7th March 2010. In all this talk of the Pays Basque, I have somehow neglected to mention what is probably the most symbolic feature of all the French Basque country and that is - La Rhune.
La Rhune is the distinctively shaped mountain that seems to crouch at the western end of the Pyrenees and its brooding presence and sharp-edged silhouette dominates the Côte Basque. To me, there is something of a headless Sphinx about its form. To put its size into perspective, at 2969' (905m), it's just shy of the qualifying height for a 'Munro' by the length of a domestic ladder.
Access to its summit is from the Col de St. Ignace (169m), which is midway between Ascain and Sare. The road up to the lower station from Ascain is described on a cyclists web site as "a gentle snaking climb (my italics) up to a very popular funicular railway taking tourists to the top of La Rhune for a view of the ocean". Cyclists clearly have a very different view of the world to the one I see!
Once at the Col de St. Ignace station, there are two methods of reaching the summit of La Rhune - there's the Petit train de la Rhune, a rack & pinion metre gauge railway that slowly grinds its way up to the top or - you can walk up. A popular option is "Train up and walk down.." or, if that smacks of being too easy, try it the other way round - aka the Hero option! If you intend taking the train up on a fine summer's day, be advised that it is an incredibly popular attraction and parking will be an issue, as will the queues for a ticket. The trick is to make an early start, looking to be at the Col de St. Ignace station no later than 9am. If you leave arriving there till later in the day, you'll be treated to a Masterclass in the Noble Art of French Queueing - say no more! A return ticket is ~14€ and dogs are charged at 50%.. ouch! There's a vulture towards the end of this clip! And despair ye not.. the accordionist stops at around 4.25..!
Make sure to check the weather forecast before leaving as the conditions can change quite rapidly up there. There is a small Spanish-run restaurant/snack bar at the summit as well as a number of shops selling tourist gizmos, alcoholic drinks and tobacco at Spanish prices. I'd recommend taking a picnic as the food in the cafe could best be described as average, plus why sit indoors when the views outside are so special?
Take a picnic, sit ouside and drink in the views which are really stunning. From the summit on a clear day, you can see waay up the coast north of Bayonne to the start of Les Landes. Saint-Jean-de-Luz lies before you and inland the Pyrenees march away to the south east in a blue haze.Right! Enough sight-seeing.. think it's time to refresh the inner man. Here's a recipe for Les Pommes de Terre Sarladaises (potatoes sauteed in goose fat, garlic & parsley) - the finest recipe for potatoes known to man: Ingredients:
750g (1½lbs) of waxy potatoes
3 tablespoonsful of goose fat (or, if serving with Confit de Canard, use the duck fat from the tin)
1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
2 finely chopped cloves of garlic
Some coarse sea salt, freshly ground black pepper.
Peel and slice the potatoes fairly thinly and dry them in a clean tea towel. Heat the goose fat in a heavy frying pan with a good-fitting lid, and when it starts to smoke, put in the potatoes to colour over a high heat. Keep turning them so that they don't stick and when they start to colour, cover the pan and moderate the heat. Allow them to cook for 30 minutes, turning them every 10 minutes or so to brown in the fat. Add more goose fat as required. Towards the end of the half hour, stir in the chopped parsley and garlic. Turn out on a dish covered in kitchen paper to soak up any excess fat, sprinkle with the salt and serve... Mmmmmm!.
4th March 2010. The Pays Basque is one of France's best kept secrets (in my opinion). After discovering its delights, I tried hard not to extol its virtues too much with friends and colleagues in the UK as I selfishly wished to keep it to myself! We’d suffered the occasional booming voices and braying laughter of my fellow countrymen in 'our' restaurant in ‘our’ village and we didn't want to increase the risk of any recurrence. For that same reason, I keep my distance from expat forums and blogs on the internet.
I've always had a yen to write and once we'd re-located in the Pays Basque I started to keep a simple daily diary of our new life down here to 'get my hand in' again and start the juices flowing. I also started writing letters to my dear old Mum in England to give her more of a flavour of what we were up to than I ever could over the phone. After a while, this material started to accumulate and I thought about starting a blog to capture all these experiences in a more flexible, readable and joined-up format. In researching blogs, I discovered a whole new world of bloggers, blogs and forums for ex-pats (including many Brits) in France that I'd previously been unaware of. The more I looked, the more I found. There must be thousands of Brits widely dispersed around France whose only contact with each other is via electronic means. However, I've kept well clear of all internet expat forums as they seem to attract aggressive "keyboard warriors" and, for me at least, life's too short to waste time engaging with them.
