Rural Life

A guest contributor dictates....

It seems to me that all blogs need a little refreshment from time to time - and this one is no exception.  I have also been accused of not playing my part in the household and just flopping around rather uselessly of an evening rather than helping with the Christmas cards or similar (my portrait at the end of this piece is not typical I assure you). So to set the record straight, I had better describe how I help out in these cold times.

Well firstly it is important to note that without me and my two chums, "they" would never get out of bed in the morning, but the need to tend to our needs means they do actually see the morning!  Secondly, the house would not be properly aired at this time of year, without me constantly reminding them to open a door or window so that I can get into the garden, or come back into the house.

I have also been doing a certain amount of digging so that all those nasty pests in the raised beds are killed off by the frost, plus I have been inspecting the bark of the cherry and pear trees pretty closely for other nasty things - I was reminded I needed to have a go at the apricot today too.

Then there are my jobs in the community, keeping various elderly neighbours on their toes.  I have to say that if I wasn't there to knock pots over, scare chickens, bat nuts about and look round open doors and windows, these poor old things would just stay rooted to their kitchen chairs, dealing with vegetables.  I am honestly doing a public service.

Perhaps the most onerous of my current duties is sorting out that young brat next door - you, know boy kittens think they can get away with anything by looking small, but that doesn't wash with me and he is going to get a jolly good thrashing when I next get my paws on him.  Of course, the poncy white oaf that sits on my wall needs to be sorted out frequently as well - I know his Mum is on the village council but I still say he is a waste of space with the memory of a goldfish.

So as you can see, my days are full, when "they" just sit around in front of these computer thingies with an odd unfocussed look on their faces (until reminded to move by me demanding food), and I am therefore entitled to my 18 hour snooze.  So there!

Les en primeurs sont arrives!

With many apologies to the French language for missing acents and dodgy spellings and potentially missing agreements.  It is the third Thursday in November however and as such the formal date for release of many of the en primeur or nouveau wines.  Some do come out earlier - we had primeurs in a restaurant in Narbonne in late October last year, but today is the day for Beaujolais and for Anjou Gamay.

I gather there are still parties for the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau but a lot of the marketing hype and fun seems to have gone out of it and wine snobs are sniffy about the quality of a wine that has been maturing for a few weeks at best.  I think they are missing the point with it.  November is a pretty grim month quite often, with storms, flooding, short days, cold nights, so something a bit fun is nice to change the mood.

The wines are young and therefore bear a very strong resemblance to grape juice with a kick, but you aren't drinking them for deep tanins and a complex nose, you are drinking these wines for a giggle.  If you want your tanins and complex nose and oak top notes and all the rest, pay a few pounds or euros more for something that is older and don't be offended by a young wine.

One thing we have found with Beaujolais Nouveau Villages, is that if you keep them for 18 months, you end up with quite a nice complex wine, although one with no more keeping qualities.

So this is our selection from Super U, and we will work our way through them, and if any are any good, we will probably invest in a couple more bottles, to keep us giggling until Christmas!

The fruits of my labours

Not the picture of pigs' ears but rather nasty weather has enabled better photographs to become available finally - could normal service be being resumed?  But then what is normal?

We have now picked the 9 fruits that we let mature on the young medlar tree, partly as all the leaves fell off and it looked rather odd.  We have the fruits bletting now in the entrance hall in an egg box, and one would appear to be right for eating - well it is mushy anyway, so later on I will find a sliver of Wensleydale and try it out.  However, as you can see, before the leaves fell off, it looked rather splendid.

As we are now at the middle of November, I thought it was about time to put away the more delicate potted trees and plants - two olive trees (neither very large), an agave (again very small) and a prickly pear.  They spend the winter in the unheated greenhouse, along with the brugmantia and the lemon tree and a pot of avocado saplings.  While I am not too worried about the cold for the olives, I am concerned at them getting water-logged, which is what they really hate.  This year I got one full sized and ripe olive - not enough to bother with either making oil or curing to eat I fear!

