41. Basque specialities

29th January 2010. I was walking through Saint-Jean-de-Luz the other day listening to snatches of conversations from passers-by (as you do) when it struck me that the English language was probably outside the medals in a distant fourth place when it came to which language was most likely to be overheard there. The first three contenders are French, Spanish and Basque (in no particular order). The rowing club has started a regular exchange with its counterpart in San Sebastian over the border. Prior to the saga of my knees, we drove over there a couple of times for outings in their very distinctive "trainières" (right). I was quite surprised at how many of the French element could speak Spanish and there were even a few who could speak Basque as well. I've deliberately kept away from speaking "Angliche" with them there unless I've been absolutely forced to but I don't think many speak it at all. I noticed in Paris over Christmas that quite a few people kindly switched into English when my French wasn't up to it. However, down here in the extreme south west, English is a long way from being a second language.

After my Basque cheese market research episode, I was weighing up the pros & cons of the unique gastronomic specialities of the Pays Basque. In my view, while Basque cheeses don't stand comparison with the great cheeses of France, they're worth trying once or twice. Given the choice between a Basque cheese or a ripe Brie de Meaux, or even better, a (Vacherin) Mont d'Or, it would be no contest.. the Brie or the Mont d'Or (the king of cheese in my book) would win every time. Mont d'Or can only be found in the winter months which is why it's such a great Christmas treat here at 'Piperade Towers'. The Basque cheese has to be tried but only, in my view, out of a sense of duty that one is eating a regional product. (Edited to add: Re-reading this comment several years after I wrote it, I think I was being unduly harsh with Basque cheese. After all, an Ossau-Iraty cheese from Fromagerie Agour was voted the best cheese in the world a few years ago. Cheese is a very subjective subject - so take my comments with a pinch of salt - after all, Kraft Dairylea was the mainstay of my youth.)

This next comment might be seen as heresy here but I think the same is true of Gâteau basque which is widely found on local menus. I find it a fairly bland, stodgy cake that's pretty heavy going (you know you've eaten one) and devoid of any great taste. (I'll burn at the stake for this!) Yes, by all means give it a try when down here but don't expect too much from it. I'd better say no more on the subject! (Again, since writing the above one-eyed comment, my tastes have moved on and I've come to appreciate and, yes, enjoy gâteau basque.)

Just back from a VO (version originale - ie, in English) showing of George Clooney's latest - Up in the Air - at the flicks in Biarritz. The cinema experience was like going back 40-50 years.. No advertising, no relentless chomping of popcorn in bucket-sized containers, no half gallon Cokes being slurped, no rustle of sweet papers - just people out enjoying a film. How was the film? Not a feel-good movie at all - in fact, quite negative and depressing. If your Winter Fuel Allowance is burning a hole in your pocket, sit on your hands - because this isn't worth blowing a week's warmth on. Think George needs to speak to his agent.

25. Smoking & Joints

21st October 2009. We’re the warmest place in France today at 21C.. Paris is down at around 12C.

I thought I’d give Madame a break from the kitchen today so this morning while she was at her painting class I prepared the lunch. I’d decided to make Jambalaya – which is a combination of many things we like – seafood, chicken, chorizo sausage, rice and hot Basque sauce.. It worked out quite well.. (if I say so myself!) If the finished product looks anything like this, you're in business!

(Gardening Dept: I’ve just finished re-seeding part of the lawn at the back of the house for about the third time.. Or, as it's known here, providing the starlings with yet another picnic.. This time I used a soil compound that was supposedly very rich in fertiliser and I hope this is the last time I have to do this particular job.)

Over the last few years I’ve had some pain in my knees when they’ve been immobile for a while – such as when driving or sat in the cinema.. The docs here sent me for MRI scans and X-rays and it turns out that I’ve got a touch of arthritis in both (aka the creeping march of time..). So yesterday I went to a Rhumatologue – a specialist who deals with articulation problems - and he injected both knees with a compound designed to cushion the joints. I’ve 2 more of these sessions to come then I should be OK again.

The issue of French manners seems to exercise many English people, but as I've observed before, manners here are different. For example, sat in the waiting room of the Rhumatologue, I noticed that everyone who came in said "Mesdames, messieurs" or what sounded like "M'sieurs dames" to the waiting room at large and the majority said "Au revoir mesdames, messieurs" to those in the waiting room on leaving. Now - correct me if I'm wrong - but this would not happen back in England.

Thought for the Day: I remember a doctor friend in England once saying that he was against living healthily with the aim of extending one’s life. His rationale is that the extra 5 years gained aren’t given back to you in your middle years – where you’d want them – but they get tagged on at the end.. where you don’t. He is a keen cigar smoker who smokes without guilt.

