Thursday, August 16, 2007
Saturday 11 August 2007
Last week I paid a longer visit to the new traiteur in the village; I saw in the window some nice little avocados stuffed with tuna and mayonnaise, but unfortunately the customer in front of me bought the lot! I asked whether there were more, and was told they could be prepared for me while I waited. So I did, and observed customers coming in for all sorts of things, and was able to read all the certificates on the wall regarding prizes for sausages, boudin, rillettes, and various, and to buy some very fresh-looking eggs wrapped in a cloth in a basket, as opposed to a cardboard egg box. Both the eggs and the avocados were delicious, and I hope I have become a « known » customer.
This is obviously what I am at the the boulangerie; this morning (and on other occasions) as soon as I came through the door my baguette was taken out of a rack just arrived warm from the kitchen at the back, and not from those out in the shop. I noticed this, as when we sometimes need to get bread in other villages and towns where I am not a « regular » , this doesn’t happen!
Apart from harvesting vegetables fruit and flowers, we have been cutting occasional leaves of verveine (lemon verbena) and mint to put in a cup or teapot to make tisane or herbal tea. There was such a large crop of verveine that N cut it all down and we hung it up to dry in the sunny verandah, where it made the most delicious smell as it dried. I spread it all on cloth and carefully stripped off the leaves into a glass jar to keep in the kitchen. Today we have done the same with a huge bush of Italian mint - once again to clear space in the garden, and the verandah now smells strongly of mint.
N is very pleased with an edging he has made in the vegetable garden between one side of the vegetable patch and the path surrounding it - the other three sides already had some sort of border - using and recycling a pile of roof tiles which has been in the woodshed since we arrived here. As well as looking much neater it keeps the weeds from trailing over from the grass verge into the vegetables.
I have received a letter from the customer services department of the SNCF, responding to my letter of June 23rd. (!) Not surprisingly, they have not refunded my ticket money, but gave some vague explanation about the most important thing during a strike being getting passengers where they needed to go. I suppose they thought that as I wanted to get to Paris, and I got there, that was OK, however long and however uncomfortable it was.
A much more pleasant letter however, was one from the local tax office explaining the reason for a nice windfall which had recently arrived in my current account; the result of having declared the expenses involved in the new (green) heating system we had installed last year. I do like the French tax system; all they have done so far is give me money, and I haven’t needed to give them any at all! I am even excused paying for a TV licence; this is included with income tax to make it easier to collect, but below a certain income is not payable at all.
Monday 13 August 2007
On Friday we had a lovely day out at the seaside, a day well chosen as it was beautifully clear, sunny and warm despite being only 22 degrees and since then it has been quite overcast.
We drove to Cabourg on the north coast, not far from Deauville and famous for its connections with Marcel Proust who stayed in the Grand Hotel there between 1907 and 1914 and wrote at length about the resort and the Hotel in « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu » and in many private letters. I had been there once before about 20 years ago out of season, so was prepared for some changes.
The town was far more Proust-aware; roads, shops, bars and restaurants all named after him or things connected with him and notice-boards with Proust quotations every so often in both the Hotel and outside in the streets. Twenty years go in October the beach had been deserted and the « digue » (a kind of rough promenade) almost deserted too; but last Friday both were filled with holiday-makers, dogs, children, kites, beach chairs, ice-cream stalls and tents.
After a little walk - it had taken us most of the morning to get there - we had lunch in the Grand Hotel. This was exactly as I remembered it, (except that last time there had been a dish of madeleines on the reception desk) although since my visit I had seen it more recently in the film « Le Temps Retrouvé », a spectacular cinema version of the last volume of « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu », with relevant scenes filmed in the Hotel itself.
The hotel restaurant has large glass windows looking out on to the digue and the beach; Proust likened it to an aquarium where outsiders could look in at the diners as though they were rare fish and I saw that a nearby bar had been named L’Aquarium. There were very few other diners that day, the service was excellent and the meal exquisite - delicious small courses that did not leave one stuffed! Both our first courses were served in long rectangular plates with the different components in a line, placed diagonally in front of us; then N had meat and I had fish, together with a wonderful chilled Chablis, and we finished with a mango creation and a chocolate cream dessert respectively.
Afterwards we looked in glass display cases in the Hotel vestibule and I noted a new edition in the series of strip cartoon books of « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu », which I bought to add to my collection. We sat in the coffee lounge for as long as we could and finely regretfully left the hotel, (after I had visited the magnificent Ladies room twice!) walked through the garden at the front into the town. We strolled slowly along a street full of little shops - souvenirs, postcards, clothes and local food and drink similar to those in Brittany. N bought a newspaper and went to read it on the seafront; I looked at some of the shops again, bought cards and a box of Brittany biscuits to begin a collection of things to take to Plymouth when we visit.
