Men in tights, bullfighting cocker spaniels, and Byron Kelleher

Cojones for Africa in Dax

Dax. Rhymes with wax. Equals Dax Wax - at least according to the younger generation, who can recite verbatim the relevant advertising for hair products.

In fact, the town of Dax - way down in the south west near the Atlantic coast and the Spanish border - has about about as much in common with a hair product as do the black bulls with which it is most famously associated. (We went for the bulls, but people also go for the thermal spa. Some of those people stay - including my father in law - in the splendid Splendid Hotel, which could almost be in Napier, such is its art deco wonderfulness.) And having recently seen those bulls in action, it would be a very brave person indeed, or a total @#$&wit, who would accuse them - to their faces - of having any truck with hair product. You'd be minus a femoral artery before you could say 'Justin Beiber' ...

Al fresco, Orange

Anyway, before we get to the bullfighting part, there was the small matter of the 1,000 km drive down through the south of France. Ema, Rosalie and Camille would probably beg to disagree, but for me that was as much part of the reason for heading for the south west as the corrida. The pépémobile loves long drives; the motorway system in France is staggeringly good (if expensive: the round trip probably cost us the equivalent of $200 - $250 in tolls); and I'll head down to the south of France at the drop of a hat. So, first stop was Orange, a couple of hours south, where we've already been (March 18, 'Don't think we saw Peter Mayle'). We stayed at our favourite hotel again (the one which feeds you endless crepes for breakfast); the difference this time was it was so warm we could eat out in the street.

House of Usher, Albi

Then a long swing through the south west to Albi. France is really, really Big: big in an Australian sort of way; big in the kind of way in which you look at something on a map and think, 'Oh yes, that's a good 3 hours from here in the pepiemobile', and it turns out to be a good 6 or 7 hours at 120 kph. So the range of different countrysides and architectures you see in the course of a long day in a car is striking. On that day the two which stood out were the garrigue, the striking scrubby, herby terrain of Provence, and the plateau du Larzac, which is a high, rocky, utterly otherworldly place which, on a stormy, windswept night, I can well imagine is home to any number of French equivalents of Emily Bronte's Cathy. (Don't bother watching this clip unless, like me, you think Kate Bush's single is the greatest song every written, or ever likely to be written; even then, you may wish to skip to the good bits on 2.20 ...)

Rosa planking on the Larzac

Albi sans Cathars

Albi is one of the central towns in the story of the Cathars (told really well, if a little lengthily, here). Apart from its significance in that respect, it's also just a gorgeous, gorgeous town. We stayed at a suitably gorgeous, gorgeous chambre d'hote (i.e. a flash B&B), and ate at a little restaurant right alongside the cathedral walls. The sun was setting, a warm wind meandered through the olive trees surrounding the tables - and Rosalie grew concerned that she was going to be brained by a falling gargoyle. Didn't happen, of course, but I suppose it might have, it being Albi and all, where many, many people were put to the torch (don't think that history records any deaths by falling gargoyles, though ...).

Dinner a la Sengresse

After Albi was an even longer sweep into Les Landes, the department in which Dax is situated. The real highlight of that third day on the road was what happened at the end of it. What happened at the end was that we wound up at what was perhaps the loveliest place I've ever stayed at, and that includes the hotel at Whangamomona. Domaine Sengresse is owned by an English family and it is drop dead gorgeous. Big, beautiful rambling houses; a discrete pool out amongst the fruit trees; apperitif served with the other guests (unfailingly lovely and not remotely offensive, and the guests scrubbed up well too); dinner out on the lawn as the sun set. There are many places I recall with affection from other trips, but Sengresse was something else altogether. Then we hit Dax  ...

young Dacquoise bulls in training

... and that, too, was something else altogether, but for rather different reasons. We arrived 3 days into a 6 day festival in which everyone wears red and white, and things were in full swing. They were in such full swing that the music - strategically situated mere metres from our hotel room - ended around 5.00 am for the first couple of nights (on the 3rd night we got a bit of a treat it wrapped up at 3.00 am). With one exception, the music was mostly global pap (including the Village People, who were never any good and who just get worse with age). The exception was the music pumped out by the 'bandas', which are the big bands associated with the villages of the region. There were dozens of them tramping the streets 'til all hours doing their thing. (This clip, in which a banda play the final song of the corrida, is from a corrida in Condom, which is close to Dax. But the atmosphere - including verbal evidence of extreme sangria consumption which, given the lyrical complexity of the song, have no discernible effect on anything whatsoever - is exactly what it was like in Dax.)

When in Dax ...

