Thursday, August 17, 2006
Saturday 12 August 2006
I finished reading « The English » by Jeremy Paxton last week, and planned to read Sartre’s « La Nausée » which I had studied vaguely many years ago, and which N claimed to have brought to La Neuve-Lyre and put on the new bookshelf. It wasn’t there however, so I began « Lost for Words » by John Humphrys, about the current state of the English language, intending to pick up « La Nausée » when I got to Saint-Denis only to find it wasn’t there either, and that N was beginning to doubt whether he ever did have a copy!
We had a very good couple of days in Saint-Denis; driving there on Tuesday afternoon in record time, 1 hour 45 minutes, well in time for an early supper before setting off for the cinema, meeting Nigel Palmer at the corner of his road. It only took about half an hour on the metro direct to the Champs Elysées, something we had not tried before, and a pleasant short walk to the very large cinema. The last time we had seen the Champs Elysées had been on TV on 14 July, watching the procession.
The film - « La Tourneuse de Pages » - was excellent, an exciting story about musicians, full of suspense and very well made. We didn’t of course see NP’s subtitles written with N’s help, but the director - a viola-player who had co-written the story - spoke before the film began. I also learned in conversation with NP that he was responsible for the English subtitles of many of the French films I had seen at the Arts Cinema in Cambridge over the years, and that a little cinema in Saint-Denis worked on the same principle; a membership fee, reduced tickets and future programmes sent in the post. Must look into this in the autumn; I thought I was going to see far more cinema in France than I have done.
Before going to dinner with the Palmers on Wednesday evening I had a good day’s shopping - the morning in Saint-Denis and the afternoon in Paris - while N cleaned the windows and got on with dusting the books in his library and sticking labels in them. I stocked up on cosmetics at Sephora, bought two sets of little blue hand towels, a bag and pair of shoes for 5 euros each, a new traditional blue and white metal number plate for the house at LNL (as the previous one has been grown over by the Virginia creeper) and a notice for the shower room door. My best purchases however were on the Thursday morning just before coming back; an unlined orange cotton jacket in C&A for 4 euros 99, which I am very pleased with indeed, and, on the second-hand bookstall which replaces the market on Thursday mornings, a copy of « La Nausée » for 2 euros! A nice traditional 1930’s paper cover. Will finish John Humphrys first though; I am sure he won’t mind coming second to Sartre.
The dinner on Wednesday evening was very pleasant, especially nice to be able to walk round the corner to their house in a few minutes, and to meet their almost two-year-old son, and to speak more French than usual; all of us speaking an interesting mix of the two languages (including the almost two-year-old, before he went up to bed.) We started the meal with a wonderful mixture of soft cheese, strawberries and salad, excellent and quite unlike anything we had ever eaten before.
When we got back on Thursday afternoon we were able to have tea in the garden, but since then the weather has gone downhill, we both had to go and find jumpers to put on and N even began muttering about putting the heating on. After a couple of very grey days, this afternoon it has rained hard. I hope it will not be too wet or unpleasant when we go to the Château at Beaumesnil tomorrow and Monday. On Friday morning one of my first tasks was to take the Italian bedspread which had dried full of dirt and soap (after the washing machine drama) on a clothes horse, and rinse it several times in the bath. It was very hard work; thank goodness for automatic washing machines! It then hung again on the clothes line - fortunately it was very windy by then - finished off once again on the clothes horse and is now finally back on the new attic bed. Other laundry news: I managed this morning to take the pink dye out of five monogrammed Italian napkins (washed by N in Italy together with a red sheet) with a marvellous purpose-made product, and they are now the same colour as all the other white ones. (While boiling in the product the pink and green embroidery turned yellow and brown, but once rinsed it became pink and green again!) This means we have at least eight clean usable napkins which match the large tablecloth, all embroidered AV (Annunciata Villani) ready for our guests.
