Monday, July 13, 2009

An Evening Entertaining the French


Sunday 5pm and Trevor picked me up, we were going to Kieron and Julia's for the evening. They were entertaining their French neighbours Rene and his wife and their local farmer Pierre who is also the number 2 to the Maire of St Cyr de Gats the commune in which they all live, and Raymon his wife, add to the mix Steve and Sally and you've got the picture. We were staring at 5pm because the French eat lunch rather than dinner, that goes double on Sundays, and they don't really enjoy being entertained to dinner, so the idea was aperitifs for the French then a meal for the English afterwards.

This was such a contrast to the dinner at Steve and Sally's (no fault of theirs) we all got involved chatting to one another, even some of the conversations between the English contingent were conducted in French. It is true that the smaller numbers would have made it difficult not to get involved, but everyone wanted to be, I wonder if some of the English that had been at Steve and Sally's had been there just what they would have done. In any event there was no hiding and as usual I was amazed at how hard Kieron and Stephen try with their French, neither's pronunciation is good and Kieron is often extremely inventive with his vocabulary, but to their eternal credit they both plough on regardless. The French love the fact that they try so hard and they respond with patience and try just as hard to understand, and most of the time everyone is able to communicate. I must admit that my conversational French has come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, so much so that all of the French present complimented me on my command of the language but Rene was also kind enough to say that I didn't have much of an accent. Which means that I've lost the "Alo Alo" tang that dogs most English who speak Freench. Of course speaking reasonable French has its drawbacks, one sometimes wonders whether one is invited as a linguistic lubricant or for one's sparkling personality , but with Kieron and Julia I never doubt that I'm invited for my wit and charm, or at least the fact that I'm a bit of a laugh. I'm not 100% sure why, but Kieron has taken to calling me Clousea, he even introduced me to the French as such, I did ask him why but as often happens with Kieron I didn't get very far

The evening was a great success with plenty of laughter, the wine flowed liberally and the finger food was superb. Finally Kieron brought out the Pineau starting with Trevor's then moving on to Rene's, then Pierre's and finishing with his own. They were all pretty good, Rene's got the blue ribbon with most people, after all he has been making it for a long time, and it was made with walnuts, I think my personal favourite was Pierre's just because I preferred the taste, and I think Guy Guerrin my farmer friend makes a better walnut flavoured Pineau. The French left at about 9.30pm and we adjourned to the kitchen/lounge where we had a prawn starter and a chicken curry. Most people were in fact very tired and Trevor and I left not long after eating, it had been a great night, very different, and just the sort of evening that France should be all about.

Friday, July 10, 2009

A Change in the Weather



Well I suppose it had to happen, the weather seems to have taken a turn for the worst, I heard today that the "Jet Stream" is currently hanging around over the UK and that autumnal storms are forecast for there. The weather definitely changed here on Sunday, it was a beautiful day and was very warm and I was going to Steve and Sally's for a celebration of their 31st wedding anniversary and another mate Tim's 50th birthday. Trevor had accepted an alternative invitation and so I was going on my own with T2 & T8 and I was driving and wasn't going to be able to drink but that was no hardship. I took my hoodie as an after thought, after all it had been so hot I hadn't worn a T shirt for weeks let alone a jacket, unless I was going out. There were 19 of us sitting down at Steve and Sally's, I'm staggered how they manage, even with the help they were getting from Tim and Sue and Kieron and Julia.

Five of the nineteen were French and there were quite a lot of English people that I hadn't met, they mostly ignored me and I spent my time talking to the French contingent, unlike most of the English (Steve,Sally,Kieron,Julia,Tim and Sue excluded) who seemed content in their nationalist clique. The English went to one end of the table I went to the French end and had a great time with Steve and Sally's neighbours Roger & Christine, who I had only met twice before but who immediately offered me their downstairs bedroom if I wanted to have a drink, and Jose and the adorable Isabel. The food was good amazingly so considering the numbers, and I'm sure that had I not been driving I would have consumed far too much alcohol, a lot of people seemed to be headed that way. Steve had asked me to write him a speech in French, to wish Tim a happy birthday, it was quite a challenge for me as written French is not my strong point. I kept it fairly simple although I did put a couple of jokes in, but I still had to labour long with the dictionary. It was even more of a challenge for Steve, reading the speech in the difficult light was his first hurdle and though his delivery was a bit iffy, pronunciation not being his forte, it went down a storm with the French contingent, which I guess was the point. I don't know how much of it the English contingent understood, but they seemed to laugh in all the right places and Steve got a well deserved ovation. All in all it was a great night but I couldn't work out why the English were so insular unless it is that they only have limited French and as such they can't be bothered to make the effort to communicate

By 10.30 it had gotten cold enough that most people were putting on tops, the delightful Isabel needed to borrow a top from Christine, it was a pale blue and brought out the colour of her eyes, it made her look even more beautiful. I put on my hoodie, it made me look like a gnome. Since then the weather has been different, by day there has been as much cloud as sun and the temperature has been about 10 degrees lower than before, the evenings have normally cleared and the nights have been cooler. So come on jet stream move back north again and let's have more of that hot stuff.
Isle de Re

If you’ve read my piece on la Rochelle you’ll know that our assault on the town was launched on the back of a visit to Castorama, a large B&Q type shop just outside La Rochelle, to replace broken swimming pool equipment. Now as Murphy, or at least his law, would have it Trevor gave the pool a good clean with the new equipment and wandered in with one of the filters from within the pump announcing that it now needed replacing. You know the good news bad news thing well the good news was that the filter didn’t come from Castorama, the bad news was it came from Cash Piscines, a shop on the same industrial estate, so we were off to the La Rochelle area again. The silver lining to this particular cloud is very Alice in Wonderland, as jutting from the coast beside La Rochelle is a most amazing three kilometre bridge, and at the other end of it is a small island, “L’Isle de Re”.

First the technical stuff. The Isle de Re is in the Department of the Charente-Maritime, and has an area of 85 square kilometres, it is 30 km long and 5km wide although in places that is reduced to mere metres. It was originally an archipelago of 3 separate islands running east off of La Rochelle but due to silting and human intervention, it has become one island. The strategic value of the island has long been recognised, and as such the island sports what almost amounts to a display of “Fortifications through the Ages”. Many people have tried to invade it but few have succeeded. Those who have failed include the English. In 1627 the Duke of Buckingham invaded, landing thousands of troops on the beaches of the Isle de Re. After 3 months fighting the islanders and failing to subjugate them, he gave up and left the island for good.

The Island has a winter population quoted as 16,000 rising to 160,000 in summer and with annual visitor numbers of over 3 million, the island’s main source of revenue is undoubtedly tourism. Sea salt works to the North West of the island, an active fishing fleet and markets selling everything from fruit and vegetables to African artefacts, indicates that there is a vibrant island community outside of tourism. The Islanders who are known as Retais view the mainland, which they refer to as the continent, and its population with suspicion. As an Island race I’m sure those Brits amongst you will identify with that sentiment. I just can’t get out of my head that they could have called themselves Reguns, not after a former President of the USA but after the armaments of mythical intergalactic warriors, but then I am a bit out there. The Retais however have now taken their battle with the continent just a touch further, and the 3 km bridge connecting the island to the mainland has become what I consider to be the strangest of battlefields. The bridge like many other motorways and bridges throughout France is subject to a toll, levied to recoup the cost of construction, as I write this the toll is 9 euros out of season and 16.50 euros in season (June 19th to September 20th) but in 2012 the bridge is due to become toll free. This has brought about a movement amongst the Reguns (Oops! sorry) Retais to retain the toll under the thin veil of being an environmental tax. The truth more than likely lies in the fact that the removal of the financial deterrent is seen to be tantamount to the opening of the floodgates which will mean that the island will become prey to hordes of the great unwashed, further clogging up the roads and taking the charm away from the few existing towns by the sheer weight of tourist numbers. With the waning of exclusivity will likely come a crash in the extremely high prices of houses and land along with the exodus of those stars and dignitaries who are purported to frequent the island because of its beauty and selectiveness. Even though this sounds to be elitist it is something that I can identify with. In 1987 I visited the Greek Island of Zakinthos for the first time; I had friends who owned one of the two tavernas in a small coastal village called Planos. The village was not directly on the beach rather being on the road that circumnavigated the island, there were spaces between the houses, and the odd shop. On my last visit some 5 years ago Plannos had 27 tavernas and there wasn’t a cigarette paper’s worth of space to be found anywhere, sadly I can’t see myself ever going back again, because it is no longer the place that I fell in love with. The same might easily happen to the Isle de Re. Our visit was out of season for both French and English holiday makers alike and yet everywhere was still full to bursting.

We started the day fairly early, which was almost a miracle as the night before Trevor had come over to my place and cooked for the waifs and strays, that being Stephen whose wife Sally had gone back to the UK for a few days in order to retire, Sue whose husband Tim was also in the UK (I call Tim “Marvin”, after the paranoid android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know the one who has such fabulous lines as “life? don’t talk to me about life”, and “here I am brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you to the bridge call that job satisfaction cause I don’t”, I find Tim incredibly funny) and myself. The dinner was a seafood triumph with Mussels followed by a fish called Loup de Mer then Cheese and then a sweet. It was a great evening, it had been late and alcohol rich, but to do the shopping and get around the island it was essential to get away early, it was definitely a day for shades.

The trip to la Rochelle was uneventful, the shopping done and the 9 Euros paid we were crossing the bridge, they don’t make ordinary bridges in France, this bridge is no exception to that, like some giant tensioned longbow with a twist, it has a little bit of the bridge over the Loire at Nantes about it although much longer of course. It was quite amazing we had left in thick cloud but on the coast the sky was clear and blue and throughout the day we could look back and see the huge cloudbank sitting morosely over the landmass while we enjoyed continuous sunshine, statistics show that the Isle de Re has the same number of hours of sun per year as the French Riviera,

Making landfall we, unlike many others I suspect, stopped at Rivedoux Plage in truth it was because we were in search of a coffee, which I desperately needed,. It being out of season for the French we did struggle a bit but we eventually found a cup in a roadside café/shop, we sat outside and drank from plastic cups, there was no view of the beach, in fact there was no view at all, but the coffee was very welcome and inexpensive.
After coffee we went straight along the coast to la Flotte, the largest town on the island, it has a quaint harbour with echoes of a mini La Rochelle. There were a mixture of luxury yachts and working boats in the harbour and the cobbled quaysides were festooned with restaurants, but at one end of the quay was an oyster market and past that along the quayside running away from the harbour was a row of attractive little single story dwellings which appeared to be inhabited by Retais. There were small boats laid up on the opposite side of the quay to the local housing and it would be churlish to refer to the scene as anything less than charming. It was just a little early to eat otherwise we might have stopped there, but Trevor satisfied his hunger pangs with a pastry and we wandered off up a side street away from the harbour just to see what we could find. What we actually found, through an archway off the road was a vibrant local market, selling everything, it was situated in a little cobbled square and it was packed, we took a small lane out of the square which was extremely pretty, if you ignored the dogs mess, with old buildings and hollyhocks lining either side. The end of the lane brought us out in close proximity to where T2 was parked so we loaded up and off we went, past the Abbaye des Chateliers a 12th Century Cistercian Abbey which was ruined during the 100years war and the wars of religion. Not much further along the road is the start of the fortifications for St Martin de Re, first there is an extensive fortress with a dry moat which is yet another example of the Island’s fortifications and continues to house the island’s prison. Our next stop was the island’s jewel in the crown St Martin de Re. We stopped in the car park just outside of the town and wandered through a park and along the ramparts towards the harbour. This really was a mini La Rochelle except it had that special feeling that is only generated in an Island community. The harbour has an almost circular feel accentuated by a central island, the evidence of fortifications are everywhere, as are the quayside restaurants.
There are shops on the harbour, but this is obviously primarily a place of entertainment, we wandered all around it and then went over the bridge onto the small central island. I could imagine that it might take on an almost magical quality at night, with the lights sparkling on the water and I suspect music and street entertainment.

We were by this time a bit late and we stooped at a restaurant called Marco Polo which looked back towards the rest of the harbour, we were amongst the last people to be served, but even then most of the tables were still full. This is obviously a fish lover’s paradise but ridiculous though it was I was still feeling the after effects of the previous evening and couldn’t face eating more fish. I had the house pizza, it had ham and peppers and mushrooms and in the centre an egg, it was good enough and was just what I needed, not too heavy, not too much topping. Trevor being an enforced abstainer was not suffering at all and tucked into a pretty little sea bass with mixed vegetables. It was a small fish and in the UK would have only been allowed if it was farmed. I used to fish for bass professionally and I know that to keep a line caught fish now in the UK it would have had to be almost twice the length, so make of that what you will. Personally I can’t see the point in serving farmed fish on an island with a vibrant fishing industry, however Trevor enjoyed it, but he was hungry and would probably have eaten a dog with relish by then. The service was very good and the waiter spoke good English, Trevor thought that he might not be French but when I questioned him he said that although he was born on the island he had grown up in Angers where he said they speak pure French without any regional accent and that was probably why Trevor thought he wasn’t French. Having grown up in a holiday town in Devon I could get all cynical here, we used to tell tourists all sorts, but I’m going to let is pass. We both drank tonic water and had large coffees and the bill came to 40 Euros.
Time was moving right along and we had to move along with it if we were going to make it around the island. We stopped at a beach at Le Matray, on the narrowest part of the island which in places is literally only a few meters wide, so that Trevor could take some photos; there was a car park and the bank which protects this part
of the island, then the beach. There were some people donning wet suits who were going to hire jet skis. We didn’t stay long and continued on to Ars-en-Re, it looked as if it had a pretty little square, but it had those bollards that come up out of the ground and not wanting to get caught inside, I regretfully chickened out so we didn’t get to see it. Next stop was the very tip of the island where you can take the one road out and then the same road back; there are a lot of beaches most serviced with car parks and none seemed crowded. This end of the island is where the salt production takes place, it also seems to have a lot of very high quality housing with I’m pretty sure prices to match. I’ve heard rumour that plots here are valued at 1 million euros plus. We came back from the point to les Portes en Re which was a very small working harbour, I didn’t venture out of the van and left Trevor to take a photographic record. It was getting late and we headed back to take a look at the lighthouse, unfortunately we were turned away by the police as the car park was full, there was another car park further out but we were hot and decided that our time would be better spent in search of an ice cream and a coffee. The island has a reputation for ice cream and ice cream parlours; however we searched high and low on our way down the south side of the island, but everywhere was closed, and it wasn’t until we reached the Southern side of Rivedoux Plage, where we stopped at a beachside bar and had, no not an authentic Isle de Re creation but “Just one Cornetto”, (in fact Trevor had two), and a large coffee each. Trevor wanted to get a picture of the bridge from the south side of the island and so he wandered off along the beach. When he came back he said that I could get closer to the bridge in the van so that I could see it, in fact we got more than even he bargained for as I decided to go off road and got us right under the bridge on the very point of the island, Trevor got some great photos not just of the bridge but also of the kite surfers on the Northern side, it was a fitting end to a long but very enjoyable day

The Isle de Re is a fabulous island that would be wonderful without tourists, our visit was out of season and there were places that were still closed, but still there were plenty of people at the tourist hotspots like La Flotte and St. Martin de Re. The island is small with a road system not designed for the volumes of traffic that they get, and it does seem that it is one of those places that is likely to suffer from its own charm. I can’t imagine what the island would be like at the height of the season, I’m sure I’d hate it, even though I loved it while we were there. My suggestion would be take a holiday at either end of the season in June or September, then hope for the best with the weather, or pack your winter woollies and try it in December; it’s something I’m seriously considering. Tate – June 2009

Sunday, July 5, 2009

It's hard to figure how many times I'll start my blog in disbelief but yet again I'm staggered that it has been nearly 2 weeks since my last entry. To be honest the fantastic weather and light evenings mean that I'm often not in from poolside until 7-30 or even later. Add to that the trips out, and then there's the socialising, then there's Wimbledon. It's even been difficult finding the time to shop.

Today was not very sunny, but very warm nonetheless, so I've made some attempt to catch up on the backlog of articles that I owe Trevor. Today I wrote up our trip to the Isle de Re, it was a great day, but so long ago that I had difficulty in remembering some things. We've been to St Giles Croix de Vie and the Marais Poitevin since then, and we've got a day at the coast planned for Wednesday. I need a week of cloud just to catch up. (I should be careful what I wish for)

Last Wednesday I went shopping with Christian, it was a normal shopping trip but when we got back to his place Gisele came out to the van and started talking to me in a code that I didn't understand. It wasn't Patois,or Argo I knew what she was saying was French, I even understood most of the words, but none of it made any sense. There was something about Guy and that he had visited my place in the morning but that I'd been out and that he was going to pick me up. I left in total bewilderment and decided that I would ring Christian when I got home, then thank goodness a little voice somewhere in my head said don't ring Christian go and see Guy. On arriving at Guy's his wife Marie-Therese explained that as it was Christian's birthday on Thursday and as he was tied up with council business they had to deliver Gisele's surprise birthday present to him on Wednesday evening. In addition they had planned a small surprise birthday party for him and that Guy was going to pick me up as I was included in the celebrations. It really was a good job I didn't ring Christian.

Marie-Therese told me to get out of the van and join them for lunch, I tried to resist, but to no avail and ended up having a three course lunch of smoked salmon, followed by a pork chop with shreded cooked lettuce and salsify, followed by a cooked mirabelle and pear tartin. All of this was kicked off with a Pastis aperetif and washed down with with Guy's own wine. I went home afterwards and had a nap followed by a swim and Guy and Marie-Therese picked me up at 9pm. They had eaten an evening meal, I had eaten nothing. Christian was sitting on his rear terrace and was very surprised when Guy drove his van around the side of the property and onto his back lawn and we all got out including Marie-Therese who emerged from the back of the van with a cold bag containing Isle Flotant a cake a bottle of champagne that Guy had boiught and a bottle of pink champagne provided by yours truly.

We had a couple of hours sat around the table talking and laughing, the Isle Flotant and Cake were brilliant, the bottles of Champagne were cold and went down a treat in the evening heat and we left at about 11.30pm.

It's days like this that make the summers here so enjoyable, the day started with a normal shopping trip, which led to an unexpected lunch and ended up with a surprise birthday celebration.

I love France.