All of which brings me on to this: when Keith Floyd died, the holier than thou element of the UK media, aka the Fun Police, had a field day.. The headline in one English newspaper was “The pleasures of life undid him in the end..!” I would doubt that he had a single regret.. he lived his life as he wanted. Many don't. Here's to you, Keith!

Here's Keith in the Pays Basque bravely trying to make a Pipérade - against a constant barrage of 'advice'!

Right, enough of this, it’s a beautiful afternoon down here and it’s time to take the pooch for a walk. Then I'm going to have a drink on the terrace. Or two.

23. Spring - Fêtes de Bayonne 2008

I think we'd been in the house for 2 months and we had just about got ourselves straight when our first visitors arrived.. By the end of September 2008, five months later, we'd had 21 visitors - and with Madame's health problems, this is something we won't be repeating - except for very special cases. She only knows one way to entertain and that is to push le bateau out.. She is a truly wonderful cook but for days after each set of visitors had departed, she would be absolutely worn out.. It was too much for her. So as much as we’d like to invite friends down here, I think for Madame’s sake, we’ll have to say come down by all means but we won’t be able to put you up. Which is a great pity but there we are.

We'd heard a lot about the famous Fêtes de Bayonne from various people.. This is the annual fiesta that takes over the town for 5 days & nights every year at the end of July/beginning of August. Last year, it was calculated that 1.3 million people came and this year was no different. Normally, Bayonne has a population of around 40,000 so you can imagine with well over a million extra visitors that the town was well & truly swamped. Many visitors come from the hinterland of the Basque region itself as the Fêtes are a celebration of their Basque identity but they also come from further afield. If parking can be problematic at normal times, then during the Fêtes, it's a complete nightmare. In our avenue, people normally park on one side only and there’s usually always a space free.. However, during the Fêtes, cars were 'creatively' parked on both sides up on the pavement as only the French (and the Neapolitans) can do. This meant that we couldn't go out in the car because if we did, we'd have two chances of finding a space upon our return: fat chance and no chance. It would be no use us putting the car in our garage as some eejit could always be relied on to block the access to it.

 

The Fêtes started off at 10pm in the main square in front of the Town Hall.. Fortunately we’d arrived there early and we’d found a shop doorway to stand in (which kept us out of the crush). After a few words from the Mayor there was the mother of all firework displays – made up largely of explosive detonations that painfully rattled your chest.. Everyone was in white and red - white trousers, white shirts with a red bandana, and a red sash round the waist. Don’t ask why – it’s just how they do it here. Everyone – but everyone – was dressed the same – they all joined together in a display of pride in their separateness, their Basque identity, their distinctive Basque culture, their Basque music, their Basque dancing and their unique Basque language. Language specialists have no idea where or what the origins of the Basque language are – it’s like no other language in Europe or anywhere else. Here’s an example so you can see how different it is: Zuek egunkariak erosten dizkidazue. This means: “you buy the newspapers for me”. Knowledge of any other European language won't help in decoding this.

The Fêtes really were a spectacle.. Despite the bars being allowed to serve alcohol till 3am and stay open till 5am.. we didn’t see many drunks.. Many slept in their cars.. and cars were parked everywhere.. The town was full of little bars that people set up, each street seemed to have their own band and it was complete bedlam! The narrow streets were full of Basque marching bands beating out old rhythms with their drums, accompanied by the reedy shrieking of an instrument that sounds like a duck call..

One evening our local butcher (supposedly the best butcher in Bayonne) at the bottom of our avenue organized a dinner in the street.. We had to sign up and pay in advance then just turn up on the night. They’d put tables out in the middle of the road to seat about 100 of us.. (only in France!) The price included the menu, the wine and there was music provided by a small band.. It was supposed to start at 9.30pm but of course it didn’t start until 10pm.. The main course was boned leg of lamb – which was delicieux! Fortunately they came round again with seconds! I think we left about 1am..

They had a pop concert one night at the bull ring (which is about 200 yards away) – which was extremely loud.. They'd spent all afternoon doing imaginative sound checks ("Un, deux.. un, deux..") but as the concert finished about midnight it wasn’t too bad.

We’ve been continuing to tackle all the outstanding jobs – some big, some small – one by one. As the dining room shutters were a bit rotten at the top, we had to have some new ones made by Eric. He’s very, very good and not expensive. He’s got the Basque work ethic too..

