45. French pop

19th February 2010. Contrary to what the UK media would have you believe, French pop music does exist and it comes in flavours other than Johnny Hallyday..! On the BBC, there is a constant drip drip of negativity towards any music emanating from across the channel. I remember when Andrea Bocelli (Italian I know) had a well-deserved hit across Europe with "Time to say good-bye" and some insular idiot on BBC Radio 2 introduced it by saying, "This has topped all the European charts over the last few weeks which means it's going to be a flop here.." (ye godfathers..)

Despite that introduction, it was a smash in the UK too. Johnny Hallyday is not rated at all by the UK pop music cognescenti either.. He's been around almost as long as Cliff Richard but that's where any similarity stops. Johnny puts on a dynamic stage show - he's got presence and power in spades and some great songs. He attracts an audience of all ages while anodyne old Cliff is the favourite of the mums & grannies.

Here he is with one of his greatest hits Que je t'aime.. (with a very Darth Vader-ish intro! - "Feel the force, Johnny!") (hard to see where he keeps his pension book in that suit!) This is how to make an entrance! Skip to 4.16 for the song:

  

There are a couple of good gizmos available for listening to French radio via a PC. RFM plays a mix of English language hits from the 80s and contemporary French songs with minimal blah-blah between them. (If you like it, right click on the RFM logo to create a shortcut to it on your desktop). We used to tune into RFM on the long drive south from Calais to the Pays Basque each summer and it wasn’t too long before we worked out what the ‘summer song’ for that year was as they seem to have a limited play list.

A classic summer song in 1971 (seems like yesterday!) that you couldn't escape from even if you wanted to was Michel Delpech's monster hit Pour Un Flirt. It still receives lots of air time even today. It's one of those annoyingly catchy tunes (aaagghh - those trumpets..!) that you can't stop yourself singing along to.

One that I would have liked to escape from would have been Tanita Tikaram's 1988 hit "Twist in my Sobriety" - played to death by RFM.

My only major gripe at RFM is that they do insist on playing James Blunt.. He should cut out the middleman and call the Samaritans direct thus sparing us from the misery of listening to his songs..

So who are the French pop music ‘greats’..? There’s the so-stylish and enigmatic Françoise Hardy – all cheekbones, hair, eyes and.. steady! She had a whole stream of hits in France – some of which she translated into English for the UK & US markets. And, although not a favourite of mine, let's not forget the evergreen Mireille Mathieu – never has the Marseillaise been sung with such passion and fervour as in her rendition. Liane Foly too is an extremely under-rated song stylist as well as being a very funny lady. See what you think of her intriguing and exotic sounding Au fur et à mesure..

Michel Fugain had a great deal of success (in 1972..) with this oh-so-French summer song:

Radio TSF Jazz broadcasts on FM in the Paris area and it plays cool jazz non-stop. 

That's enough to be going on with..! Apologies in advance if you start humming Pour Un Flirt all day!

And now for something completely different - the late great John Candy in "Trains, Planes & Automobiles".. If you haven't seen it, you've missed a very very funny film..

I know this has got nothing to do with the Pays basque but this is one funny film.. take a look at the trailer:

44. Over the hump

16th February 2010. I've never enjoyed the first three months of the year. Dark, cold, wet and with the prospect of Spring seeming like a distant mirage. And, to crown it all, the bank balance is normally in recovery mode after the excesses of Christmas as well. So here we are - half way through it - and with just another six weeks to go.

Still no rowing for me.. hopefully it won't be too long before I can get in a boat again. After last Saturday's outing, one of the guys at the club sent me a slideshow of pictures taken on the river. They all looked c o l d..

Seeing F in one of the pictures reminded me of an incident a year or two ago out on the river in a 'yolette' (a 'four'). On this particular day I'd started off in the cox’s seat (the one who does the steering and shouting the orders..) which was a bit tricky because I don’t know all the orders in French yet.. There were 2 nanas (ie, female ladies of the opposite persuasion) occupying seats 2 & 3, and one was early getting her oar in all the time and the other one was late all the time.. (Not like a woman to be late getting her oar in I thought!).. Anyway, F, who was rowing up at 'bow', suddenly decided he had to have a P for relief - right now! This is completely in line with the inalienable right of all Frenchmen to pee al fresco whenever, wherever and in front of whoever they want - this sub-clause must be enshrined in the Constitution somewhere (and, believe me, it's exercised prolifically during the Fete de Bayonne!).

Now given that a nana was immediately in front of F, do you think this would have put him off for one moment..? Er, beh non.. The nanas in the boat kept their eyes discreetly towards the stern of the boat (so they said!) while F got to his feet. From my position in the stern - but facing forward - I watched the whole thing unfolding (no pun intended!). 'Yolettes' are pretty stable as long as everyone is sat down but for some unaccountable reason, as soon as F got to his feet and started rummaging around in the trouser area, a vicious wobble started up which he tried to counteract by shifting his weight. Alas, it was all to no avail because he suddenly found himself leaning past the vertical in one direction while the boat had a wobble on in the other direction..! From that point on, there was no way back and into the Adour he toppled - in a tangle of arms & legs - with all the grace of a horse pushed into a swimming pool. Needless to say, sympathy was in short supply.. as we were all too busy crying with laughter. Luckily, a coach was nearby in a motorboat and she picked him up to return him to the clubhouse.