So far (and bandas apart), so generic. However, two things set Dax apart in a good, entirely non-Village People kind of way. The first were the two evenings we spent quaffing sangria and hooking into Dacquoisian tapas at a bodega. (For some reason people from the town and surrounds are known as Dacquoise and not Daxians, which is what you might expect. You'd be wrong.) That was great: lots of noise; good food; a 30-strong male choir belting out local songs; and semi-butchered conversations about rugby. (The south west is serious rugby country and they take considerable pride in the fact that every New Zealander who's ever played there falls in love with the place (and frequently its women). Watch the locals' reaction to Byron Kelleher's haka on top of a bus.) The second thing was the corrida ('bullfighting' is a misnomer, as it's not a fight at all - more a ritualised series of confrontations ending in the bull's demise). As tends to be the case with things I haven't grown up with, I didn't understand anything about the whole shebang. But Michel's efforts to rectify this were not entirely fruitless, such that at the end of the session we went to, I'd figured out the significance of at least some of the ritual and pageantry. 

Don't try this at home - or anywhere

As a result of all of this, I have altered my thinking slightly on the subject of corrida. Not that it's something one thinks about all of the time but, still, it is a subject that people tend to have strong views about. I'm not that keen on seeing the animals killed, and think that arguing the case for bullfighting because it's cultural and traditional is a bit like saying it's alright to beat your children because that might also have been cultural and traditional once upon a time. On the other hand, the bulls aren't tortured (they do way more damage to themselves in the state of nature than the mere flesh wounds the picadors and bandarillos hand out), and - at the risk of anthropomorphising - perhaps some part of them appreciates being able to go out in a blaze of glory rather than in an abattoir.

And then it was time to head home. Just one night on the road this time, at a chambre d'hote outside of Toulouse. This one was notable for the fact that one of the owners was a chef in a starred restaurant. In short, he was good, and we ate very well that night and the following morning. Then, it was back in pépémobile and a long run home. Just in time to hit the heatwave ...

And the point of getting up at 5.30 am was ... ?

To get in a car and go and watch the 19th stage (etape) of this year's Tour de France, of course! The Tour is one of France's great gifts to the world, and this year's 19th etape took in 2 of the iconic climbs: le Gallibier, and a summit finish on top of Alpe d'Huez. So, of course, this was not to be missed.

The Guardian's cycling correspondent described the etape as 'short and horrible' - and that was only for those spectators intent on walking all or - in our case - part of the way up Alpe d'Huez. For the riders, something like, 'short and murderous' or 'short and suicidal' would have been more accurate. Le Gallibier and Alpe d'Huez are HUGE mothers in cycling terms: Gallibier is almost exactly the same height as Taranaki, and Alpe d'Huez is 3/4 that height (but steeeeeeeeeep like you've never seen). So, it'd be like riding up Taranaki, descending, then whipping around and doing pretty much the same thing - all in one day (actually, in a touch over 3 hours). And this after nearly 3 weeks in the saddle. No wonder these guys are so skinny they're nearly transparent. (The cycling pointy heads amongst you may be interested in this link, but even the non-pointy heads should look at the D211 on this one, which gives you a sense of the sheer horribleness of what was involved.)

Looking fresh

Anyway, here's the stage in pictures. Michel, Cam and I leave at 6.30 am to beat the rush, arrive (with half of Europe; the other half will be watching it on the telly) at the foot of Alpe d'Huez, and start climbing. It's only 14 kms to the top, but it's steep as buggery, so we only get to the 5th of 21 turns before setting up camp. That is already 500 m up a solid 10% gradient. Turns out we have chosen a small quarter of Luxembourg to settle in for the day. Les freres Schleck, Frank and Andy (pronounced 'Ondy' in these parts), are prominent in Le Tour this year, and attract a fanatical and well-natured following. The hardcore have set up camp on our corner (or we on theirs): generator, music, telly, beer keg, tents, cars, bikes, caravans, appropriately spraypainted road (all the way up you can paint your favourite rider's name on the tarmac - the archaeological record goes back millenia), 'Go hard' signs for Frank and Ondy on any remotely flat surface (road, cliff, car) ... all the usual signs of cycling colonisation.

Yes, it is cold

So, welcome to Luxembourg. This will be base camp for the next 9 hours.  It is cold, rocky and full of Frank'n'Ondy stuff. Perhaps the real Luxembourg is not like this, but I suspect it may well be at this particular point in history. Their boys are doing well, after all, and the natives have high hopes that Ondy will take possession of the maillot jaune today. He probably will, but the French and the neutrals (which amount to the same thing - in my view it is impossible to be neutral in something like the Tour, so you may as well be French, which I am anyway) desperately hope this will not happen, as it will mean the end of the glorious, heroic, majestic effort of Thomas Voeckler. (Yes, I know that that makes 3 uber-superlatives in one sentence, but he deserves each of them, and I would by inclination put in more.) The French don't really do the 'little battler' narrative, but this year Voeckler has been the Tour's equivalent of Alan Border, Steve Waugh and Precious Mackenzie all rolled into one. (Some of you will get these cultural references; the quilters amongst you probably won't.) The nation has died with him up ever monsterous ascent in the Pyrenees and the Alps, and we're all secretly hoping that Ondy will fall off/miss his alarm clock/get bored and go home do the decent thing and let Voeckler ride into Paris with maillot jaune on his shoulders. He probably won't, though ...

