-striped barber's pole and the three golden balls for the pawnbrokers. Chemists sometimes had a gold mortar and pestle sign.

The illuminated Tabac sign is said to resemble a double ended carrot, often with TABAC spelled out.. Apparently the 'carrot' symbol stems from former times when pipe smokers would keep a piece of carrot in their tobacco pouch to keep their tobacco moist. When I used to smoke and I was gasping for a ciggy, the illuminated Tabac signs were a godsend.

I can understand the need for a easy-to-spot sign if you've a desperate need for a pharmacie or a Tabac - but a horse butchers? The sign for a horse butchers is a gilded horse's head that juts out from the wall. How many times have you found yourself dashing out of the house, all of a quiver for a horsemeat steak ("Just gotta have one!").. running around town with wild eyes looking for a shop with the gilded horse's head sign..? Exactly.. Here's a somewhat battle-damaged horse butchers (above right) from what looks like the immediate post-war years - and, incidentally, I don't think I'd be busting a gut to step inside this shop, would you? I'm reminded of the butchers in the film "Delicatessen".. 

I'm not sure that many Brits would ever contemplate the idea of eating horse meat - I think most would find the whole thing quite repugnant - but I must be honest, having tried it on 2 occasions, I have to admit that they were two of the best steaks I've ever had. I tried it once knowingly in France and the second time, in Italy, unknowingly. I won't be doing it again though.

During the Balkans conflicts in the mid 90s, over a period of 4 years I probably spent half that time based in Italy, just to the north of Venice. Madame came out a few times and, on one memorable occasion, we were out having dinner in a traditional restaurant in town with J, the wife of a colleague who was working. I'd become reasonably adept at decoding Italian menus and, being all pizza'd out, we decided we'd go for a meat dish. Feeling like trying something different, looking at the meat section, I spotted filetto di puledro.. It was clearly a fillet of some kind of meat so we ordered three. They arrived served in a reduced red wine sauce and we enjoyed them very much.. When it came to the bill, I asked the waitress what they were and eventually she said the word for a horse in Italian (cavallo) and then said 'piccolo' - meaning little.. ie, a foal. Eek!

Neither Madame or I felt too happy about that but our unease was as nothing compared to J's. I should have mentioned that she was a keen horsewoman. She went white and so I quickly ushered her outside as I thought she looked very close to a spectacularly lavish demonstration of projectile vomiting..

Moving swiftly on, while we're on the subject of Italy, one year I found a delicatessen in Italy that stocked two of Madame's favourite things combined into one.. It was a tin decorated in an ornate fin de siècle style that contained marrons glacés* that had been dipped in plain chocolate. To say that these hit the spot would be understating the case. And needless to say, I've never been able to find them again since.** And, coming back to the Pays Basque, last Christmas I went around all of the specialist chocolatiers in Bayonne hoping that one of them might have them, or might make some for me. I described what I was looking for but I met with the same universal response - or rather, lack of response - everywhere. No-one was interested in dipping a few marrons glacés in dark chocolate for me.. It was a demonstration of French culinary chauvinism -

"We don't do them like that here.."

Yes, I know that, but could you - just this once?

"If you want marrons glacés like that, you'd better go back to Italy.."

Etc etc.

Back to more domestic issues, we're having our Christmas dinner here at the weekend before we leave next week to go up to Paris. Commander-in-Chief (Home) has decreed that a Christmas pudding might just be on the agenda. Be still my beating heart!

* The brand was La Castagna Glassata Di Majani.. ricoperta di finissimo cioccolato fondente..

** Just found another site in Italy that has them! Guiliani I'll order some when we return in the New Year.

21. Farewell to the gite

I’m glad my stay in hospital is behind me.. I’ve just got to go back on 28th January for a final check-up. The staff were really friendly and a cut above the staff in NHS hospitals.. (in my experience)

I remember going to visit my Mum who'd been taken into the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Unit at a NHS Hospital (that shall remain anonymous) in 2006. As I arrived, an ambulance was parked outside the entrance to the A&E Unit and its crew were cleaning out the inside of it – one of them was holding a bloodied stretcher that looked like it had come from a chainsaw massacre while the other chap was hosing the blood off it. I wouldn’t have minded but this was in the entrance to the A&E Unit and everyone walking in or out had to walk through these pools of bloody water..!! I couldn’t believe it..!