I then rejoined him in front of the hotel and we watched the passers-by for a little longer, and the kites and a sandcastle competition going on on the beach in the sunshine, and thought we really ought to be going home.
The journey home took some time as we stopped twice; first of all at a car wash where we had to queue, as for some weeks now the car has been covered in droppings from the swallows’ nests in the rafters of the garage. (N is threatening to remove the most badly-placed nest as soon as they have all flown off to South Africa; I think they’ll just rebuild it when they get back. I managed to take a photo of the young birds all looking out of the « nest with the extension » ; I thought they would all fly off the minute I put up the ladder, or when they saw the flash - but they just stayed put and looked at me. Perhaps like the young thrush we found a few weeks ago, they haven’t yet learned to be frightened.)
Our second stop was at a supermarket to catch up; one called Super-U which we often see advertised on television, but had never visited before.
Tuesday 14 August 2007
I had a note in my diary for a Foire at Beaumesnil for Sunday 12th, but had seen no posters recently so got the phone number of the tourist office from the website and rang to check. They said yes, but that there was also another bigger one somewhere else whose name I then forgot. We set off for Beaumesnil, for the first time in a long while, and found a fair similar to the smaller one we had been to last year.
The first thing I saw was something I had been looking for on and off for some time, but was always the wrong colour or too expensive, or in bad condition. This time it was exactly right - a traditional set of five china kitchen containers in graduating sizes, labelled farine, café, épices, sucre, sel, in a lovely red and white design! So I bought it; I am sure no French country kitchen should be without such a set, like the copper saucepans N bought last year. We have put them on the top of the kitchen cupboards, where they can be seen from as far away as the grande pièce. I also bought a very cheap round flat basket for bread on the table; and most importantly, some very good and inexpensive home-grown Victoria plums, which I made into jam the same afternoon. I was very pleased to find Victorias, as they are not well known here, and are my favourite. N bought a large pair of wooden clogs; I am not quite sure why, but they are now in front of the fireplace, and a pretty silver (?) stand for two bottles of wine. This will be better when I have had time to clean it.
This was all over quite quickly, and we decided it would be nice to go on to the second fair if only we knew where it was, so called in at the tourist office where there was no-one to help but a pile of handbills on the counter advertising a huge foire à tout at a village called Gisay le Coudre, which I recognised as the name I had been given over the phone. Fortunately the car’s satellite navigation was able to direct us there; it was not far.
It was small village with a very big church, and a very big fair in a large field; all in rows, much easier to navigate than fairs around the streets, but as always sometimes progress is slow when a group of four or five people meets another group they know and everybody in the first group has to kiss everybody in the second group…….. The fair was very entertaining too, lots of families clearing out all sorts of objects, and some making a day of it and eating lunch en famille around a long table under two umbrellas. There was the usual selection of common and uncommon items; old sewing machines, washbasins, calendars for 1916, horse collars, old toys, top hats, mugs with risqué captions, 1970’s coffee cups, fondue plates, baby clothes, pairs of cups labelled Moi and Toi (how do you know whose is whose?), ash trays and a whole box of china lids, of which I bought one which vaguely matches the Italian cherry jar we got a few weeks ago. N found another painted champagne bottle, the same design as before but smaller, and I bought two books; one published in 1926 giving advice to a young girl; mostly about how to equip a kitchen, but also on becoming a mother; have not had much chance to look at it yet. The other was a book on walks around Normandy with Proust; in the same series as the book of walks round Normandy with Flaubert which we bought at one of the first fairs here. There are two more in the series, published in the mid-1980’s, so we must keep a look out. I also bought an unusual white oval china plate with a gold pattern.
Yesterday the weather was warm again, like Friday; N mowed the lawns and I did two loads of washing, and we were able to have lunch in the garden. This morning I have been to L’Aigle market on the bus - it was far more crowded than usual - and got some smoked haddock, pork rillettes, salad, vegetable cakes and a vintage white tablecloth and two napkins to replace some of those lost in the washing machine disaster. While waiting for the bus to get there I talked again to two elderly ladies I had met on previous occasions; one lives in La Neuve-Lyre and the other, who I think must be her sister, always gets the bus as far as Rugles. We talk about the weather and the lateness or otherwise of the bus, and today the « sister » shook hands with me, which I think is progress!