A wee ride up the hill

What do you do for 9 hours while you wait for something that will take a matter of seconds to zip past? Partly what we do is we watch people ride up and down the mountain (and some of them do it more than once). This is considerably more interesting than it sounds, although if I were to be wholly truthful I would concede that after 8 or so hours the novelty wears off a bit. But there are so many of them! One boffin estimates that there are nearly 500,000 people lining the route of the etape, and that most of these are on Alpe d'Huez. And perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 have come armed with a bicycle, and each of them is intent on demonstrating that they, too, can ride up Alpe d'Huez. It is a bit like a Womad concert without the music: young and old, big and small, thin and the other word We Must Not Utter - they're all decked out in their colourful mockers and are chugging up the hill at various speeds. There are people doing it in wheelchairs! There is the obligatory anti-drug protester (who will later receive a punch in the face from Alberto Contador for his efforts). There is the evangelist predicting the end of the world (but not 'til the end of the race, and only if Thomas does not win). Never have so many DBs been deserved by so many.

To DB or not to DB?

Psycho Boy

We don't deserve DBs, though. We simply sit and watch the  festival. There goes the Luxembourg Lion (he is drinking a lot of DBs, and by the end of the day will be wilting badly but happily). There are the Vikings. There's the weird guy with a Hannibal Lecter mask waving the US and Mexican flags. Noone can figure him out, but he appears harmless. There goes the Roman centurion riding a top-of-the line Cannondale. And so on and so on. It is the strangest thing. Although we can only see the people for 100m on either side of our corner, we can hear vast amounts of noise booming up and down the mountain, and out across the valley. It is slightly apocolyptic, but in a very happy, cheerful sort of way.

Stuff

It is very hot now, so we clump together under our neighbour's umbrella (but he is following the Tour and has not washed for some time, so we do not clump too closely). We talk with Swedes, Portugese, Dutch and English people; we spot All Black jerseys and Sliver Ferns, but retreat into our Frenchness and do not yell out 'g'day'; we stroll along the sides of the mountain and marvel that not one child seems to be wearing either sunscreen or a cap; and occasionally we wonder why we are sitting in full Alpine sun on the side of road. But then the caravan of goodies arrives and we have the answer to our question! For fully half an hour the sponsors' trucks rampage up the mountain. Each is inhabited by French youths who dance madly to Gaga or Madonna (and these days who can tell the difference?) while hurling Stuff out into the adoring masses. Cam deployed her energies to excellent effect: caps, lanyards, jelly things, madeleines, blow up wavy things, other gumpf the purposes of which are not immediately apparent - all vacuumed up.

Look mum, I can read!

Then more waiting.









Then they arrive. And we find that we have badly over-estimated how long it will take the riders to go past. Contador, Rolland and Ondy are a blur, and then are gone. They are riding faster than Psycho Boy can run - he tries to keep up with them, but fails. Possibly his mask hinders his breathing. But there is no Thomas Voeckler: we fear the worst and fall silent. Then a huge roar rolls up the mountain as he hoves into view. He is down - well down - on Ondy and the drug-taking cheat Contador, but no matter: he has battled his way back to the lead group and is hurling himself up the hill like a man possessed (and, in a very real sense, he is). If Tennyson had been both French and alive it would not have been the Charge of the Light Brigade, it would have The Charge of Voeckler up Alpe d'Huez. Equally magificent; equally doomed.


And then they are gone. Later, we find that while Ondy did not obligingly fall off and has indeed taken Voeckler's jersey, the etape was won by Voeckler's young team mate Pierre Rolland. Rolland is the first Frenchman since Hinault in 1986 to take Alpe d'Huez, and only the second local ever to have done so. This makes it easier for us to come to terms with the end of Voeckler's challenge. Those of us who remain capable of rational thought know that all this should not matter to us as much as it seems to. But today, on the mythical Alpe d'Huez, it does.

Who is Peter Gordon?

If you need to be told this then you have been living under a rock for the last 25 years. A small one affording limited visibility of the world beyond. And it's time you got out more. From under your rock.

