The Bricklayer's Lament

The late Gerard Hoffnung addressed the Oxford Union 54 years ago and this gem was part of his address.  I defy anyone to listen to it without laughing.



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You want a picture as well?  OK.  I did threaten to post a picture I took the other day when on the Roman Camp and here it is.  We are looking south-east across the golf course and over the Bevendean valley to the Race Hill.  At the right of the picture you can see the race course grandstand and the eagle-eyed might spot a couple of large container ships heading down Channel on the horizon.  And those two specs in the sky are gulls.

A l'Auberge des Pecheurs

In the shadow of Leotoing and its castle, way down in the valley, lies the hamlet of Lanau, too small to be called a village.  Here, on the bank of the River Azerre, one finds the Auberge des Pecheurs, Fishermen's Inn, where I ate one of the most memorable meals of my life.  As you might think from the picture, this is not the place one would stop off if looking for a gourmet meal.  Indeed, I would have been most unlikely to have stopped there for more than a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.  But it had been recommended to us.

The Old Bat and I were on holiday in the Auvergne, that part of central France which is almost mystical with its extinct volcanoes, mountains and valleys, cheeses and cow bells.  As is our wont, we had rented a gite for the week.  Our hosts were a couple of English gentlemen whose relationship left us a tad puzzled and which we never did sort out satisfactorily.  But that is neither here nor there.  On the first evening we asked if theu could recommend any restaurants in the area.  They suggested a few but the Auberge was, they said, the best, and they rang Rachel, not so much to book a table as to warn her that we would be arriving.  Rachel, they explained, was Lebanese and had married a Frenchman.  He had been seriously ill and was not long out of hospital.  (That does have a bearing on what follows.)

We left in good time as we had a drive of several miles ahead of us, the first five of them being down the mountainside to the nearest village.  (I had no cause to use the accelerator once out of the courtyard and when we reached the village my fuel consumption was recorded as in excess of 200 miles per gallon!)  The Auberge, we had been told, was to be found soon after passing one château and before the next.  We parked in a small space at the back of the inn and walked towards the entrance in some trepidation as this didn't look a particularly inviting venue.  The plastic strip curtain hanging in the open doorway did nothing to improve our thoughts.

Nor did our hopes pick up as we pushed through the plastic strip curtain and entered the Auberge.  Immediately in front of us was a hand-football table, while to our right was an area obviously used by Rachel and her husband as their living room.  A shelf unit containing a miscellany of books, ornaments and assorted knick-knacks and implements provided a partial room divider.  There was a dining table almost completely covered with what appeared to be drugs of various kinds, a television with the sound turned down very low and an ancient computer monitor.  A cat was lying on the bench seat running along one side of this room and it was here that both Rachel's husband and his dog sat when he came in during the evening.

Beyond the hand football table was a small bar and too our left was the dining area.  The chairs were metal with plastic seats and as far as we could tell, the tables matched.  It was difficult to be certain as each table was covered with a minimum of three very thick plastic cloths.    On the one laid up for us the top cloth was white on the top although the parts hanging over the sides of the table had a colourful pattern.  Obviously the top had been cleaned so often that the colour had been wiped off.  The cutlery was clean if mismatched and our doubts were slowly being dispelled.

Rachel told us we could have either trout or pork.  We both opted for trout, that having been recommended by Bob and Frank, the owners of our holiday cottage.  We accepted her offer to make a mixed salad for our starter.  I told her that we would like wine and she went off without bothering to answer, only to return with a half litre carafe of white wine.  As it happens, that is probably what I would have ordered if I had been given the chance.  What sort of wine that was I have no idea but it tasted very good to both of us.  As did the simple mixed salad when it came.  Little more than lettuce and tomato, the dressing was out of this world and made the dish.  It didn't hurt, either,  that the vegetables were fresh.