It occurred to me the other day that this largely invisible expat community only exists here in France. It's all one way traffic. There doesn't appear to be a similar group of French expats living the reciprocal life in the UK. While there is a large group of French working in the UK - estimated to be some 300,000 strong - I would doubt very much if there's an equivalent number of French living in the UK for what might be called lifestyle reasons - retirees and people who've taken early retirement and have set up small businesses to complement their pensions. It's my guess that those 300,000 French are mainly to be found working in and around London where there's easy access to the Eurostar for weekend commuting.
Peter Mayle definitely hit a nerve with his seminal "A Year in Provence" as it tapped into the aspirations of thousands of baby boomers (like me) who'd experienced foreign travel first hand - and liked it - in a way that wasn't possible for their parents' generation. I'm excluding, of course, our fathers' wartime experiences overseas as they all mainly came to a grinding halt in 1945. Our fathers returned home never to travel overseas again for the most part and they spoke about it rarely. It was a period that most of them wanted to forget.
We, the UK baby boomers, were the generation brought up on a diet of dull post-war food (although we didn't realise it at the time) - Camp coffee, Kia-Ora orange squash, sliced white bread, evaporated milk, salad cream, tinned fruit (peaches, pears or pineapple usually covered it), tinned veg, packet soups, Kraft Dairylea cheese, meat that was cooked to death and rice was only seen in rice puddings. Cooking oil - what's that? Spaghetti - as we'll find out in a few paragraphs - came in tins in tomato sauce. As my Mum said years later, "after the war, we were just grateful to be eating anything.." I think it's fair to say that our knowledge and experience of food and drink - as a nation - was pretty minimal in the fifties and well into the sixties, so we were all in the same boat. The problem arose when England met Europe, and more specifically - France.
Madame once asked me if we used to have lobster at Christmas when I was a kid.. (Lobster! I thought.. suppressing hysterical laughter!) No, we didn't! Or oysters. Or broccoli. Or a thousand and one other things we now take for granted. My Dad used to stock up with a case of a dozen bottles of sweet Spanish Sauternes in early November in good time for Christmas. By the end of November, that case had mysteriously evaporated and he'd have to go out for another. Sweet Spanish Sauternes put me off white wine for a loong time.
Here's a little story that will illustrate what a complete numpty I was in food matters when I was young. I lived in London for a couple of years in the mid sixties. My bed-sit was on the first floor of a large semi in trendy Willesden Green(!). My landlady was Italian and the tenants were a cosmopolitan bunch. Among others, there was Ferry, a wealthy young Persian man (they weren't Iranians yet) on my floor and a Polish girl called Marta in the basement flat.
It wasn't too long before my beady eye alighted on Marta. I found out that she had supper with the landlady one day per week so I asked her what Marta liked to eat. It turned out that spaghetti bolognaise was her favourite. I asked Marta if she'd like to come up one evening for a meal and, to my surprise and delight, she said that she would.
I went out that evening to buy all the supplies.. (and don't laugh!): 2 large tins of Heinz Spaghetti Bolognaise, a large white sliced loaf, some butter, a 2oz tin of Nescafe.. two plates and two coffee cups and saucers. Oh yes, and a packet of sausages. I was going to serve Marta tinned spag bol, on buttered toast, with a couple of sausages sticking jauntily out of the top in the manner of an indoor TV aerial.. Followed by real Nescafe.. I can't remember if wine was involved.. probably not. What a feast to set before my date! (ahem..)
Come the evening in question and Marta arrived on time.. The spag was bubbling away nicely in a saucepan on top of my Baby Belling.. the sausages were under the grill.. the toast was ready.. and I was talking to the lovely Marta... Suddenly, blue smoke started pouring out from under as the sausages caught fire.. Without pausing for breath, I quickly slid the grill pan out, blew the flames out and then held it out of the window to let the smoke disperse.. In my mind's eye I can still see this cloud of acrid blue smoke slowly drifting down the neighbouring gardens..
Right - the toast is on the plates, each with a steaming dollop of spag, two burnt sausages stuck in a 'vee' like a bullfighter's bandilleros..et voila! From there on, the evening was only going one way and that was downhill..
I never did see her again. Strange that.. (I've often wondered if she's ever recounted the tale to groups of totally bemused Poles..)
Three or four years later, my French sister-in-law was staying at the family home and she offered to make the evening meal for my mother. She wanted to make a spag bol (the classic sixties dish) so she popped out to the shops to pick up all she needed. When she returned with all her ingredients, I noticed she had a long blue packet (~half a metre long) under her arm. I asked her what that was and she gave me a curious look and said, "It's the spaghetti..!" The penny finally dropped. D'oh!
