I have temporarily abandoned La Belle France. Due to an urgent need for funds I am keeping a presence behind the counter in my little shop in Burnham Market Norfolk UK. I have set up a new gallery where I propose to keep everything, old, french and very functional. The gallery (of course) is above the fishmongers, so while you are queuing for your kippers you can pop up and purchase a monogrammed
linen sheet. Please do not write, phone or email me when, tucked up under your new purchase, you are asphyxiated with a sudden rush of "Odour de Poisson " I cannot help it. It will wash out I promise...I do my best but the Fishmonger does not like the sound of the extractor fan. July and August are his meanest and most tormented months.
I have been here now for two weeks and I am missing home and whippets and more to the point good food.
Today I tried to buy an organic chicken in Tesco's and was told they don't stock them because they don't sell. Well that says a good deal about this county. I am lucky because I live off the fish while I am here but, still, one needs a little variety every now and then. I miss those little yellow, corn fed darlings, and my weekly markets. I miss the salad man who picks his leaves fresh from the garden on friday mornings and mixes it up with flowers and mustard leaves. I miss my jolly bread seller who always keeps me a round and robust, rough, grained, loaf under his white linen clad table, and the little man with the gravelly voice who sells buckets of wild flowers and home grown beets. It hurts me that so much melody has escaped my attention in the gurgling water that ripples through the village fountain and sends me happily to sleep almost under my window each night. I loved it when, a couple of weeks ago, I saw a large black lab leap into the fountain and then hurl himself out again, shaking an arc of heavy, water beads all over the passers by and set everybody screaming with delight!
I am having bad withdrawals. I need a market and some seriously interesting characters, and some seriously good fruit and veg. So I am driving back again on friday next and once I feel my wheels rolling again on french tarmac, I shall be reassured with the promise of more sensual pleasures to come.
I am intending to visit my friend Kathryn Ireland at her beautiful home in the Tarn. Totally different from the Cevennes. The arid and rocky landscape transforms into rolling countryside more akin to Tuscany.
Kathryn's house is full of laughter and, well... full of Kathryn, who is exceptional in her ability to create pleasure in all areas, and sends all her guests happily off to bed each evening on delightfully satisfied stomachs while visions of sugar plums dance in our heads! Apart from all this she is a wonderful textile designer and decorator and tomorrow I pick up my copy of her new book. Summers in France. I dare not appear without one! In fact I need to sell them in the shop.
Reading this back, it sounds rather flat and humourless. But I guess that is how I feel at the moment. I really can't think what keeps anyone wanting to live in the UK. Mid July, a cold and foreboding sky, deserted beaches, and everyone milling about wondering what to do......
Come to sunny France...let the figs season begin!!
Monday, July 25, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Full Blown Summer
It is upon us here in the Cevennes. Almost too hot to venture outside. The plants are looking forlorn and droopy and the whippets curled up all day with one sleepy eye on their respective food bowls.
I am wisely giving July 14th a wide berth this year due to St Hippo being the only village in France that still allows the dastardly petard. These are a type of "firework" more a bomb though, that is made up of dynamite in an L shaped metal tube. Ecstasy is then accomplished by the bearer hammering the metal bar into the small cobbled streets, and letting off an explosion loud enough to break windows and cause stone lintels to crash to the ground. At 3 am in the morning this can spark erratic and cruel revenge. The first year I was here I seriously plotted pouring a bucket full of unmentionable effluence on the collective heads of my assailants, but as I am a visitor in their country it is probably wiser to swallow a bottle of Pastis and valium and put a pillow over my head. Luckily I have one stone deaf whippet, but the other has been traumatised to such an extent that his teeth rattle and knees knock together1
Anyway, this year I am going back to Blighty to set up some new space in the showroom and deposit my lovely purchases from the Avignon and Montpellier antique fairs. This will also mean I will escape the heat which is bearing down on us here in the Cevennes at 35 degrees. Today I found some relief in the river,,,What glorious refreshment to be able to swim in water fresh and cool from the mountains. We have it so good here.