And the trout.  It must have jumped straight out of the river at the bottom of the garden and into the pan, it was so fresh.  Plump and sweet, we drooled as we ate them even though neither of us is keen on having a fish with its head and tail still attached when on the plate in front of us.  The fish was accompanied by fried diced potatoes which were perfect and (I think) French beans.  This was followed by home-made pear tart and good coffee.

As I wrote, that was one of the most memorable meals I have ever eaten.  Memorable for three things: the setting, which led one to expect the worst; the food and wine, which combined good, fresh ingredients with careful cooking; and lastly, the price, just over £20 for the lot!

We went back later in the week and were equally well pleased.

(48 years today)

The goggle box moan - again

One of my more frequent moans is that there is nothing on television.  Of course, what I really mean is that there are no programmes on television that I want to watch; there is always plenty of rubbish - and that seems to be proliferating.  But having said that I would have been made to eat my words two or three weeks ago.  About two weeks ago there were close on 20 programmes I had recorded because either they were broadcast at inconvenient times or they clashed with a programme on another channel.  What caused the big build up were the repeats of Downton Abbey.  We had failed to watch either the first or the second series when first broadcast but such was the acclaim for this period drama that we decided watch the repeats.  These, unsurprisingly perhaps, were broadcast too early in the evening for us to watch them as at that time we were otherwise engaged - eating, which was far more important.  We have now caught up and watched both series 1 and series 2, but series 3 has just started its first run.  This, however, started before we had watched the last of series 2 so we will need to wait until the repeats are shown.

When we reach the point that there is nothing we want to watch on the goggle box and we have nothing recorded - the situation we have just reached - we fall back on DVDs.  I have bought box sets of various sitcoms, all of which we have watched, one twice over, and we have started watching a drama series from 1990, House of Cards.  This is a political thriller set after Maggie Thatcher's stint as Prime Minister.  It is only four parts long, but there are two follow-ups to make up a trilogy.

Once that is over, we have two films.  The Old Bat was given Titanic as a birthday present six months ago and it is still in its plastic wrapper!  I have just bought Oh! What a Lovely War which was released way back in 1969 and starred so many top British actors that I can't remember them all - Olivier, Geilgud, Richardson, John Mills, Maggie Smith.  It was filmed in and around Brighton which adds to the appeal of this anti-war film.  I'm looking forward to watching it again.

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Still in the Massif Central of France but now in the Auvergne département, we find the village of Leotoing and the remains of its château perched high on a hill.

Eggstra! Eggstra! Read all abart it!

How do you like your eggs cooked?  I have vague memories of my father using that question as a sort of threat of punishment if we (my brother and I) carried on misbehaving.  That said, I don't have the foggiest idea what makes it a threat.  Could it have been a catch phrase on a radio show, I wonder?  What ever the answer, the question remains: how do you like your eggs cooked?

According to some new research, how one prefers one's eggs cooked reveals one's personality type and even the sort of job one does - and one's sex drive!  British Egg week starts today and this research was commissioned by the British Egg Industry Council.

So, what do the different cooking methods reveal?

Apparently those people who prefer their eggs poached are likely to have two children and no more than one sibling while they are more likely to be women than men.  They are outgoing, listen to upbeat music and are happier than other egg eaters.

Boiled egg eaters are disorganised and have a tendency to be careless and impulsive.

Those who prefer omelettes are self-disciplined and likely to have tidy homes while those who opt for scrambled eggs are more likely than other types to be found in managerial or senior level jobs.  They are guarded and likely to own their own homes.

Fried egg eaters are most likely to be younger and male and are most frequently found among the skilled working classes (whatever they are).  They also have a high sex drive.

So there you have it.

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I picked a very few blackberries yesterday morning and that is nearly the end of those in our garden.   In Stanmer woods in the afternoon I failed to see a single one.  Perhaps that is just as well as according to country lore today is the day the Devil spits on them.

Today is also Old Folks' Day.  Yeehaw!  One for me!