Monday 14 August 2006
Also in preparation for large numbers of guests, we brought back with us from Paris a very comprehensive set of modern cutlery, collected by N over the years, including cake slice, teaspoons and coffee spoons, and fish knives and forks. This was all squashed into one box, so during a shopping trip to Bernay in the rain on Saturday afternoon I bought another wooden cutlery box and divided it all between the two. I also bought half a dozen more large wine glasses; N had selected a case of Bordeaux to be drunk on the evening of Saturday 26th after the music making and we tried a bottle; it was wonderful, so we tried another just to make sure! It needs really large glasses, and we had a total of 9, hence the half dozen extra. We had decided before going to Paris last week that when we got back we would go along to our local traiteur, to see about ordering food for the Saturday lunch. On Friday morning I saw a sign on the door saying it was closed for holidays until Wednesday 23rd, too late. Before we had really thought about what to do next, I saw a brochure of dishes to order while we were at the supermarket in Bernay, and after some discussion with the lady on the charcuterie counter we placed an order, which we must collect on the Friday evening between 6 and 8 o’clock. It consists of ham, charcuterie, salads, beef, chicken and a good selection of cheeses, and will thus save A Lot Of Time.
On Saturday afternoon and evening N made enough Boeuf Bouguignonne for fourteen people (hopefully) for the evening of Saturday 26th to go along with the Bordeaux. The kitchen was filled with good smells (and splashes) of home-grown shallots, bacon, wine, beef, mushrooms and garlic, and we let it cool down in the oven overnight, before freezing it on Sunday morning. This took some organisation, as there is very little room left in the big freezer, so some went into the kitchen freezer, all in a haphazard collection of five different-sized containers.
Yesterday - Sunday - it rained hard all day, N was very pleased for the lawns and the water butt, but I think the weather forecasters have got their timing wrong, it was supposed to be today, which has been quite fine! We ate roast chicken for lunch, followed by gooseberry crumble (one I had made earlier, thereby creating a little more space in the freezer) and it all seemed quite wintery. This was because of going to the evening with Chopin and Sand which started at 9 o’clock, so we only needed a little supper. I had originally thought of wearing a light summer dress, but this had to be changed for black trousers and my new raincoat. Fortunately by the time we left it had stopped raining, although very wet and muddy everywhere, and the sky was filled with fascinating cloud patterns on our route to Beaumesnil. It was the first time we have ever been out for the evening here in Normandy.
The event took place in the Grand Salon of the château, after a long queue during which we spoke to a woman about some of the other events, including the Madame Bovary meal the next day. We were all squashed into the salon on tiny red folding chairs (like those N brought here for his music) and like most French events, it started late. We both enjoyed it tremendously however. It consisted of three actors - a man and two women - reading letters and biography by Sand and Chopin, interspersed with waltzes, preludes and mazurkas played by a pianist. It concerned a stay in Majorca in the winter of 1838; Chopin was ill, the locals hated them and they ran out of money, far from idyllic! Georges Sand’s life sounds fascinating, must track down her biography « Histoire de Ma Vie. »
After getting home at about 11.30 we were not up very early this morning, and at 12.15 left to go back to Beaumesnil, for the Madame Bovary Lunch, due to start at 1.00. A much nicer day, sunny and cloudy but dry, and it was just as well we set off in good time as just as we reached the château gates I realised I had not brought the tickets with me. We rushed back quickly to get them, and then back again to Beaumesnil; I have never known N drive so fast in his life, and we arrived at about five past one, only to find, as we might have guessed, everybody standing around in a field waiting for something to happen, which it didn’t until about 1.30. French unpunctuality again! N spoke again to the woman we had met last night, who turned out to be the wife of the organiser, and he mentioned his interest in the book museum, and she introduced us to the woman who had been responsible for that part of the programme the day before. We also learned that this was the first year such a festival had taken place. He then said he was interested in meeting musicians and got introduced to the mayor; while all this was going on eventually a horse-drawn carriage rolled up with Emma and Charles Bovary (Georges Sand and Frederic Chopin from the night before!)
We were all ushered into a large barn, with tables laid with flowers and white cloths, and barrels of wine and jugs of cider at the end. « Emma and Charles » read descriptions from the novel about the wedding guests and the meal, and very very much later we actually started eating. We found ourselves opposite another English couple, and mentioned being late and forgetting the tickets; he said we could have been an hour late and still not have missed anything! N was next to - and spoke at length with - the husband of the book woman; I spoke to the English couple and briefly to some people the other side of me, but mostly just watched the proceedings.