I was hoping that The Fishmonger would come and join me for the last weekend but no. His season has begun. For the next ten weeks there will be an endless supply of people clamouring for his fishy delights.
He will disappear into his little smokery and prepare all manner of exquisite piscatorial products and when he re-appears he will be exhausted, grumpy and extremely unlikely to be up for anything else.
After the season his mind will turn to our house in Byron Bay Australia and he will begin to make travel plans and think of mangoes.
Actually this year I may be able to tempt him down here in the fig season. I have some potential beauties on my tree. But although he likes France he has a problem with the language, but he speaks it more correctly than I. In Australia, on the other hand, he can quite easily stretch his Old Etonian vowels into a "She'll be rite maaaaate!" drawl and enjoys the physical confirmation with a hefty slap on the back. But here in the Cevennes, where the words are often spat at one through three or less teeth, and they come at you like rubber bullets and whole sentences bounce around your ears and are lost against medieval walls in incomprehensible twangs and thangs, The Fishmonger, dare not open his mouth, except to correct me quietly from the wings, on my appalling grammar. I argue that at least I make an effort and even if it sounds terrible to him, the french laugh with me and I am able to laugh at myself. This is possibly how I manage to get through life as a general rule.
So for now I am signing out because I have to pack the car with mirrors and textiles and pottery and retrieve the suitcase from under the attic stairs where I hide it to stop the whippets peeing on it. They
aren't going to like it one bit.
I am wisely giving July 14th a wide berth this year due to St Hippo being the only village in France that still allows the dastardly petard. These are a type of "firework" more a bomb though, that is made up of dynamite in an L shaped metal tube. Ecstasy is then accomplished by the bearer hammering the metal bar into the small cobbled streets, and letting off an explosion loud enough to break windows and cause stone lintels to crash to the ground. At 3 am in the morning this can spark erratic and cruel revenge. The first year I was here I seriously plotted pouring a bucket full of unmentionable effluence on the collective heads of my assailants, but as I am a visitor in their country it is probably wiser to swallow a bottle of Pastis and valium and put a pillow over my head. Luckily I have one stone deaf whippet, but the other has been traumatised to such an extent that his teeth rattle and knees knock together1
Anyway, this year I am going back to Blighty to set up some new space in the showroom and deposit my lovely purchases from the Avignon and Montpellier antique fairs. This will also mean I will escape the heat which is bearing down on us here in the Cevennes at 35 degrees. Today I found some relief in the river,,,What glorious refreshment to be able to swim in water fresh and cool from the mountains. We have it so good here.
I was hoping that The Fishmonger would come and join me for the last weekend but no. His season has begun. For the next ten weeks there will be an endless supply of people clamouring for his fishy delights.
He will disappear into his little smokery and prepare all manner of exquisite piscatorial products and when he re-appears he will be exhausted, grumpy and extremely unlikely to be up for anything else.
After the season his mind will turn to our house in Byron Bay Australia and he will begin to make travel plans and think of mangoes.
Actually this year I may be able to tempt him down here in the fig season. I have some potential beauties on my tree. But although he likes France he has a problem with the language, but he speaks it more correctly than I. In Australia, on the other hand, he can quite easily stretch his Old Etonian vowels into a "She'll be rite maaaaate!" drawl and enjoys the physical confirmation with a hefty slap on the back. But here in the Cevennes, where the words are often spat at one through three or less teeth, and they come at you like rubber bullets and whole sentences bounce around your ears and are lost against medieval walls in incomprehensible twangs and thangs, The Fishmonger, dare not open his mouth, except to correct me quietly from the wings, on my appalling grammar. I argue that at least I make an effort and even if it sounds terrible to him, the french laugh with me and I am able to laugh at myself. This is possibly how I manage to get through life as a general rule.
So for now I am signing out because I have to pack the car with mirrors and textiles and pottery and retrieve the suitcase from under the attic stairs where I hide it to stop the whippets peeing on it. They
aren't going to like it one bit.
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The Fishmonger
The Fishmonger beside a tinkling stream.
The whippet walk
Mazet