Three of us plus some bloke

Let me help you. Peter is A Famous Chef. That's him third from the right at the far right of the photo. The chefy looking bloke. The photo is taken at Kopapa, his new restaurant in Seven Dials. (And before you start whittering on about cultural imperalism and appropriation and all that, I should tell you that Peter whakapapas back to Ngati Awa (I think). Plus he's cooked at Turangawaewae for the Kingitanga. So there.) Anyway, Seven Dials would be at the heart of London. (In the second paranthetical aside in one paragraph I would add that Em understands this area to have been Jack the Ripper's haunt, although I see no necessary connection between the two men - apart from a proclivity for using knives, perhaps.) And in a third aside, now that I look more closely at it, there's something wrong with my daughters' eyes on this photo. A slightly manic, possum-in-the-headlights quality that's not generally there. Curious.

Scrounging at the cuzy's

Back to the real point, which is not that Peter is A Famous Chef, but that he is A Cousin. That gives us special status, and means we get to hang out at his restaurants and eat very yummy stuff. (Did I mention that our cuz has TWO restaurants in London? Probably not, so I should. And here they are.) Some mate of Cam's once noted, in what I gather was a puzzled sort of tone, that a surprisingly high percentage of our family's travel photos involve food (see left). This is true, and is largely accounted for by the fact that mostly what we do when we travel is eat (and when we're not actually eating we are planning the next meal). Which we did quite a bit of in London. Peter's stuff was very good: apart from the Turkish number on the left (some whipped yoghurt, chilli oil and chorizo number with poached eggs which set me right for 3 days), our favourite thing was the anzac biscuits we had with flat whites ...

OK, enough of this we've-got-a-famous-cuz stuff. Actually, not quite enough, because the other lovely things were (a) we stayed in his place for 3 nights (Rosalie's blog will tell you why that was cool) and (b) he gave Rose a personally signed copy of his latest book. So that's good, apart from the extra zillion dollars it will add to our excess baggage bill on the way back to NZ.

Surprisingly, more food

Food, though. One of the several things that surprised Ema and I was the extraordinary improvement in the range and quality of good in London. I don't know why we'd be surprised at this, given that we lived there nearly quarter of a century ago, but we were. Other good things we noticed: it's far cleaner than it was, the coffee is better, they let kids into pubs now, and they have excellent information on the reason for the latest delay/cancellation/station closure in the tube. Also, there is a very high concentration of super cars in London, which 3 of the 4 of us appreciated greatly. Not 'super' as in 'That's a super little car, dear', but 'super' in the Jeremy Clarkson sense. The tackers and I ticked them all off: Aston Martins, Maseratis, Lamborghinis (no link here because we don't like them), sundry Jaguars and Porsches (ditto) and, best of all, a real live Bugatti Veyron. Pity it was a manky silver and white colour (white trash owners, we decided in a moment of generosity), but the main thing is that it was there. Just outside Harrods. Another aside. A couple of years ago when Rosalie and I were on our campervan trip to the Far North, one of our games was 'Spot the Audi'. We saw 3 in a fortnight, I think, 2 of which were vintage. After a week in London we got fairly ho-hum about Aston Martins - 'Oh for God's sake, Camille, it's just an Aston Martin' - let alone the swarms of Audis. North Auckland it is not ...

Exhibit #1, V&A

More good things about London. The V&A (see Cam and Rose in the middle of the front row of the photo via this link). Surprisingly for us, our favourite thing was the cafe. This was not only for the food, but because it is in the most fantastic location. The other stuff in the museum was pretty cool, too, though. As was catching up with some old friends from earlier eras in our life, including Gigi Cottave, who was good enough to put up with us for the bulk of our stay. For me, too, it was wonderful to see an old university mate, Tim O'Neill, who has managed the extraordinary feat of still sounding like he's just left the Tron even though he's been living in central London for 25 years. That man definitely deserves a DB.

Some things - like seeing Les Miserables and Kevin Spacey's Richard III - we didn't manage to do. Plenty of others we did: Buckingham Palace, endless little lanes in Hampstead Village, Highgate Village, bus rides around the city, wonderful book shops. And did we mention Peter Gordon?

The mid term report ...

... has been sitting in the bottom of the bag for a few weeks, but it's time to drag it out.

Weather. Jury's split on this one. Half of us (the mature half) give it an 'A+': clear seasonal distinctions; lovely spring; summer warming up nicely. The less mature younger members of the family have taken a hard line and refuse mulishly to move above a solid 'B': snow didn't last long enough; spring has come and gone; and it's too hot. There may be something in this, as today it hit 48 degrees at 3 in the afternoon, and public radio and t.v. were warning people to stay indoors and keep the water topped up. Tomorrow it is supposed to get even hotter ... [Hang on! (Ema here.) It was a lovely afternoon, 35 in the shade, nice cool drink, good book ... only you would have chosen that day to mow the lawns and trim the bushes ...]