Coming to France from the UK was a genuine revelation back then.. particularly in food terms. Steaks had red juice (ie, blood) still in them. (Meat was always killed twice in England.. once in the abattoir and then it would be murdered in the kitchen - just to make sure..) If there was any lingering sign of blood in a steak, my father would proclaim "A good vet would have that back on its feet in 5 minutes.." He would have used a blowlamp to cook a steak if he'd been allowed.. (I think he'd been marked by 5-6 years of Army cooking) The big difference was that French food had taste. Salads with vinaigrette dressing (not salad cream). Crusty baguettes (not limp white bread). All the different varieties of cheese (not Kraft Dairylea). Red wine. Real coffee..
All of the above goes some way to explaining why thousands of French retirees aren't buying up abandoned properties the length and breadth of Britain, living the dream and writing best sellers called "A Year in Warrington" with a follow-up called "Toujours Warrington"*. Imagine the rumblings if they colonised such outposts as British West Hartlepools, Workington or Rochdale with settlements of trimly moustachioed French pensioners and their hennaed wives! Getting on to the committee of the local Working Mens Club, walking their whippets, fancying their pigeons and breeding budgies, writing witty columns for French newspapers.. The horror of the Bowling Club committee as the newly arrived Frenchman launches his 'wood' up in the air on the local bowling green in the parabola of a pétanque player..! There's a parody waiting to be written here. The simple truth is that they live to eat. We don't. We eat to live and as Madame found, it's very difficult outside of the major centres in the UK to find the ingredients for cooking à la française.
* Withapologies to the good folk of Warrington naturally!
I doubt if there's a better interpretation of Debussy's Clair de Lune than this one by Presti Lagoya..
28th February 2010. An Alerte Rouge for 60-odd departements in France last night.. Strong winds swept the country overnight - the storm crossed the Bay of Biscay from Spain and coasted in around La Rochelle and devastated some low-lying villages when a high tide, whipped up by the strong south-westerly winds, breached a dyke and flooded villages and farmland. So far around 45 dead have been reported with many being drowned in their homes.
The idea of drowning during the night in one's own house is far from our thoughts when we go to bed and so the unimaginable shock of waking up in the wee small hours with the house flooding and no lighting must have been appalling for those involved, especially the elderly and infirm. Many houses were flooded to a depth of 1m 80.. (almost 6 feet) It doesn't bear thinking about..
I now feel somewhat guilty about my reactions during the storm because I was lying in bed, listening to the noise outside and feeling content that, with the new windows fitted, things were now much quieter.
2nd March 2010. We were on the beach at Anglet this afternoon and I heard some unfamiliar honking sounds coming from above.. Looking up, I spotted several great straggling broadly vee-shaped formations of cranes beating their way back to their northern European summer retreats (from Africa?). There were a good few hundred of them. My next question is what is the difference between a stork and butter oops, a crane..? I’m no ornithologist as you can guess.. This must be a sign that spring is on the way.. The car thermometer registered 22C yesterday at 3pm on the way to the beach.
Our pooch (9 this summer) met another English cocker spaniel, a 10 months old bitch, down there and the two of them started racing about like a coupla eejits.. (“Wow, another dog!”) It was so funny to watch.. Would have been hard pressed to say which one was the 8 year old.. Strange, isn’t it, how dogs never lose their fascination with each other.
20th February 2010. In previous posts I've mentioned a few Basque dishes, notably the Gâteau basque, but I think I should apologise in advance to the Confrérie du gâteau basque for what I'm about to say about their revered cake.. (I should add that this is all tongue-in-cheek!)
At the 2009 Fete du Gâteau basque in Cambo (below), the judges were photographed filling out Next Of Kin forms before trying to speed-eat eight Gâteaux basques* against the clock (although I could be wrong here..) No, they were really suggesting alternative uses for the cake in the middle.. (I heard later that the winning suggestion was "Boat Anchor.." with "Base for garden umbrella" cominga close second)
(Note from Management: 1 Gâteau basque, but 2 Gâteaux basques)
There's even a museum dedicated to the gâteau basque.. Try as I might, I just can't imagine a museum for Dairy Cream Sponges or Custard Slices in the UK - but that's all part of the magic of France. Gâteaux basques come in two main varieties (and an HGV licence is needed for both!) with either a black cherry or a crème pâtissière filling. Madame usually buys the cakes (I'm only allowed to buy them when there's a 'k' in the month) and I've never really been that enamoured with the black cherry variety of Gâteau basque.. finding them a bit heavy going, rather like a flywheel in cake form.
Last Sunday, I was off out to buy a couple of baguettes from the baker in the centre of town when I had a sudden hankering to try a Gâteau basque with a crème pâtissière filling. I found one at a pâtisserie (I've been "hedumacated" not to buy cakes at bakers) and brought that home. It was chalk & cheese compared to the black cherry variety. Of course, Madame wasn't too keen but, as far as I'm concerned, it's the one I prefer.