When it came the food was excellent; provided by the local charcutière. During a few words at the end the organiser said he had just told her to go and buy a copy of « Madame Bovary » and reproduce the wedding meal, I don’t know if that was exactly it, but it worked, right down to the pièce montée wedding cake! She and her helpers were in suitable nineteenth-century costume. There were various meats - I had chicken - vegetables, gratin dauphinois, cider, red and rosé wines, calvados, cheeses, salad, nougat and finally once it had been cut - cake and coffee. Because of the delay in serving the meal (due to problems with electricity supply to the barn) the whole afternoon’s programme was running late, so the 3.30 event - a reading of suitable texts by the river - took place in the barn, and those of us who hadn’t got tickets were able to join in and listen to this anyway, while we waited for the cake to be cut. The same three actors again, reading Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, a lot of which I am pleased to say I recognised. They were accompanied this time by a young woman flautist, who came up to us later having recognised N from the RATP orchestra in Paris. We eventually left at about 4.30, and drove back nice and slowly having decided that next year, now we knew what it was all about, we would be in a position to book for a lot more events.
Wednesday 16 August 2006
For a few weeks now we have been aware of a New Generation of swallows in our garage, and ever since Emanuel the electrician fitted a nice new neon light they have been perching on it and making terrible mess of it. N has now fitted up a plank of wood over it in the hope that they will sit on there instead. We had noticed the mess but would never have actually seen them in place if we hadn’t come home late on Sunday evening. We have also noticed that the second - hitherto uninhabited - nest is now undergoing a make-over, new mud and grass round the top.
Our bags of rubbish are put in the garage too, awaiting collection days which happen rather haphazardly twice a month. Up to now this has been fine, but over the last few days the edges of the black sacks have been nibbled, and chicken bones and other rubbish pulled out on onto the floor. N thinks rats are the culprits; I think it could have been a fox or a cat. A few weeks ago he called me as an expert witness to identify some possible cat droppings found one morning in the vegetable garden; I thought they could well be cat, but who knows? The only cat I have seen round here is the one at the cycle shop, asleep in the window, but N thinks that during the night he could well get on his bike and nip down the road and over the wall into our vegetable garden…..
Yesterday - the Quinze Août - was a holiday and first thing in the morning we went down the Beaumesnil road for the third day running, to a Foire à Tout at Bernay. It promised to be interesting, as it was held in a road full of antique shops, and was just as good as expected. Within a few minutes N had purchased a set of (smallish) copper saucepans, and I had bought a little white metal shelf unit from the same stall. By the end he also had a stamp album full of Swiss stamps, a book on melons and a reproduction Flemish portrait of a lady, and I had a book on Proust’s Normandy, and two tiny butter dishes. We stopped at an Italian delicatessen we had seen before (but which always seemed to be closed) and while studying the window heard someone say « Good Morning! » behind us, it was the English couple we had met at lunch on Monday, complete with dog, whom we had not met, only heard about. After a few minutes’ pleasantries, they moved on and we went into the delicatessen and bought some nice little things for lunch, memorable for its being the first one in the garden for some time! The weather forecast is still not getting it right; although we did have a storm about nine o’clock last night, there has been far more sunshine about than expected. We are just hoping it continues into next week.
N has screwed hooks underneath my recipe bookshelf for the copper saucepans, which are now hanging in a tasteful row. Not sure whether I will use them or not, but he reckoned no French kitchen should be without some. (There is a larger set in regular use at Saint-Denis.) He has also fixed up the new metal number plate on the front gatepost; we noticed that all the other houses in the street have identical numbers so hope this is not another local rule we are not aware of. In « The English » J Paxman notes with surprise that in some parts of Germany there are laws concerning times for washing cars or beating carpets; obviously he has not visited La Neuve-Lyre. He makes this point illustrating the importance of individual rights and freedoms to the English. I have almost finished reading « Lost for Words »; meanwhile N has found his copy of « La Nausée ».
