54. Basque Mafia & Confréries

3rd April 2010. Eric - our friendly carpenter from the Basque Mafia - brought the new doors around for the garage the other day. Altogether there are 5 door panels that need painting. One is the new entrance door from the garden that he made from scratch and fitted on Friday. He's really made an excellent job of it - the old one was rotten & starting to sag on its hinges so much so that Madame could hardly open it even if she managed to unlock it. Now? The lock now snicks opens with a well-oiled click and the door fits snugly in the recessed doorway. However, the new garage doors will require a touch of Eric magique™ as they are concertina doors and he'll need to fit the track.

In case you were wondering, my part in all of this is to paint everything. I counted up this afternoon how many coats of paint I'll have to apply on the doors - it went like this - Entrance door: 6 coats (1 undercoat plus 2 top coats x 2 sides - front and back); 4 concertina doors: 24 coats (3 coats as before x 8 sides) - total 30 sides.. I went to Castorama the other day to buy some large tins of undercoat and top coat - which, by the way, has to be Basque Rouge. For a 2 litre tin, the prices ranged from 40-60€.. (that's $53-$80 for just over ½ gallon US). Ouch! While I'm in a frenzy of converting prices, here's one to ponder for any readers in the US.. Diesel here is $6.20 per US gallon..!

Meanwhile - the last few days have seen La Foire au Jambon in Bayonne - the annual event that's been taking place since 1426 (yes, 1426 - before Columbus discovered America!) that celebrates the famous Bayonne ham. I've been too busy painting to wander down there to see what's going on but we went last year and yes, it was as you'd expect - there was a large marquee set up by the covered market that was full of some very Basque faces tucking in to Jambon de Bayonne and other regional products in all of its guises.

5th April 2010. With yesterday being Easter Sunday, we decided to attend the Sunday morning service at the cathedral in Bayonne - and I wore a tie. As we neared it, we could hear the unmistakeable sounds of Basque bands. There was one drawn up in ranks outside the main entrance beating their drums in an ominously slow roll as another one approached. Luckily we arrived at the entrance just in time to squeeze in before a long, colourful procession of Confréries of all kinds.

The Confréries (think the word means a brotherhood) exist in support of various foods and wines (and probably many other things too). They preserve the traditions and customs associated with their selected product and they celebrate it. They are often seen in attendance at religious services and processions and they offer mutual help and charity. They dress in colourful medieval robes and hats and they carry banners that attest to the glory of their chosen food item. This is a most French tradition and it's definitely something that you just cannot imagine in England. The Brotherhood of the Black Pudding.. The Brotherhood of the Meat & Potato Pie.. The Brotherhood of the Pork Scratchings.. It just doesn't work does it?

We took our seats inside and shortly afterwards the entry of the Confréries started. Of the ones I can remember, there were the Confréries of the Gateau Basque, Confit de Canard, Madiran, Foie Gras, Jambon de Bayonne and Piment d'Espelette - but there were more.. It's moments like these that bring home the deep-rooted links between the produce of the local terroir and the people.

The morning service was accompanied by Errobi Kanta, a Basque choir and their voices filled the cathedral with their distinctive harmonies.
This was the timetable for the Confréries yesterday:

8h: Rassemblement et accueil des confréries à la Maison des associations in Bayonne.

9h15: Intronisation des nouveaux membres de la Confrérie du Jambon de Bayonne à la Maison des associations.

10h15: Défilé des confréries vers la cathédrale.

Circuit: quai Chaho, pont Pannecau, quai Roquebert, rue Port-de-Castets, rue Argenterie, cathédrale Sainte-Marie.

11h: Messe traditionnelle de Pâques en la cathédrale en présence des confréries et animée par la chorale Errobi Kanta.

12h30: Défilé des confréries de la cathédrale à la Maison des associations en passant par le carreau des Halles.

Circuit: rue du Pilori, rue du Port-de-Suzeye, carreau des Halles.

17h30: Bal des confréries à la Maison des associations et clôture de la Foire 2010. This last event would have been worth attending!

As I've said before, the French have a far more complex relationship with their food than is the case elsewhere. In the UK, food is what you eat when you're hungry. End of. Here - particularly here - it's about pride in one's region. In France, you are expected to be able to discuss food & wine (French food & wine)(what else!) in all of its regional varieties intelligently, knowledgeably and passionately. Food & wine are both subjects for discussion around the table - and while people are eating one meal, they'll often be waxing lyrical about one they've had or one they're going to have.