So, back to Basque specialities. A feature of Basque cooking is that the colours of the Basque flag - red and green - often feature in the dishes (usually red & green peppers). I think my first lip-smacking experience was at La Buvette des Halles, a small café that had just opened in the centre of St Jean de Luz adjacent to the covered market (that sells meat, poultry, fish & all types of sea food, fruit & veg and cheese). After the market had finished for the morning and while all the detritus was being swept up, we saw a chap quickly setting up tables and chairs. His kitchen was inside the market building and his fish-orientated menu featured much that had come straight from the market - so without further ado we sat down at a table in the shade of the platanes.
I still remember what we had that first time - Madame had a tomato* and mozzarella salad and I had 9 oysters, then we both had grilled sardines (we didn't know then that they'd been cooked on a plancha) accompanied by a pichet of cold rosé. Everything was fresh and full of taste. Coffee, a Café Creme cigarillo and the bill followed - 105 francs - which at the time was only ~£11. If we could have pressed the rewind button and had it all again we would have! Delicious - and in such a simple setting - and as a bonus, it was ideal for people watching. It was his first year in business and we've been back every year (bar a couple) since then.
* Tomatoes are a no-go item for me..
His menu is a véritable (as they like to say here) catalogue of Basque cuisine - he serves all of the following staples of the Basque kitchen: Ttoro, Pipérade, Omelette au piment doux, Axoa d'espelette & Poulet basquaiseand probably a few more that I've forgotten. Plus a few standards like sardines, grilled tuna, dressed crab, oysters, moules, entrecôte steak or confit de canard. For freshness of taste (and price) I don't think he can be beaten. It's one of our favourite places when it gets a bit warmer. Recommended: Light lunch? Go for the sardines. Feeling peckish? Tuna with pipérade will slow you down a bit..
I remember after our first holiday down in the Pays Basque we were keen to try sardines on our barbecue when we returned home. After they all fell through the grill and smoked out the neighbourhood we realised that frozen ones just won't do! And you need a plancha..
Here's the late Keith Floyd attempting to make a Pipérade in a Basque lady's kitchen in St Jean de Luz and getting it all so wrong. (Imagine the reaction if a Frenchman was ensconced in a Yorkshire kitchen attempting to demonstrate for the viewers - and the lady of the house - 'owze famoos pudding de York-sheer was made..) I think he escaped very lightly! Don't misunderstand me.. I had a lot of time for Keith Floyd.. it took some nerve to do what he did here. Can't imagine the saintly Delia trying that!)
22nd February 2010. 15C this morning. I went to Dancharia in Spain to fill the car up with diesel.. It's crept up to a tad over 1€/litre (~88p) - presumably in the light of the Total refinery dispute in N France which threatens to disrupt the supply of petrol to the country. While I was there, I picked up a few odds and ends and had an extra virgin cold pressed hot chocolate.. (as you do).
23rd February 2010. A few months ago, we were asked by A - an old friend of J-M in Tours - if we’d like to go for a flight with him one day from the Basque Aero Club at Biarritz airport.. A is a semi-retired fighter pilot (French Air Force) and he's a flying instructor at the Aero Club. Biarritz Airport is not that busy and the main operators who use it are Air France, RyanAir or EasyJet. Occasionally a biz jet flies in. We were there once waiting to board a RyanAir flight to the UK when I sensed that there was something going on. I noticed a posse of gendarmerie motorcyclists discreetly standing by with a few heavy-looking characters talking into their cuffs. An Airbus landed and, as it taxied in, a small tricolourcould be seen fluttering from the flight deck window. It taxied up to the terminal and shut down in quick time while a stairway was hurriedly wheeled into place. There were a few impressive looking 'suits' nervously waiting below.. A minute later the door opened and there was El Presidente Sarkozy himself.. with MAM* two steps behind him.
Anyway, on the day we flew with A, all was blissfully peaceful and quiet. We opened the hangar doors and pushed out the (very) small aircraft (a Robin DR 400 120) that we were going to commit aviation in and, after a few external checks, we strapped ourselves in, quickly ran through a short checklist, called the tower to ask for start clearance and then started up. All very simple and minimalist! Once the engine and oil temperatures were showing the correct values, we called for taxy clearance and then we were off taxying around (above) to the threshold of the active runway. Then, following a quick look around, A released the brakes and opened the throttle and we were off down the runway - all 7,382ft of it.
We climbed out over Biarritz before turning north over the sea to follow the coastline. At around this point, A turned to me and said "You have control.." (at that point I could sense Madame watching me like a hawk from the rear seat!) and we continued flying north along the beaches at Anglet before he told me to turn onto an easterly heading to fly up the northern banks of the Adour. I'm reminded (not by my performance of course!) of the classic comment written on a student pilot's report. It went: "Once Bloggs climbs into an aircraft, he starts a chain of events over which he has no further control.." Ouch!