And finally sorting through the 400 odd photos on the camera, I came across this lovely picture of the two types of chillis we had growing this year - the smaller ones are hot, while the large ones are totally mild but add a lovely rich flavour to chillis and stews.  Previously I have grown Cayenne chillis which are very hot, but don't do much on flavour so this year has been quite a change.  I picked the last mild chillis yesterday - they are still green but should turn red in the kitchen over the next few weeks.

 
  

Afraid of 13?

Today is Friday the Thirteenth - a day when many try to spend the day in bed in case of bad things happening.

In France they are a bit schizophrenic about the number 13, so there is always a special massive jackpot on the lottery, they do not fear having 13 people sit down to dinner and if you ask for a dozen oysters from a vendor, you are likely to get 13 not 12.

Today the news reports are full of stories about people being afraid of Friday the thirteenth, putting the blame on Jesus sitting down at a table of 13 at the last supper and then being crucified on the Friday.  Personally that seems more likely to bring on an Arthur Dent moment of not being able to cope with Thursdays rather than Fridays, and better vetting of friends, but there we go.

Could it be that the French are trying to avert people's attention from the truly unlucky Friday the thirteenth back in the forteenth centruy when the French king, Philippe the Fair (Philippe le Beau) had the Knights Templars rounded up and burnt on a Friday 13th?

Still no luck on the photos clearly ...

Must get better photos!

So it's like this:

• two weeks ago we had the final stages of the masonry project at the back of the house to deal with, plus next door's new kitten
• last week I was tearing round the UK trying to earn an honest crust
• this week I have to catch up with all teh work that didn't get done last week as I was tearing around the UK

All of this impinges on two things, my ability to sort out photos and my ability to find nice ones to adorn this blog, or even to write something for this blog or my other one.

So in order to prove I still exist, and in a vain attempt to spur myself into finding something better jolly quickly, I put in the photo below.

It was taken on a friend's Blackberry and quite late in the evening, hence the grainy quality, on Easter Sunday when the really rather good Dutch band, Forty Fingers, were playing a gig outside the Excaliber Pub in our village.  The picture is of my frind Kathy and myself with a pair of pigs ears Kathy had brought over for me from their small haolding - I am a fan of eating pigs ears.  But by the time this was taken, we had both had a couple of Stellas....

A bit of time out

I have been quiet for a while, partly trying to cope with the fruit and nuts and also taking some time off.  As I work from home and spend most of my day it seems in front of a computer, that holiday time did include being banned from switching my computer on apart from doing a bit of internet banking.

So how did I fill my 10 days off (including 2 weekends - it really wasn't a long break at all)?

Well, we went to Futuroscope for a day, which is about 2 hours drive south from here, and we made sure we went on a weekday and outside of school holidays.  Once we had checked into our hotel, we hit the park and did 11 rides and attractions before getting tired and needing to eat, after which we watched the evening show and retired to our hotel.  I am not a theme park person but it was superb.  We built up from reclining in comfy armchairs to watch a projection of planets on a domed screen, through walking through a hi-tech hall of mirrors, going up on the Gyroscope, to a white knuckle ride through the Vienne department on a variety of vehicles, to an even more white knuckle ride showing an ecologically sound speed race 100 years in the future. 

For details of Futuroscope follow this link.

We went on to our favourite hotel in Brive la Gaillarde for a night - for more details follow this link.

Then we had a relaxing four days at home, dealing with the mason, chopping down a hedge, finding tiles, collecting nuts - stuff like that, before heading off for another weekend, but this time at the sea.  We haven't downloaded the photos yet, but the Brittany coast when it is blowing a gale is fabulous.  We stayed at this hotel and had a jolly nice time, including breakfast outdoors on the terrace on Sunday morning, watching the tide go out.

However, now I am back at work, in front of the coputer and feeling that I must take some time out to set up the heating in my office before I freeze!

Mellow fruitfulness!

Well, there is mellow and then there is run ragged by it all!

I really should not complain, and I'm not, but how can I get "paid for" work done when there is all this fruit and stuff to be dealt with?  Once this is posted I must go downstairs and make quince juice from the 5 quince we got on our little tree - 5 quince weighing a total of 7lbs!  They are huge and gorgeous and ripe and I will photograph them before chopping them up, adding water and simmering them for a good 2 hours - the house will smell fabulous!