Food. 'A' for this. 'Only an A?', I hear you think. Well, the quality and availability of fresh (and frozen) produce is consistently good. (As is the experience of buying it. Today at the market, along with all of her other regulars we took pleasure in Our Cheese Woman's new, bigger, whizz-bangier cart. Our Vege Man tosses in extra bits and pieces for free. Our Lamb Woman could pass for a Topp Twin - with dreadlocks - and once spent 3 months working in the Wairarapa. Our Chicken People do a killer roast chook. We never vary and we are very possessive of Our People.) But here's why it's not an 'A+'. Sometimes the stuff from strange and forgotten corners of Europe is past its best (e coli, e coli, e coli), and the price of fish and red meat is very off-putting. Cam and I purchased some fresh cod at the market this morning: when we figured out it was going for $66 per kg we rapidly reworked the night's meal plan ...

Location. Hands down 'A+'. If we could afford the gazillion dollars that Martine and George's home is worth, we'd buy it. The only people would could possibly feel uncomfortable here are the sort of people who aspire to living in the middle of Idaho. (Appropos of which, this is the best film that Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis and Leonardo di Caprio have ever done, and it was set in Idaho, I think.) When it was 10 degrees below during winter it was 25 inside; when it nearly hit 50 outside today it was 25 inside. That's weirdly consistent. Fruit trees, bats, shade, grassy knolls, golden chooks and grumpy, cross-eyed tomcats happily coexisting, paddocks next door, mountains wherever you turn. We may be hard to shift ...

Work. Rosalie would like to give her school an 'F-'. I said that sounds like the front half of a jet-fighter, not a letter grade. Rosalie being Rosalie, the 'F-' stands. [Although she gets an A+ for her performance there, her endurance and resilience and her capacity to make friends with a whole bunch of boys and the odd girl, even though they have all been together for ever and she doesn't even speak the lingo. And also A+ for her remarkable impersonation of a french person in her school play. Perfect accent, great delivery and poise ... I'll stop now, or she will skin me alive ....]

Em is not entitled to grade this, as she is not working. Unless you count the work of reconnecting (with people, with place, with France ...) which, on reflection, is possibly the hardest and certainly the most important work that any of us have done here. I thought I might hazard a guess on this one. Then I thought better of that rather flawed tactic and asked her: 'A', turns out. I think I shall also give Cam an 'A' for her 4 jobs. Her work in the local canteen and library mean she is possibly amongst the most well connected people in the village - and the most knowledgeable about village gossip! Presently, I'd give my work an 'A-': good overall, but room for improvement. If I get Marsden funding this year, I shall have an 'A+' for the next 3 years.

Best moment.
See previous 26 blog entries.

Worst moment.
First time out on skis, reaching the top of the mountain after a 5 km slog uphill, and realising there was the matter of getting down to attend to. Not being a mountain man or a chamois, I found the prospect of getting down a big hill in fading light and on icy, slippery stuff rather menacing. Actually, riding down a big hill with vertiginous drops either side can be a bit tricky, too, but at least the damn bike stops when you ask it to. [And there is the matter of the mad brother-in-law, who made it all rather worse ...]

Could do better.
Put more effort into my French. Go for more bike rides up steep mountains. Drink less rose while gazing at the mountains I should be riding up. On balance, however, I prefer the Californian, New Age approach to things. So: could eat more of those amazing cakes; watch more free sport on public television; spend more money on food; have longer mountain watching/rose drinking moments; read more Terry Pratchett with the girls; spend more time shaking random hands and yelling 'Pompeeeeeee!' at the gym. [And cook more of those delicious things you find at the market for us! Come on bonhomme, let's have another quiet drink in the garden, these are the shortest nights of the year.]

And on that note, we're off to have another drink in the garden ...

Le joli mois de Mai (or: How many ways can you cook cherries, ay?)

Let me count the ways ...

The thing about living in my other country is that in May, things start coming to life. When you actually have four seasons (although not in one day, thank God), the distinction between them can be striking. Particularly this year, when the transition from winter to spring took about 3 days, and we shifted from skiing to picking cherries in what appeared to be the blink of an eye. (Apropos of which, blinking eyes feature in this very good song from Jesus Jones which some of you may recall. If you don't, and are of a certain age, then you were clearly listening to the WRONG MUSIC.)

Way # 1

So, May 2011: wonderful arrays of wild flowers in the middle of the paddocks (which are not mown, and look the better for it); little, intensely flavoured wild strawberries along the sides of the mountain roads; short, wild electrical storms that cluster around particular parts of the Belledonne range; a line of green ascending as spring climbs the mountains' slopes; similarly ascending puffs of white all along the mountains as the cherry trees blossom.