It was a day when I would normally have been rowing and down below I could see a couple of 'yolettes' (fours) outlined like pond skimmers against the silvery Adour.
The rowing club lies just above the second bridge up on the pic above on the left hand bank. At this point we turned right hand down a bit (technical aviation term) towards the Pyrenees and suddenly my mind map of how the Pays Basque fitted together suddenly took on an extra dimension as the landscape unfolded before us.
Saint-Jean-de-Luz
After St Jean de Luz we landed back at Biarritz, refuelled the aircraft and then taxied around to the hangar and locked it all away again. Great fun.. and I wish I could afford to do it more often. Many thanks to A for his kind gesture.. the Pays Basque looks just as good from the air.
To wind up with, here's the pooch enjoying himself on a blustery day at our local beach a day or two ago. The clip won't win any awards I know - I was really just testing out my new camera.
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:
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)
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)
1st February 2010. On Saturday I went down to the rowing club at around the time that the crews normally return after their morning outings - just in time for a torrential downpour. It looked very wet out there on the river. They were all soaked to the skin but in good humour. (It's only water innit!) I remember one outing last year when I went out with F in a double sculler and as we left the pontoon, the sky had looked dark and vaguely threatening. We set off up the river when suddenly - from nowhere - a hailstorm started. Each piece of hail was about the size of a marble and was it ever painful. And with being in a boat and having to keep hold of the sculls, we didn't have a free hand to protect ourselves from the worst of it. Luckily we'd only rowed about half a mile upstream so we dashed back. Ouch ouch ouch! Felt as though my head was being shot-peened..
Glad to see the back of January - while it's been very cold down here we were lucky to escape the snow. Been out in the car this morning and I was intrigued by a road sign I kept seeing (don't start me off!). It said "Norabide Guziak". At first I thought it looked like one of my nightmare Scrabble hands.. but it's Basque for "Toutes Directions" - or "Through Traffic" in yer Anglo Saxon.. There's just nothing there to give you a clue is there? While we're on the subject, I'll run through my Basque language repertoire for you.. Milesker is please. Bai is yes. And, as you now know, Norabide Guziak is Through Traffic.. And that's it after living here for over 2 years.
I nipped over the border to pick up a few things (inc. a 2 litre bottle of Scotch for 16€) at the Venta supermarkets on the other side. Well worth a visit if in the area.
2nd February 2010. The car thermometer reckoned it was 15C.. And, as it was Pancake Tuesday, Madame made a stack of them with all kinds of exotic fillings - think the highlight was the chocolate & banana one, flambéed with rhum.. We went down to the beach at Anglet this afternoon and for the first time this year, it felt like spring was on the way. A silver mist hung over the Biarritz beach and the Pyrenees were white with snow.
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.
28th January 2010. Here in France, cheese is a serious subject - as you might expect from a country that has n cheeses (where n is a number between 400 & 500) although this French web site asserts that there are now at least 1,200.
I had an encounter outside the Grand Hotel in the centre of Bayonne the other day with a market research lady with a clipboard. After I confessed to being a Brit, she quickly established that I'd heard of cheese and then she asked if I'd like to participate in a cheese tasting survey inside the hotel. (quiet in the cheap seats!)
She sat me down at a table in the bar and I had to tell her which cheeses I was familiar with from a list. She then invited me to eat a dry cracker while she went off to fetch the first cheese.
She put a healthy wedge of an un-named Basque cheese in front of me. It was sat in a plastic tray container similar to the ones that St Agur or Roquefort is sold in. Then the questioning started. Did I like cheese presented in plastic? (all answers were on a scale from 1 to 5) Or did I prefer paper? Did I like the look of the cheese and was the cheese sticking to the plastic and did this bother me? Did I like the look of the crust, the feel of it, did it make my fingers sticky, did I like the smell of it on my fingers, did I think the crust looked real or man-made, did I think the crust was too thin or too thick, did I like the colour of the cheese, did I like its smell and a few more questions I can no longer remember before she finally said, now cut a piece off and taste it. More questions followed concerning what were my positive reactions to the cheese followed by my negative reactions.. What did I think of its ease of cutting, body, taste, smell, after-taste, texture, granularity, creaminess and saltiness?
She then invited me to have another bite which triggered another endless stream of questions - apart from the only one I was ready for (the Major Bloodnok question), but which, alas, never came: "Is it like Cheddar..?" Gawd knows what she'd have made of the cheese of my youth - Kraft Dairylea..