But that is not all!  There are still pears knocking around, plus a few peaches, tomatoes (green and red) and aubergines, which tends to imply there will need to be more chutney making going on - I have already made 10 jars of chutney of various types, plus a few bottles of plum sauce, vast quantities of jam of all sorts, while the freezer groans with all the fruit that is frozen in there for more jam and jelly making (mostly tayberries and black currants).

The chillies - two types this year, hot, and flavoursome - are ripening up and need to be strung up for drying before the deadly combination of frost and the mason starting work get them - I am always terrified of getting chilli finger and then poking myself in the eye or something similarly stupid.  But I must be brave, or my chilli con carne will be tame during the winter.

There is a giant marrow lurking in the undergrowth and three "potimarrons" - a small and sweet variety of pumpkin - that all need to be dealt with too.  The potimarrons should store if I take advantage of the fine weather currently to dry them off.  The marrow will probably end up as chicken food.

At least the medlars aren't clamouring for attention - they have another month or so to go before they will be anywhere near ready, but the nut trees are starting to do their thing.  We are rigging up nets under two walnut trees and have also invested in a nut harvester (something for a separate blog I think), while yesterday we found our first sweet chestnuts of the season and ate them roasted on the portable cooker - yummy.  That does mean that we will have to seek out chestnuts however, as the stock in the freezer is sadly depleted, and I have this brilliant crumble recipe...

We are up to 4 litres of sloe gin set off and I have another good pound of sloes to prick and put into gin, so that is good, and we can probably do with more of that.

Last year we got a good dollop of apple juice made, this year we were in a giant consortium, and came away with 24 bottles of apple and grape juice and a further 46 bottles of pure grape juice.  As the wine round here is good and cheap, why bother making something fairly nasty yourself?  Instead this rich, dark brew is ideal for lunches and cocktails, if a bit strong for breakfast.

I will tart this post up with some images, but I am also being called to pick figs which are ripening and need to be dealt with - more chutney perhaps?

By the way, if the Mossy Gnome is reading this at any stage - how are things?  Are you OK?

French Comic Films

The theme for the Comice at Pontigne was Comic Films, and this was reflected in the grand procession of floats on the Sunday afternoon.  How many of these great works have you heard of, let alone seen?  And let's be clear - some of these are the biggest grossing films in France of all time!

The procession always starts with what they call the Ambassadrices - we would say carnival queens - and the Cadets de Baugeois - be glad there is no sound.

Next came le Vieil Bauge as we will be hosting the Comice next year.  Our chosen film was Les Bronzes font du Ski - about a bunch of middle aged swingers who go on Club Med holidays together, this time skiing.  I think there are four or five in the series, most of which were huge at the box office.

Vaulandry were next, and I never really got to see anywhere on their float the name of the film, but from the float I would imagine it was Les Enfants du Marais with Jacques Villeret - actually a very nice little film, but the frog fishing scenes were the best.  In some ways this procession was an hommage to Jacques Villeret and Louis de Funes, of whom more later.

Fougere decided to look more to Hollywood and Walt Disney and did a fine representation of Herbie - although they don't actually call him Herbie over here.

Following them, were Bauge with the first of the Louis de Funes films - le Gendarme de St Tropez.  Louis was kind of the French Norman Wisdom, but funny.

Next up, Le Guedeniau with another Louis de Funes film that is currently also doing the rounds as a musical - so they very bravely stopped every 50 metres and did a dance - Rabbi Jakob - and yes, they are all dressed up as Jews.

Next two pictures of the two floats of Chevire le Rouge, which we were fairly convinced were depicting the Frank Dubosc film Camping (top of the summer box office here 3 years ago - Frank is French Canadian and deeply worrying).

Then Boce - one of the smaller communes - who put on a fine display with another Louis de Funes film, La Grande Vadrouille.  I gather it was hugely popular in its time and is often shown on French TV.  The bloke who seems to be holding a pumpkin in his hand, is actually holding a water bomb made to look like a pumpkin - he was a very good shot, but it was so hot, no one minded.