He appeared one afternoon at about 1.30 with a stack of planks and by 6.30pm he’d finished. He’d taken all the metal fittings off the old shutters and re-used them where he could. Next day, I had the ladder out and I put on 2 coats of the Basque red that we’re supposed to use. All the woodwork of the houses in the Basque country is painted either blood red, dark blue or dark green. Now and again you’ll see a brown one.

So you can see that life here is all one mad round of fun, washing wine stains out the curtains, putting clean straw down, trips to the bottle bank and re-seeding the lawns after the starlings have been at it – AGAIN!

And now I'm just off to buy the newspapers in Basque.. or maybe not.

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.

8. Chocolate & Car Number Plates

A day or two later we had to go to the tax office in Bordeaux to straighten out some administrative wrangle. We finished the business there early and so we had time to find a little restaurant in a side street for lunch where we sat outside in the September sun and had some salad and a steak. All for about £6 each.

After that, we went for a look at Arcachon, a swish seaside resort near Bordeaux I’d not been to before. It had that unmistakeably expensive look of a well groomed and manicured town. Someone had told us that house prices there are even higher than those in Biarritz and, looking at some of them, I could well believe it. Unfortunately, just as we found our way to the front, it started to rain so we never did get to get out of the car for a walk along the beach as we’d wanted to.

One for the ladies - chocolate heaven! 

After Arcachon, we drove back to Bayonne and parked in the centre to try one of the famed ‘chocolatiers’. Chocolate first came into France in the 17th century via Bayonne and there are still a number of specialist ‘chocolatiers’ grouped together in the narrow streets of the old town that date back to those times who still make their own chocolate from scratch (cocoa butter) and sell boxes of handmade chocolates (at wince-making prices). We had a hot chocolate at one of these establishments where it is still made from real solid chocolate (as opposed to cocoa powder) and was incredibly rich. They shave a block of chocolate and add hot milk to melt the shavings. As Madame is a chocaholic she enjoyed it very much! A real treat. The displays of superb hand-made chocolates would make many women weak at the knees. (Ideal for that first date then..) (oo-er missus!)

Then the weather changed…. It rained heavily during one night and it felt like the first day of autumn here in the morning. After sorting out some insurance quotes for the car, we went to our bank in St Jean de Luz to check our account, after which we came back to the gite for lunch the scenic way over the hills. The sun was out and the lush green countryside sparkled as it had been washed by the rain in the night, those big Basque farmhouses shone dazzlingly white in the sunshine and the jagged outlines of the blue mountains of the Pyrenees stood out sharply in the distance. What a landscape..!

This is a song that's dear to the hearts of all Basques - it's called Hegoak - it's almost their national anthem:

When we got back, I remember having a rich fish soup with some crusty fresh bread with a restorative glass of Bordeaux (about £1.50 a bottle in a local supermarket).

With all the bathroom and kitchen work coming up, we’ve been hitting the kitchen and bathroom showrooms pretty hard because I remember that afternoon we went to a huge DIY supermarket to look at tiles for the hall, kitchen and bathroom. After a while, I began to lose the will to live as it seemed that thousands of tiles were dancing before my very eyes. (although I might have overdone the lunchtime Bordeaux!) We also looked at shower enclosures. After a while, we both felt like we were ‘all shopped out’ and we’d definitely had enough for the day so we headed for home.. It’s definitely hard work being a pensioner.

At about this time I was taking the dog for a walk up the lane when I saw the strangest thing – the longest worm I’ve ever seen was in the middle of the lane. It must have been at least 18” long and it was almost as thick as my little finger. It definitely was an earth worm – and not a snake of any kind. The dog and I were fascinated..

More steps forward.. We registered the car with the French authorities and they allocated us a new plate with a local number – 64 - that will go on the car. To us, this was quite a symbolic moment – we’ve often talked about the day when we’d do this but it had always seemed so far away. We then drove to a garage and they made and fitted the new number plates while we waited. I must admit it felt strange to see the fitter take off my old plates, bend them in two and throw them into the bin.. A small part of me (the vestigial Daily Mail part) felt like saying, “Oi mush! They’re real British number plates they are, mate.. Get your hands off of them!” – but, of course, I didn’t..

After that, we’d just about had enough excitement for one day so we came home. When we got here, outside our door was some cheese that Madame D had made for us – she’s very kind. A few minutes later I was outside washing the car when she came along and we had one of those conversations where neither party is entirely sure what the other is saying.. (happens all the time to me when I’m speaking French!) But I gathered finally that she said I could use her hose to rinse the suds off my car.

Now why wasn’t this covered when I did French at school..?