1st February 2008. We’d settled on 1st February 2008 with our Hereford-based removals company as the date for the delivery of the bulk of our possessions which had been in storage since the summer of 2007. The New Year came and went and as we neared February the last few jobs in the house neared completion. We had to seek permission from the Town Hall to block the traffic in the road while the removals lorry was unloading.

On the day, we were at the house at 7.15am ready for the removals lorry which was expected at 8.15. We turned the heat on and waited. We cordoned off a part of the avenue with some barriers that the council had kindly dropped off for us. I was half expecting a call from the lorry asking me to direct them here but nothing. Madame was getting increasingly agitated as the witching hour approached with still no sign of them.

At 8.15 I was pacing up and down outside when suddenly the big lorry turned into the avenue on the dot of quarter past.. (with the “Dambusters March” playing in my head!) The driver was the same chap who’d moved us from the cottage into their storage facility in Hereford - so we knew him. Anyway, he and his mate soon got cracking and despite regular pit-stops for cups of tea on the hour every hour (unlike our Basque boys!) they soon had everything unloaded. Where did all these boxes come from I asked myself..? Boxes and still more boxes appeared. I opened one and found they’d packed half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits we’d left out for them to have with their tea in the cottage five months earlier. I resisted the temptation to offer them to the men..

We managed to position most of the boxes in the right rooms and then we went back to the gite where we were staying for our last night. It was reassuring to see that our old things had emerged safe and sound not only from storage but also the long trip down. I was desperate to read a book other than "Out of Africa" - great though that is.

The next morning we were up early to fetch the rented camionette (light van) from nearby Ustaritz which we were going to use to transport all our things from the gite to the house.. In the end this evolution took 2 trips. We said our final goodbyes to Monsieur and Madame D who in turn invited us for a coffee in a few days time. Then we returned the van and headed off to the house. In the meantime, the last touches were being applied to the kitchen and the bathroom.. When we’d finally created a bit of space around the sofas, we opened a bottle of champagne that a friend from work had kindly given us - with a few bits of smoked salmon.. It felt good to be reunited with all our things again.

On the Friday morning, our new TV was delivered and connected up. We’ve now got hundreds of channels of TV from around the world – including Al-Jazheera which I don’t think we’ll be watching. They also brought round the new dryer and fitted that on top of the washing machine.. Before long Madame had most of our stuff put away and we were starting to see the walls again.

On the Saturday morning at about 8am I was putting together Madame’s old armoire (wardrobe) when I tripped over a piece that I’d put down on the floor and I went down like a sack of spuds - a sack of pommes de terre doesn't have the same ring to it does it? I landed on top of the attachment fittings for the electric radiator which hadn’t been put back up and whose edges were razor sharp. On getting to my feet I found I had a sliced cut across the back of my fingers on my right hand (across the first joint) which I hardly felt but then they suddenly started leaking blood.. Madame patched me up as best she could with what we had to hand and then I drove into town to find a pharmacy that was open because here in France, pharmacists will dress a wound for you as well as - here's a surprise - identifying edible from non-edible fungi.

When I found one, the woman took one look and said “’Opital!”.. When I got there I was whistled through to the Urgent Dept and where we found to our astonishment that the doctor there was a young Welshman.. His parents live here for six months and the other six months they spend in Welsh Wales so he grew up speaking French.. I had my hand x-rayed in case some foreign body had got into the cuts and I got a tetanus jab.. and they tied my hand up like a parcel and said no work for you this weekend. A result!

However, after a few idle minutes though, I started carrying on with the million and one jobs that needed doing, of which one of the most time-consuming was changing 20+ plugs on everything electrical from the familiar old British 13 amp to your basic untrustworthy foreign jobbies.. (I jest) And so the days of that week passed.. each day we’d open a few more boxes and put things away, downstairs in the basement or out in the garage to go to the dump.

One morning we went to the gite for the coffee as promised.. and as 12 o'clock approached Madame D brought out a few nibbles.. then it was time for an 'apero'.. at which point Monsieur D came in from the farm - then a bowl of soup appeared.. next minute, there's a roast farm chicken on the table, wine glasses, and we're having a real farm lunch.. cheese.. then a tarte and then coffee and a glass of Basque liqueur.. When we finally came to leave, they presented us with a porcelain Basque pattern coffee service.. Words failed me at this point. They are two of the most generous people I've ever met - we'll never forget them.