My enduring memory of this time, though, will be of what happens once the cherries start to fruit. So, let me return to the question posed in the title of this blog. (The more alert amongst you will have long since realised that 'How many ways can you cook cherries, ay?' is not a fair or even remotely accurate translation of 'Le jolie mois de Mai', but there you go.) The answer to the question is: two. The first of these ways is Ema's Cherry Cake. This is a recipe which has been passed down from mother to daughter for a period of around 4 weeks. Actually, neither daughter has listened to a word their mother may have said on this subject: they have simply bolted the cakes down (at least, those parts that have survived close encounters with me). The second method is cherry clafouti. This, too, is strictly an Ema speciality (although I know her father, Michel, is no slouch on the clafouti front either) which she has had ample opportunity to work on over the last several weeks. Every day; in fact, sometimes twice in one day. Never before in this history of this particular family have so many desserts been eaten in such a short space of time. We have taken fusion cooking to new lengths, and have established that there is no cuisine - Thai, French, Japanese -  that does not go staggeringly well with a cherry clafouti a la Ema. Wonder if it would work with kiwifruit?

Dunno - found it in the mountains

Anyway, over the last fortnight or so we have picked at least a thousand cherries, I reckon. That adds up to about $NZ 1,000 worth of fruit. Right back to the days when we were kids and had mango trees in the back yard in Fiji, I have always thought that nipping out and picking fruit off the tree/bush/vine is right up there with having cold beer in the fridge. (I may have collapsed space time in that sentence, but you see what I mean.) But by any standards our cherry tree has been extraordinary. Each day I would scurry up the thing and come back down with 3 or 4 big bowls' worth for that night's clafouti(s). I filled the kitchen sink up once. (But that was before Germans started dying of Spanish cucumbers or whatever it is that's presently killing them - wouldn't dream of doing that sort of thing now.) Plus I could only ever reach about 30% of the fruit - the birds had a field day up the top, where no man has set foot (or is ever likely too, unless he's the general proportions of a cat). Sadly, the tree has finished fruiting now, but Rosalie has brought our attention to the raspberries, which are also starting to look rather good, as are the peaches ...

Actually, a last note on the cherries. There is a beautiful song - Le temps des cerises - which is a reminder that it's not all climbing trees and clafouti. It was penned in the mid-1800s, seemingly in memory of the writer's lost love who was shot by government troops during the suppression of the Paris Commune. Well worth a listen in a quiet moment.

Bit unfair, really, as Venus has no arms

The other thing that you do during spring in France, of course, is you go to Paris. And, of course, when in Paris, we do as Marianne Faithfull does the Japanese do: we visit the major tourist spots, take slightly pompous but Meaningful photos of other tourists acting like tourists, then sneak in when no-one's looking and take 'arty' photos - all the while trying to look like we know more about the thing being photographed than is, in fact, the case. (But at least Em and I no longer refer to ourselves as 'travellers'. If there's anything worse than comfortably off 40-something year olds calling themselves 'travellers', I've yet to come across it. And if you didn't get the Jesus Jones reference above, chances are you won't have got the Marianne Faithfull one either. Sigh. Here you are, then. But for your penance you must listen all the way through.)

Same problem as Venus

So, on the itinerary: the Louvre, Versailles, le Marais, Shakespeare and Co., the Shoah Memorial, walks along the Seine and through the Quartier Latin, and a very good meal at Julien. Actually, to digress briefly: I think I have come across something worse than faux travellers. That would be the 3 people Camille and I overheard in the Louvre saying various things of towering stupidity. (I'd divulge their nationality, but Rosalie - who is rather ferocious about not extrapolating from the particular to the general - would quite rightly take offense. Two clues, though: Sarah Palin and Russia.)

Anyway, comment 1: 'Gee, Paris is big'. (Well, yes ...) Comment 2 (while gazing at David's Napoleon Crowns Empress Josephine): 'Wasn't he the one who married Anne Boleyn?' (Er, no, that would be the big English bloke who also married a bunch of other women and died about 280 years before Napoleon became Emperor.) Comment 3 (different people; same painting): 'That's Napoleon crowning his wife Marie Antoinette' (Er, no, that would be the Austrian blonde you're thinking of, and she certainly never featured in an ad for Brut 33.) Clearly, these were Tourists rather than Travellers who had read rather too much Dan Brown, although it is true that both AB and MA had their heads cut off ...

Paris by night

Given the thinness of my own veneer of high culture, that might be about enough smarminess on my part. One other thing about Paris - it was hot. So hot, in fact, that one night Rosalie and I slept (or at least, we tried to) with wet towels slopped all over us. We resembled poorly assembled mummies. In fact, heat is becoming an issue for most of France. Amidst talk of this being the driest year in a century, and with fears of a significant drought mounting, the relevant authorities have begun confirming the places of residence of the elderly - this with an eye on the experience of the terrible heatwave some years back, in which the elderly suffered particularly badly.