Wednesday 15 August 2007
Over the weekend our downstairs TV developed a strange symptom; the picture was squashed into the middle of the screen leaving a black strip at the top and the bottom, and all the characters rather foreshortened. It was just the same with my exercise DVD; so it wasn’t a TPS problem. On Monday morning N phoned our TV « doctor » Monsieur B, but was only able to leave a message. We had no response all day, and N wondered if he was on holiday for the whole of August; I thought he could just be closed on Mondays, which seemed to be the case as he phoned back early on Tuesday morning, said it was a problem which could be solved and that he would come in the afternoon. N dealt with him and I only came in just as he was leaving - he had to take our TV set away, but had brought us another one to keep us company - with a far bigger screen! I wished we had had it the night before, when we had watched the very early James Bond film « Thunderball », which surprisingly neither of us had ever seen before, and which would have benefited from not being squashed into the centre of the screen; James Bond appearing rather short and squat. Since then we keep going into the room just to see what is on and what it looks like in the new larger, non-squashed format, rather as I remember doing when I first had colour TV.
Today, the « Quinze Août » (fifteenth of August) is a national holiday, and as last year, we went to a foire à tout in the streets of Bernay. It was quite small but entertaining and there was not a lot we needed to buy; N got two almost new stamp albums with British stamps from the last few decades and space for a lot more; and apart from another antique jam jar for my collection my only purchase was a teapot.
It is a small white classic French café design with « Thé Lyons » printed on it in red, cost 3 euros, and the woman who sold it to me said it belonged to her mother who adored tea, but you couldn’t keep everything, could you? I said I would remember that when I used it. It certainly looks as though it has had a lot of tea in it, and I am anxious to see what it is like after a turn in the dishwasher.
We also found more Victoria plums on sale and I decided against making another vast quantity of jam, as my hands and nails had only just recovered from halving and stoning the last lot. I bought just one kilo, and will make a plum dessert cake this afternoon and we will probably eat the rest although N is talking of Plum Crumble.
Before leaving Bernay we called in at the Italian delicatessen, where N bought far too much as usual, especially as I had stocked up at L’Aigle market yesterday, but I had to admit the Gorgonzola looked - and tasted - delicious, and there is nothing like real thinly cut Parma ham.
Last week I paid a longer visit to the new traiteur in the village; I saw in the window some nice little avocados stuffed with tuna and mayonnaise, but unfortunately the customer in front of me bought the lot! I asked whether there were more, and was told they could be prepared for me while I waited. So I did, and observed customers coming in for all sorts of things, and was able to read all the certificates on the wall regarding prizes for sausages, boudin, rillettes, and various, and to buy some very fresh-looking eggs wrapped in a cloth in a basket, as opposed to a cardboard egg box. Both the eggs and the avocados were delicious, and I hope I have become a « known » customer.
This is obviously what I am at the the boulangerie; this morning (and on other occasions) as soon as I came through the door my baguette was taken out of a rack just arrived warm from the kitchen at the back, and not from those out in the shop. I noticed this, as when we sometimes need to get bread in other villages and towns where I am not a « regular » , this doesn’t happen!
Apart from harvesting vegetables fruit and flowers, we have been cutting occasional leaves of verveine (lemon verbena) and mint to put in a cup or teapot to make tisane or herbal tea. There was such a large crop of verveine that N cut it all down and we hung it up to dry in the sunny verandah, where it made the most delicious smell as it dried. I spread it all on cloth and carefully stripped off the leaves into a glass jar to keep in the kitchen. Today we have done the same with a huge bush of Italian mint - once again to clear space in the garden, and the verandah now smells strongly of mint.
N is very pleased with an edging he has made in the vegetable garden between one side of the vegetable patch and the path surrounding it - the other three sides already had some sort of border - using and recycling a pile of roof tiles which has been in the woodshed since we arrived here. As well as looking much neater it keeps the weeds from trailing over from the grass verge into the vegetables.
I have received a letter from the customer services department of the SNCF, responding to my letter of June 23rd. (!) Not surprisingly, they have not refunded my ticket money, but gave some vague explanation about the most important thing during a strike being getting passengers where they needed to go. I suppose they thought that as I wanted to get to Paris, and I got there, that was OK, however long and however uncomfortable it was.
A much more pleasant letter however, was one from the local tax office explaining the reason for a nice windfall which had recently arrived in my current account; the result of having declared the expenses involved in the new (green) heating system we had installed last year. I do like the French tax system; all they have done so far is give me money, and I haven’t needed to give them any at all! I am even excused paying for a TV licence; this is included with income tax to make it easier to collect, but below a certain income is not payable at all.
