A 'Guest' Blog - by a guest!

This week the perfect guests have been to stay.  They took over all dishwasher; pool-cleaning, bin emptying and garden watering duties and also took themselves off in their hire car every day to explore the area and they have been so enthusiastic about the visit that they even volunteered to write this blog.  So over to my ‘guest’ blogger, Tony .....

 

The offer of a week’s holiday in the P-O was just too good to miss - but what about the chien?

My hostess (Mme. Caroline) was welcoming, but did warn me of the dog.  It was bound to be a fierce one and I am not very good with mutts.  I devised a cunning plan to deceive everybody (and their dog) by playing ball with the thing.  Literally.  Tennis, football and handball have been undertaken; so much so that Loulou has now become absolutely devoted to me and will not leave me alone. We have indeed bonded and I now refer to her as the CGV (Chien a Grand Vitesse). She has become almost too affectionate - several times I have awoken to something wet and shiny in my lap only to find the mutt’s  nose resting la.

Anyway we are off for a walk in the vineyards now

 hullabalou Loulou

don’t bring Loulou

  I’ll bring her myself

Is the P-O a happening place?  Well judged on this week it is.  We hired a car so as to explore the area and have most certainly done so. Several great trips and the two most frequently heard phrases in the car have been “Look at that” and “bloody traffic”!

Always something happening and lots of traffic to follow it. On Tuesday we popped over to the delightful Prades, sightseeing combined with a wonderful market selling local fresh foods and artisan products - very popular with people driving in for miles (or kilometers). The highlight for us was the fight between two pairs of stall- holders (probably husband and wife but you can’t tell these days), when packing up for the day one had knocked over part of the others display.  A lot of shouting from the guys, but the real drama came from the two women who went at it like a pair of fishwives (well in this case a greengrocer and a dress shop owner). Peace was barely restored by the appearance of Arthur Bostrom’s brother (the “Poloseman” in Allo Allo) who told them twice to be quiet and then gave up.

The next day saw a trip to Collioure. Superb.  I can’t add anything to all the delightful things there. Well there is one – market day is Wednesday!   Selling local fresh foods and artisan products - very popular with people driving in for miles (or kilometers) etc etc. get the picture?

By the way avoid St Cyprien on a Friday unless you like markets selling local fresh foods and artisan products  - very popular with people driving in for miles (or kilometers).....

So now we have becone wise to these markets and moved the planned trip to Ceret from Saturday (market day) to Sunday.  Brilliant idea and Ceret and  Amelie-les-Bains are both absolutely gorgeous and well worth a visit. Who would have thought that they could host both  the XVIIIth national Petanque championships AND the Folkdance festival at the same time in fact the same weekend (today) 

Bouchon* is a great word!

*Traffic jam

Animals of the Pyrenees-Orientales

On my way to the garage the other day I spotted two llamas and a camel tied up on the roadside.  I managed to take a quick picture but it was only as I was filling the car that I looked up and spotted a trailer containing 3 lions parked next to the pumps!  The circus was in town so while this is not ‘the norm’ for the area it made me think a bit about the different kinds of wildlife I have come across since moving here.

Wild pigs were my main concern but I have had very few sightings – one I saw lying dead by the road and I heard one snort and run off as I walked along the country lane to the village so I’m guessing it was more scared of me than I was of it – if only it knew!  I’m still not sure what was coming into the garden and digging holes around the fruit trees a few weeks after we moved here as there was only a very small gap under the wire fencing at the bottom of the garden but, once we had blocked the hole with a plank, something was making a lot of banging noises trying to break through the barrier so I assume it was a very cross Sanglier.

Reptiles have never been top of my list of ‘cute’ creatures and I would still love to meet the first Frenchman who looked at a frog and thought ‘hmm, that looks tasty’.  We have a lovely pond in our garden with everything a frog could wish for and yet they still prefer to jump into our pool and we regularly have to scoop them out with a net which can take ages as they are very clever at holding their breath and hiding behind the pool alarm mounting.  Perhaps we are luckier than our friends who live near Toulouse and have to deal with snakes in their pool.  Readers of a nervous disposition should perhaps skip to the next paragraph - the only encounter with a snake in our garden occurred last summer when I called my husband to watch a frog jumping around in front of the hedge, and then screamed as it was chased and caught by a snake.  I’m ashamed to say that I had to ignore the whole episode as I wasn’t sure whose side I was on...  I have recently come across 2 more snakes – one of which I couldn’t avoid running over as it was crossing the road.  In the rear view mirror I could see it was still wriggling but I am still wondering, why did the snake cross the road....

And still on the subject of reptiles, there are the lizards.  I don’t mind the little normal ones who tap-dance their way across the terrace in the heat of the day but the Geckoes with their big sticky feet make me feel a bit uncomfortable, particularly as one seems to be living above the polystyrene false ceiling in my office.

Which reminds me, I am literally suffering from ‘empty nest syndrome’.  In March a very determined bird (apparently a Redstart) insisted on flying into the house and making a nest in the boiler room next to my office.  At first it was quite amusing as the female soon realised when the patio door was shut or not but the male was regularly to be found shocked and stunned (as was our Son when he came to visit as being 6’3” tall he often found himself directly in the flightpath).  Luckily the birds soon found a new access – through the office, via the Salon, through the bathroom window, into a Verandah and out through an opening around the exhaust pipe connected to the old generator (every home should have one!) and we no longer had to keep the patio doors open for them.  Now the birds have flown the nest and we no longer have to duck when moving around the house.