View from the grange

Back in St Nazaire, however, things are a little more bearable. We're a little higher up the slopes of the mountain than most people are, and we seem to catch the breeze as it flows up the valley. Plus we have our little bolthole in Montgaren. Quite a few of you have been up to the ancestral seat (and if you have, Michel and Marie would like you to come back, as they have developed considerable affection for all of you), so you'll appreciate that when it's hot down in the valley, getting up into the mountains is the thing to do. Bit like the Raj heading up to Simla in the hot months, really. If you haven't been there, all you need to know is that Em has a French equivalent of a bach in the mountains (one point of difference with the place in Foxton is that parts of Montgaren - including some of the beds, I reckon - are over 300 years old; another is that it's been in the family for over 4 generations) which is wonderfully cool in the summer. So, if we're never seen again, it'll be because we've removed ourselves to the mountains and are happily living in the grange at Montgaren ...

Barcelona

Another sangria, please ...

Hands up if you wish Freddy had lived long enough to be able to sing the theme song to the 1992 Olympic Games with Montserrat Caballé? (Or that you could sing even a teensy bit as well as either of them?) Well, we've just come back from a week in Barcelona, with wee stop-offs on the way: Nimes and Arles on the way down, and Carcassonne on the way back. We're all sun'd, tapas'd and sangria'd out - detox on all fronts for us for a few days, I'm thinking ...

We drove down through Provence to Nimes, location of the finest remaining Roman temple in Europe, and home to a wee restaurant down a quiet side street that served wonderful toro daub (that's stew made out of bull to you), tomatoes provencal, and a chilled strawberry soup for dessert (which, with all that southern French sun beating down, we needed ...). Arles was the next stop; we spent the night at La Maison d’Arles, which is a gorgeous wee bed and breakfast just down the road from the forum.

The following day we continued down through the Camargue, with its wild white horses, rice fields, flamingos and bulls (also wild, but black, and destined for the casserole pot once they've visited the bull ring). We popped into Saintes Maries de la Mer where, in late May each year, they have a ceremony which culminates in the locals barrelling into the sea carrying a black Madonna on their shoulders. There wasn't much of that sort of malarkey going on when we were there, but it was the first time we've seen the sea since we left New Zealand four months ago.

The drive into Barcelona was a lesson in why it's a really rubbish idea to rely upon Google maps. The Pepiemobile had had quite enough of noodling around little one way streets - all of which seemed to be heading away from where we needed to be - and was on the verge of blowing up when we finally cracked the da Vinci code and found both the hotel and the carpark.

Left of centre

Turns out that as well as falling on the plain, the rain in Spain also falls in Barcelona. That night it absolutely chucked down, which didn't stop us waddling through dark back streets to a little seafood restaurant at which you selected your own squid, calamari, crab and so forth, which was wrapped in large, white paper cones, handed through into the kitchen, then cooked for you. You had to clear your own plates.

Park Guell

So, highlights from Barcelona. Wandering for hours through the Barri Gotic; multiple visits to a little tapas bar so we could work through the full menu at least twice (roasted red peppers stuffed with mushrooms, cod with beans, little meat pasties, potato croquettes, two types of sardines, chorizo, fried potatos with aioli, aubergine with goat cheese, glasses of really, really good Spanish wine … ); strolling down La Rambla late at night (and having your 18 year old offered drugs); visits to La Sagrada Familia (with its idiosyncratic figure of Christ sitting just off-centre), the Park Guell and other melting candle Gaudi wonders; sangria when we felt we were flagging (a bit like garlic, I am not sure it's possible to have too much of this when it's hot); sitting on the top of the open-top bus hooning around the city; Ben and Jerry ice-cream when it got a bit steamy (served by a lovely woman who let us try about 3 ice-creams' worth of every other flavour before settling on one); quite cloisters and narrow little alleys a block away from broad avenues; churros with hot chocolate you could almost stand your spoon up in (look carefully at the photo) ...

Perspective

Not-so-highlights? Only one, really: the drive up the Costa Brava on the way home. Actually, this was a cultural experience in its own right, although one you'd probably only need to undertake once - unless your name is Wayne, you support Manchester City and you hold chips in curry sauce in high regard. It was raining (on the coast this time; no idea what was going on on the plain), and the only place we could find open was Holly's Cafe, a greasy spoon run by some expat English folk who'd forsaken Hull or wherever for Spain. Lovely people, and we appreciated hearing the English version of Radio Classic as we ate (although the wall-to-wall Beatles and Slade jarred a touch with the context). But tapas in Barcelona it was not. So, turns out our last meal in Spain was steak and chips (the girls) and mince and rice (me). Ema sensibly foresook the food and stuck with the John Smith ale ...

More food? Excellent!

Clearly, 4 days in a place doesn’t remotely entitle you to make authoritative pronouncements, but Barcelona feels - in parts, anyway - like a bit of a testament to good regulation and vision. Old working class areas rejuvenated for their original inhabitants; ancient factories converted into cultural spaces; a functional public transport system; and everywhere, little and not-so-little gems of architecture that you wouldn’t believe. It seems a place that's comfortable with itself. (It helped, clearly, that Barca had defeated Real Madrid 2-0 AT THE BERNABEU the night before we arrived. On which note, the four Classicos (i.e. matches between republican Barca and monarchist Real) over the last fortnight have been a sporting revelation. The biggest revelation has been Camille's growing interest in football. We've had a lot of fun watching the matches with Emma's father. Clearly, then, there was only one thing for a man to do for his oldest daughter when in Barcelona - and it's now right up there with posters of Rammstein on her wall. Chur ...) Not sure the Catalans would confuse the terms 'tax cut' and 'vision'. Imagine if Don Brash had been in charge of municipal goings-on there: they’d all be washing their Spanish underwear in their sinks ...

Old gated community

On the way home we swung through Carcassonne. This is a fascinating, haunting, place. Long story short: it was a Cathar stronghold (whatever the rights and wrongs of their 'heresy', the Cathars had stunning taste in castles); was sacked at the instigation of the Pope (further evidence of tolerance of difference and diversity); became part of the French Crown's domain; fell into disuse and disrepair; rediscovered and renovated in the 19th century. Brilliant, sprawling walled city on the top of a hill with commanding views out over the countryside. Every other castle I've ever seen (which, as I've spent a fair amount of my life on the plains of the Manawatu, is not all that many) pales alongside it. They make a mean cassoulet there, too.

And so back to France. Today encapsulated why this is a good place to be. I went for a bike ride today: 1 and a bit hours to climb up the side of a mountain to a village that's over 1,000m up and has a view that runs from Switzerland off towards Italy - and 6 minutes to get down. As a wee reward for having managed to complete that without either having a cardiac arrest or riding off the side of the mountain, I sat outside watching the sun set over the Alps, drank a local rosé ($5.00 per bottle, and better than passably drinkable), and watched the little bats flitting in and out of the cherry tree - the first fruit from which Rosalie picked today ...

Good luck figuring this one out ...

Just saying ...

So, tomorrow we are going to the A&P show to end all A&P shows. It's the Mother of A&P shows. It's the Big Daddy of A&P shows. It's the A&P show you go to when you want to go to an A&P show.

But it's not a Clayton's A&P show. (For those of you of sufficient age to recall the famous ad, have a look at this. This is a candidate for the Ignobles, surely ...) Actually, it's not an A&P show at all. It's better: it's a 'foire' (a French fair). And tomorrow will be the 792nd time this particular one has been held. I kid you not: the Beaucroissant foire was first held in 1219, and is still going strong. Quite how a town the name of which translates into 'Beautiful Croissant' and which isn't on the way to anywhere has managed this is quite beyond me. That's like having a town in NZ south of Gore which is called 'Gorgeous Lamington', and which has the longest-running cake stall ever. Can't wait ...

You think about all sorts of things living here. Lately, I have been reflecting a good deal on life as the Other. A few things to do with cross-cultural relationships have become clearer for me in the last 4 months, and this is one of them. It's the permanent sense that you are About To Fuck Up. (With apologies, but the 3rd of those words is really the best one in the circumstances.) Look at someone wrong; drive on the wrong side of road and cause carnage; make some doozy faux pas in company and immediately assume the position of social leper. That kind of thing ...

But people here are accepting to a fault, and so it never happens - other than in your head. Mostly, it's saying the wrong thing that's the worry. (The occasional American never has this problem, because when confronted with linguistic difference, his method is simply to SHOUT AT YOU in his own language. In these circumstances the French - quite rightly - show no tolerance.) In your mind you know exactly what you're saying. Moreover, you're fairly sure that what you think you're saying is what people are actually hearing. In my case, that is almost never sometimes not the case. Very often, turns out that what I'm burbling on about bears only a passing resemblance to the thing I think I'm talking about.

This can be embarrassing. A couple of days ago I strolled into our local, and excellent, boulangerie to buy the day's bread. They make a really, really lovely walnut bread, which we plough through at an unseemly rate. So, feeling like a bit of a local, having ordered about a gazillion loaves of this since we've been here, I asked for a loaf of the walnut bread, please. And was greeted by faces looking the way faces do when their owners are trying desperately not to giggle (there was also a muffled snort of laughter, but that had the good grace to be rapidly retreating out the back). It was all sorted in the end, but reflecting on the exchange in the car on the way home, it occured to me that what I'd asked for was 'nut'. Not 'a loaf of walnut bread', or even, 'I'd like a walnut, please': just - 'nut'. Imagine that: imagine someone wandering into your shop and saying 'nut'. What a manus, you'd think. But not these people - they simply swallowed the laughter down and handed me the thing which most closely resembled a nut. Which was, of course, the walnut bread. I'd like to think I'd've been as gracious in the circumstances ...