Etorki
She disappeared off to fetch another one and by now, I was starting to lose the will to live. When she returned she went through exactly the same procedure with the new cheese with the addition of a few comparative questions relative to the first cheese..
She wouldn't tell me what the cheeses were but I think the cheeses I tasted were both varieties of Etorki. This is a cheese made in the French Basque country, at Mauléon-Licharre in the interior of the Pays basque.
In the interests of balance, I google'd the British Cheese Board and it appears that there are over 700 named British cheeses produced in the UK, with "a cheese available for every occasion". I wonder if any of the occasions imagined by the BCB included tiling the bathroom floor, wedging open the garage door.. or stopping that annoying wobble of the dining table.. we'll never know.
Here's what the great and the good have to say on the subject of French cheese:
"A country producing almost 360 different types of cheese cannot die."
Winston Churchill in June 1940
"Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?"("How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?")
Charles de Gaulle (Le grand fromage himself!) (I've never quite seen the link between the number of cheeses produced by a country and its ability to govern itself..)
"Un repas sans fromage est une belle à qui il manque un œil."("A meal without cheese is a beautiful woman with an eye missing.")
Brillat-Savarin (from La Physiologie du goût) (a bit OTT this one - dare I say it: it's only cheese!)
Nostalgia Dept: Next time it's a Sunday lunchtime, close your eyes and play this one.. and let it conjure up the smells of a Sunday roast at home in days gone by.
Time for a late New Year's resolution: in the interest of preserving what remains of my reputation, this year I don't intend to enter any more hotels with strange ladies bearing clipboards to "discuss cheese". Unless, of course, they're offering a glass or two of red wine with it..
16th January 2010. That sound you can hear is the last of the dust settling following Christmas and New Year.. We’re now back to our old routine.. no more champagne to drink, no more foie gras or galettes to eat. The trouble was that we stayed with 4 sets of friends in 9 days in and around Paris and each time we arrived at a new temporary 'home', the fatted calf would be killed anew and more bottles would be opened, with the result that when we finally returned home on New Years Day we were both feeling just that little bit jaded and desperately wanting to eat lightly for a few days.
That resolution lasted only 5 minutes once we got home.. because it was 5 minutes after opening the front door that I thought to check our mail box. The facteur (postman) has a master key to it and this explains how a fully formed Christmas Pudding (a kind thought from a friend in England) was found to be lurking in there.. along with all the other mail. Yes, a Christmas pudding - the one thing I hadn’t eaten over Christmas! So it was on the following Sunday that we nobly sacrificed ourselves to appease Ye Olde English Christmas Pudding Gods. The pudding was heated, hot brandy poured over it (“we have ignition..!”) and all conversation ceased for a few glorious minutes.. As always, the French have an apt expression for this moment: "Un ange passe". All was well with the world again. We retired early with snoring high on the agenda..
I could have done with this diagram on Christmas Eve - not having worn a tie for months!
Looking back over the holidays, I remember feeling 'hard done by' on Christmas Day.. With it being France, we had our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve with O - Madame's brother - and F - his wife - and their family.. and it was excellent indeed. O knows his wine too and he offered us a wonderful Bordeaux.. The following day at 3pm, we sat down to a light lunch as we were going to be eating for Queen & Country later in the evening. This is where the mind can play terrible tricks.. I remember thinking that, at that very moment, upwards of 10 million sizzling golden brown roast turkeys were sliding out of ovens all over Britain. The fact that we’d dined like kings the night before was temporarily forgotten. As I said, it was just a passing thought born out of years of conditioning. What was it that Hemingway said about Christmas? - that "you don't know what Christmas is until you lose it in some foreign land". There is some truth in that. Although we'd eaten royally (or should that be republicanly if there is such a word?) on Christmas Eve, I did feel a sense of seasonal deprivation on Christmas Day in the Vittles Department, if only for a few moments.
Earlier on Christmas Day, we'd gone with F to the outdoor market in nearby Saint-Germain-en-Laye which to my complete surprise was open and busy. Quite a few shops were open as well. This is a manicured little town (now effectively an outer suburb of Paris) that is clearly a very desirable place to hang one's chapeau.
On Boxing Day, we’d been invited to F's sister in the afternoon. They live in the 9th arrondissement in Paris in one of those old apartment blocks that always look so inviting. Entering Paris from the north (Porte de la Chapelle) and driving through an ‘ethnic’ part of Paris, you could have been forgiven for thinking that we were in downtown Baghdad. We fought our way through the traffic and arrived at the address (just north of Pigalle). It was such a stylish flat with its polished parquet floors with decorative moulding on the walls and ceilings. Following hard on the heels of another outbreak of handshakes and cheek kissing all round on arrival, there was the unmistakeable sound of champagne corks being popped.. (again!)