And finally, to dogs and cats.  I always assumed they were just cute pets but here there are many wild ones.  Apart from the fluffy little dogs that are carried around in handbags in the town centre, many dogs here are ‘working’ dogs and spend much of their time roaming around protecting their territories.  Just the other day two dogs rushed out of a field by the roadside and attacked the car as I was driving.  In winter we have to be very careful when walking around the vineyards as the hunters don’t seem to pay much attention to the ‘no hunting’ signs and if we hear barking and the sound of bells (which are tied to the collars of the dogs so the hunters don’t shoot them by accident) we turn and go home.   The cats aren’t much better as there are so many abandoned ones that they turn feral.  On one occasion we had stopped at a roadside fruit stall and a wild cat suddenly shot out and attacked the dog!  Luckily the stall owner had a bottle of water to hand so after being drenched with water and beaten with a plastic bottle it ran off hissing.  Just another day in the French countryside!

A matter of taste

One night last week I had 7 glasses of wine and still drove home safely.  Perhaps I should add that each glass was less than 1cm full -  I was at a ‘beginners guide to wine tasting’ evening.

Friends that know me will be laughing already as I am no ‘beginner’ at wine tasting!  I started drinking it in the late 70s when pubs & bars in the UK finally caught up with the fact that it could be offered by the glass rather than just a bottle with a meal.  My grandparents even bought a bottle of Blue Nun for me to drink rather than the usual glass of sherry but being kept at room temperature in their drinks cabinet did nothing to improve the flavour.  (After they died we also found several bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau which they were storing in their cellar)! 

The French look on the British as stereotypical wine drinkers in that we drink too much of it, go for quantity rather than quality, and drink it at strange times – some French friends were quite surprised when we offered them wine at Apero time and insisted that they only drank wine with meals (some rules are just crying out to be broken ‘though!).  I’m afraid that I conform to this stereotype and purchase my wine from the Co-operative outlet in the village where 5 litres costs under 10 euros – you can even have your plastic bottles filled with wine via what looks like petrol pump.  However, my eyes were opened recently when we went out for dinner with our neighbours and J-C spent more time perusing the wine list than the main menu.  After much discussion a bottle was ordered and  I’m ashamed to say that my first thought was ‘that’s not going to go very far between four of us’ but for some reason, the fact that it was so delicious & complemented the meal perfectly made me sip and taste it rather than swig it down in large gulps. 

Having finally realised that perhaps there is more to wine than price but not really knowing how to find out more, I was really pleased to see an invitation on Facebook from a couple who run a Domaine in the neighbouring village www.domainetreloar.com offering a one-off ‘class’ called ‘How to Taste Better’.  This really was a ‘back to basics’ class where we learnt about the five main ‘tastes’ and were invited to smell and taste glasses containing water with added sugar, water with pure alcohol added and also glasses containing acid – I hasten to add that this was heavily diluted as I’m sure it would be very bad for business to poison potential customers.  Now that we knew what we were looking for, when it came to the wine itself it became easier to recognise the different tastes and as we swirled, sniffed and tasted we began to sound like real wine snobs as we discussed tannin levels, acidity and oak flavours.  We all agreed that the last glass we tasted was our favourite – which was lucky as it just happened to be produced by the Domaine itself! 

Many many thanks to Jon (for the talk) and Rachel (for the nibbles) and I look forward to the next lesson.      

Smoking is bad for ...... pretty much everything!

One of the main reasons we bought our house was because of the fantastic views of the Pyrenees and to Fort Bellegarde on the Spanish Border. Today I can hardly bear to look at it because it is shrouded in smoke due to a horrific fire which has so far killed 4 people (all French) and injured god knows how many.

It started around lunchtime yesterday (Sunday) on the Spanish side of Le Perthus. Le Perthus is a ‘Mecca’ for the locals (and holidaymakers alike) as it straddles the border but for some reason is a ‘duty-free’ town so that is the place to go to stock up on cigarettes, whisky and all manner of other things, and is also open on Sundays. The route through Le Perthus (D900) is the ‘old’ road to Spain but it soon became apparent that the fire was not going to be controlled easily so tourists and residents were quickly evacuated and the road was closed – together with the main A9 Peage motorway. It didn’t help matters that Sunday was a day of exceptionally strong winds and the fire quickly spread towards the coast.

The picture above was taken late afternoon yesterday. Last night I could see the glow of flames on top of the mountains, and also the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles.

This morning there was just the slightest wisp of smoke to be seen and it looked as if everything was finally under control and the wind had dropped – until mid-morning when a new wind from the sea began and the fire took hold again and now appears to be moving over the border towards France again. All day helicopters and 'water' planes have been flying backwards and forwards between Perpignan Airport & the border. As I write this (8.15pm French local time Monday evening) the view of the Pyrenees has completely vanished and I can smell the smoke.

This is the closest I have ever been to a ‘natural disaster’ and I find it pretty scary – not that I am in any danger (hopefully!) but the fact that such an enormous disaster has probably been caused by a discarded cigarette butt. Sadly it will probably be impossible ever to diagnose the cause of this but the ground is so dry here that just the tiniest spark is enough to cause chaos. And this brings me to the main reason I wanted to write this blogpost: it is just over one year since I stopped smoking. I had smoked for all of my adult life, in the car, at home, in the countryside, wherever and whenever I could. As with most smokers I knew it was a stupid habit but after several failed attempts to ‘give up’ I seemed doomed to continue. But finally last year something ‘clicked’ in my head and I realised I wasn’t actually giving anything up, just making a positive decision not to do something so stupid anymore. In fact, I think it was totally to do with buying this house – partly because I realised that the ridiculous amount of money I was spending on cigarettes every week would go a long way towards the renovations the house requires, but mainly because I would be really worried about setting fire to the garden! So, last June I slapped on the patches and here we are, 14 months later, quite anxious about watching the incendie developing in the distance but extremely relieved that I don’t feel the slightest moment of guilt in case I had anything to do with it!