Clefs came next with the biggest grossing French film of all time, and indeed the film that had the most ever cinema entrances in France of any film.  It is called Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, starred Danny Boon and came out in 2008.

If you have ever taken the fast road between Saumur and La Fleche, you will have passed through Cuon.  This year they came up with a film Le Petit Baigneur - another Louis de Funes film from 1968 and not one I have heard of at all, but a rather sweet float.

St Martin d'Arce was next in line.  They did Asterix and Obelix in fine style - but personally I prefer the books to the films.  We all cheered until we realised we were about to get "magic potion" thrown at us, which seemed to be dirty dish water (I hope it wasn't).

Then St Quentin les Beaurepaires - a tiny village off the main road - which did what I am told is a great French classic - Le Pere Noel est un Ordure.  I never think it wise to mock Father Christmas - you never know, as I saw him finishing his rounds one Christmas morning at Fontain Guerin!

Montpollin had several outriders before the main float turned up as they portrayed the film Mais ou est donc passe la 7eme Compagnie?  The French do a fine line in comedy films about the war.

Chartrene is the smallest commune in the Department - only about 50 registered voters and a few more people than that (mostly British).  They did another Louis de Funes film, but by this stage, my knowledge of these is totally exhausted (though no one did the Fantomas sequence - happily).

Echimire decided to take on the Jean Reno films - Les Visiteurs - about a rather tetchy medieval knight who gets sent forward in time, and doesn't much enjoy it.  I believe his catch phrase in the films was C'est dingue! - it's crazy!

Finally Pontigne brought up the rear, in place of honour with the finest and most highly regarded of all French Comic Films - even more than M Hulot's Holiday - La Soupe au Chou - about a couple of old peasants who make a wicked cabbage soup.  The disturbed digestion they get from this makes them fart a lot, which turns out to be an inter-galactic greeting and brings them Denree, who comes in search of cabbage soup, and brings gifts in return.  Denree is played by Jacques Villeret in an early role.  It cannot be called high art, but does epitomise French films - Truffaut was an abberation.

More from the Comice at Pontigne 2009

I couldn't leave it with just the photo from the dress rehearsal, so here are the Vieil Bauge Transylvanians doing the Time Warp, and at that moment we were keeping our knees in tight!

Once we had done all that fun stuff, the competitive inter-villages games were a pretty serious bout of tug-of-war.  We were outsized by most villages, and puffed from doing the dancing and quick changes behind a caravan.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

After all that fun on the Saturday, we were tired on the Sunday so went over to the Comice and sat in the shade and admired the scenery - Pontigne has a fine twisted spire as well!

However when the time came we had to go to the field entrance and greet the Vieil Bauge float.  The theme was comic films - I'm sure every British viewer of this blog will know Les Bronzes font du Ski intimately!  I will do another post on real comic French films shortly, once I am back from the UK.

The Vieil Bauge website has more photos if you are interested - follow this link here!

Comice at Pontigne - part 1 - the dance

If it is August, it must be Comice time here in the Baugeois.  Last year was Chartrene, this year it was down to Pontigne to arrange it all, next year it is our turn - help!

Last year, with some young friends, we sang and danced the Windmill in Old Amsterdam - following the theme of fables and stories.  This year's theme was comic films, and as I was given the job of deciding what we would do and setting it all up, they had to put up with an English language film - the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  While much of it would be unsuitable for young, old, horses and cattle, the Time Warp sequence is a good ensemble piece and this year, I also had lots of volunteers.

We have been rehearsing in our garden for the past five weeks, and Saturday afternoon was the performance.  The stage had no shade at all, and we were all in black - I was even wearing a wool dinner jacket - and the shade temperature was 32 degrees by the time it was down to us to open the dance proceedings, so I could really have done without having to do an interview with the compere before we got started.  I am waiting to see one of the videos that was done, but we got a lot of applause and it felt right.

The tug of war that we also had to do that afternoon in the baking heat was a complete disaster - I will say no more about that.  I will do other posts about the decorated floats on the Sunday, but leave you with a photograph from the dress rehearsal last Friday, showing my fabulous troupe of dancers in their finest Transylvanian apparel.