After lunch, we decided to take a drive up to the Pas de Roland.. which is one of the oldest routes across and over the Pyrenees and which lies at the foot of a mountain known as Artzamendi. We noticed quite a few fields had small numbers of contented looking donkeys in them. Why the Basques keep them I'm not sure but often you'll see local cars with a donkey sticker on the back. We also saw some wild shaggy coated mountain goats. There was a large male with two smaller females and the male had a spread of gnarled horns a couple of feet long that erupted up and out away from his head like the handlebars on a 'Chopper' bicycle..

The road out of Ixtassou (famous for its black cherries) is essentially single track but of course, local drivers treat this as a challenge and it wasn't long before we had our first meeting with someone coming the other way who didn't see the need to pull over when it was possible for him to. No, instead he simply advanced.. Where he thought I was going to go is a mystery. This was yet another "I'm gonna reach for the 'pump action' moment!" There's always one.

This is a duet I've always liked - it captures the recall of shared memories that exists between couples beautifully. Who is there now who can put over lyrics like these two..? The late great Maurice Chevalier with Hermione Gingold (and yes, you're right, there is something of Madame and I in this!) (maybe):

There's usually an outdoor competition to judge the best Omelette au jambon and all the usual suspects are there offering dégustations (tastings) of various products - patés, saucisses, cheeses, wines etc etc.

53. Hemingway & the Pays Basque

30th March 2010. The Hemingway persona/myth continues to fascinate as each succeeding generation discovers the man and his work anew. One of the preoccupations of youth has always been the conspicuous consumption of alcohol and in picking Hemingway as a role model, they're never in any danger of being disappointed on that score. That he carried on his youthful heavy drinking all through his adult life during which he drove ambulances on the Italian front in WW1, skied in the Alps, shot big game in Africa, fished the Gulf Stream, followed bullfights, served as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and WWII, became a serial husband and, to pay the bills, worked as a journalist and, in his novels, produced some of the greatest writing of the 20th century - only serves to lend credence to, and perhaps legitimise, his legendary love affair with the one mistress he stayed faithful to all his life - alcohol.

In the course of a colourful life lived to the full, he left an indelible imprint in several locations scattered around the fringes of the western world. It could be argued that he rode the first wave of global tourism. There must be as many blue plaques in bars around the world indicating that Ernest Hemingway ate or drank here (usually the latter) as there are inns in the UK claiming that Mary, Queen of Scots, slept there. I must admit I envy him for having been able to experience Italy, France, Spain, East Africa, Key West and Cuba before tourism marked them irreparably. Yes, he's a flawed figure and one who's easy to mock or parody - but there's no denying the fact that he wrote much beautiful prose and despite living a hunting, shooting, fishing, drinking, womanising life with a tendency to self-aggrandisement, he remains a fascinatingly charismatic figure. Paris continues to attract young Americans who go there hoping to write the great American novel. Hemingway put down markers that seem impossibly out of reach.

The Pays Basque and Spain frequently figured in EH's body of work as well as in his personal life. He left America in the early 1920s to take up residence in Paris, from where he travelled to Pamplona via the Pays Basque for the now-legendary running of the bulls during the feast of San Fermin. This must have been a fairly obscure event in a dusty corner of Europe at the time when Hemingway visited it.

   

Nowadays, the running of the bulls has morphed into an international rite of passage for thousands of young men from many nations and also for more than a few older ones who are seeking to re-capture their lost youth. For Hemingway though, this was a life-changing experience and he immortalised it in his first best-selling novel The Sun Also Rises. It describes how the relationships within a group of expat Americans and Brits change during the alcohol-fuelled week of the San Fermin festival against a background of bull fighting. Jake is the narrator and clearly speaks with Hemingway's voice. After a memorable week, Jake finishes up in Madrid having lunch with Lady Brett - where Hemingway has Jake polishing off 5 bottles of Rioja (as you do!).

Hemingway arrived in Bayonne by train from Paris to catch his first sight of the Pays Basque. Arriving in Bayonne on a summer's night after a long hot train journey from Paris, I would think his first priority after crossing the bridge over the Adour to find a hotel in the old centre of Bayonne would have been to find the nearest bar - of which there is no shortage - for a cold beer or two. Having grown up (in Prohibition America) in the leafy suburbs of staid Oak Park, a wealthy suburb of Chicago, he must have been excited at the thought of what lay ahead.