I finished reading « The English » by Jeremy Paxton last week, and planned to read Sartre’s « La Nausée » which I had studied vaguely many years ago, and which N claimed to have brought to La Neuve-Lyre and put on the new bookshelf. It wasn’t there however, so I began « Lost for Words » by John Humphrys, about the current state of the English language, intending to pick up « La Nausée » when I got to Saint-Denis only to find it wasn’t there either, and that N was beginning to doubt whether he ever did have a copy!
We had a very good couple of days in Saint-Denis; driving there on Tuesday afternoon in record time, 1 hour 45 minutes, well in time for an early supper before setting off for the cinema, meeting Nigel Palmer at the corner of his road. It only took about half an hour on the metro direct to the Champs Elysées, something we had not tried before, and a pleasant short walk to the very large cinema. The last time we had seen the Champs Elysées had been on TV on 14 July, watching the procession.
The film - « La Tourneuse de Pages » - was excellent, an exciting story about musicians, full of suspense and very well made. We didn’t of course see NP’s subtitles written with N’s help, but the director - a viola-player who had co-written the story - spoke before the film began. I also learned in conversation with NP that he was responsible for the English subtitles of many of the French films I had seen at the Arts Cinema in Cambridge over the years, and that a little cinema in Saint-Denis worked on the same principle; a membership fee, reduced tickets and future programmes sent in the post. Must look into this in the autumn; I thought I was going to see far more cinema in France than I have done.
Before going to dinner with the Palmers on Wednesday evening I had a good day’s shopping - the morning in Saint-Denis and the afternoon in Paris - while N cleaned the windows and got on with dusting the books in his library and sticking labels in them. I stocked up on cosmetics at Sephora, bought two sets of little blue hand towels, a bag and pair of shoes for 5 euros each, a new traditional blue and white metal number plate for the house at LNL (as the previous one has been grown over by the Virginia creeper) and a notice for the shower room door. My best purchases however were on the Thursday morning just before coming back; an unlined orange cotton jacket in C&A for 4 euros 99, which I am very pleased with indeed, and, on the second-hand bookstall which replaces the market on Thursday mornings, a copy of « La Nausée » for 2 euros! A nice traditional 1930’s paper cover. Will finish John Humphrys first though; I am sure he won’t mind coming second to Sartre.
The dinner on Wednesday evening was very pleasant, especially nice to be able to walk round the corner to their house in a few minutes, and to meet their almost two-year-old son, and to speak more French than usual; all of us speaking an interesting mix of the two languages (including the almost two-year-old, before he went up to bed.) We started the meal with a wonderful mixture of soft cheese, strawberries and salad, excellent and quite unlike anything we had ever eaten before.
When we got back on Thursday afternoon we were able to have tea in the garden, but since then the weather has gone downhill, we both had to go and find jumpers to put on and N even began muttering about putting the heating on. After a couple of very grey days, this afternoon it has rained hard. I hope it will not be too wet or unpleasant when we go to the Château at Beaumesnil tomorrow and Monday. On Friday morning one of my first tasks was to take the Italian bedspread which had dried full of dirt and soap (after the washing machine drama) on a clothes horse, and rinse it several times in the bath. It was very hard work; thank goodness for automatic washing machines! It then hung again on the clothes line - fortunately it was very windy by then - finished off once again on the clothes horse and is now finally back on the new attic bed. Other laundry news: I managed this morning to take the pink dye out of five monogrammed Italian napkins (washed by N in Italy together with a red sheet) with a marvellous purpose-made product, and they are now the same colour as all the other white ones. (While boiling in the product the pink and green embroidery turned yellow and brown, but once rinsed it became pink and green again!) This means we have at least eight clean usable napkins which match the large tablecloth, all embroidered AV (Annunciata Villani) ready for our guests.