I had Eric around yesterday to fix the halogen spots in the kitchen. Since he installed them 2 years ago, they've been nothing but trouble so yesterday he came around and replaced all the units free of charge. I think he'd originally been given a duff set to fit. He's also going to give us an estimate for replacing the garden door to the garage and the main garage doors. The garden door looks a touch moth eaten and I suspect it's only the paint and the 2 long hinges that are holding it together.

Now that all the double glazing in the house has been fitted, we've been thinking about a new front door as I can see daylight around the locks and the cold comes whistling in through there. We asked the company who provided the new windows for an off-the-cuff estimate and we were told somewhere in the region of 2,500 - 3,500€! Shorely shome mishtake..

The temperatures have finally risen from around freezing point and the ground is no longer iron hard. Looking outside, the palm tree looks bedraggled and the fronds are dripping in the light rain. (where's that number for the Samaritans..?)

(Edited in Oct 2017 to add) Sad to think that out of the five founding members of the 80s supergroup 'The Traveling Wilburys', that only two remain with us today.. (if the video gets taken down, click on this)

43. Junk that BBQ! Vive la plancha!

4th February 2010. One of the best things we bought since arriving down here is a "plancha"..

Stunned silence in the snug..

"C'est quoi - une plancha..?" I hear you ask?

It's a means of cooking outdoors that consigns the BBQ firmly to the Stone Age.. (Cue howls of derision, chest beatings, etc) Now I realise that this may be heresy to a few readers - as there's some strange psychology tied up with the Western male fixation with BBQs that has never been satisfactorily explained. There are many elements at work here - the playing with fire, squatting over a smoking heap of charcoal that refuses to get going, Suburban Man reverting to Hunter/Gatherer (joke apron optional), the outsize tools, the "know how", etc etc. The stage whispered "tutting" from the neighbours as washing is hastily taken indoors due to the smokescreen drifting over the hedge that the Royal Navy could hide a medium sized warship behind (if we had any left)..

And then there's the food that's been cooked on a BBQ.. we've all suffered the chicken legs that have been cremated on the outside and are virtually raw inside - accompanied by the familiar cry of "It'll be OK, just scrape off the black bits..".

Those days are gone. A plancha is a heavy slab of cast iron (I suspect ours is a recycled bulkhead from the "Bismarck") that's been enamelled and it sits on top of a gas burner or two. How to use it? It couldn't be easier. Light the gas, wipe it with a smidgen of oil, wait 5 minutes for the cooking suface to warm up and you're in business. Ours is identical to the one above. 

Once you've tasted food cooked on one, there's no going back. Sardines cooked on it have never tasted better.. It does fish, meat and chicken beautifully. I think planchas may be Spanish in origin but they are everywhere in the Pays Basque. 

  

I think I'll be heaving ours out of the garage in a month or so (it weighs a ton.. and I have to lug it up a few steps between the garage and the terrace) and then it sits on our terrace through to October/November - & no, it won't blow away! 

Madame loves to cook on it and she cooks like an angel. My job? In March I carry it out, and in November I clean it off, lightly grease the metal parts & put it away again. In between that I sort out the drinks. Happy days.

PS With Feb 14th coming up, and if the thrill of sleeping in the dog-house has lost its appeal, then rescue is at hand..! The site offers substantial discounts on French perfumes..

Sunday, 7th February 2010. Went down to Socoa to have a look at the menu at Chez Pantxua.. ie, to see if we could afford to go there next weekend. We've been there several times before and for sea food it's in a class of its own. Today we decided that it would be foolishly expensive (around 100€ for 2) for lunch so Madame said she would make something special next weekend. She can always outdo anything a restaurant can serve up anyway - and I can extract a cork with the best of them. We stopped off at Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the way home and walked along the seafront watching the surfers. The temperature was hovering around 15C.

Tomorrow, we're having the remainder of the windows at "Piperade Towers" double glazed so we'll be one step closer to finishing all the thousand and one jobs that we've had to do in the house..

I just had one of those random memory moments - I was reminded of a conversation I had years ago.. I was telling a friend about my new watch and he came out with: "Yes, I used to have a watch like that - it lost 2 minutes a day, regular as clockwork"  Still makes me laugh!

Now, it's fast approaching that* time of day but first - put your feet up, close your eyes and enjoy the beautiful tone of Michael Lucarelli's guitar as he interprets Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata".. (and filmed through a war surplus U boat periscope)

* "Apero" time!

PS. Style Tip: Ditch the flat 'at!