Monday 13 August 2007
On Friday we had a lovely day out at the seaside, a day well chosen as it was beautifully clear, sunny and warm despite being only 22 degrees and since then it has been quite overcast.
We drove to Cabourg on the north coast, not far from Deauville and famous for its connections with Marcel Proust who stayed in the Grand Hotel there between 1907 and 1914 and wrote at length about the resort and the Hotel in « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu » and in many private letters. I had been there once before about 20 years ago out of season, so was prepared for some changes.
The town was far more Proust-aware; roads, shops, bars and restaurants all named after him or things connected with him and notice-boards with Proust quotations every so often in both the Hotel and outside in the streets. Twenty years go in October the beach had been deserted and the « digue » (a kind of rough promenade) almost deserted too; but last Friday both were filled with holiday-makers, dogs, children, kites, beach chairs, ice-cream stalls and tents.
After a little walk - it had taken us most of the morning to get there - we had lunch in the Grand Hotel. This was exactly as I remembered it, (except that last time there had been a dish of madeleines on the reception desk) although since my visit I had seen it more recently in the film « Le Temps Retrouvé », a spectacular cinema version of the last volume of « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu », with relevant scenes filmed in the Hotel itself.
The hotel restaurant has large glass windows looking out on to the digue and the beach; Proust likened it to an aquarium where outsiders could look in at the diners as though they were rare fish and I saw that a nearby bar had been named L’Aquarium. There were very few other diners that day, the service was excellent and the meal exquisite - delicious small courses that did not leave one stuffed! Both our first courses were served in long rectangular plates with the different components in a line, placed diagonally in front of us; then N had meat and I had fish, together with a wonderful chilled Chablis, and we finished with a mango creation and a chocolate cream dessert respectively.
Afterwards we looked in glass display cases in the Hotel vestibule and I noted a new edition in the series of strip cartoon books of « A la Recherche du Temps Perdu », which I bought to add to my collection. We sat in the coffee lounge for as long as we could and finely regretfully left the hotel, (after I had visited the magnificent Ladies room twice!) walked through the garden at the front into the town. We strolled slowly along a street full of little shops - souvenirs, postcards, clothes and local food and drink similar to those in Brittany. N bought a newspaper and went to read it on the seafront; I looked at some of the shops again, bought cards and a box of Brittany biscuits to begin a collection of things to take to Plymouth when we visit.
I then rejoined him in front of the hotel and we watched the passers-by for a little longer, and the kites and a sandcastle competition going on on the beach in the sunshine, and thought we really ought to be going home.
The journey home took some time as we stopped twice; first of all at a car wash where we had to queue, as for some weeks now the car has been covered in droppings from the swallows’ nests in the rafters of the garage. (N is threatening to remove the most badly-placed nest as soon as they have all flown off to South Africa; I think they’ll just rebuild it when they get back. I managed to take a photo of the young birds all looking out of the « nest with the extension » ; I thought they would all fly off the minute I put up the ladder, or when they saw the flash - but they just stayed put and looked at me. Perhaps like the young thrush we found a few weeks ago, they haven’t yet learned to be frightened.)
Our second stop was at a supermarket to catch up; one called Super-U which we often see advertised on television, but had never visited before.
Tuesday 14 August 2007
I had a note in my diary for a Foire at Beaumesnil for Sunday 12th, but had seen no posters recently so got the phone number of the tourist office from the website and rang to check. They said yes, but that there was also another bigger one somewhere else whose name I then forgot. We set off for Beaumesnil, for the first time in a long while, and found a fair similar to the smaller one we had been to last year.
The first thing I saw was something I had been looking for on and off for some time, but was always the wrong colour or too expensive, or in bad condition. This time it was exactly right - a traditional set of five china kitchen containers in graduating sizes, labelled farine, café, épices, sucre, sel, in a lovely red and white design! So I bought it; I am sure no French country kitchen should be without such a set, like the copper saucepans N bought last year. We have put them on the top of the kitchen cupboards, where they can be seen from as far away as the grande pièce. I also bought a very cheap round flat basket for bread on the table; and most importantly, some very good and inexpensive home-grown Victoria plums, which I made into jam the same afternoon. I was very pleased to find Victorias, as they are not well known here, and are my favourite. N bought a large pair of wooden clogs; I am not quite sure why, but they are now in front of the fireplace, and a pretty silver (?) stand for two bottles of wine. This will be better when I have had time to clean it.