Monday 14 August 2006
Also in preparation for large numbers of guests, we brought back with us from Paris a very comprehensive set of modern cutlery, collected by N over the years, including cake slice, teaspoons and coffee spoons, and fish knives and forks. This was all squashed into one box, so during a shopping trip to Bernay in the rain on Saturday afternoon I bought another wooden cutlery box and divided it all between the two. I also bought half a dozen more large wine glasses; N had selected a case of Bordeaux to be drunk on the evening of Saturday 26th after the music making and we tried a bottle; it was wonderful, so we tried another just to make sure! It needs really large glasses, and we had a total of 9, hence the half dozen extra. We had decided before going to Paris last week that when we got back we would go along to our local traiteur, to see about ordering food for the Saturday lunch. On Friday morning I saw a sign on the door saying it was closed for holidays until Wednesday 23rd, too late. Before we had really thought about what to do next, I saw a brochure of dishes to order while we were at the supermarket in Bernay, and after some discussion with the lady on the charcuterie counter we placed an order, which we must collect on the Friday evening between 6 and 8 o’clock. It consists of ham, charcuterie, salads, beef, chicken and a good selection of cheeses, and will thus save A Lot Of Time.
On Saturday afternoon and evening N made enough Boeuf Bouguignonne for fourteen people (hopefully) for the evening of Saturday 26th to go along with the Bordeaux. The kitchen was filled with good smells (and splashes) of home-grown shallots, bacon, wine, beef, mushrooms and garlic, and we let it cool down in the oven overnight, before freezing it on Sunday morning. This took some organisation, as there is very little room left in the big freezer, so some went into the kitchen freezer, all in a haphazard collection of five different-sized containers.
Yesterday - Sunday - it rained hard all day, N was very pleased for the lawns and the water butt, but I think the weather forecasters have got their timing wrong, it was supposed to be today, which has been quite fine! We ate roast chicken for lunch, followed by gooseberry crumble (one I had made earlier, thereby creating a little more space in the freezer) and it all seemed quite wintery. This was because of going to the evening with Chopin and Sand which started at 9 o’clock, so we only needed a little supper. I had originally thought of wearing a light summer dress, but this had to be changed for black trousers and my new raincoat. Fortunately by the time we left it had stopped raining, although very wet and muddy everywhere, and the sky was filled with fascinating cloud patterns on our route to Beaumesnil. It was the first time we have ever been out for the evening here in Normandy.
The event took place in the Grand Salon of the château, after a long queue during which we spoke to a woman about some of the other events, including the Madame Bovary meal the next day. We were all squashed into the salon on tiny red folding chairs (like those N brought here for his music) and like most French events, it started late. We both enjoyed it tremendously however. It consisted of three actors - a man and two women - reading letters and biography by Sand and Chopin, interspersed with waltzes, preludes and mazurkas played by a pianist. It concerned a stay in Majorca in the winter of 1838; Chopin was ill, the locals hated them and they ran out of money, far from idyllic! Georges Sand’s life sounds fascinating, must track down her biography « Histoire de Ma Vie. »
After getting home at about 11.30 we were not up very early this morning, and at 12.15 left to go back to Beaumesnil, for the Madame Bovary Lunch, due to start at 1.00. A much nicer day, sunny and cloudy but dry, and it was just as well we set off in good time as just as we reached the château gates I realised I had not brought the tickets with me. We rushed back quickly to get them, and then back again to Beaumesnil; I have never known N drive so fast in his life, and we arrived at about five past one, only to find, as we might have guessed, everybody standing around in a field waiting for something to happen, which it didn’t until about 1.30. French unpunctuality again! N spoke again to the woman we had met last night, who turned out to be the wife of the organiser, and he mentioned his interest in the book museum, and she introduced us to the woman who had been responsible for that part of the programme the day before. We also learned that this was the first year such a festival had taken place. He then said he was interested in meeting musicians and got introduced to the mayor; while all this was going on eventually a horse-drawn carriage rolled up with Emma and Charles Bovary (Georges Sand and Frederic Chopin from the night before!)
We were all ushered into a large barn, with tables laid with flowers and white cloths, and barrels of wine and jugs of cider at the end. « Emma and Charles » read descriptions from the novel about the wedding guests and the meal, and very very much later we actually started eating. We found ourselves opposite another English couple, and mentioned being late and forgetting the tickets; he said we could have been an hour late and still not have missed anything! N was next to - and spoke at length with - the husband of the book woman; I spoke to the English couple and briefly to some people the other side of me, but mostly just watched the proceedings.
When it came the food was excellent; provided by the local charcutière. During a few words at the end the organiser said he had just told her to go and buy a copy of « Madame Bovary » and reproduce the wedding meal, I don’t know if that was exactly it, but it worked, right down to the pièce montée wedding cake! She and her helpers were in suitable nineteenth-century costume. There were various meats - I had chicken - vegetables, gratin dauphinois, cider, red and rosé wines, calvados, cheeses, salad, nougat and finally once it had been cut - cake and coffee. Because of the delay in serving the meal (due to problems with electricity supply to the barn) the whole afternoon’s programme was running late, so the 3.30 event - a reading of suitable texts by the river - took place in the barn, and those of us who hadn’t got tickets were able to join in and listen to this anyway, while we waited for the cake to be cut. The same three actors again, reading Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, a lot of which I am pleased to say I recognised. They were accompanied this time by a young woman flautist, who came up to us later having recognised N from the RATP orchestra in Paris. We eventually left at about 4.30, and drove back nice and slowly having decided that next year, now we knew what it was all about, we would be in a position to book for a lot more events.
Wednesday 16 August 2006
For a few weeks now we have been aware of a New Generation of swallows in our garage, and ever since Emanuel the electrician fitted a nice new neon light they have been perching on it and making terrible mess of it. N has now fitted up a plank of wood over it in the hope that they will sit on there instead. We had noticed the mess but would never have actually seen them in place if we hadn’t come home late on Sunday evening. We have also noticed that the second - hitherto uninhabited - nest is now undergoing a make-over, new mud and grass round the top.
Our bags of rubbish are put in the garage too, awaiting collection days which happen rather haphazardly twice a month. Up to now this has been fine, but over the last few days the edges of the black sacks have been nibbled, and chicken bones and other rubbish pulled out on onto the floor. N thinks rats are the culprits; I think it could have been a fox or a cat. A few weeks ago he called me as an expert witness to identify some possible cat droppings found one morning in the vegetable garden; I thought they could well be cat, but who knows? The only cat I have seen round here is the one at the cycle shop, asleep in the window, but N thinks that during the night he could well get on his bike and nip down the road and over the wall into our vegetable garden…..
Yesterday - the Quinze Août - was a holiday and first thing in the morning we went down the Beaumesnil road for the third day running, to a Foire à Tout at Bernay. It promised to be interesting, as it was held in a road full of antique shops, and was just as good as expected. Within a few minutes N had purchased a set of (smallish) copper saucepans, and I had bought a little white metal shelf unit from the same stall. By the end he also had a stamp album full of Swiss stamps, a book on melons and a reproduction Flemish portrait of a lady, and I had a book on Proust’s Normandy, and two tiny butter dishes. We stopped at an Italian delicatessen we had seen before (but which always seemed to be closed) and while studying the window heard someone say « Good Morning! » behind us, it was the English couple we had met at lunch on Monday, complete with dog, whom we had not met, only heard about. After a few minutes’ pleasantries, they moved on and we went into the delicatessen and bought some nice little things for lunch, memorable for its being the first one in the garden for some time! The weather forecast is still not getting it right; although we did have a storm about nine o’clock last night, there has been far more sunshine about than expected. We are just hoping it continues into next week.
N has screwed hooks underneath my recipe bookshelf for the copper saucepans, which are now hanging in a tasteful row. Not sure whether I will use them or not, but he reckoned no French kitchen should be without some. (There is a larger set in regular use at Saint-Denis.) He has also fixed up the new metal number plate on the front gatepost; we noticed that all the other houses in the street have identical numbers so hope this is not another local rule we are not aware of. In « The English » J Paxman notes with surprise that in some parts of Germany there are laws concerning times for washing cars or beating carpets; obviously he has not visited La Neuve-Lyre. He makes this point illustrating the importance of individual rights and freedoms to the English. I have almost finished reading « Lost for Words »; meanwhile N has found his copy of « La Nausée ».
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 3:50 AM 