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We move well south today in our search for a château, south to the Massif Central, the volcanic mountains in the centre of France.  Here we find the village of Polignac with the château perched high above on an outcrop of basalt.

That Was The Week That Was

To continue from where I left off yesterday.  But first, I should perhaps explain that I have again taken the title of my post from a television programme.  This time I have used the programme's title rather than a quote from it.  That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, was a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963.  It was presented by David Frost and was, I think, his television debut.

Coming back to the present, or at least the near past in the form of the week just gone by, I took Fern, the springer spaniel, to Waterhall one afternoon.  Wednesday, I think.  It was just as well I had not gone earlier as when I arrived I noticed a caravan in one corner of the car park and two rather burly men leaning on their big cars in the middle.  Then I saw the council's rubbish containers and realised that those two men were bailiffs who had just evicted a load of travellers.  Unfortunately, these were the sort of travellers who delight in leaving a mess behind them.  It was disgusting.  The one bright spot in the afternoon (other than the moving on of a bunch of ne'er-do-wells) was a large flock of swallows flying over and around the playing fields.  I would have expected them to have left before now but they were presumably just getting ready to move on.

I did say write yesterday that the week had periods of nothing much happening.  Most of those seemed to have been when it was raining.  And we have had a lot of rain this week.  That said, this little corner of south-east England has escaped the worst of the wet summer and we have certainly been a lot better off than hundreds of people in the north of the country who have been flooded out of their homes.  OK, it will be of absolutely no consolation to those people in Northumberland and Yorkshire, but there were a paragraph or two on a page well inside the newspaper the other day from which I learned that there are many more people - millions, was it? - in India who are also homeless as a result of flooding.  I wondered why I had not heard of this before and if Lions International have been brought in.

Yesterday was a day of glorious sunshine in these parts and I took the dog up to the Roman Camp.  It was the first time I had managed to get there for three months or more but I had overestimated my recovery and had to cut the walk short when my left knee started playing up.  But it was worth it to get the fresher air on top of the Downs and to enjoy the views extending 50 miles to the Isle of Wight in the west.  I took a couple of pictures and may well post one in due course.

In the news this week was a comment made by the Queen to a BBC correspondent in a private conversation.  Frank Gardner, I am sure, realised what a gaffe he had made almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth and both he and the BBC have apologised to Her Majesty for the breach of protocol.  All the same, I am sure that the Queen's comment that she was puzzled why Abu Hamza, the militant Islamist cleric, was still a free man will have endeared her to 99% of the British population.  (He isn't free now - he's in a high security jail at a cost of £50k a year.) If the Americans want him, let them have him, is what most of us think.  And this has been dragging on for eight years!  What sticks in the craw even more is that, although his appeal to the highest European court has been turned down, his lawyers have launched yet another, believed to be on the grounds that his mental health is below par or some such.  It makes matters worse to learn that those lawyers have received fees of about half a million pounds, fees paid by the British taxpayers!!

Had to smile on Friday, though, to read a front page story.  A post box on Birmingham station had not been emptied for - wait for it - 23 years!  It seems the Royal Mail forgot they had it!  I'm surprised that there was still room to post letters in it.  It must be in a pretty out of the way spot not to have been filled long before now.

I think that just about wraps up the week.

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The Château de la Lorie is another of those not very far from our village.  We had learned that there is a magnificent marble staircase here so when my brother and his wife were staying with us we set off to pay a visit.  Unfortunately, we arrived on the one day of the week that the château was not open to the public and were unable to go back again.  Next year, my wife and I went - only to find that the château opened to the public in July.  This was in June.  We have never been back again.

It's been a funny sort of week

The title of this post is a paraphrase of what were almost the last words in every episode of Open All Hours, a sitcom starring the late Ronnie Barker and David Jason which was broadcast back in the 1970s.  Barker played the part of a lonely, late middle-aged bachelor running a corner shop and as he took in the potatoes, brooms, buckets and other things placed or hanging outside the shop at the end of the day he would cogitate what had gone on, always saying, "It's been a funny sort of day".