He travelled on through the Basque country to Pamplona but always returned to the coast - San Sebastian, Hendaye, St Jean de Luz or Biarritz. Much later in life (in 1959) he was commissioned to write one last time about a summer of bullfighting in Spain. He recruited a young American woman as his secretary and she wrote that:

"On the trips we took to France Hemingway carried the manuscript of the novel with him. In late August we went to Dax to see Antonio fight. We stayed at the Chantaco Hotel in St. Jean de Luz and ate at the Bar Basque."

The  Hotel Chantaco (just outside St Jean de Luz) remains the same fine & grand establishment that it surely was 50 years ago:

Hotel de Chantaco

I suspect that EH would have been far more at home in the unpretentious Bar Basque in the Boulevard Thiers, Saint-Jean-de Luz. Well situated in a leafy boulevard, the Bar Basque is a 'clean, well-lighted place' and somewhere that's very pleasant indeed to sit with a late drink (or 3) under the platanes on a summer's evening and watch the world go by.

Bar Basque

This week's freebie - Papa's grand-daughter Mariel playing opposite Woody Allen in the great closing scene of "Manhattan", with Gershwin pulling it all together. I like the moment when the penny drops for Woody at 02:23.. (we've all been there..)

Finally, still on the Hemingway theme of this week's post, here's Paolo Conte with his "Hemingway":

I cut and pasted the Italian lyrics into Babelfish and this popped out the other end! I'm none the wiser..

Beyond the dolcezze dell Harrys Bar

And the tendernesses of Zanzibar wax questra road

Beyond the illusions of Timbuctoo

And the long legs of Babal wax this road

Quetsa road zitta that it flies via like a butterfly,

Nostalgia, nostalgia to the taste of curaçao

Perhaps a day better me spiegher

Et alors, Monsieur Hemingway, to it goes?

Et alors, Monsieur Hemingway, to it goes mieux?

Well I hope that's answered any questions you may have had!

Wish I'd said this:  "Always carry a large flagon of whisky in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake."

One for the road:

"Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you?"                                                  

                                         Ernest Hemingway

52. Ramiro Arrue - his vision of the Pays Basque.

27th March 2010. Visitors to the Pays Basque with an eye for the graphic arts will soon become aware of the stylistic influence exerted on the self image of the region by the celebrated Basque artist Ramiro Arrue (right) of Spanish nationality.

More than anyone else that I'm aware of, his paintings define the region and capture the essence of the Basque identity. His work is deceptively simple and it portrays the rural Basque people at work and at play.

The Basques have an especially intense relationship with their houses, their farms and their land. This is perhaps best illustrated by a poem - My Father's House - by Gabriel Aresti, 1963 (translated from the original Basque):

I shall defend the house of my father.
Against wolves, against drought, against usury, against the Justice,
I shall defend the house of my father.
I shall lose cattle, orchards and pinewoods;
I shall lose interests, income and dividends,
But I shall defend the house of my father.
They will take away my weapons and with my hands

I shall defend the house of my father;
They will cut off my hands and with my arms

I shall defend the house of my father;
They will leave me without arms, without shoulders and without breasts,
And with my soul I shall defend the house of my father.
I shall die, my soul will be lost, my descendants will be lost,
But the house of my father will remain standing.

(Reading the above lines explains the passion the Basques feel for their houses and the fierce local resistance here to the southern extension of the special track for the TGV which is planned to pass through the Pays Basque - that will necessitate the demolition of ~140 Basque houses.)

Born May 20, 1892 in Bilbao, Ramiro Arrue studied in Paris and associated with Picasso, Modigliani and Cocteau. He settled in St Jean de Luz in 1917 where he remained for the rest of his adult life. Despite choosing to live in France, he retained his Spanish nationality and as a result was arrested together with other Spanish Basques in 1943 and imprisoned in the fortress at St Jean Pied de Port.

He resumed painting in 1945 and he found his main inspiration for landscapes, portraits, and everyday scenes. His style is figurative, featuring simple, even austere, lines with an almost monumental quality and muted colour harmonies. The academic Hélène Saule-Sorbé wrote: "The colours of Ramiro Arrue's brush are a trilogy: green, white, red. The permanence of heraldry, a sign of belonging, the palette of a country of green hills, of bright white houses whose roofs and woodwork is red".

He died alone in penury in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on 1 April 1971.

A prolific artist, we see his work regularly surfacing at a gallery in St Jean de Luz but they command high prices.

Here's the real thing: