Rural Life

Being a good peasant

Apologies for not posting yesterday - I was indeed being a good peasant, and had just got my hands on 4 kilos of very ripe yellow plums - if I didn't jam them yesterday, they would have gone in the new burping barrel, and that would have been a waste.  I had also turned down a tray of apricots in favour of free plums for jam making, so had to get cracking.  But taking the stones out and chopping up 4 kilos of plums takes time, then you have to gently cook them, before adding the sugar and pushing to setting temperature.  Still, we started the half jar today at breakfast, and it was jolly yum, so definitely worth it and you will have to believe me!

And once that was done, I thought I was on a roll, so I spent an hour peeling the tiny shallots for pickling (no photo), at which point it was time to do all the bits for crab and comté soufflé for dinner.

At the start of the week, I was able to enjoy this wonderful vista over a vast field of sunflowers - in general they are nearly over but I was able to catch this field near its best.

Close to, some of the flower heads were huge, and while still flowering at the centre. birds had already started to peck away at the ripening seeds.  I picked out a few myself for sowing next year (just 8) and they were slightly sticky to the touch but fat and well filled.

Midweek I was able to spend a bit of time working in the potager and was able, after doing a bit of watering, to thin out the carrots a bit, particularly those that were quite close to the nicely developing parsnips.  I sowed a sort of heritage variety of multicoloured carrots - apparently all shades between white and black, via yellow, orange and red.  So far those I have thinned have been firmly in the white to orange spectrum, which is a shame as black carrots are so dramatic!

The woodstore by the potager is very useful for drying off crops once lifted, such as shallots, onions and potatoes, before they go to storage or are used.  It has the standard tin roof, ventilated wooden walls and a sandy floor.  This seems to be an ideal home for antlion larvae.  I've not dug down to see what they look like, but we have a lot of depressions which are very characteristic and very intriguing.  If I were 50 years younger, I would probably dig one up, now I am more live and let live.

The week has also been about Comice preparations.  I spent Thursday afternoon in a disused piggery with a laptop, projector and a load of paints, trying to trace the logo onto part of a giant panel.  It all went well until the scaffolding holding the projector shifted just a smidge!!

Saturday was Bunting Day - I helped on the morning shift, stringing up bunting down the main drag of the village to get people in the mood for fun.  It's amazing how lots of small triangles of fabric on a piece of bailing twine can make everything seem so much more festive!  In the afternoon our house got bunting on its façade too, which I can see a small bit of when in the back garden - it's the small things that can give so much pleasure!

Next week I'll try to be more timely, but there is a lot more Comice preparation to do!

 

Starting the gardening season

I don't know why, but we haven't really been inspired to get this year's gardening underway so far.  We have planted shallots and onions, which are now sprouting, and of course in the last weeks of 2022 we sowed our broad beans, but other than that we've not done much.

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Over winter, we have been able to enjoy fresh parsley, parsnips, chard, leeks and the stored potatoes (now all gone), but yesterday we had a few spears of feral asparagus which acted as a reminder that if we want to feed ourselves, we need to get ourselves into gear!  After all, we do have 53 seed potatoes chitting away, which will need to be planted soon.

The chard will keep going for a while and there is a hint of cauliflower on the six plants that are still also providing ample food for caterpillars.  There is also corn salad hiding away among the weeds that have grown back, which I hope to rescue soon.

The state of the rhubarb reminds us that we need to care for the soil, adding organic matter back where we can, while at the same time continuing to fight the good fight against the rampant scrub that wants to reclaim the gardens.  These tulips were planted in a vegetable bed only 3 years ago, but are now fighting their way out of a bramble patch.

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Those plants that fight on through the weeds and scrub come out stronger - this calendular made it through the winter and is now developing many more flower buds for more blazing orange.

One reason for our lassitude to date is that for once things are a bit delayed in nature.  The daffodils would have been finished by now last year and the year before, while the cowslips are just going from strength to strength.  But blossom is late - the countryside is white with wild plum and blackthorn much later than normal, while the pear may not be in full bloom for Easter, as it usually would be (irrespective of date, as Easter is determined by moon phases).  There is a slow green veil taking over but that has been apparent in late March for the last few years, not early April.

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The birds are out in force, but there were few insects around, despite the blossom and the highly pungent laurel flowers.  The hornet trap is set at The Shack but not at home, but there is no sign of any interest in it so far.  There are a few heavy bumblebees around, but without insects, there will not be much fruit, so I hope they appear soon.

The extremely clear sign of a late spring was at the One Acre Wood however.  For the past few years, by the start of April, the lily of the valley would be perhaps an inch or two tall and showing whether there would be any flowers to come.  We walked through the spot today, and could see nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  They will sprout in due course, but they confirm we are right not to be plunging into too much gardening activity before Nature is ready to give us a helping hand.

Many the Easter Bunny bring you more chocolate than you can eat in one sitting!

 

Seaside Rendez-Vous

This weekend we had our first holiday together for four years, comprising a night away at Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie in the Vendée.  Once we had fed both sets of cats, and hidden food bowls around the house for the girls, we headed south west in search of pastures new, sea air, food not cooked by us and exercise.

Our first "holiday" stop was to admire the ruined castle at les Essarts, somewhat north of la Roche-sur-Yon.  it looked dramatic driving by, and has a lovely new carpark and an excellent boardwalk to the entrance, but won't be open until 7th April, so the boardwalk was as far as we got.

We then carried on to Saint Gilles itself, found a parking space near our hotel and before we checked in, went for a first exploratory wander.  The place is an amalgamation of a number of small communities along both banks of a river which takes a tortuous route to the sea.  We were on the far side, so to speak, but there was actually a further side beyond the river Vie, which we went to today.  Without a map it was horribly confusing, and as we were outside the tourist season, we had to wait until we checked into the hotel to get our hands on a town plan and make sense of it all.  Anyway, we walked out along the river towards the sea, taking a few photos on the way.

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We then checked into the hotel, let my feet recover from a lot of walking, and studied the map carefully, before changing for dinner.  We then set out inland back over the second loop of the river, and as the weather was pretty filthy, chose the first open restaurant we came to for our dinner, which was very good.  I forget how much I like Pineau de Charente as an aperitif!  We also forget how good the simple things in life are, like good bread and butter and tinned sardines (sardines are very much The Thing at Saint Gilles), which made a delicious starter.  After a very nice dinner, and once that rainstorm had blown over, we went back to the hotel, stopping only to photograph the rather dramatic church tower.

This morning was the fine weather before the storm, so we took advantage to walk up and down along the dune and Grand Plage that protect the entrance to the river Vie and the sailing and fishing ports behind.  In summer it must be vile, lined as it is with holiday apartments, candy floss shops, ice cream parlours and creperies, but firmly out of season and with a few brave cafés and restaurants open and a few mad kite surfers, it was what we needed.  The wind was blowing a gale, which made life interesting.  John had to screw his flat cap on his head to avoid it flying away more than once.  The amount of oxygen inhaled in any one breathe was intoxicating and my hair is still standing on end.

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Even though we were on holiday, we really couldn't resist this bit of interpretation about and curation of dune plants, vital for saving the Vendée coastline in all its natural splendour against the ravages of the sea.  The irony of it being next two blocks of recent and really rather ugly holiday flats seems to be totally lost on the French and local government.

The promised thunderstorm arrived a little after midday, but by that time, we were tucked up in the outer terrace (so protected from most of the elements but with a good view of them all) of a very nice restaurant having a lovely lunch and being aggressively flirted with by a waiter practicing his English before the holiday hoards descend.  We dashed to the car in a pause between rain showers, to head home to face the wrath of cats, feeling very well fed, well oxygenated and almost ready for the Spring.  Almost...

 

Truffle time

If you aren't interested in food, today's contribution is not for you!  

Every year, from early January and depending on prices and what is going on, John buys 100g of black truffle for me to "play" with.  He uses Ebay to find a supplier, and if we like their product, we stay faithful for a year or two.  The bloke that sent us a photo of the dog that found the truffles was a favourite for about 3 years I think!  Generally they come from the south west of France, although there are truffle woods around here and a truffle fair each year at Chinon.  This year we were a bit later than usual buying our black gold as I had a trip to the UK earlier in the month, but the parcel arrived on the 23rd of January with these gems.

The first thing I do is set some to infuse in cheese - this year's choice was a quarter of a Brillat Saverin, a mild cheese that we generally find fairly pointless, unless it is to take on truffle aroma.  I also mixed some pieces into cream cheese and sealed that in a yoghurt pot for a few days.

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The first meal was the classic - scrambled eggs with truffle shards sprinkled over them.  The scrambled eggs are a silly colour because our chickens produce dayglo yellow egg yolks.

The second meal was another classic - linguine with a cream sauce infused with cèpe and truffle flakes.  I added the smoked salmon as I had a slice that I had got from the fish monger before the truffles arrived and it needed to be used up.  Happily, it didn't overwhelm the sauce.

The Wednesday meal was fish based, as I had been to the market that morning - a nice piece of cod filet, pan fried, with a beurre blanc sauce and slices of truffle.  There were crudités to provide a hint of healthy bits too.

By the Thursday evening, the truffle infused cream cheese was just right for a dip with aperos before dinner.  I then topped up the pot with more cream cheese to get another go at it!

Thursday dinner was a sumptuous roast chicken leg served with truffle mash - one of the very few dishes where the truffle gets cooked as it is so well encased in mashed potato.

Friday we had a day off from truffle, but Saturday night was an interesting one.  My brother had given me a couple of merguez crepinettes - for those not in the know, merguez are a beef and/or lamb sausage well spiced with paprika, while a cripinette is a sort of flat sausage encased in crepine, or the membrane of an internal organ of a pig.  We had the other half of the truffle mash too, and were worried that the meat would be too strong for the mash, but they made an excellent mix.

Sunday lunch is normally eggs in some form after a morning of labour or leisure at The Shack.  For the truffle fest, I did baked eggs with truffle slices hidden under the eggs, so another of the few times the truffle actually gets cooked, but again trying to keep the aromas in with a coating of egg, cream and mild cheese.  It worked!

Sunday dinner was another classic - pan fried scallops with truffle.  To celebrate scallops, I dug up four leeks from The Garden and cooked them down with stock, before adding a swirl of cream and pepper to the final mix.  They made a wonderful bed and foil to the scallops - that was memorable!

On the Monday, as I was in Baugé, I stopped at the market and got a pork loin from the butcher.  This enabled me to do slices of pork loin with spaghetti and a cream and truffle sauce which was a particularly lush start to a new week.

The next lunchtime we finished off the truffle infused cheeses as the Brillat Saverin was starting to climb out of the cheese box - not in a smelly way, just getting jolly runny.

The week of truffle greed ended with the second half of the pork loin, cut into medallions and pan fried, and served with a rich mushroom risotto, all liberally festooned with the final slivers of truffle.

So there you have it - 8 days of truffle heaven, which won't be repeated in 2023, so roll on 2024!  I should also add that there is a real art to photographing food, which includes the right lighting and the food not being hot.  But scrub around that - I remembered to take a snap before wading into dinner and that is the most I can promise!

Next week there should be animal videos.

 

A time of decadence

The past week has been one of gluttony, sloth and the odd bit of exercise to try to make that seem less decadent, but really that is what this season is all about - recovery, putting on a bit of winter fat, reflecting on the past and looking forward to the new year.  The cold broke but it is taking a while for the warmth to build up again in the old stones of our house.  Actually it is rather nice to be curled up on a sofa in the Snug (used to be called the seating area, but now it is seriously snug), with the woodburner going, covered in fleece rugs and with a cat to provide a bit of extra snuggle - it's what winter is about!

There was also the issue of serious puddings - a fantasy of chocolate, praline, salted caramel and biscuit on the Friday before Christmas, and The Pudding on Boxing Day over in Chinon.  Between them, I think these are good for about 4 pounds on the hips!

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Looking around when walking, either to get to the supermarket, or just for the joy of walking, there are still natural sights to delight in.  This leaf with a corolla of damp around it was rather striking at Aldi.  The old tree in an abandoned area of scrub was about 50/50 tree and mistletoe, and for those who say the quality of French mistletoe is rubbish with no berries, I beg to differ.  This is loaded!  The birds are in for a treat.

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There is hope in the vegetable plots.  The broad beans sown in late November are now starting to show, seemingly unaffected by the serious frosts.  Looked at from a distance, it is also clear where I sowed the wheat in a vain attempt to cut down on next year's chicken feed bills.

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While there has been no major activity on the trail camera other than foraging blackbirds - in the main due to a fogged up lens - I did spot a minor catastrophe at Badger Towers.  Whether a boar had been jumping up and down in that area too much, or whether the layer of soil became too thin, or whether frost and rain did their thing, a foot long piece of set entrance fell in during the weekend.  It was tidied up fairly quickly and doesn't seem to have had any lasting impact, but it certainly looked different - and Clause agreed with me.

So the final image of the year is of the best view in France, in my opinion anyway.  Whatever the weather, it makes my heart leap with undefined joy.  What a pity the camera on a smart phone can't really capture the true joy of it!

Enjoy however you spend the New Year cross over, and next time I will review the wildlife year  of 2022, before getting on with the excitements of 2023.

Midwinter musings

Apologies for not writing on Sunday - a mix of yuletide fun and frolics and some wretched football match meant that the weekend didn't go as planned and since then I have been running to catch up.  But yesterday, after securing a rare piece of meat for Christmas Day at the market (whole poultry is a bit rare with the avian 'flu outbreak), getting my fourth Covid jab and sending off the final version of a report I've been working on for a number of weeks, I found that I've caught up.  Actually it works well, as I don't want to blog for the next two Sundays so pushing the publications back a few days is a good thing.

The previous blog talked of the sharp frosts that had hit that weekend and the cold snap lasted another week.  While nothing compared to what the North American continent is facing, it was nasty enough for us in the west, and further east they recorded temperatures as low as -18ºC.  The sustained cold meant that buildings lost any retained heat, and we found ice in the bowl in the cats' kitchen one day!

I read today a short story about the midwinter hare, and ours is certainly out and about a lot at the moment.  There is a trail through the scrub and I guess there is a den somewhere along the run.  The trail camera is at one end of the run and so we are getting a lot of images of the hare and also some short films as it becomes more used to the strange log that has appeared.  More of those next week perhaps, as I really can't face battling YouTube today!

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The hunters have been out and about more than once, so I am not surprised to see little evidence of boar and deer at the moment - I think they have moved to more wooded ground.  We are seeing more pheasant activity however, as they are well sheltered in the enclosed grounds and of little interest to hunters with very powerful guns.  Hares and pheasants seem appropriate for the time of year!

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One thing I did manage to do last week was to assemble the vast piles of pillows, duvets and cushions that departing second home owners have left with us as it wasn't worth taking them back to the UK and facing paying customs duty on them.  My audit showed 6 duvets, 15 pillows, 8 cushions, a bolster and an electric blanket.  This was after a number had been donated to worthy human causes.  This carful (I couldn't see out the back, I was relying on wing mirrors) was donated to a local cat rescue, sterilisation and rehoming charity run on a shoestring but a handful of lovely ladies who work extremely hard for no reward other than cat cuddles.  The electric blanket and the bolster were particularly welcome for kittens.

There are no brussels sprouts for Christmas this year from the plot - they may bulk up in the next couple of months - but we are enjoying butternuts, potatoes and parsley and hope to have a magnificent Christmas parsnip from the garden, now the soil has defrosted!

May your midwinter festival of whatever persuasion be peaceful and mellow.

 

Winter is here!

It's cold, it's dark, there is Christmas music on the radio and threats of snow on the weather forecasts - I think it must be winter.  We have been so lucky with temperatures from a purely selfish perspective over the past two months of autumn.  That has freaked out some plants and trees and the oaks round here still have a good covering of brown leaves, while I hear rumours of things flowering out of season, although not with us.  With high energy prices and exhortations to keep electricity use to a minimum, keeping more than one or two rooms at a comfortable temperature gets harder and that pile of fluffy fleeces is particularly welcome when sitting still.  We have also rediscovered the joys of hot water bottles (wilfully ignoring the advice that they need to be renewed every 3 years at least).  Slower cooked comfort food is also the thing, and yesterday was my first winter risotto, using the liquor from rehydrating dried cèpes as the stock, Paris mushrooms to provide the content, and purple carrots to provide a certain je ne sais quoi.  Served with fried medallions of monkfish, it was delicious.  There was a bit of rice left for the chickens (sort of resembles maggots), and I look forward to seeing if that has an impact on yolk colour, should any deign to lay an egg.

Keeping an eye on the trail camera, there has been a mixed bag of activity in the corner of the meadow.  Inevitably, but disappointingly, there was clear evidence of hunting dogs questing up and down the line of fruit trees yesterday, so I fear it will be a while before we see deer, boar and hares in that area again.  On the other hand, I can understand that farmers get a bit hacked off with boar activity, as we have plenty of evidence of their destructive tendencies and a litter can be up to a dozen piglets, with no natural predators.  The badgers aren't out at a time when the dogs are but, and I could well be wrong, are likely to hibernate for a bit soon.

I also know very little about the private life of the pine martins, so whether this chap is getting ready for a long sleep or not, I couldn't tell you, but it is always lovely to see him around the camera area.

What we are seeing a lot at the moment are standard "garden" birds enjoying turning over leaves and checking boar damage for something interesting to eat.  There has been a jay, a pair of blackbirds, a green woodpecker I think, the inevitable pheasant, and also a thrush.  It is years since I have seen a thrush in the garden, but over at The Shack, I have heard them smashing snails and have found their anvils in and around the vegetable plots, which is delightful.  Not only do they help keep pests down for me, but the broken shells add a bit of drainage to the heavy clay.  So I knew they were around but had to take it on faith in general.  I was therefore delighted to find one posing in front of the camera for me, and also very pleased with the quality of the photo, even when cropped/blown up a bit.

While I am not one of those that advocates you leave your garden covered in leaves, with long shaggy grass and weed stems, I would suggest keeping a small corner untouched to allow thrushes and blackbirds to have somewhere to rummage, because they are getting rid of the things that will eat any crops and flowers next year.

Have a good week!

 

The tail end of autumn

Yes, on Thursday Winter kicks in and there are hints of Christmas in the air too, with decorations going up in the streets.  It is really rather bizarre, as the weather is relatively warm still, many trees still have leaves, and not all have turned colour yet either, and I have the most magnificent yukka flowers out too!

In the vegetable garden, the parsnips continue to do what they do, the chard is amazingly lush, there is a magnificent crop of parsley, and the brassicas continue to be munched by caterpillars.  At least the red cabbages are hearting up, but it will be a while before the cauliflowers do the same - about three months, I think.  The token Brussel sprouts are not really showing any development yet, so John may have to cope with bought ones for Christmas Day!  There are also a number of self-seeded curly endive growing around the edge of one of the beds.  I marked their position so they wouldn't get mown, but the markers were moved as they were in the way for mowing... Anyway, they have reappeared and now I need to try to keep them faintly weed free.

Last weekend I changed the position of the trail camera, and after a false start, as I got lots of images of horsetail blowing in the wind, there has been some activity.  Well, when I say some activity, I think it is fair to say that I have captured activity from three species of bird, and five of mammal!  The place I have chosen is clearly popular with many, but now we are into the challenge of cold season images, so that most are at night, and many in fog - some things are really very grainy, but see below for pheasant, pine martin, hare, badger and boar.  As far as photos go, I also have deer legs, but there are a couple of videos of them which make me think that the faun that was born there in the summer is still in the vicinity.

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It doesn't happen as often as it should, but we went out for dinner during the week, to that fine concept, the "All you can eat Chinese Buffet".  Basically, you pay a price, which depends on age and time of day, and then can keep going up for more until you can't eat any more.  The caveat is that if you take more than you can eat, you pay a supplement, which seems only fair to me.  There is a vast range of starters and mains, plus you can take a plateful of raw ingredients and get them woked to your liking.  There is also an ice cream bar, which we didn't spot until we were too full to eat anymore!  The visit had been planned and cancelled too many times to be funny since last November, so it was delightful to finally assuage my need for caramel pork and noodles!

There are many of these across France, and they all seem to be cavernously huge, on slightly dingy shopping estates.  I will probably survive another couple of years before I need to go back, but it was a lovely change!

 

Work and Mushrooms

Last week I waxed lyrical about the wonders of the cèpe mushroom, and we have been lucky to find a few over the last 10 days so that I have been able to dry a load in the desiccator for use over the coming months, as well as being able to eat rather a lot fresh.  They make a lovely omelette and work well with garlic, and with garlic and herb butter - such a pity that most of the chickens are currently on strike (nothing to do with bird 'flu, more to do with shorter days, getting older and moulting).  This panful was particularly tasty.

The challenge with collecting mushrooms from the wild, once you have correctly identified what is edible of course, is that humans are not the only beings to enjoy a good mushroom.  There is a small insect, which I think of as the "expensive mushroom fly" which can get there first, and there is nothing you can do about it.  Some people will eat fly damaged mushrooms, but I don't.  I will share with a slug, although not at the same time, but i draw the line at flies.  I found this fabulous cèpe yesterday afternoon, and from the condition of the underside of the cap, it was a very new growth one.  I was so proud of it!  Sadly, when I cut it open to prepare it, as you can see, it was riddled with the beastly fly.  I have buried it in leaf litter in the hope that it will spread mycelium and start a new colony, but I'm not telling anyone where! 

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I have a nasty suspicion that this means the end of the mushroom season for this year.

There are other critters out and about that I wouldn't expect at this time of year - caterpillars!  And not just any, but the dreaded scions of the Cabbage White Butterfly.  I have spent hours with the Cats in the Country explaining the difference between a cabbage white and all other butterflies (cabbage whites are good cat food, all others are banned), but they just don't seem to listen and don't spend enough time on brassica patrol.  I don't think this will utterly defeat my attempts at cauliflowers, but it won't do them any good either.  I picked loads off by hand (and got very green fingers as a result) and threw them away to where I hoped they would attract robins and other birds but kept finding more!  Ugh.

It has been unnaturally warm this weekend - even for northwest France, 18ºC is not normal for the middle of November - so I was finally spurred into digging up the last 9 potatoes.  It didn't help that a lot were sprouting again, and I needed to get shot of all the foliage.  It hasn't really been cold enough for storing potatoes out of the ground easily, but at the same time, frost isn't good either.  They were nice and plump, and I knocked off a load of shoots, so hopefully they will be OK.  They are now in a drying rack in a barn, hardening off, and letting the soil dry off them too.  I guess that was another 15 kilos of spuds for the winter.  I also made my first sowing of broad beans - 66 to be precise - in a bed beside leeks and cauliflowers - fingers crossed they all germinate.  I am eyeing up another bed for a further double row as it was a good-sized packet of seed.

There has been no action on the trail camera this week, so it has come home for recharging of batteries and clearing the SD card.  Next week there should be some video clips, when I have had a chance to look at what is there.

So rather than talk pigs and badgers, I will mention the one and only thing we miss from our old life in the UK - cricket.  We left in early 2005, just as free to air cricket coverage was coming to an end.  It did make the move that bit easier, as previous summers would be spent re-caning chair seats in front of the Test Matches, and occasional visits to local venues for Sunday League limited overs matches.  It was a passion, sometimes an obsession even, but selling out to Sky broke my heart and my habit.  There is a spot in the garden where I can pick up Radio 4 LW, and we still have a couple of radios that can pick that up, but any other form of radio gets nasty noises and licence restriction warnings.  So it was a real pleasure to hear that Channel 4 were showing the final of the Twenty20 World Cup free to air this morning, and a nifty app gives us 1 hour of UK TV per day.  Breakfast was taken watching a fine England bowling performance, and I gather they won in the end.  While pyjama cricket isn't my favourite form of the game, it was still a real treat to watch!

Have a good week!

 

What a strange week!

Last Sunday the weather decided to break, with thunderstorms and rain, except around us.  I could see storms, but couldn't actually hear them, and we had little rain during the week despite the predictions for quantities of up to 20mm.  We had 5mm.  Not really enough to do anything other than make the air heavy and uncomfortable.  But then the temperatures went down, and I even wore a pair of jeans one day! 

The chimney is now swept, so we could have a fire, but the house is still very warm, so no need.  It got ever cooler so that on Friday, when visiting Chinon, I turned down the opportunity of a soft drink in the Place Jeanne d'Arc on the basis I didn't have a jumper with me.  Today I am back in shorts, and we expect temperatures of 30ºC and over for the next couple of days.  Crazy!  This storm was to the North of le Mans, 50km away!

The trail camera is starting to be accepted again by the local wildlife - it takes a while for them to get used to a lump of willow trunk sitting and looking threatening in their "zone".  There are some videos, but i don't think the bandwidth is there today to load them onto YouTube and share them.  In addition to the badger, deer and birds of last week, more deer have been spotted, and the pine martin is back.  A new addition to the local gang is a hare - the field next door was ploughed, and he/she seemed to object.

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Yesterday was the annual Méchoui or outdoor pig roast at our local Boule de Forte club, la Paix.  Covid meant that it couldn't run in 2020, as no large gatherings were allowed, while the rules were changing so often in 2021, the organisers wisely decided not to bother.  This year, with no restrictions, it was back. 

While for the organisers, it starts early on a Saturday morning, getting the pig cooking, for us punters, things kick off from about midday with a long drinks and nibbles session, before we are called to table for more drinks and nibbles.  Then there is a collation of cold salad starters with bread (at which point the chaps buy wine and water), and by about 3:30pm, people are starting to get restive, so six chaps will carry the pig over to the carving table and serve it up.  Platters of hot pork, bowls of beans and bowls of ratatouille then do the rounds, and there are always seconds.  There can be a bit of a scrum for good bits of skin and crackling, but I did well on that this year.  Then when you feel you couldn't eat or drink another thing, cheese and slices of apple tart arrive, followed by coffee. 

We dragged our sagging tummies home at 6:30pm, as our brains were ringing with French, including heartfelt condolences from French friends who had been thinking about us, they assured us, constantly since Thursday evening.  The warmth of community feeling is a wonderful thing.

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So yes, that's the final aspect to a strange week - Thursday 8th September, at 7:33pm the France 3 news was interrupted in its first story by the breaking news that Queen Elizabeth II had died.  By the time we turned over to France 2 for the detailed weather forecast including the Caribbean islands, their 8 o'clock news had started early, with presenters wearing black, doing a four-hour special on Her Majesty.  Their coverage was sad but also celebratory.  They managed to find a couple of British, but fluent French speakers from their staff to make some sort of serious comment, while National Treasure, Stéphane Bearne (OBE) was wheeled out to talk about the several times he met the Queen, including for his investiture.  It was an excellent homage to a great lady. 

While flags were lowered on Friday in many places, and any news programme or channel is a bit obsessed by it all, we can turn over and watch other things.  We can also change channel on the internet radio and go from mournful or reflective music on Classic FM and Radio 2, to jollier tunes and normal voices on French radio stations.  Come the 19th September, I guess we will be glued to a news channel though - after all, it is history in the making.

But now I must go and make peach jam, because over-ripe peaches wait for nothing and no one!