I suppose, when I come to think of it properly, it hasn't really been a funny sort of week.  It's been perfectly normal; which is to say, I have enjoyed (?) a variety of experiences interspersed with longish periods when nothing much was happening.  So let me tell you about those experiences and maybe comment as well on things that have been going on around me but not directly affecting me.

The first thing of note was the receipt of a letter, a copy of the letter my consultant rheumatologist sent to my GP.  It told me pretty much what he had said at my consultation last week about decreasing the daily dose of prednisolone (the steroid I am taking) and starting a low dose of methotrexate and gradually building this up - subject to no adverse reactions shown in blood tests.  These will need to be done every month while the dose of meth is built up and then every 6 to 8 weeks.  I knew I would need to have regular tests once on this new drug but I had assumed they would be every 6 months or so, not every 6 weeks!  This drug must be more dangerous than I had realised but I must at least try it.  If I am crippled by arthritis the way I was a month or so ago I can be no help whatsoever to Mrs S as her condition gradually worsens - and it is.  I will see my GP next week and will take it from there.

I didn't do bingo on Wednesday.  The Lions run bingo sessions twice-monthly in each of two retirement homes and I volunteered to stand in for one of the Lions who was on the rota for Wednesday when it seemed he would be unable to go along.  As it happened, the Australian couple who had said they would arrive with him and his wife on Wednesday afternoon changed their plans and came on Tuesday for one night.  But I did do bingo yesterday where I distributed invitations to the pre-Christmas tea party we are organising.  They were well received.

Of course, I nearly forgot that the Old Bat and I went out to eat on Thursday.  I had wondered if the local Italian restaurant had pasta with barolo sauce on the menu but they don't.  Instead I tried rigatoni with boscaiola sauce.  This sauce is made with thin slices of mushroom simmered with Parma ham, garlic, tomatoes, onions etc.  Very tasty it was too, although not quite as tangy as the amatriciana which the Old Bat tried for the first time and very much enjoyed.  Desserts were tiramisu for me and panna cotta for her ladyship.

Well, there is more I could write but I think that will do for today.

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We were looking at châteaux in the daily pictures but got slightly diverted yesterday in Vitré.  Château is French for castle but the building evolved from the defensive forts such as the one at Pouancé into the hunting lodges and mini-palaces that are a feature of the Loire valley.  Our village is some distance from the major châteaux but there are some minor gems not far away, such as this one at Challain la Potherie.

Off on holiday again?

I often wondered what drove people to buy a time-share.  They were, I thought, tying themselves down to taking a holiday in the same place and at the same time every year.  (I had not realised that time-share holidays could be swapped.)  This was during the years when the Old Bat and I were exploring the world and taking our holidays in a variety of places: Scotland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Guernsey, France, Jersey, Madeira, Malta, the Blue Ridge Mountains, New England and other places in between.  I had forgotten that for quite a few years when the children were small we had spent a week each August in the same guest house in a small Devonshire village.  Mrs Longman's one-time farm house was in Abbotsham, just a few miles from Westward Ho! on the north Devon coast were there was a large expanse of sandy beach beside a free car park.  The children loved it and Mrs Longman apparently enjoyed looking after us.  Our elder son loved her treacle tart and every year she would make sure it was on the menu, baking a special small one just for him.

Now we are older we tend to explore less and less and make more use of our French hideaway as a destination for holidays.  But that - holidays - is a word I don't associate with Les Lavandes.  People always talk of us going on holiday when we go there but I never think of it in those terms.  After all, the house requires work from both of us.  There is painting and decorating as well as gardening - and who associates DIY with going on holiday? 

All the same, those jobs seem less like chores in France than they do here in England and even though I always tell people we are not going on holiday, we are merely living in our other house for a while, a week there always seems like a holiday.

Roll on next weekend!

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Vitré is a quaint town - at least, the central old part is - with narrow streets and half-timbered buildings.