More delights followed in the form of those little multi-coloured ‘macarons’ and other chocolatey nibbles. We had to leave fairly soon afterwards as we were expected at A’s, our second ‘home’ for the next couple of days in La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, on the south east edge of Paris on the banks of the River Marne.
I thought I’d trust the GPS to guide us through Paris – big mistake! We ended up stuck in heavy traffic before emerging to graze Boulevard Haussmann just at the point where the major department stores Galeries Lafayette and Printemps(left) are located. Fortunately, the chosen route led us away around La Madeleine(right) and then from there, an unexpected bonus, along the expressway along the banks of the Seine with its stunning views across to the Left Bank. It lifted our spirits to see again the city we love, the city that's full of memories for us. And, in the slanting late afternoon light, it really did look like what it is - the most beautiful city in the world. (OK, who's the comedian who said "After Birkenhead.."?)
With A, we walked along the banks of the Marne, lined with trophy houses, including the one where Charles Trénet’s mother lived. If you don’t know Charles Trénet (shame on you!), he wrote & recorded “La Mer” in 1946 - well before Bobby Darin’s English version came out in 1960. (Wait for it... "Who's Bobby Darin..?")
We walked down to A’s local market and I must say that I’ve not seen a better one. Food markets in the Pays Basque are very regional & very Basque with few, if any, outside influences. In genteel St-Maur, with it being Paris, all tastes and regions of France were represented and catered for and the meat, poultry, cheese and fish stands were a real treat for the eyes. A’s 2 sons were visiting – the elder being Madame’s godson – and we enjoyed catching up with them.
After a couple of days with A, we moved back into central Paris to stay with N – Madame’s copine of old – and A, who live in the 11th in a chic top floor flat with a terrace, not far from the Place de la Bastille. This is a lively area, full of arty workshops and designers who’ve been allowed by the Ville de Paris to establish themselves in the curved spaces beneath a long viaduct. We walked along this fascinating row of avant-garde ateliers (workshops), studios and galleries heading for the Place Bastille and then to the Place des Vosges(above & right) in the Marais. We walked around the square in the cover of the galleries before stopping for a hot wine to keep the cold at bay. We sat outside a café under a heater and gradually warmed up. This is one of our favourite places in Paris for many reasons and we always find ourselves homing in on this particular spot. Chekhov said it best: "The golden moments pass, and leave no trace."
I make no apologies for this next one - one of the greatest songs ever written:
The next day, we had a tasty lunch at a local Chinese restaurant in the 11th before leaving Chibby (our golden cocker spaniel) with N & A (as dogs aren’t allowed in the Métro) while we went off for a walk up the Champs Elysées. Privately we were already starting to miss the sea air of the Pays Basque and the sea side.
When I first set foot in the Champs Elysées in the mid-sixties, it - and Milan - were undeniably the style capitals of the world and the ne plus ultra of luxury shopping in western Europe. The broad pavements were also the territory of some spectacularly beautiful nanas, either cruising or stepping hither and thither from one luxury shop to the next.
Over the years, the general malaise in the standards of western society saw a decline in the fortunes of these emporia for the excessively wealthy as street fashion now largely dominates the pavements. When we were there, it seemed that every man and his dog was out there walking up and down – and many of them were in baggy jeans and back-to-front (ooh trendy) baseball caps. And to crown it all, white painted Christmas market stalls selling imported tat had been set up lower down the grand Avenue. I never thought I'd live to see it. I'd've thought anywhere but here. We walked past the Drugstore(above left) at the top of the Champs Elysées. This is the Drugstore in its current incarnation (right) – OK for the fairground at Southend perhaps but at the top end of the Champs Elysées..? I'd call it council-sponsored vandalism. In Paris, the lunatics are now officially running the asylum. We decided we'd escape the madding crowd and so we circumnavigated the Arc de Triomphe and it was with a great sense of relief we headed off down into the tranquillity of the Avenue Victor Hugo in the 16th. This was a different world.
At one point I spotted a stylish restaurant across the road and I realised I was looking at Prunier – the classic seafood restaurant of Paris that dates waay back. I think it’s fair to say that its heyday was probably in the Golden Age but I’d still give my right arm to have lunch there.
I found myself standing outside a shop for gents like wot I am and, looking in the window, I saw quite a few things I liked. Stepping inside, Madame said I was looking for a jacket. After a single practised look at me, the owner reached into a rail of jackets, selected one and held it open for me to try. It fitted as though made for me. I don’t think we spent more than 10 minutes inside the shop. My kind of shopping!
We went into a few shops looking for things for Madame but without much luck.
This area of Paris is almost like a village – only a few minutes walk from the Arc de Triomphe but a haven of peace and calm. I shudder to think what an apartment there would cost.. As the old saying has it: if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. And with that, with night fast approaching, we headed back to N & A’s.