This was all over quite quickly, and we decided it would be nice to go on to the second fair if only we knew where it was, so called in at the tourist office where there was no-one to help but a pile of handbills on the counter advertising a huge foire à tout at a village called Gisay le Coudre, which I recognised as the name I had been given over the phone. Fortunately the car’s satellite navigation was able to direct us there; it was not far.
It was small village with a very big church, and a very big fair in a large field; all in rows, much easier to navigate than fairs around the streets, but as always sometimes progress is slow when a group of four or five people meets another group they know and everybody in the first group has to kiss everybody in the second group…….. The fair was very entertaining too, lots of families clearing out all sorts of objects, and some making a day of it and eating lunch en famille around a long table under two umbrellas. There was the usual selection of common and uncommon items; old sewing machines, washbasins, calendars for 1916, horse collars, old toys, top hats, mugs with risqué captions, 1970’s coffee cups, fondue plates, baby clothes, pairs of cups labelled Moi and Toi (how do you know whose is whose?), ash trays and a whole box of china lids, of which I bought one which vaguely matches the Italian cherry jar we got a few weeks ago. N found another painted champagne bottle, the same design as before but smaller, and I bought two books; one published in 1926 giving advice to a young girl; mostly about how to equip a kitchen, but also on becoming a mother; have not had much chance to look at it yet. The other was a book on walks around Normandy with Proust; in the same series as the book of walks round Normandy with Flaubert which we bought at one of the first fairs here. There are two more in the series, published in the mid-1980’s, so we must keep a look out. I also bought an unusual white oval china plate with a gold pattern.
Yesterday the weather was warm again, like Friday; N mowed the lawns and I did two loads of washing, and we were able to have lunch in the garden. This morning I have been to L’Aigle market on the bus - it was far more crowded than usual - and got some smoked haddock, pork rillettes, salad, vegetable cakes and a vintage white tablecloth and two napkins to replace some of those lost in the washing machine disaster. While waiting for the bus to get there I talked again to two elderly ladies I had met on previous occasions; one lives in La Neuve-Lyre and the other, who I think must be her sister, always gets the bus as far as Rugles. We talk about the weather and the lateness or otherwise of the bus, and today the « sister » shook hands with me, which I think is progress!
Wednesday 15 August 2007
Over the weekend our downstairs TV developed a strange symptom; the picture was squashed into the middle of the screen leaving a black strip at the top and the bottom, and all the characters rather foreshortened. It was just the same with my exercise DVD; so it wasn’t a TPS problem. On Monday morning N phoned our TV « doctor » Monsieur B, but was only able to leave a message. We had no response all day, and N wondered if he was on holiday for the whole of August; I thought he could just be closed on Mondays, which seemed to be the case as he phoned back early on Tuesday morning, said it was a problem which could be solved and that he would come in the afternoon. N dealt with him and I only came in just as he was leaving - he had to take our TV set away, but had brought us another one to keep us company - with a far bigger screen! I wished we had had it the night before, when we had watched the very early James Bond film « Thunderball », which surprisingly neither of us had ever seen before, and which would have benefited from not being squashed into the centre of the screen; James Bond appearing rather short and squat. Since then we keep going into the room just to see what is on and what it looks like in the new larger, non-squashed format, rather as I remember doing when I first had colour TV.
Today, the « Quinze Août » (fifteenth of August) is a national holiday, and as last year, we went to a foire à tout in the streets of Bernay. It was quite small but entertaining and there was not a lot we needed to buy; N got two almost new stamp albums with British stamps from the last few decades and space for a lot more; and apart from another antique jam jar for my collection my only purchase was a teapot.
It is a small white classic French café design with « Thé Lyons » printed on it in red, cost 3 euros, and the woman who sold it to me said it belonged to her mother who adored tea, but you couldn’t keep everything, could you? I said I would remember that when I used it. It certainly looks as though it has had a lot of tea in it, and I am anxious to see what it is like after a turn in the dishwasher.
We also found more Victoria plums on sale and I decided against making another vast quantity of jam, as my hands and nails had only just recovered from halving and stoning the last lot. I bought just one kilo, and will make a plum dessert cake this afternoon and we will probably eat the rest although N is talking of Plum Crumble.
Before leaving Bernay we called in at the Italian delicatessen, where N bought far too much as usual, especially as I had stocked up at L’Aigle market yesterday, but I had to admit the Gorgonzola looked - and tasted - delicious, and there is nothing like real thinly cut Parma ham.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 6:50 AM 