You’ll have to look elsewhere to find out how Johnny (Halliday) is doing.. he’s been headline news for weeks now in France with a near-death experience in Los Angeles due to medical complications arising from an 'op' he'd had in Paris. And then there was the Euro-tunnel fiasco with trains marooned for hours. I didn’t see an English newspaper but I’m sure that more than one of the tabloids would have been unable to resist that old headline: “Tunnel shut-down; Continent isolated..”
To round off our stay in Paris, here’s the incomparable Yves Montand singing Les Feuilles Mortes.. (Autumn leaves in the English version). Enjoy..
Places to go? An ideal day would start with an 'apero' (aka attitude adjuster, bracer, snifter, heart starter..) at Au Franc Pinot on the Ile St-Louis before walking to the Taverne Henri IV (13 Place du Pont Neuf) for a light lunch. Try their rillettes de canard (right)with some crusty bread and a glass (or two) of Madiran. In the afternoon, head across to the Place des Vosges area for a mooch around the galleries, cafes and shops various before dinner at Bofinger, just off Place de la Bastille. This is the oldest brasserie in Paris and you may need to book. Tip: ask (demand!) to be seated downstairs under the dome. Try their excellent fixed price 3 course menu - which used to include wine. (It was the equivalent of £18 for years - menus here) After that, stroll down to the Latin Quarter for a rhum or two at the Rhumerie. There's always the Slow Club to finish off with..
Aide memoire!
Start: Au Franc Pinot. 1, Quai de Bourbon. (A while since I was last here - heard it had closed - now believed to have re-opened. Might be worth one visit)
Lunch (or a long afternoon!): Taverne Henri IV.
Dinner: Bofinger.
Drinks after: Rhumerie.
Finish: Slow Club. You're on your own now..!
It occurred to me the other day that Woody Allen nailed the essence of New York with the opening credits of his film "Manhattan" - the marriage of images and music (courtesy of George Gershwin) has never been bettered. Has something similar ever been done for Paris? And if not, why not? Here's a reminder:
Edited to add: Woody Allen put together some great images of Paris to open his 2011 film 'Midnight in Paris'. Well worth enjoying if you haven't seen it.
Three down, one to go..! Our final stop before returning home was at Tours but we thought we’d go via the cemetery at Chartres – to pay our respects to Madame’s father & mother. The family grave is well situated in a beautifully maintained cemetery with a splendid view of the great cathedral which soars up to dominate the landscape for many miles around. It’s not a sad place - it’s not overgrown with moss or ivy – and as a final resting place it’s hard to think of one better.
We had a problem when it came to leave Chartres in that it seemed to be in a ‘black hole’ as far as the GPS was concerned! Unable to get a signal, we battled our way around the tangled inner parts of the town which were already starting to clog up with the early evening traffic. I think it took us a good 30 minutes to leave Chartres behind and get established on the road for Tours where fortunately the GPS kicked in once again. The temperature was just above freezing and as we approached Tours I could see a classic “line squall” developing fast out to the west. One half of the sky was black as pitch while the other was a benign early evening blue. Suddenly, there was a deluge of rain and gusts of wind - the noise in the car was deafening and all road markings disappeared. The sheer volume of water that came down was astonishing but gradually it tailed off and we breathed a sigh of relief.
At Tours, we stayed with our good friends J-M and M. Two years earlier we’d broken our journey with them overnight on the way south when we moved down from England. It was lovely to see them again and on New Year’s Eve, we took a walk along the Loire on a bright but bitterly cold afternoon. He’d bought his boys a Wii thing, a Beatles program with a couple of ‘modded’ guitars but he was suspiciously well practised at playing along with the Beatles..!! All too soon it was New Year’s day and time to leave again and head south.
The wintry weather we’d had in Paris extended as far south as Tours and we were both feeling the cold. As we drove south towards the Pays Basque though, we saw the first breaks in the cloud and before long we were under a cloudless sky and the temperatures started to rise.
And when we finally turned off the autoroute at Bayonne and crossed the familiar bridge over the Adour, it seemed like we hadn’t been away. Beautiful, grand and invigorating though Paris is, we were glad to be back home in the south west, in the Pays Basque.
It struck me in the wee small hours this morning that I haven’t really said much about the ‘gastronomique’ specialities of the Pays Basque. In my view, it’s a significant part of what makes this corner of France so special.
Right! Enough sight-seeing.. think it's time to refresh the inner man. Here's a recipe for Les Pommes de Terre Sarladaises (potatoes sauteed in goose fat, garlic & parsley) - the finest recipe for potatoes known to man:
Ingredients:
Ingredients:
