As the last of our festive stragglers disappears out of the door and the mountain of clearing up begins in earnest, and I waddle around due to the agony of seriously bruised ribs compounded by the excesses of Christmas, I find myself reflecting on the fundamental joys of Christmas 2009. Having all the family together again for one last major beanfeast, before some of the teenagers decide to disappear off to newfound friends and families in years to come, was the greatest of them. With a whole ocean and a continent dividing us, it proved to be a very precious time forging new bonds and reaffirming old ones.
The American cousins have never spent Christmas with us, despite the older ones being seventeen. Thanksgiving is the main family holiday in the States so my sister-in-law usually just has the 25th December off work. As a single 'mom' of three, she cannot afford the luxury of unpaid Christmas leave, so the choice inevitably is between a summer holiday or an expensive Christmas trip. The airlines know that they have their Christmas pricing policy sussed! The double whammy of using up your precious holiday leave [never generous in the USA at the best of times!] and paying an arm and a leg to bring four full fare 'adults' across the pond mitigates against everyone being together. So this year was indeed something special.
Having Christmas at Bardies, en famille, then was the icing on the cake [which I only just managed to finish moments before they all came through the door!]. I even managed to make a 'stollen' this year too! We had a few anxious moments as we read and saw the horrendous holiday disruption being reported on the evening news but, remarkably, everyone made it with the minimum of delays. One brother-in-law flew from Dresden, via Schipol, the other drove down after taking an overnight crossing to St Malo with his family. My sister-in-law drove over the mountains from Heidlberg in a rental car because her own car had given up the ghost battling snow drifts in southern Germany. My mother-in-law made it from Kent to Gatwick in thick snow to meet up with my other sister-in-law and her children, who had had the good sense to take the Gatwick Express from London. And Easyjet didn't let them down either. A miracle indeed.
We started as we meant to go on, with a huge lasagne brought down from Chiswick by my sister-in-law in a freezer bag, still frozen because the weather en route had been so cold followed by a warming panetone bread and butter pudding, made with lashings of extra butter, cream and dried fruit. Nineteen around the table was a hoot and the logistics of serving everyone were helped by some deft changes to our kitchen layout - turning my workbench into a serving 'counter' was a stroke of genius, even if I say so myself! The kids, at first a little reticent with each other, and with us, warmed up as the evening progressed. By the end of it they didn't seem too daunted at the prospect of sharing rooms of six and five respectively, one sure way of getting to know one another pretty rapidly.
Christmas Eve got off to a cracking start with a solo performance on the piano of 'The Nutcracker', complete with narration and props, by my brother-in-law. I should really qualify this by saying that, as an ex Opera House Director of Music and Conductor, he does it for a living, giving solo pre-performance talks of all the major operas at the Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig opera. He has always struggled with his sight but, now, tragically, like Beethoven he has lost his hearing, torture indeed for a brilliant musician. He has his own little business now, which is much in demand, so we get personalised performances whenever he is with us. The kids will never look at the 'Nutcracker' in quite the same way again.
As we quaffed smoked salmon blinis [the blinis freshly prepared by one sister-in-law], sausage rolls [from the freezer cabinet of 'Les Mousquetaires', but surprisingly good], warmed mince pies [from Waitrose, of course!] and [pretentious or what!] 'Bellinis' [made the quick way a la recette de Jamie Oliver], we continued with carols in front of the Christmas Tree. As more alcohol was consumed, the quality of the singing deteriorated in inverse proportion. We might even have got onto 60's pop songs if we hadn't called time! I had made a huge fish pie during the afternoon so we were able to stagger into dinner without too much extra work. This was followed by Nigella Lawson's divine Clementine cake [actually, it was mine but you know what I mean!]. It was such a shame, though, that we managed to get the times of the Midnight Mass in the Cathedral in St Lizier wrong because the French go in for early starts and 'minuit' is pretty much the finale.
For Christmas Day, in true French style, we had capons, which were absolutely delicious. We started with some of Caroline's 'mi-cuit' foie gras [this is France!] and brioche, followed by the capons with all the usual trimmings. I had had the good sense to bring fresh cranberries with me to make a cranberry, port and orange relish. I had also brought vacuum packed chestnuts to make the stuffing because I have never seen any chestnut trees around us. The 'pigs in blankets' had been brought down especially from Marks and Spencer's in Chiswick because my fifteen-year-old daughter had been adamant that it wouldn't be Christmas without them. We even found Brussels sprouts locally, at the third attempt, which is more than many managed in the UK I gather. Sadly there were no parsnips to be found in a twenty kilometre radius, but with mounds of roast potatoes and honey glazed carrots, though, I don't think that anyone noticed.
The bread sauce I made with my own bread, because my darling mother-in-law had bought me a Panasonic bread machine a few years ago for my birthday "just in case you have a crowd, Lola, and can't get to the shops". Brilliant for times of mass catering like this, when the idea of slicing crusts off the round edges of baguettes is just a little too daunting. My mother-in-law had also made her legendary Christmas Pudding, which we served with creamy rum sauce from the family Father Christmas Toby jug [promised in her will to my sister-in-law in San Francisco!]. By the end of it, we were well and truly ready for the Christmas present unwrapping fracas, interrupted midway by the teenagers' urgent need to see the Christmas 'Doctor Who' special, which by all accounts was well below par. We finally got to bed, deliciously over indulged but thoroughly content, at 4.00am!
Boxing Day brought home baked muffins followed by much needed walks in the winter sunshine and trips to St Lizier and St Girons. For lunch, we had a whole leg of organic unsmoked ham, lovingly prepared by my sister-in-law and driven down, with festive coleslaw, home-made soup, baked potatoes, antipasti and salad, and the most divine cheese from Madame Gilbert in St Girons. A French 'fromagier' will never sell you a cheese which is anything other than perfectly ripe for the occasion. We had Brie, Camembert, and four different types of chevre and even the teenagers demolished platefuls saying that they had never tasted cheese so good. I had brought a Stilton with me but it remained unopened. Somehow it didn't seem quite right.
So now we're consuming all the delicious leftovers. We waved the German cousins off with sandwiches of Madame Gilbert's Brie and ham, mince pies, left over chocolate cake and fresh fruit for their long trek home. Those destined for Blagnac didn't need a packed lunch, sadly. It all seems to have gone so quickly, like Clara's 'Nutcracker' dream. The house is quiet, but ours again. We miss everyone terribly but it's nice to be just four. We talk and chat and curl up with new DVD's. We loved 'Milk' and 'Benjamin Button' especially, the first time that I've sat down in over a week.
Even the leftovers taste great. Last night we finished the fish pie and clementine cake. Today we had smoked salmon and cheese for lunch. Tonight it's ham and eggs with the remains of the 'leek gratin', followed by leftover bread and butter pudding. We seem to have eaten our way through the Christmas cookies [Nigella, again!], the chocolate orange muffins [Darina Allen] and the delicious stollen brought from Dresden by my brother-in-law, as well as the Christmas 'lebkuchen' brought from Heidlberg by the German contingent. Needless to say, the Christmas cake [mine!] and the big chocolate panetone [Carluccio's] haven't been touched. I wonder why? We are all stuffed after a festive feast of food, glorious food, that's why! The diet starts on 1st January!
Monday 28 December 2009
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow
Unbelievably pour moi, it's a whole month since I managed a posting. The last week of November and these mad, crazy three December weeks before Christmas have been fuddled in a haze of dental pain and, now, bruised ribs and a badly bashed big toe. Oh, woe is me! I am rapidly realising, the closer I get to my free bus pass, that after a certain age everything starts to wear out! First it was my eyes. Nowadays, I can't see a bloody thing without +3.0 glasses, which I seem to lose faster than Boots manage to restock them [obviously, my brain is going the same way too!]. Now, it's my teeth. There is no pain as debilitating as major tooth ache and two root canals and a shedload of painkillers and anitibiotics later, I am finally back on track for the festive frivolities.
The bruised ribs and blackened toe, however, are a more recent acquisition. There we were feeling thoroughly smug with ourselves that we had got through 'le Tunnel' with a mere two hour delay [at the time we couldn't understand why the sign said that this was due to winter conditions - little did we know!]. Once we got into France, it was like Narnia, only with HGV's and other more modern vehicles. The snow was falling in large flakes on the autoroute all the way to Rouen but the road remained open, despite the Arctic conditions. The gritters and 'saliers' had been out in abundance and it was apparent immediately that this is what the French get in return for their decidedly hefty taxes.
We managed to get as far as Orleans, by which time we had decided that the snow was becoming too icy and treacherous to push our luck too far. Safely tucked up in our functional, corporate designed Novotel bedroom after the obligatory steak/frites dinner, we turned on the TV. The full scale of the carnage on the French roads became apparent. People were stranded in their cars everywhere, but especially to the east in Alsace. The gods were certainly with us. After a couple of centimetres of overnight snowfall, we set off the following morning with no idea what to expect on the autoroute. It was deserted. The road was clear, every illuminated sign announced that 'saliage' was in progress and we were amazed at how easy it all was.
The oddest thing of all was driving along a French motorway with no trucks. We couldn't understand what was going on. Had we missed something? Was there a 'greve'? Eventually, on the opposite carriageway we saw a huge line of lorries parked along the hard shoulder. We ploughed on, puzzled. Then, near Limoges, we saw a similar line of stationary trucks lined up on our carriageway, topped and tailed with gendarmes. Perhaps they had become stranded during the night? Finally, the mystery was solved when we were directed off the autoroute into what appeared to be a deviation. Our hearts sank, thinking that our 'bon chance' had finally run its course.
Then, as we reached the roundabout, more trucks materialised and we assumed that there had been an accident. But, no, to our utter amazement it rapidly transpired that the gendarmes had closed the motorway simply to take any stray trucks off it. We were allowed back on, along with the few other passenger vehicles, to continue our journey. In order to keep traffic flowing and reduce the risk of accidents, the French traffic police had decided to transfer all the HGV's to the 'routes nationales'. Great for us, but a bugger for them. It made me think of my friend Caroline de Roquette, who makes divine fresh 'mi-cuit' foie gras, losing tens of thousands of euros worth of stock during a lorry drivers' dispute in the run-up to Christmas a few years ago. Perishable goods wait for noone.
We got safely all the way to the tiny 'hameau' of Gavats, less than a kilometre from the house, where we turn left to begin the climb up to us. As we turned left, we slid down the slope and, with the heavy weight of ten tons of Christmas stuff, swerved uncontrollably into the side of a neighbour's house. Unsurprisingly, the wall won, but in the process my slackened seatbelt didn't engage fast enough and the impact well and truly took the stuffing out of me! Thankfully, we weren't going too fast but, my God, it hurt. And, just to compound my injuries, as I was thrown back my legs lifted off the floor and my right toe took the brunt of the momentum. You couldn't make it up! It was the stuff of 'Live at the Apollo'.
Determined to unpack the mountains of stuff in the boot and roof rack, we managed to hobble up the hill with no seatbelts and a badly bashed in driver's wing, with me moaning and groaning all the way. Home at last - to no heating and no hot water! It's everyone's worst nightmare. It had been turned on for us by a friend the day before but something had seriously malfunctioned. I rang our heating engineer, only to find that the office would be closed until 28th December. Then, I rang his mobile just to depress myself even further. At least, though, we had the woodburners, which solved the heating problem, but they do not provide hot water and we don't have an immersion heater. Oh well, tomorrow would be another day.
We woke up to a bitterly cold, beautiful clear day. Bardies shrouded in snow is the ultimate feelgood experience, even with bruised ribs, a bashed toe, a smashed up car and no hot water. The quality of light here is magical and because we are at 500 metres, it has the same ambiance as a ski resort. We battened down the hatches and prepared for a long wait, as nothing ever happens here at the weekend. I don't think that we have ever drunk as many mugs of hot tea! Only when Peter's business partner rang to say that he had spent all day on the M20 trying to get to Folkestone with his family, en route to Christmas in Geneva, and had to turn round and go home, did we realise our luck. When we turned on the television and saw the news footage of desperate and anxious stranded travellers, we guessed that we must have been some of the last people through.
Over the weekend, the tales of travellers' woe only got worse as Britain battled, and lost, its fight against the elements. It was a story of two countries divided by a small sea and a big tunnel. It's true that noone, least of all Eurotunnel and Eurostar, had been able to anticipate the full, horrendous impact of Arctic weather conditions on the functioning of their services. However, I have to say, after our experience, that there appears to be no comparison between how the UK and France manage their road transport system in a crisis. Is it a matter of funding or one of organisation, we ask ourselves? It would be very unfair of me to cast aspersions when I wasn't there, but I can't help thinking that you get what you pay for.
Meantime, our heating is working again, the house is decorated and the family has arrived. Our car is to be towed home but, thankfully, we have our trusty, ancient, French resident Jeep here for last minute shopping. We will not go hungry. We are nineteen for Christmas, the stuff of my next blog. It's grey outside, but bright and warm indoors. The fires are stoked, the Christmas tree lights twinkling, Bach's Christmas Oratorio blasting from the CD player and everyone, so far, is happy. It's Christmas. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
The bruised ribs and blackened toe, however, are a more recent acquisition. There we were feeling thoroughly smug with ourselves that we had got through 'le Tunnel' with a mere two hour delay [at the time we couldn't understand why the sign said that this was due to winter conditions - little did we know!]. Once we got into France, it was like Narnia, only with HGV's and other more modern vehicles. The snow was falling in large flakes on the autoroute all the way to Rouen but the road remained open, despite the Arctic conditions. The gritters and 'saliers' had been out in abundance and it was apparent immediately that this is what the French get in return for their decidedly hefty taxes.
We managed to get as far as Orleans, by which time we had decided that the snow was becoming too icy and treacherous to push our luck too far. Safely tucked up in our functional, corporate designed Novotel bedroom after the obligatory steak/frites dinner, we turned on the TV. The full scale of the carnage on the French roads became apparent. People were stranded in their cars everywhere, but especially to the east in Alsace. The gods were certainly with us. After a couple of centimetres of overnight snowfall, we set off the following morning with no idea what to expect on the autoroute. It was deserted. The road was clear, every illuminated sign announced that 'saliage' was in progress and we were amazed at how easy it all was.
The oddest thing of all was driving along a French motorway with no trucks. We couldn't understand what was going on. Had we missed something? Was there a 'greve'? Eventually, on the opposite carriageway we saw a huge line of lorries parked along the hard shoulder. We ploughed on, puzzled. Then, near Limoges, we saw a similar line of stationary trucks lined up on our carriageway, topped and tailed with gendarmes. Perhaps they had become stranded during the night? Finally, the mystery was solved when we were directed off the autoroute into what appeared to be a deviation. Our hearts sank, thinking that our 'bon chance' had finally run its course.
Then, as we reached the roundabout, more trucks materialised and we assumed that there had been an accident. But, no, to our utter amazement it rapidly transpired that the gendarmes had closed the motorway simply to take any stray trucks off it. We were allowed back on, along with the few other passenger vehicles, to continue our journey. In order to keep traffic flowing and reduce the risk of accidents, the French traffic police had decided to transfer all the HGV's to the 'routes nationales'. Great for us, but a bugger for them. It made me think of my friend Caroline de Roquette, who makes divine fresh 'mi-cuit' foie gras, losing tens of thousands of euros worth of stock during a lorry drivers' dispute in the run-up to Christmas a few years ago. Perishable goods wait for noone.
We got safely all the way to the tiny 'hameau' of Gavats, less than a kilometre from the house, where we turn left to begin the climb up to us. As we turned left, we slid down the slope and, with the heavy weight of ten tons of Christmas stuff, swerved uncontrollably into the side of a neighbour's house. Unsurprisingly, the wall won, but in the process my slackened seatbelt didn't engage fast enough and the impact well and truly took the stuffing out of me! Thankfully, we weren't going too fast but, my God, it hurt. And, just to compound my injuries, as I was thrown back my legs lifted off the floor and my right toe took the brunt of the momentum. You couldn't make it up! It was the stuff of 'Live at the Apollo'.
Determined to unpack the mountains of stuff in the boot and roof rack, we managed to hobble up the hill with no seatbelts and a badly bashed in driver's wing, with me moaning and groaning all the way. Home at last - to no heating and no hot water! It's everyone's worst nightmare. It had been turned on for us by a friend the day before but something had seriously malfunctioned. I rang our heating engineer, only to find that the office would be closed until 28th December. Then, I rang his mobile just to depress myself even further. At least, though, we had the woodburners, which solved the heating problem, but they do not provide hot water and we don't have an immersion heater. Oh well, tomorrow would be another day.
We woke up to a bitterly cold, beautiful clear day. Bardies shrouded in snow is the ultimate feelgood experience, even with bruised ribs, a bashed toe, a smashed up car and no hot water. The quality of light here is magical and because we are at 500 metres, it has the same ambiance as a ski resort. We battened down the hatches and prepared for a long wait, as nothing ever happens here at the weekend. I don't think that we have ever drunk as many mugs of hot tea! Only when Peter's business partner rang to say that he had spent all day on the M20 trying to get to Folkestone with his family, en route to Christmas in Geneva, and had to turn round and go home, did we realise our luck. When we turned on the television and saw the news footage of desperate and anxious stranded travellers, we guessed that we must have been some of the last people through.
Over the weekend, the tales of travellers' woe only got worse as Britain battled, and lost, its fight against the elements. It was a story of two countries divided by a small sea and a big tunnel. It's true that noone, least of all Eurotunnel and Eurostar, had been able to anticipate the full, horrendous impact of Arctic weather conditions on the functioning of their services. However, I have to say, after our experience, that there appears to be no comparison between how the UK and France manage their road transport system in a crisis. Is it a matter of funding or one of organisation, we ask ourselves? It would be very unfair of me to cast aspersions when I wasn't there, but I can't help thinking that you get what you pay for.
Meantime, our heating is working again, the house is decorated and the family has arrived. Our car is to be towed home but, thankfully, we have our trusty, ancient, French resident Jeep here for last minute shopping. We will not go hungry. We are nineteen for Christmas, the stuff of my next blog. It's grey outside, but bright and warm indoors. The fires are stoked, the Christmas tree lights twinkling, Bach's Christmas Oratorio blasting from the CD player and everyone, so far, is happy. It's Christmas. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Monday 23 November 2009
A Whiter Shade of Pale
As the howling gales thrash the last of the autumn leaves off the trees, leaving them scattered in huge piles like confetti from a giant's wedding, my muscle memory kicks into action again. The nerves around my sternum still concentrate like tightly stretched elastic bands whenever I allow my mind to wander back. For, since the autumn of 2003, this time of year lurches me back to a dark, bleak place where even the turning on of the sparkling Christmas lights in Regent Street or Bond Street could do nothing to dispel the gloom of the hard winter looming ahead of us.
That year our eleven year old son, Freddie, had been diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. With only thirty or so cases a year, we were suddenly thrown from the security of a comfortable, complacent, cosy family life into the maelstrom that is the world of childhood cancer. Nothing prepares a parent for either the shock of diagnosis or the advent of night sweats as one anxiously contemplates the terror of possible outcomes. To say that one's life is turned upside down would be an understatement. Like the mythical Persephone, you find yourself cast into an alien underworld, a complete sub-culture of chemotherapy drugs, blood counts and antibiotics.
Freddie had commenced his gruelling pre-surgery chemo in the June of 2003 on Carousel Ward in the old Middlesex Hospital on Mortimer Street. Ironically, it was not a depressing place despite the fact that a children's cancer ward functions with its own language and points of reference, where a raised eyebrow or hesitant response can yield up a dozen nightmare scenarios. His surgery, to remove a sizeable tumour on his tibia just below his left knee, was scheduled for the 4th November, two weeks after his 6th session of chemo.
We knew that Freddie, now bald as a coot, had a small window of time where his blood counts would be stable. In a moment of madness, we decided to give him a a special treat and take him and his poor, neglected little sister to Eurodisney for a Halloween treat. Even though I secretly disapprove, I have to admit that the Americans do Halloween so well. The upside of the trip was that with his wheelchair and blue disabled badge, we were officially allowed to queue jump every ride. The downside was that poor Freddie got so tired out in the cold and damp, we needed to go back to the hotel to let him sleep at periodic intervals.
He was a trooper throughout and it gave him a much needed lift in advance of the prospect of losing almost half his tibia. Afterwards, with a week to spare, we decided to fly down to Bardies from Paris on the new Easyjet service. More than a trip to Eurodisney, Freddie wanted to get back to our beloved Bardies. For him, it represented a life before cancer and a life that he was determined to go back to once he was well again. As for me, I had never thought that we would get back at all, so it was with some joy and a great deal of trepidation that we arrived 'chez nous'.
No sooner had we lit the fire and put a casserole into the oven than Freddie began to complain that his chest hurt at the point where his intravenous 'Hickman line' was inserted. There was some residual blood around it so, as a precaution, I telephoned the hospital in St Girons and they said to bring him in immediately. Whilst Peter drove him down, I frantically called the Middlesex in London, where, fortunately, Krissie, his regular nurse, was on duty. "No worries", she said, in her best Aussie accent, "I expect that a bit of blood escaped due to pressure on the plane. Just get them to wash out the line with some saline, as per normal."
By the time I got back to Peter on his mobile, it had been done. We breathed a sigh of relief and thought that our troubles were over. We all went off to bed happy to be home, but to be on the safe side I put Freddie in the bed next to me. As I leant over during the night to check his temperature, as I always did throughout his treatment, I knew that something serious was brewing. He was like a furnace. When I checked his temperature properly with the thermometer it was pushing 40 degrees and therefore critical. I dressed rapidly, scooped him up and put him into the car for a mercy dash back to the hospital.
After a very brief 'triage', we were shown to our room. It was private, spotlessly clean and with a view up to St Lizier worthy of a tourist brochure. In the half light of the very early morn, the city towered, twinkling, above us. If I hadn't been so panic stricken, because by then Freddie was almost comatose, I might have appreciated it rather more. A succession of people, all dressed in white, came and went. They were so uniform in their uniforms that I had no idea if I was discussing the finer points of cancer treatment with the cleaner or the consultant.
Everyone, but everyone, was dressed from head to toe in white, with white leather clogs to accessorise their dazzling ensembles. There was not a dirty mark to be seen on one of them. No wonder the French health service is so costly - the laundry bills alone must take up a serious chunk of the annual budget! All around were hand disinfectant dispenser gels and, without fail, everyone washed their hands the moment they came into the room. I would find it hard to believe that a single MRSI bug could survive a second in that scrupulously clean environment. If you are going to be ill with a life threatening condition, you would want to be somewhere like this. You might miss the creature comforts of a British hospital, the pictures of Jemima Puddleduck and Winnie the Pooh, the ubiquitous mobiles and half-dead pot plants, or the general clutter and chaos, but you would know that no flesh eating bug would dare to stray within a kilometer of your bed.
I have to say, though, that the Middlesex was brilliant. The care standards were extremely high and the nurses and doctors dedicated, and never more so than when we were stuck, stranded and terrified, for a week in the hospital in St Girons. They directed operations from London through a bi-lingual Registrar, no mean feat as St Girons is a local hospital and has no expertise in the field of paediatric cancer care. After a succession of different intravenous antibiotics, Freddie began to revive and the panic abated. His temperature slowly reverted back to normal and we were given, albeit reluctantly, permission to travel.
After a week sleeping in a cot beside Freddie, with the best view imaginable, I was glad that we would be on our way back to Carousel and the next stage of Freddie's cancer journey. For, with all its faults, it had become our sanctuary and the place where we felt safe. Freddie remained a whiter shade of pale until his Hickman line was replaced but his surgery was successful. We had many more roller coaster rides through his treatment, a further eight gruelling chemo sessions followed his surgery, but none was as memorable as our week in the ward in St Girons. I missed the view, but most of all I missed the glass of wine with lunch and dinner. It could only happen in a French hospital!
That year our eleven year old son, Freddie, had been diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. With only thirty or so cases a year, we were suddenly thrown from the security of a comfortable, complacent, cosy family life into the maelstrom that is the world of childhood cancer. Nothing prepares a parent for either the shock of diagnosis or the advent of night sweats as one anxiously contemplates the terror of possible outcomes. To say that one's life is turned upside down would be an understatement. Like the mythical Persephone, you find yourself cast into an alien underworld, a complete sub-culture of chemotherapy drugs, blood counts and antibiotics.
Freddie had commenced his gruelling pre-surgery chemo in the June of 2003 on Carousel Ward in the old Middlesex Hospital on Mortimer Street. Ironically, it was not a depressing place despite the fact that a children's cancer ward functions with its own language and points of reference, where a raised eyebrow or hesitant response can yield up a dozen nightmare scenarios. His surgery, to remove a sizeable tumour on his tibia just below his left knee, was scheduled for the 4th November, two weeks after his 6th session of chemo.
We knew that Freddie, now bald as a coot, had a small window of time where his blood counts would be stable. In a moment of madness, we decided to give him a a special treat and take him and his poor, neglected little sister to Eurodisney for a Halloween treat. Even though I secretly disapprove, I have to admit that the Americans do Halloween so well. The upside of the trip was that with his wheelchair and blue disabled badge, we were officially allowed to queue jump every ride. The downside was that poor Freddie got so tired out in the cold and damp, we needed to go back to the hotel to let him sleep at periodic intervals.
He was a trooper throughout and it gave him a much needed lift in advance of the prospect of losing almost half his tibia. Afterwards, with a week to spare, we decided to fly down to Bardies from Paris on the new Easyjet service. More than a trip to Eurodisney, Freddie wanted to get back to our beloved Bardies. For him, it represented a life before cancer and a life that he was determined to go back to once he was well again. As for me, I had never thought that we would get back at all, so it was with some joy and a great deal of trepidation that we arrived 'chez nous'.
No sooner had we lit the fire and put a casserole into the oven than Freddie began to complain that his chest hurt at the point where his intravenous 'Hickman line' was inserted. There was some residual blood around it so, as a precaution, I telephoned the hospital in St Girons and they said to bring him in immediately. Whilst Peter drove him down, I frantically called the Middlesex in London, where, fortunately, Krissie, his regular nurse, was on duty. "No worries", she said, in her best Aussie accent, "I expect that a bit of blood escaped due to pressure on the plane. Just get them to wash out the line with some saline, as per normal."
By the time I got back to Peter on his mobile, it had been done. We breathed a sigh of relief and thought that our troubles were over. We all went off to bed happy to be home, but to be on the safe side I put Freddie in the bed next to me. As I leant over during the night to check his temperature, as I always did throughout his treatment, I knew that something serious was brewing. He was like a furnace. When I checked his temperature properly with the thermometer it was pushing 40 degrees and therefore critical. I dressed rapidly, scooped him up and put him into the car for a mercy dash back to the hospital.
After a very brief 'triage', we were shown to our room. It was private, spotlessly clean and with a view up to St Lizier worthy of a tourist brochure. In the half light of the very early morn, the city towered, twinkling, above us. If I hadn't been so panic stricken, because by then Freddie was almost comatose, I might have appreciated it rather more. A succession of people, all dressed in white, came and went. They were so uniform in their uniforms that I had no idea if I was discussing the finer points of cancer treatment with the cleaner or the consultant.
Everyone, but everyone, was dressed from head to toe in white, with white leather clogs to accessorise their dazzling ensembles. There was not a dirty mark to be seen on one of them. No wonder the French health service is so costly - the laundry bills alone must take up a serious chunk of the annual budget! All around were hand disinfectant dispenser gels and, without fail, everyone washed their hands the moment they came into the room. I would find it hard to believe that a single MRSI bug could survive a second in that scrupulously clean environment. If you are going to be ill with a life threatening condition, you would want to be somewhere like this. You might miss the creature comforts of a British hospital, the pictures of Jemima Puddleduck and Winnie the Pooh, the ubiquitous mobiles and half-dead pot plants, or the general clutter and chaos, but you would know that no flesh eating bug would dare to stray within a kilometer of your bed.
I have to say, though, that the Middlesex was brilliant. The care standards were extremely high and the nurses and doctors dedicated, and never more so than when we were stuck, stranded and terrified, for a week in the hospital in St Girons. They directed operations from London through a bi-lingual Registrar, no mean feat as St Girons is a local hospital and has no expertise in the field of paediatric cancer care. After a succession of different intravenous antibiotics, Freddie began to revive and the panic abated. His temperature slowly reverted back to normal and we were given, albeit reluctantly, permission to travel.
After a week sleeping in a cot beside Freddie, with the best view imaginable, I was glad that we would be on our way back to Carousel and the next stage of Freddie's cancer journey. For, with all its faults, it had become our sanctuary and the place where we felt safe. Freddie remained a whiter shade of pale until his Hickman line was replaced but his surgery was successful. We had many more roller coaster rides through his treatment, a further eight gruelling chemo sessions followed his surgery, but none was as memorable as our week in the ward in St Girons. I missed the view, but most of all I missed the glass of wine with lunch and dinner. It could only happen in a French hospital!
Wednesday 11 November 2009
We Will Remember Them
As I sat down to write this, at two minutes past the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, with the BBC's live broadcast from Westminster Abbey in the background, I felt terribly sad. Here we are, in November 2009, with photographs on our newspaper front pages of a cortege of dead young men being driven from RAF Lyneham, through the Wiltshire village of Wootton Bassett, on their way to their temporary resting place at a hospital in Oxford. Where once we watched these moving services of remembrance thinking "lest we forget", now we look at them afresh, as we vow "we will remember".
When I was growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, no one talked about the war. Looking back, I can see that it was because its horrors were best left buried deep in the recesses of far distant memory. There were only three things about it that my mother, who nursed at Charing Cross hospital through much of it, ever told me. One was that she lost a favourite green leather shoe scrambling into an air raid shelter during one of the worst nights of the Blitz. Another was that her wedding ring [my parents married in 1942, when my father was on leave] was made from gold pooled by friends, otherwise they would have had no ring. The third was that she and her fellow nurses had had to cut down a poor dead airman who had parachuted out of his aircraft and somehow landed on the parapet outside their ward.
How many hundreds of other anecdotes had she hidden, I wonder? My father, who was in the RAF, never spoke about any of it although, to be fair, he had long died by the time my interest in history had manifested itself. My mother-in-law, who was a motorbike dispatch rider charging around the Chatham dockyards in the thick of it, has recounted very little. Rather like the reluctant tourist's return from an exotic holiday, laden with tales and photographs, they must have realised pretty quickly that no one wanted to know. A new dawn had begun and war was best forgotten. Remembrance Sunday came and went once a year, and that was that.
On my flight from Toulouse to Bristol last Saturday, I scavenged a free copy of 'The Daily Telegraph' from the British Airways newspaper rack as I boarded my Easyjet flight [it did say 'please take your complimentary copy', even if they had probably only intended them for their own customers!]. Inside, on the eve of Remembrance Sunday, was an illuminating article by Peter Parker, the biographer of the last British Great War veteran, Harry Patch, who died on 25th July this year at the ripe old age of 111. I had known that Patch had been called 'the reluctant hero' after his return, disillusioned, from the horrors of Passchendaele but beyond that I knew very little else about him.
It transpires that he had lost his Anglican faith when he left the army but later joined a choir hoping to revive it. "In the end, I went because I enjoyed the music and had friends there. But the belief? It didn't come. I felt shattered, absolutely, and didn't discuss the war with anyone from then on, and nobody brought it up if they could help it." In addition, according to Parker, he refused to join veterans' associations, had no wish to visit battlefields, never attended a regimental reunion and avoided all war films. It was only when the BBC wanted to film a documentary entitled 'The Last Tommy' in 2004 that he was persuaded to revisit Flanders. "What a waste. What a terrible waste," he memorably said.
I was reminded of a scene in the film version of Alan Bennett's superbly scripted 'The History Boys', almost as good as the stage play and with the same National Theatre cast. When Irwin, the new history supply teacher who aspires to a career in television, takes the boys to a war memorial, he asks them why they think has has brought them there. "To remember, Sir," they say. "No", he replies, "it is so that we can forget." And we did, didn't we?
Almost fifty years after the end of the Second World War came Bosnia, and Srebenica, and our attitude to war began to change. A sense of failure was seared into our complacent brains. Then, twenty one months into this new century, on 9/11, everything changed irrevocably. The poppies of Flanders' fields have now been replaced with the poppies of Afghanistan. Jonathan Friedland, writing in today's 'Guardian' headlines with "The coffins will keep coming until we conquer our amnesia on Afghanistan". It is a mess, a horrible, bloody mess, not least because we have forgotten why we went in there in the first place. A war whose aims have long been lost in the quagmire of international politics is taking young lives once again.
Harry Patch was conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in October 1916. Many of his friends had volunteered earlier for the Somerset Light Infantry. "We were the PBI - the Poor Bloody Infantry- and we were expendable," he said. I think of the fallen from Bardies today, too. Like the south west of England, the south west of France provided the infantry divisions in the Great War, the cannon fodder. The effects on the economy of both were devestating.
The Barthet family, who had owned the Chateau de Bardies since 1822, was decimated. Louis Barthet, the eldest son of Joseph and Marie Lesparda Barthet, survived but returned from the war wounded. His younger brother, Etienne was killed in 1916. Amelie, one of their sisters, married Captain Ambroise Henry, who was killed not long after the commencement of war. Suzanne, another sister, married Ambroise's younger brother, Lieutenant Auguste Henry, who was himself killed three weeks later.
There were many more from our little part of France who were sacrificed; the husbands and fiances of the maids, whose uniforms were still tucked away in 'armoires' upstairs when we bought the house, the gardeners who had left hidden traces under overgrown laurel trees, rather like at the lost gardens of Heligan, in Cornwall, the farmers who had tended and husbanded the land, the 'voisins' from the nearby 'hameaux'. They are commemorated in St Girons and will be remembered today.
The Second World War took a heavy toll too. George Crinon, who had married the daughter of Auguste and Simone Henry, professor of mathematics and principal of the college, was killed in June 1940 fighting for France. Many others, ununiformed, lost their lives as members of the 'maquis', the resistance, who were very strong in our area. The nearby village of Rimont on the main St Girons/ Foix road was the scene of a Nazi reprisal on 21st August 1944, when forty four trucks filled with soldiers newly back from the eastern front rampaged through the sleepy, innocent village. On that day, 11 Rimontais were executed, many women brutally raped and 236 buildings torched. We must not forget the price that civilians also pay in war.
The town of St Girons was also the starting point of 'Le Chemin de la Liberte', the final stage of the escape route over the Pyrenees organised by the O'Leary network. More than a hundred brave local men and women, called 'passeurs', lost their lives or their liberty taking the evaders over the high mountain passes to safety. They had a choice, and they chose to help people that they did not know at huge personal risk to themselves and their families. They are the unsung heroes and we remember them today, with deep gratitude, too.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
When I was growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, no one talked about the war. Looking back, I can see that it was because its horrors were best left buried deep in the recesses of far distant memory. There were only three things about it that my mother, who nursed at Charing Cross hospital through much of it, ever told me. One was that she lost a favourite green leather shoe scrambling into an air raid shelter during one of the worst nights of the Blitz. Another was that her wedding ring [my parents married in 1942, when my father was on leave] was made from gold pooled by friends, otherwise they would have had no ring. The third was that she and her fellow nurses had had to cut down a poor dead airman who had parachuted out of his aircraft and somehow landed on the parapet outside their ward.
How many hundreds of other anecdotes had she hidden, I wonder? My father, who was in the RAF, never spoke about any of it although, to be fair, he had long died by the time my interest in history had manifested itself. My mother-in-law, who was a motorbike dispatch rider charging around the Chatham dockyards in the thick of it, has recounted very little. Rather like the reluctant tourist's return from an exotic holiday, laden with tales and photographs, they must have realised pretty quickly that no one wanted to know. A new dawn had begun and war was best forgotten. Remembrance Sunday came and went once a year, and that was that.
On my flight from Toulouse to Bristol last Saturday, I scavenged a free copy of 'The Daily Telegraph' from the British Airways newspaper rack as I boarded my Easyjet flight [it did say 'please take your complimentary copy', even if they had probably only intended them for their own customers!]. Inside, on the eve of Remembrance Sunday, was an illuminating article by Peter Parker, the biographer of the last British Great War veteran, Harry Patch, who died on 25th July this year at the ripe old age of 111. I had known that Patch had been called 'the reluctant hero' after his return, disillusioned, from the horrors of Passchendaele but beyond that I knew very little else about him.
It transpires that he had lost his Anglican faith when he left the army but later joined a choir hoping to revive it. "In the end, I went because I enjoyed the music and had friends there. But the belief? It didn't come. I felt shattered, absolutely, and didn't discuss the war with anyone from then on, and nobody brought it up if they could help it." In addition, according to Parker, he refused to join veterans' associations, had no wish to visit battlefields, never attended a regimental reunion and avoided all war films. It was only when the BBC wanted to film a documentary entitled 'The Last Tommy' in 2004 that he was persuaded to revisit Flanders. "What a waste. What a terrible waste," he memorably said.
I was reminded of a scene in the film version of Alan Bennett's superbly scripted 'The History Boys', almost as good as the stage play and with the same National Theatre cast. When Irwin, the new history supply teacher who aspires to a career in television, takes the boys to a war memorial, he asks them why they think has has brought them there. "To remember, Sir," they say. "No", he replies, "it is so that we can forget." And we did, didn't we?
Almost fifty years after the end of the Second World War came Bosnia, and Srebenica, and our attitude to war began to change. A sense of failure was seared into our complacent brains. Then, twenty one months into this new century, on 9/11, everything changed irrevocably. The poppies of Flanders' fields have now been replaced with the poppies of Afghanistan. Jonathan Friedland, writing in today's 'Guardian' headlines with "The coffins will keep coming until we conquer our amnesia on Afghanistan". It is a mess, a horrible, bloody mess, not least because we have forgotten why we went in there in the first place. A war whose aims have long been lost in the quagmire of international politics is taking young lives once again.
Harry Patch was conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in October 1916. Many of his friends had volunteered earlier for the Somerset Light Infantry. "We were the PBI - the Poor Bloody Infantry- and we were expendable," he said. I think of the fallen from Bardies today, too. Like the south west of England, the south west of France provided the infantry divisions in the Great War, the cannon fodder. The effects on the economy of both were devestating.
The Barthet family, who had owned the Chateau de Bardies since 1822, was decimated. Louis Barthet, the eldest son of Joseph and Marie Lesparda Barthet, survived but returned from the war wounded. His younger brother, Etienne was killed in 1916. Amelie, one of their sisters, married Captain Ambroise Henry, who was killed not long after the commencement of war. Suzanne, another sister, married Ambroise's younger brother, Lieutenant Auguste Henry, who was himself killed three weeks later.
There were many more from our little part of France who were sacrificed; the husbands and fiances of the maids, whose uniforms were still tucked away in 'armoires' upstairs when we bought the house, the gardeners who had left hidden traces under overgrown laurel trees, rather like at the lost gardens of Heligan, in Cornwall, the farmers who had tended and husbanded the land, the 'voisins' from the nearby 'hameaux'. They are commemorated in St Girons and will be remembered today.
The Second World War took a heavy toll too. George Crinon, who had married the daughter of Auguste and Simone Henry, professor of mathematics and principal of the college, was killed in June 1940 fighting for France. Many others, ununiformed, lost their lives as members of the 'maquis', the resistance, who were very strong in our area. The nearby village of Rimont on the main St Girons/ Foix road was the scene of a Nazi reprisal on 21st August 1944, when forty four trucks filled with soldiers newly back from the eastern front rampaged through the sleepy, innocent village. On that day, 11 Rimontais were executed, many women brutally raped and 236 buildings torched. We must not forget the price that civilians also pay in war.
The town of St Girons was also the starting point of 'Le Chemin de la Liberte', the final stage of the escape route over the Pyrenees organised by the O'Leary network. More than a hundred brave local men and women, called 'passeurs', lost their lives or their liberty taking the evaders over the high mountain passes to safety. They had a choice, and they chose to help people that they did not know at huge personal risk to themselves and their families. They are the unsung heroes and we remember them today, with deep gratitude, too.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Wednesday 4 November 2009
Toussaint
'Toussaint' is a time of reflection here, as well as being a special time of year for family and friends - a bit like Thanksgiving in the States, only a bit more sombre and minus the turkey and pumpkin pie. At this, the very start of winter, families get together from all over the country to remember their departed and count their blessings. I am constantly amazed to see people that I haven't seen all year arrive from Paris, Marseille, or wherever, for their annual get-together whatever the weather. It is always a weekend 'en fete' and, I suspect, a uniquely French celebration.
Since American film makers hijacked 'All Hallow's Eve' and turned it into a beanfeast of witch's hats and orange and black-iced cupcakes, most of us have forgotten the ritual significance of this time of year. 'All Soul's Day', the day after 'All Hallow's Eve' was a big event in my childhood. It was the day the dead returned to earth to make their presence known to us again, and we needed to acknowledge them big-time if they were to leave us be for the rest of the year. Pre- Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video with his brilliant coterie of ghoulish dancers, it was a terrifying time for a child. Very sadly, and somewhat ironically, he has now become one of the departed himself.
I see that Sting has written a song called 'Soul Cake' for his latest album celebrating both winter and north- eastern folklore. According to him, the soul cakes were made to give to the dead when they returned on 'All Soul's Day'. The poor, though, being both very hungry and very canny, offered to exchange the cakes for prayers for the dead instead. According to him, it is a tradition that goes back five hundred years and was the precedent for 'trick or treat'. Amazing! We can't blame Hollywood then for all the ghastly commercial spin-offs that make today's Halloween a largely unpleasant experience, especially for terrified pensioners too frightened to open their doors.
All Saint's Day' [Toussaint], in complete contrast, was a time of light. We still had to go to Mass, but to give thanks rather than out of fear for peripatetic malevolent souls. The priest wore a white surplice, I recall. I don't remember it being anything particularly special, other than having to take flowers to my father's grave in Epsom cemetery afterwards. By then, as kids, we were much more excited at the prospect of fireworks on November 5th. Collecting old socks and scraps of fabric to make a 'guy', and firewood and kindling to make a huge bonfire to put it on, was much more of an adventure. Thankfully, my Irish mother had no real grasp of the nuances of English history, so it was party-time in our garden.
This year, I spent 'Toussaint' in the Lauragais, with my good friends Caroline de Roquette and Christian and Inez Sarramon. Christian and Inez come down from Paris every year to visit the family grave and spend time 'en famille'. This year, like last, was particularly poignant because Louis-Charles de Roquette, Caroline's husband and Inez's brother, and my darling friend, was killed in a tragic car accident in May 2008. Caroline's lovely farmhouse was filled with seasonal crysanthemums, in glorious, autumnal, deep red hues, in his memory. They had taken many more to the cemetery in St Felix Lauragais after a special mass for him. The pain of loss never really goes away.
I met them for a delicious dinner at Inez's house, where she had prepared her signature dish of 'blanquette de veau', one of my favourite traditional French dishes and one that she makes brilliantly. We talked and laughed, reminiscing over the old times but also looking forward to new ones. It made me think how sad it is that none of my siblings meets up to remember our mother, and that I am as guilty as they are for not organising it. The great thing about 'Toussaint' is that the date is always fixed in the calendar so there are never any excuses for putting it off. It is a great institution and it is such a shame that in the UK there is no real equivalent.
Christian had two new books, hot off the press and still wrapped in plastic, to show us. One is called 'Delices', full of fabulous photographs and history of the patissiers of Paris, and the other is called 'Linge', with stunning pictures of old linens from all over France. He is a genius! I had just bought 'France, A Sense of Place' and 'Gourmet Bistros and Restaurants of Paris', new, on Amazon's secondhand site for a knockdown price, which I just happened to have in my car. He kindly inscribed them for me for the biblioteque at Bardies.
Tellingly, he wrote in 'France', "quelques morceaux de France d'avant les e'oliennes". At Merveille, they have been invaded by enormous, triffid-like wind turbines because the Lauragais has a huge number of windy days each year. There is a price to be paid for everything and France has not shirked difficult environmental decisions. The 'e'oliennes' can look very striking when seen from a distance, but if you live in their shadow they are an ominous and noisy presence. Would we want them here? No, I don't think so!
'Toussaint' is a special time, and I am so pleased that they allowed me to share it with them. Without Peter and 'les enfants', I have time to reflect on the summer just gone and think of the year to come. We need this time to take stock, to batten down the hatches, especially when the wind is as strong as it is here right now, and to give thanks for what we have. Our need for preparing ourselves for the hardship of winter seems to me to be celebrated in so many ways at this time of year - Bonfire Night, Harvest Festival, Michaelmas, Thanksgiving, Advent and, the ultimate winter festival, Christmas. After that, sadly, unless you're a skier, it's downhill all the way!
Saturday 24 October 2009
Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome
I had thought that enough had been written in response to Jan Moir's disgraceful homophobic rant in last Tuesday's 'Daily Mail' and that, anyway, it probably wasn't the stuff of a blog from Bardies. As someone who would rather eat wild toad droppings than buy a copy of the loathesome 'Daily Mail', I must confess that I have only just downloaded the offending article. My reason for doing so is simple. When I opened my emails this morning, there were two from my closest, and gay, friends here in France, lamenting their shock and horror at the implications of Jan Moir's article.
Their request that we all boycott the newspaper is easy enough to deal with in my case, but their emails instantly prompted me to discover for myself just what she had said. It is, indeed, a shocking piece of 'kneejerk' journalism and one that must have broken the heart of poor Stephen Gately's mother. To use the story of his sad demise, of which to date none of us knows the exact cause, to legitimise in some perverse way, the consequences of being gay is media fodder for all homophobes. At a time when we know from police figures that homophobic crime is on the increase, such irresponsible journalism merely serves to stoke the fires of hatred.
Those who abbhor the idea that two people of the same sex can not only love each other but can also consolidate their union through a civil partnership ceremony, must have opened their paper of choice and rejoiced at Moir's statement that "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships." Excuse me! How? Why? A young man dies tragically in the home he shares with his same sex partner and the whole legal edifice of civil partnerships can be doubted? What sort of distorted logic is this?
My friend Giovanni, quite rightly, is beside himself with anger at the implication that Stephen Grately must have died as the result of drug-taking and a sleazy gay lifestyle. How easy it is for right wing homophobes to link drug taking with sleaze and being gay! It reminded me of something that Rabbi Lionel Blue once said. "Just because you're in the gay world doesn't mean you go to orgies. You've also got to deal with relationships." In a heterosexual world, with a great deal of drug taking, pornography, prostitution and child sexual abuse, we don't question the legitimacy of marriage, do we?
It is the last line of Moir's article, though, which is the most shocking. In a chilling line, which Josef Goebbels himself could have written, she says, "For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see." In a week when the BBC, wrongly in my view, gave Nick Griffin of the BNP a voice on the 'Question Time' panel, my thoughts turned to parallels with 1930's Weimar. The similarity is clear: gay equals deviant, and therefore dangerous.
Alan Cumming, the Scottish actor, who has played Emcee in Kander and Ebb's stage version of 'Cabaret' and is himself gay, presented a fabulous documentary on BBC 4 this week called 'The Real Cabaret'. It followed a showing on the same channel of Bob Fosse's 1972 film with Liza Minelli and Michael York, one of my all time favourite movies [thank goodness for satellite TV!]. The real cabarets were often run by Jewish impressarios, many of whom finished up in the gas chambers. What the 1972 film didn't show, was that the likes of the fictional Emcee and his coterie of homosexual and sexually ambivalent musicians and dancers would have finished up in the gas chambers too.
Not so long ago, we went to see Julian Clary in Rufus Norris's revival of the stage version. Norris, bravely, took Fosse's narrative all the way to its logical conclusion. In the film version, Emcee closes the curtains with the camera panning round the Kit Kat Klub to show swastika armbands on many of the visitors. In Norris's revival, Clary and the other performers slowly and subtly remove their clothes, turn round with their backs to the audience and huddle together at the back of the stage. As the light shines on them, the shower above them rains down. No one leaving that show would have been under any illusion about what happened to many of Berlin's homosexuals under Nazism.
Of course, this may sound a little over dramatic in the context of a second rate piece of journalism in a right wing 'red top'. We live in liberal times, don't we? Nick Griffin, thank heavens, has none of the misplaced abilities and political canniness of Jean-Marie Le Pen. But both Jan Moir and Nick Griffin have become major players this week in a debate about the sort of society we all want to live in. We have fought hard for our freedoms, for the right of all human beings not to live in fear of their lives for their race, their religious beliefs or their sexual orientation. Why does anyone care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes? Sadly, for all of us, it appears that fascists and fundamentalists still do.
In December 2007, on a bitterly cold, damp, grey day we went 'en famille' from Oskar Schindler's factory in the majestic city of Krackow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, less than an hour's drive away. The museum at Auschwitz is a true and fitting memorial to its lonely ghosts, but it is at nearby Birkenau that their souls speak to you. As we stood in the watchtower, alone, looking through the wintry mist at the forked railway line where Rabbi Hugo Gryn had waved 'goodbye' to his little brother, where Irene Nemirovsky and countless others were herded to their deaths, and Jacob Bronowski wept into the red earth for the failings of mankind, I knew why we were there. I said to the children, "This is what happened when people stood by and let injustice take hold. We must never let it happen again."
........... 'Auf Wiedersehen........ auf Weidersehen........ auf Weidersehen...........'
Their request that we all boycott the newspaper is easy enough to deal with in my case, but their emails instantly prompted me to discover for myself just what she had said. It is, indeed, a shocking piece of 'kneejerk' journalism and one that must have broken the heart of poor Stephen Gately's mother. To use the story of his sad demise, of which to date none of us knows the exact cause, to legitimise in some perverse way, the consequences of being gay is media fodder for all homophobes. At a time when we know from police figures that homophobic crime is on the increase, such irresponsible journalism merely serves to stoke the fires of hatred.
Those who abbhor the idea that two people of the same sex can not only love each other but can also consolidate their union through a civil partnership ceremony, must have opened their paper of choice and rejoiced at Moir's statement that "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships." Excuse me! How? Why? A young man dies tragically in the home he shares with his same sex partner and the whole legal edifice of civil partnerships can be doubted? What sort of distorted logic is this?
My friend Giovanni, quite rightly, is beside himself with anger at the implication that Stephen Grately must have died as the result of drug-taking and a sleazy gay lifestyle. How easy it is for right wing homophobes to link drug taking with sleaze and being gay! It reminded me of something that Rabbi Lionel Blue once said. "Just because you're in the gay world doesn't mean you go to orgies. You've also got to deal with relationships." In a heterosexual world, with a great deal of drug taking, pornography, prostitution and child sexual abuse, we don't question the legitimacy of marriage, do we?
It is the last line of Moir's article, though, which is the most shocking. In a chilling line, which Josef Goebbels himself could have written, she says, "For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see." In a week when the BBC, wrongly in my view, gave Nick Griffin of the BNP a voice on the 'Question Time' panel, my thoughts turned to parallels with 1930's Weimar. The similarity is clear: gay equals deviant, and therefore dangerous.
Alan Cumming, the Scottish actor, who has played Emcee in Kander and Ebb's stage version of 'Cabaret' and is himself gay, presented a fabulous documentary on BBC 4 this week called 'The Real Cabaret'. It followed a showing on the same channel of Bob Fosse's 1972 film with Liza Minelli and Michael York, one of my all time favourite movies [thank goodness for satellite TV!]. The real cabarets were often run by Jewish impressarios, many of whom finished up in the gas chambers. What the 1972 film didn't show, was that the likes of the fictional Emcee and his coterie of homosexual and sexually ambivalent musicians and dancers would have finished up in the gas chambers too.
Not so long ago, we went to see Julian Clary in Rufus Norris's revival of the stage version. Norris, bravely, took Fosse's narrative all the way to its logical conclusion. In the film version, Emcee closes the curtains with the camera panning round the Kit Kat Klub to show swastika armbands on many of the visitors. In Norris's revival, Clary and the other performers slowly and subtly remove their clothes, turn round with their backs to the audience and huddle together at the back of the stage. As the light shines on them, the shower above them rains down. No one leaving that show would have been under any illusion about what happened to many of Berlin's homosexuals under Nazism.
Of course, this may sound a little over dramatic in the context of a second rate piece of journalism in a right wing 'red top'. We live in liberal times, don't we? Nick Griffin, thank heavens, has none of the misplaced abilities and political canniness of Jean-Marie Le Pen. But both Jan Moir and Nick Griffin have become major players this week in a debate about the sort of society we all want to live in. We have fought hard for our freedoms, for the right of all human beings not to live in fear of their lives for their race, their religious beliefs or their sexual orientation. Why does anyone care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes? Sadly, for all of us, it appears that fascists and fundamentalists still do.
In December 2007, on a bitterly cold, damp, grey day we went 'en famille' from Oskar Schindler's factory in the majestic city of Krackow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, less than an hour's drive away. The museum at Auschwitz is a true and fitting memorial to its lonely ghosts, but it is at nearby Birkenau that their souls speak to you. As we stood in the watchtower, alone, looking through the wintry mist at the forked railway line where Rabbi Hugo Gryn had waved 'goodbye' to his little brother, where Irene Nemirovsky and countless others were herded to their deaths, and Jacob Bronowski wept into the red earth for the failings of mankind, I knew why we were there. I said to the children, "This is what happened when people stood by and let injustice take hold. We must never let it happen again."
........... 'Auf Wiedersehen........ auf Weidersehen........ auf Weidersehen...........'
Photos by Peter Vardigans, Auschwitz-Birkenau, December 2007
Monday 19 October 2009
A Week in the Garden
I woke up to a glorious autumnal morning at Bardies – the first frost of the season and a herald of the Pyrenean winter to come. Because we have had no significant rainfall, the vast spread of the Pyrenees looms, still snowless, to the south of us. I feel my energy levels rise. I love this time of year, just as I do Spring, because the air has been cleared of summer haze. It seers through my nostrils and clears my head of summer clutter, the endless meal plans and day trips mentally packed away until next year. Now, 'sans invitees', I can speak French again!
The garden is full of leaves, but not those on the stubborn lime trees in front of the house, which hover defiantly high above me. It will take more than a solitary frost to shift them. These two majestic trees, planted in 1912 and 1913 respectively, to celebrate the births of Germaine and Simone Henry, have seen much in their long existence and time is of no consequence in the rhythm of their lives.
Their crooked, wild sibling, however, who hides in their shadow, is destined for the chop in December. Pascal is already sharpening his tools. We are loathe to cut down trees but this one is cramping the style of her bigger sister and becoming seriously deformed herself in the process. Pascal brought the tree man round for a second opinion and it was a ‘no brainer’. As soon as all the leaves are off, it will be no more. There are mounds of mistletoe on it to harvest into the bargain, as well as a lot of chopping work for Pascal afterwards.
Another benefit from this summary execution, will be the climbing roses, stunted below her shady boughs by lack of sunlight. The old yellow climber on the dilapidated metal pergola has barely flowered in ten years and the recently planted St Swithun variety pink ones have sulked ever since they were dug in. Quelle sacrifice! One life for three more. Sydney Carton, eat your heart out!
We have had a labour intensive week at Bardies, jollied along by the heavenly weather. I say “we”, when really I mean Laurent, our ‘jardinier’. Actually, his name is Lawrence and he is English but I didn’t want you thinking ‘Mellors’! He is a genius and he comes to help me re-design bits of the garden twice a year. I have big plans, courtesy of a lifelong passion for Christopher Lloyd, and Lawrence interjects a note of practicality into my rantings. He listens to me patiently, with no hint of horror or disapproval on his face, then does exactly what he thinks is right, regardless.
Whilst I ferried the winter flowering pansies for the pots on the terrace and hauled bags of potting compost, Lawrence dug out masses of hypericum and re-seeded the lawn, lugged 18 barrowloads of horse shit from the stable to feed the shrub roses, pulled out the summer bedding plants from the veritable army of terracotta pots, untangled the borders and rockery, and planted 140 alliums, 200 ‘tete a tete’, 120 English, not Spanish, bluebells, as well as uncounted numbers of snowdrops, crocuses and tulips. He also scattered masses of aquilegia and poppy seeds scavenged from a friend's garden. That’s next year sorted then!
He chopped up a huge mound of smaller logs for the ‘salon’ woodburner for Christmas as well. Good man! Thank goodness we blew the budget on two of them last year, because with 12 young people in the house over Christmas, ranged in age between 13 and 21, the ‘salon’ will be a no-go zone. At least now the electricity meter won't be in freefall. Whilst the kids are welded to whatever celebrity game show final is scheduled for the festive period, the adults can be getting suitably squiffy in the ‘biblioteque’. We can meet in the middle for meals and the annual fracas that is present opening chez nous. Meantime, I must start searching the woods for a suitable Christmas tree. It will be fun!
Having cleared up the debris from the flue installation, I was suddenly inspired to wax all the oak floorboards and doors. Mad or what? We have enormous armoire doors from floor to ceiling on either side of the fireplace and they were so dry, it took a tin of ‘cire liquide’ for each one. I must have significantly reduced our fire risk! Rattling old edifices like this really need an army of servants, as I’m sure they once had, not just me and the occasional help of a ‘femme de menage. It’s a long time since I have been down on my knees for so long!
In between times, as ever, the kitchen beckoned and I had great fun being creative. Amazingly, there was still some basil growing in its large pot outside the kitchen door [a sign of global warming?] as well as tarragon, chives, parsley, marjoram and verveine. I made a plum and thyme jam to go with magret of duck, which seemed to work quite well. The basil, gently sweated with shallot, freshly chopped tomatoes and garlic, made a great coulis for a vegetable lasagne and a Chicken Basque. With Halloween around the corner, the ‘potirons’ are in season so we had a risotto one night and a pumpkin and cumin soup for lunch. I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and half a chorizo, together with a good dollop of smoked paprika, to the leftovers to make a really hearty Spanish style peasant soup, very Allegra McEvedy!
I also managed to find some lovely girolles in Cazeres, because we still don’t have any in our woods. There has been nothing, so far, to forage for this year. We desperately need some serious autumn rainfall. Apart from asparagus omelettes in Spring, mushroom omelettes in autumn are my favourite lunchtime treat. In the garden, the figs are finished [indeed, this year they never really got started] so instead I poached our windfall pears in red wine for desert. I still have some of last year’s bumper crop of figs marinating in ‘Absolut’ vodka in the fridge, which will make for some merry post-prandial activity at Christmas!
Meanwhile, my Facebook journey continues. It may seem to be a virtual world, but so far I have caught up with many old friends with whom we’ve agreed meetings in real time. There is definitely something so much more personal about Facebook, which makes you want to reply immediately. With regular e-mail, the temptation is always to leave it until after the gym, or supper or a good night’s sleep with the inevitable forgetfulness that follows. Is it the visual stimulus of a photo image, I wonder? Anyway, I’m loving it. It makes being in France like being next door, which may, or may not, be a good thing after all.
The garden is full of leaves, but not those on the stubborn lime trees in front of the house, which hover defiantly high above me. It will take more than a solitary frost to shift them. These two majestic trees, planted in 1912 and 1913 respectively, to celebrate the births of Germaine and Simone Henry, have seen much in their long existence and time is of no consequence in the rhythm of their lives.
Their crooked, wild sibling, however, who hides in their shadow, is destined for the chop in December. Pascal is already sharpening his tools. We are loathe to cut down trees but this one is cramping the style of her bigger sister and becoming seriously deformed herself in the process. Pascal brought the tree man round for a second opinion and it was a ‘no brainer’. As soon as all the leaves are off, it will be no more. There are mounds of mistletoe on it to harvest into the bargain, as well as a lot of chopping work for Pascal afterwards.
Another benefit from this summary execution, will be the climbing roses, stunted below her shady boughs by lack of sunlight. The old yellow climber on the dilapidated metal pergola has barely flowered in ten years and the recently planted St Swithun variety pink ones have sulked ever since they were dug in. Quelle sacrifice! One life for three more. Sydney Carton, eat your heart out!
We have had a labour intensive week at Bardies, jollied along by the heavenly weather. I say “we”, when really I mean Laurent, our ‘jardinier’. Actually, his name is Lawrence and he is English but I didn’t want you thinking ‘Mellors’! He is a genius and he comes to help me re-design bits of the garden twice a year. I have big plans, courtesy of a lifelong passion for Christopher Lloyd, and Lawrence interjects a note of practicality into my rantings. He listens to me patiently, with no hint of horror or disapproval on his face, then does exactly what he thinks is right, regardless.
Whilst I ferried the winter flowering pansies for the pots on the terrace and hauled bags of potting compost, Lawrence dug out masses of hypericum and re-seeded the lawn, lugged 18 barrowloads of horse shit from the stable to feed the shrub roses, pulled out the summer bedding plants from the veritable army of terracotta pots, untangled the borders and rockery, and planted 140 alliums, 200 ‘tete a tete’, 120 English, not Spanish, bluebells, as well as uncounted numbers of snowdrops, crocuses and tulips. He also scattered masses of aquilegia and poppy seeds scavenged from a friend's garden. That’s next year sorted then!
He chopped up a huge mound of smaller logs for the ‘salon’ woodburner for Christmas as well. Good man! Thank goodness we blew the budget on two of them last year, because with 12 young people in the house over Christmas, ranged in age between 13 and 21, the ‘salon’ will be a no-go zone. At least now the electricity meter won't be in freefall. Whilst the kids are welded to whatever celebrity game show final is scheduled for the festive period, the adults can be getting suitably squiffy in the ‘biblioteque’. We can meet in the middle for meals and the annual fracas that is present opening chez nous. Meantime, I must start searching the woods for a suitable Christmas tree. It will be fun!
Having cleared up the debris from the flue installation, I was suddenly inspired to wax all the oak floorboards and doors. Mad or what? We have enormous armoire doors from floor to ceiling on either side of the fireplace and they were so dry, it took a tin of ‘cire liquide’ for each one. I must have significantly reduced our fire risk! Rattling old edifices like this really need an army of servants, as I’m sure they once had, not just me and the occasional help of a ‘femme de menage. It’s a long time since I have been down on my knees for so long!
In between times, as ever, the kitchen beckoned and I had great fun being creative. Amazingly, there was still some basil growing in its large pot outside the kitchen door [a sign of global warming?] as well as tarragon, chives, parsley, marjoram and verveine. I made a plum and thyme jam to go with magret of duck, which seemed to work quite well. The basil, gently sweated with shallot, freshly chopped tomatoes and garlic, made a great coulis for a vegetable lasagne and a Chicken Basque. With Halloween around the corner, the ‘potirons’ are in season so we had a risotto one night and a pumpkin and cumin soup for lunch. I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and half a chorizo, together with a good dollop of smoked paprika, to the leftovers to make a really hearty Spanish style peasant soup, very Allegra McEvedy!
I also managed to find some lovely girolles in Cazeres, because we still don’t have any in our woods. There has been nothing, so far, to forage for this year. We desperately need some serious autumn rainfall. Apart from asparagus omelettes in Spring, mushroom omelettes in autumn are my favourite lunchtime treat. In the garden, the figs are finished [indeed, this year they never really got started] so instead I poached our windfall pears in red wine for desert. I still have some of last year’s bumper crop of figs marinating in ‘Absolut’ vodka in the fridge, which will make for some merry post-prandial activity at Christmas!
Meanwhile, my Facebook journey continues. It may seem to be a virtual world, but so far I have caught up with many old friends with whom we’ve agreed meetings in real time. There is definitely something so much more personal about Facebook, which makes you want to reply immediately. With regular e-mail, the temptation is always to leave it until after the gym, or supper or a good night’s sleep with the inevitable forgetfulness that follows. Is it the visual stimulus of a photo image, I wonder? Anyway, I’m loving it. It makes being in France like being next door, which may, or may not, be a good thing after all.
Friday 9 October 2009
Family, Friends and Facebook
My metamorphosis is now complete! Not only have I become a compulsive blogger over these last months, but I have also finally decided to throw all notions of a secluded and isolated old age pottering around my 'potager' to the wind. My initial paranoia about privacy has turned into an amazing sense of liberation. Methinks, as well, that I have Twitter in my sights, despite the inevitable limitations on one's pretentiousness, creativity and poetic licence with a measly 140 characters! The world really is becoming a smaller place by the minute.
If people keep talking to each other, they are less likely to blow a gasket and hit each other, that's for sure. Whole family networks can be maintained with a quick posting on a 'wall', and everybody is happy to know that they are part of one big virtual happy family. It's so much better than the real thing in so many ways, because you don't have to fight for the bathroom, argue over the washing up, or sulk because one of your number nicked the last yoghurt that you had carefully positioned in the fridge behind the confitures and old pots of honey.
In the last 48 hours, since I signed up on Facebook, I have been amazed that not one of my many nieces and nephews has rejected me as a 'friend'. All I can say is that they must have total confidence in my broadmindedness, or else they know so much more about the technology than I do and can successfully hide or edit out any references to sex, drugs and rock and roll. My devoutly Catholic Irish mother would have grounded me for months had she worked out that my secret diary was hidden behind an air brick. Now, my own Catholic guilt has the reverse effect, for I cannot bring myself to overly intrude into the very precious private lives of my young relatives.
I am flattered that they show such a high degree of trust in me. It makes organising 'Noel' so much easier, when there will be 19 of us at Bardies. These semi- virtual friendships will be put to the test then, that's for sure, but Christmas 'en famille' in our rambling old chateau will be a first. The Heidlberg and Chiswick contingents are used to our ways, but the San Franciscans will have to cope with the double whammy of jet lag and traditional French Christmas fayre. No turkey this Christmas, I'm afraid. We're going for a brace of capons and a 'buche de Noel', and all objections will be smartly over ruled!
The kids are all excited and have been communicating endlessly with each other, I am told. Facebook really is amazing. Sophie, one of my nieces in Germany, immediately sent me a message saying, "Welcome, Auntie, to this amaaaaazing communication system", and that perfectly sums it up. I would never in a million years have bothered to email each of them, so I'm seeing at first hand just how effective it is. It makes the daunting prospect of all the preparations so much more enjoyable for everyone, when we each have a vested interest in the whole project.
The only person who is missing out is Grandma, which is sad because she is the person that we are all doing it for. She is a hugely entertaining and lively 85 year old, but despite being an ex-teacher and brilliant mathematician, she remains one of the many members of her generation who has failed to embrace new technology. It would be such a wonderful thing for her to be able to communicate with all her grandchildren, and we are all at a loss as to understanding why such an intelligent woman has run shy of such a life changing opportunity. We have offered to buy her a computer, set it up and coach her in its applications, all, to date, to no avail.
I have puzzled much over this conundrum. Why is it that older people run so scared of the internet? Is it the fear of failure? Surely not, especially when I know that my mother-in-law could out think and out perform many youngsters a quarter of her age. Is it that life already seems to go so fast for them, they just don't feel that they have enough time to invest in something so new and all-absorbing? Is it because they fear exposure to 'sharks' and 'shisters', made even more terrifying by tabloid horror stories? Is it because they wish to protect their privacy from prying eyes, a throwback from the war years for so many of them? Is it a gender issue, I wonder, with so many elderly widowed women convinced that technical matters are somehow not for them? I wish I knew the answer, because it is a real issue that we must address urgently, for ever-increasing life expectancy threatens to isolate this generation even further.
We know that communication is the essence of being human. I don't buy into the notion that Facebook is bad, per se, or that the new so-called 'Facebook generation' are inarticulate idiots. I know many, many young people [and I'm proud to say that quite a few of them have just accepted me as a 'friend'!] and they all seem to me to be better communicators than we ever were. After we'd done our homework, we used to flop in front of the TV or read racy books by Dennis Wheatley to alleviate the interminable boredom of termtime evenings. Sunday afternoons, with shops closed, churches open and friends grounded, was a weekly nightmare only to be escaped by talk of sharing homework with a friend.
Today's youngsters, in contrast, are planning everything, from their next party to changing the world on Facebook. Good on them! They are reading and writing too, and if writing is essentially about communication, then they will learn these skills prettily speedily on Facebook, or face a blank 'wall'. We moan that youngsters are apolitical, because they have no faith in our devalued party political system, but fail to see that they are highly motivated when driven by single, relevant issues. When they want to do something, they reach more people with a single posting than any party political broadcast could ever hope to do.
They have a lot to teach us, and we need to listen to them more, not less. In the meantime, I shall treasure my young Facebook friends, and indeed the older ones too. They can come and see us at Bardies anytime. After all, it's so much easier to organise now.
If people keep talking to each other, they are less likely to blow a gasket and hit each other, that's for sure. Whole family networks can be maintained with a quick posting on a 'wall', and everybody is happy to know that they are part of one big virtual happy family. It's so much better than the real thing in so many ways, because you don't have to fight for the bathroom, argue over the washing up, or sulk because one of your number nicked the last yoghurt that you had carefully positioned in the fridge behind the confitures and old pots of honey.
In the last 48 hours, since I signed up on Facebook, I have been amazed that not one of my many nieces and nephews has rejected me as a 'friend'. All I can say is that they must have total confidence in my broadmindedness, or else they know so much more about the technology than I do and can successfully hide or edit out any references to sex, drugs and rock and roll. My devoutly Catholic Irish mother would have grounded me for months had she worked out that my secret diary was hidden behind an air brick. Now, my own Catholic guilt has the reverse effect, for I cannot bring myself to overly intrude into the very precious private lives of my young relatives.
I am flattered that they show such a high degree of trust in me. It makes organising 'Noel' so much easier, when there will be 19 of us at Bardies. These semi- virtual friendships will be put to the test then, that's for sure, but Christmas 'en famille' in our rambling old chateau will be a first. The Heidlberg and Chiswick contingents are used to our ways, but the San Franciscans will have to cope with the double whammy of jet lag and traditional French Christmas fayre. No turkey this Christmas, I'm afraid. We're going for a brace of capons and a 'buche de Noel', and all objections will be smartly over ruled!
The kids are all excited and have been communicating endlessly with each other, I am told. Facebook really is amazing. Sophie, one of my nieces in Germany, immediately sent me a message saying, "Welcome, Auntie, to this amaaaaazing communication system", and that perfectly sums it up. I would never in a million years have bothered to email each of them, so I'm seeing at first hand just how effective it is. It makes the daunting prospect of all the preparations so much more enjoyable for everyone, when we each have a vested interest in the whole project.
The only person who is missing out is Grandma, which is sad because she is the person that we are all doing it for. She is a hugely entertaining and lively 85 year old, but despite being an ex-teacher and brilliant mathematician, she remains one of the many members of her generation who has failed to embrace new technology. It would be such a wonderful thing for her to be able to communicate with all her grandchildren, and we are all at a loss as to understanding why such an intelligent woman has run shy of such a life changing opportunity. We have offered to buy her a computer, set it up and coach her in its applications, all, to date, to no avail.
I have puzzled much over this conundrum. Why is it that older people run so scared of the internet? Is it the fear of failure? Surely not, especially when I know that my mother-in-law could out think and out perform many youngsters a quarter of her age. Is it that life already seems to go so fast for them, they just don't feel that they have enough time to invest in something so new and all-absorbing? Is it because they fear exposure to 'sharks' and 'shisters', made even more terrifying by tabloid horror stories? Is it because they wish to protect their privacy from prying eyes, a throwback from the war years for so many of them? Is it a gender issue, I wonder, with so many elderly widowed women convinced that technical matters are somehow not for them? I wish I knew the answer, because it is a real issue that we must address urgently, for ever-increasing life expectancy threatens to isolate this generation even further.
We know that communication is the essence of being human. I don't buy into the notion that Facebook is bad, per se, or that the new so-called 'Facebook generation' are inarticulate idiots. I know many, many young people [and I'm proud to say that quite a few of them have just accepted me as a 'friend'!] and they all seem to me to be better communicators than we ever were. After we'd done our homework, we used to flop in front of the TV or read racy books by Dennis Wheatley to alleviate the interminable boredom of termtime evenings. Sunday afternoons, with shops closed, churches open and friends grounded, was a weekly nightmare only to be escaped by talk of sharing homework with a friend.
Today's youngsters, in contrast, are planning everything, from their next party to changing the world on Facebook. Good on them! They are reading and writing too, and if writing is essentially about communication, then they will learn these skills prettily speedily on Facebook, or face a blank 'wall'. We moan that youngsters are apolitical, because they have no faith in our devalued party political system, but fail to see that they are highly motivated when driven by single, relevant issues. When they want to do something, they reach more people with a single posting than any party political broadcast could ever hope to do.
They have a lot to teach us, and we need to listen to them more, not less. In the meantime, I shall treasure my young Facebook friends, and indeed the older ones too. They can come and see us at Bardies anytime. After all, it's so much easier to organise now.
Tuesday 6 October 2009
Here We Go Again......
Last week, for my sins, I was at the Labour Party Conference, a rather funereal experience this year to say the least. Gone are the joys of drinks parties and fringe events, packed full of tipsy people desperate to hang onto the coat tails of aspiring, or as often as not, actual members of the government and their many acolytes. After May 1997, the skies really did seem bluer and the sun more benevolent to us lifelong Labour groupies. A new dawn had broken, or so we thought, but that was before 9/11, the Iraq war, 7/7, financial meltdown and Gordon Brown's dystopian grimaces. Now we are nearing the end of the road, I fear.
As I wandered aimlessly about, despondently looking for friends who have apparently jumped ship, I thought, not for the first time, 'Bring back Tony!' Now I know that not many people will agree with me, for obvious reasons, but I still think that he was the greatest asset we ever had [unlike poor Gordon who, with his rictus grin and vacuous promises, remains an electoral liability!]. The sun still shone in Brighton, but somehow it seemed a pale apology. The only good thing that remained was the seafront fish and chips.
There I was thinking, with a heavy heart, that there was so little to divide Big Gord from the Boy Dave, I might consider voting Green instead. Never in my life have I not voted Labour in a General Election, so this was betrayal indeed on my part. But, in Harold Macmillan's immortal phrase, a week is a long time in politics or, in this case, more like a couple of days. My maternal relatives, and their fellow Irish countrymen and women, have put Europe well and truly back on the electoral map. The spectre of the European Constitution being ratified before next May's general election has well and truly galvinised the 'castrati' of the Euro-sceptic Tory right.
Never have so many hitherto strangulated voices sung in such perfect harmony. Their moment has come and, mon Dieu, they are determined to have it. Hold onto your seatbelts, fellow Francophiles and Europhiles, for the road ahead will be rocky and deeply unpleasant. Already, Angela Merkel has expressed her discontent with Cameron and Co. by downgrading Tory relations in Europe, because of their unfathomable decision to ally themselves with the swivel eyed homophobes and Holocaust dissemblers already in the European parliament. Boris Johnson, the irascible blonde bombshell, is ready to take the helm and ride out with the Valkyries.
In yesterday's Daily Telegraph, Boris nailed his colours to the wall. In an amusing and offensive rant, he balked at the very real prospect of Tony Blair being thrust back into our lives as the first President of Europe, the one-man incarnation of the wishes of 500 million people and 27 countries. "Can you really imagine," he writes, "Nicolas Sarkozy being willing to share the international limelight with our Tony, when Blair is British, charismatic, and not remotely frightened of appearing in photocalls with people of more than five foot five inches in height?" If he thinks little of Tony Blair, he thinks even less of Nicolas Sarkozy and is 'heightist' into the bargain!
Why, oh why, do us Brits persist in the notion that somehow we still rule the world? For how long can the delusion remain that we are somehow, as a result of our DNA, superior to the French or the Germans, never mind the Italians, Spanish, Greeks and former east Europeans? When are we going to learn that we are now just little people ourselves, stranded on islands way to the west of Brussels and Strasbourg. We may have misguidedly thought that the USA would altruistically act in our best interests, but from Maynard Keynes to Tony Blair, the lessons have been hard ones to stomach. Our future must be in Europe and we fail to engage at our peril.
The failed referendum promise of Labour's 2005 Manifesto certainly leaves a sour taste in the mouth but this cannot be justification for retreat. We must move the debate forward, not backwards. In any event, the genie has been let out of the bottle and at least now a real election issue has been unceremoniously slapped on to the table. Here we go again........
As I wandered aimlessly about, despondently looking for friends who have apparently jumped ship, I thought, not for the first time, 'Bring back Tony!' Now I know that not many people will agree with me, for obvious reasons, but I still think that he was the greatest asset we ever had [unlike poor Gordon who, with his rictus grin and vacuous promises, remains an electoral liability!]. The sun still shone in Brighton, but somehow it seemed a pale apology. The only good thing that remained was the seafront fish and chips.
There I was thinking, with a heavy heart, that there was so little to divide Big Gord from the Boy Dave, I might consider voting Green instead. Never in my life have I not voted Labour in a General Election, so this was betrayal indeed on my part. But, in Harold Macmillan's immortal phrase, a week is a long time in politics or, in this case, more like a couple of days. My maternal relatives, and their fellow Irish countrymen and women, have put Europe well and truly back on the electoral map. The spectre of the European Constitution being ratified before next May's general election has well and truly galvinised the 'castrati' of the Euro-sceptic Tory right.
Never have so many hitherto strangulated voices sung in such perfect harmony. Their moment has come and, mon Dieu, they are determined to have it. Hold onto your seatbelts, fellow Francophiles and Europhiles, for the road ahead will be rocky and deeply unpleasant. Already, Angela Merkel has expressed her discontent with Cameron and Co. by downgrading Tory relations in Europe, because of their unfathomable decision to ally themselves with the swivel eyed homophobes and Holocaust dissemblers already in the European parliament. Boris Johnson, the irascible blonde bombshell, is ready to take the helm and ride out with the Valkyries.
In yesterday's Daily Telegraph, Boris nailed his colours to the wall. In an amusing and offensive rant, he balked at the very real prospect of Tony Blair being thrust back into our lives as the first President of Europe, the one-man incarnation of the wishes of 500 million people and 27 countries. "Can you really imagine," he writes, "Nicolas Sarkozy being willing to share the international limelight with our Tony, when Blair is British, charismatic, and not remotely frightened of appearing in photocalls with people of more than five foot five inches in height?" If he thinks little of Tony Blair, he thinks even less of Nicolas Sarkozy and is 'heightist' into the bargain!
Why, oh why, do us Brits persist in the notion that somehow we still rule the world? For how long can the delusion remain that we are somehow, as a result of our DNA, superior to the French or the Germans, never mind the Italians, Spanish, Greeks and former east Europeans? When are we going to learn that we are now just little people ourselves, stranded on islands way to the west of Brussels and Strasbourg. We may have misguidedly thought that the USA would altruistically act in our best interests, but from Maynard Keynes to Tony Blair, the lessons have been hard ones to stomach. Our future must be in Europe and we fail to engage at our peril.
The failed referendum promise of Labour's 2005 Manifesto certainly leaves a sour taste in the mouth but this cannot be justification for retreat. We must move the debate forward, not backwards. In any event, the genie has been let out of the bottle and at least now a real election issue has been unceremoniously slapped on to the table. Here we go again........
Wednesday 23 September 2009
Bend Me, Shake Me, Anyway You Want Me!
Well, I'm finally back at Bardies, on a gloriously sunny day, after a gruelling five day yoga retreat in the Haut Garonne. I ache in places I didn't know I had and, I can tell you, keeping my rear end and my excess kilos up in the air in 'down dog' position for minutes at a time was no mean feat for wimps like me. My arms and shoulders are still screaming for mercy and it's forty eight hours since I was last upside down! Despite my feeble attempts at going to the gym, by way of pre-preparation, I know for sure that I must focus on getting myself vaguely back in shape if I am going to enjoy my dotage without a zimmer frame.
'Hey, you hypocrite!' I hear you say, especially after my previous eulogy to the great Keith Floyd, and, of course, you are right. On the other hand, enjoying good food, good wine and living life to the full, and being vaguely fit, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I am certain that they compliment each other. After all, you can justify wolfing down more calories if you've been for a good hike around the Bethmale Valley or, even better, skied the pistes of Guzet Neige. The hills around here are not part of the Tour de France for nothing, which I have to admit is just one of the reasons why I haven't got on my bike to date! Things are about to change, although I have no intention of getting too carried away with this fitness lark. 'Peu a peu'.
For me, though, yoga is the ultimate form of exercise. It ticks all the boxes. Many years ago I did Iyenegar yoga, which involved a lot of polystyrene blocks and a great deal of time spent upside down in headstands. I was certainly supple and the meditative aspects of the classes helped get my head into the right space for dealing with hyperactive toddlers. Peace, calm and 'me-time' were a life saver. I only gave it up because I pulled a ligament trying to be over ambitious with my stretching on a bitterly cold winter's morning [the downside of the classes was that they were held in a de-consecrated church with virtually no heating].
These last few magical days have been a revelation. This time, I did Ashtanga Yoga which, if I'd known how hard it was when I started last Friday morning, I might have dipped out of. No pain without gain, as they say. You don't get a tea break, that's for sure. In fact, you don't get any breaks at all between moves, because it works on a continuum of sequences which you are supposed to master through constant repetition. In the 'Eighties', when we all battled to look like Jane Fonda, the trend was for aerobic classes. I can tell you first hand that Ashtanga Yoga is about as aerobic as it gets, and I was hiding at the back of the group!
You start with a sequence of moves known as 'sun salutations'. On my first morning I was pathetic, but I forced myself to do them despite having a bad back. When I first watched Katie, our lovely teacher with a beautifully supple figure to die for, I immediately thought 'no way!' Not being one to give up on things easily, I dutifully attempted to copy her fluid movements. I may have looked like a beached whale desperately trying to manoeuvre itself back into the ocean but I am proud to say that I slowly got the hang of it. I even, perversely, started to enjoy it. The really incredible thing was that it gradually made my back feel better though, obviously, not my arms or shoulders because of my weight.
Sun salutations are the most perfect sequence of exercises for a bad back and I don't know why chiropractors don't insist on them [perhaps they would if they didn't think they might get sued by clients unable to extricate themselves from some of the positions, which I guess is understandable!]. The idea is to do them every morning and I am determined to try my very best to continue with them 'toute seule'. I must make a note to keep Charlie, our Jack Russell out of the way because he's bound to see it as a new game, with potentially disastrous consequences for my health.
As we progressed, we continued with more complex sequences, some with greater success on my part than others. The early evening classes were my favourite. They were the 'ying' to the 'yang', soft meditative stretches designed to work on soft connective tissue, rather than muscle groups. I could happily have taken extra classes like these and felt fantastic after each one. Whereas half way through the frenetic activity of the morning class I was thinking, more often than not, about what I was going to have for breakfast, after the afternoon session I just felt an amazing sense of well-being and always had a spring in my step. I loved it and can't recommend Ashtanga yoga enough.
The retreat was held in the fabulous chateau of close friends near Aspet, a beautiful quaint little town nestling below the mountains. I am told that it has become much beloved by the English of late, although our friends bought their house in 1990, when most English people back then decamped instead to the Dordogne. Thai Ping and Giovanni, who own the house, have converted the top floor of one of their barns into a huge yoga studio, complete with Moroccan awnings and stunning views from the wide open windows over their magnificently landscaped and planted garden. Below was the pool, surrounded by stunning cobalt walls inlaid with mosaic. The house, originally built in 1792 by an unfortunate aristocrat who lost his head in the frenzy of the revolution, is to die for, full of fabulous things sourced from their many trips to Asia, as well as a fine collection of period pieces.
Katie Heller, from 'Tri Yoga', ran the course brilliantly and Thai Ping and I did the food. We ate so much, three meals a day, but it was all good healthy stuff and we only had a glass of wine each on the first and last nights. Honest! The cooking was more knackering than the yoga, but I did enjoy it. Pete Heller, Katie's husband generously cooked a fantastic butternut squash risotto on Saturday night. On Sunday, we drove over the border to Bossost for an exquisite lunch at 'El Portalet'. If you haven't been there yet, it's the best kept secret in the region. The restaurant is not flash but the food has shades of Heston Blumental in its staggering combinations of flavours. Excellent, and all for a 'prix fixe' of 25 euros a head.
On the same trip, we also managed to bag some great ceps and girolles from a man by the side of the road for 12 euros a kilo [none here yet because of the lack of serious rainfall] and stock up on duty free booze for 'Noel' in the huge hypermarket, where people behave like savages in pursuit of their hauls. After a serious lunch and a mega shop, we were all lined up in the yoga studio in our 'trackie bottoms' again by 6 o'clock, ready to roll. Keen or what? I tell you, this yoga lark really gets to you. Let's just hope I can keep it up! Bend me, shake me, anyway you want me..........!
'Hey, you hypocrite!' I hear you say, especially after my previous eulogy to the great Keith Floyd, and, of course, you are right. On the other hand, enjoying good food, good wine and living life to the full, and being vaguely fit, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I am certain that they compliment each other. After all, you can justify wolfing down more calories if you've been for a good hike around the Bethmale Valley or, even better, skied the pistes of Guzet Neige. The hills around here are not part of the Tour de France for nothing, which I have to admit is just one of the reasons why I haven't got on my bike to date! Things are about to change, although I have no intention of getting too carried away with this fitness lark. 'Peu a peu'.
For me, though, yoga is the ultimate form of exercise. It ticks all the boxes. Many years ago I did Iyenegar yoga, which involved a lot of polystyrene blocks and a great deal of time spent upside down in headstands. I was certainly supple and the meditative aspects of the classes helped get my head into the right space for dealing with hyperactive toddlers. Peace, calm and 'me-time' were a life saver. I only gave it up because I pulled a ligament trying to be over ambitious with my stretching on a bitterly cold winter's morning [the downside of the classes was that they were held in a de-consecrated church with virtually no heating].
These last few magical days have been a revelation. This time, I did Ashtanga Yoga which, if I'd known how hard it was when I started last Friday morning, I might have dipped out of. No pain without gain, as they say. You don't get a tea break, that's for sure. In fact, you don't get any breaks at all between moves, because it works on a continuum of sequences which you are supposed to master through constant repetition. In the 'Eighties', when we all battled to look like Jane Fonda, the trend was for aerobic classes. I can tell you first hand that Ashtanga Yoga is about as aerobic as it gets, and I was hiding at the back of the group!
You start with a sequence of moves known as 'sun salutations'. On my first morning I was pathetic, but I forced myself to do them despite having a bad back. When I first watched Katie, our lovely teacher with a beautifully supple figure to die for, I immediately thought 'no way!' Not being one to give up on things easily, I dutifully attempted to copy her fluid movements. I may have looked like a beached whale desperately trying to manoeuvre itself back into the ocean but I am proud to say that I slowly got the hang of it. I even, perversely, started to enjoy it. The really incredible thing was that it gradually made my back feel better though, obviously, not my arms or shoulders because of my weight.
Sun salutations are the most perfect sequence of exercises for a bad back and I don't know why chiropractors don't insist on them [perhaps they would if they didn't think they might get sued by clients unable to extricate themselves from some of the positions, which I guess is understandable!]. The idea is to do them every morning and I am determined to try my very best to continue with them 'toute seule'. I must make a note to keep Charlie, our Jack Russell out of the way because he's bound to see it as a new game, with potentially disastrous consequences for my health.
As we progressed, we continued with more complex sequences, some with greater success on my part than others. The early evening classes were my favourite. They were the 'ying' to the 'yang', soft meditative stretches designed to work on soft connective tissue, rather than muscle groups. I could happily have taken extra classes like these and felt fantastic after each one. Whereas half way through the frenetic activity of the morning class I was thinking, more often than not, about what I was going to have for breakfast, after the afternoon session I just felt an amazing sense of well-being and always had a spring in my step. I loved it and can't recommend Ashtanga yoga enough.
The retreat was held in the fabulous chateau of close friends near Aspet, a beautiful quaint little town nestling below the mountains. I am told that it has become much beloved by the English of late, although our friends bought their house in 1990, when most English people back then decamped instead to the Dordogne. Thai Ping and Giovanni, who own the house, have converted the top floor of one of their barns into a huge yoga studio, complete with Moroccan awnings and stunning views from the wide open windows over their magnificently landscaped and planted garden. Below was the pool, surrounded by stunning cobalt walls inlaid with mosaic. The house, originally built in 1792 by an unfortunate aristocrat who lost his head in the frenzy of the revolution, is to die for, full of fabulous things sourced from their many trips to Asia, as well as a fine collection of period pieces.
Katie Heller, from 'Tri Yoga', ran the course brilliantly and Thai Ping and I did the food. We ate so much, three meals a day, but it was all good healthy stuff and we only had a glass of wine each on the first and last nights. Honest! The cooking was more knackering than the yoga, but I did enjoy it. Pete Heller, Katie's husband generously cooked a fantastic butternut squash risotto on Saturday night. On Sunday, we drove over the border to Bossost for an exquisite lunch at 'El Portalet'. If you haven't been there yet, it's the best kept secret in the region. The restaurant is not flash but the food has shades of Heston Blumental in its staggering combinations of flavours. Excellent, and all for a 'prix fixe' of 25 euros a head.
On the same trip, we also managed to bag some great ceps and girolles from a man by the side of the road for 12 euros a kilo [none here yet because of the lack of serious rainfall] and stock up on duty free booze for 'Noel' in the huge hypermarket, where people behave like savages in pursuit of their hauls. After a serious lunch and a mega shop, we were all lined up in the yoga studio in our 'trackie bottoms' again by 6 o'clock, ready to roll. Keen or what? I tell you, this yoga lark really gets to you. Let's just hope I can keep it up! Bend me, shake me, anyway you want me..........!
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Adieu Keith Floyd, RIP
I really wasn't going to do another blog until I had planted out my smuggled buddlejas and penstemmons and severely contorted my middle aged body on a five day yoga course with my two best friends in their chateau neat St Gaudens. Having agreed to help provide the vittals [wheat, dairy and booze free, of course], food has been very much on my mind as I have waded through such illustrious publications as 'Dr Joshi's Holistic Detox' and 'Carol Vorderman's 28 day Detox Plan'. Still not sure what detoxing is, but I do so love playing around with new recipe ideas.
Then, this morning on the 10.00am news bulletin on Radio 4, the news came through that Keith Floyd, the original TV celebrity chef [if you discount the matronly and decidedly bossy Fanny Craddock!], had died. I was devestated and felt much the same overwhelming sense of sadness that I had felt when it was announced that first Bob Marley and then John Lennon were no longer with us. Only yesterday, in my local coffee shop, I was reading a hilariously funny extract from Keith Floyd's autobiography from a borrowed copy of the 'Daily Mail'. Remembering all those great programmes where it was obvious that everyone was totally plastered, I finally had it from the horse's mouth.
I knew that he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer but had thought that the prognosis would be reasonably good, despite his years of seriously 'going for it'. There was something so wonderfully reassuring about that permanently craggy old face that made us all feel reckless and carefree when it came down to the really important things in life. Food, wine and friends, thrown randomly together wherever one was in the world, provided his metier. He made us feel good about the good things, and bugger tomorrow. How different it all is today when, if you're female, you are made to think that if you have just half a glass of wine a week you are destined for a long slow death from breast cancer, or if you're male you will die of some complication from a sclerotic liver.
Ironically, just in case you're thinking 'QED', they say that he died from a heart attack. My guess is that the chemo drugs may have damaged his heart, but, of course, it is possible that the wanton self abuse of his life style was the principal reason. In any event, I don't know whether to be joyful for a life so well lived, or depressed because his death, if you'll excuse the awful pun, is yet another nail in the proverbial coffin for all of us 'bon vivants'. Personally, I don't want to be a dribbling, incontinent, brain dead 95 year old shut up in a lonely nursing home until I fall out of my wheelchair and keel over. Life is for living and as far as I am concerned I would rather have Keith Floyd as my mentor than some gym addicted Department of Health bureaucrat.
Friends of ours knew him in Bristol when he had his loss making restaurant. The restaurant was great, they told us, and the food was, as one would expect, fantastic. I was at a loss to understand how a restaurant owned and cooked in by the great Keith Floyd could have lost so much money. The answer was so simple, and a mark of the great man himself. Quite simply, the minute the bulk of his semi teetotal and dull customers left the restaurant, Keith would dive into the cellar and pull out sundry bottles of his favourite clarets and Burgundies for his 'chums' to taste and test.....and drink.....and drink. It was not unheard of for them to stagger out into the misty Bristol night air at 5 o'clock in the morning. He enjoyed himself so much, he never charged them.
Such generosity of spirit is uplifting and, in my book, is what life is all about. What else is there? Answers on a postcard please! Rien! I have just pulled out of my bookshelf an old copy of his definitive 1987 'Floyd on France', which was, at the time, south west London's answer to Elizabeth David and Julia Child. It is all so simple that us baby boomers, desperate to impress at our 'dinner parties' could knock off the real thing with none of the guesswork required for the lengthy tomes of ED and JC et al. We learnt to cook, thanks to him. He always said that everything that he cooked was courtesy of Elizabeth David but, in reality, he communicated to us the real essence of her work with none of the experimental pitfalls.
When we went to live in Madrid in 1992, with a hyperactive one year old in tow, we were able to sample the delights of Spanish food from his 'Floyd on Spain' book without having to stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning in the local Madrileno restaurants. I think that we pretty well cooked our way through the whole of his book on Spain, a bit like Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child et al's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. It was easier for us because Floydy had written the recipes. If you haven't seen 'Julie and Julia' yet, by the way, you must. Meryl Streep was a brilliant Julia Child although, as I watched the movie, I realised that I had never ever seen her in the true flesh. Before Floyd, there were just books, not people. Julia Child was a great personality but, unlike Floyd, us Brits never saw her. The Americans did, of course.
So, adieu then, to a master. The world will not be the same without him. I mourn not just the man, but a way of life in retreat. It was great while it lasted and now it's Dr Joshi's holistic detox [my arse!]. So long, Keith, and thanks for all the fish!
Then, this morning on the 10.00am news bulletin on Radio 4, the news came through that Keith Floyd, the original TV celebrity chef [if you discount the matronly and decidedly bossy Fanny Craddock!], had died. I was devestated and felt much the same overwhelming sense of sadness that I had felt when it was announced that first Bob Marley and then John Lennon were no longer with us. Only yesterday, in my local coffee shop, I was reading a hilariously funny extract from Keith Floyd's autobiography from a borrowed copy of the 'Daily Mail'. Remembering all those great programmes where it was obvious that everyone was totally plastered, I finally had it from the horse's mouth.
I knew that he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer but had thought that the prognosis would be reasonably good, despite his years of seriously 'going for it'. There was something so wonderfully reassuring about that permanently craggy old face that made us all feel reckless and carefree when it came down to the really important things in life. Food, wine and friends, thrown randomly together wherever one was in the world, provided his metier. He made us feel good about the good things, and bugger tomorrow. How different it all is today when, if you're female, you are made to think that if you have just half a glass of wine a week you are destined for a long slow death from breast cancer, or if you're male you will die of some complication from a sclerotic liver.
Ironically, just in case you're thinking 'QED', they say that he died from a heart attack. My guess is that the chemo drugs may have damaged his heart, but, of course, it is possible that the wanton self abuse of his life style was the principal reason. In any event, I don't know whether to be joyful for a life so well lived, or depressed because his death, if you'll excuse the awful pun, is yet another nail in the proverbial coffin for all of us 'bon vivants'. Personally, I don't want to be a dribbling, incontinent, brain dead 95 year old shut up in a lonely nursing home until I fall out of my wheelchair and keel over. Life is for living and as far as I am concerned I would rather have Keith Floyd as my mentor than some gym addicted Department of Health bureaucrat.
Friends of ours knew him in Bristol when he had his loss making restaurant. The restaurant was great, they told us, and the food was, as one would expect, fantastic. I was at a loss to understand how a restaurant owned and cooked in by the great Keith Floyd could have lost so much money. The answer was so simple, and a mark of the great man himself. Quite simply, the minute the bulk of his semi teetotal and dull customers left the restaurant, Keith would dive into the cellar and pull out sundry bottles of his favourite clarets and Burgundies for his 'chums' to taste and test.....and drink.....and drink. It was not unheard of for them to stagger out into the misty Bristol night air at 5 o'clock in the morning. He enjoyed himself so much, he never charged them.
Such generosity of spirit is uplifting and, in my book, is what life is all about. What else is there? Answers on a postcard please! Rien! I have just pulled out of my bookshelf an old copy of his definitive 1987 'Floyd on France', which was, at the time, south west London's answer to Elizabeth David and Julia Child. It is all so simple that us baby boomers, desperate to impress at our 'dinner parties' could knock off the real thing with none of the guesswork required for the lengthy tomes of ED and JC et al. We learnt to cook, thanks to him. He always said that everything that he cooked was courtesy of Elizabeth David but, in reality, he communicated to us the real essence of her work with none of the experimental pitfalls.
When we went to live in Madrid in 1992, with a hyperactive one year old in tow, we were able to sample the delights of Spanish food from his 'Floyd on Spain' book without having to stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning in the local Madrileno restaurants. I think that we pretty well cooked our way through the whole of his book on Spain, a bit like Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child et al's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. It was easier for us because Floydy had written the recipes. If you haven't seen 'Julie and Julia' yet, by the way, you must. Meryl Streep was a brilliant Julia Child although, as I watched the movie, I realised that I had never ever seen her in the true flesh. Before Floyd, there were just books, not people. Julia Child was a great personality but, unlike Floyd, us Brits never saw her. The Americans did, of course.
So, adieu then, to a master. The world will not be the same without him. I mourn not just the man, but a way of life in retreat. It was great while it lasted and now it's Dr Joshi's holistic detox [my arse!]. So long, Keith, and thanks for all the fish!
Sunday 13 September 2009
Bardies 10:10
I do not know where the first fortnight of September has gone - lost in a flurry of sewing on nametapes, getting shoes fitted and endless washing machine cycles. C'est la vie des Mamans! Here I am, finalement, with a few sweaty and tired moments to spare in front of my computer on the evening before my 18 year old heads off back to college. My original intention was to get this blog up on the 2nd or 3rd September in response to the 'Guardian's' launch of its 10:10 campaign.
For those of you who don't read 'The Guardian' on line, their campaign was launched at the Tate Modern on 1st September 2009, with the aim of asking individuals, businesses and organisations of all kinds to try to cut their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Not much, you might think, especially from the clean air of the Ariege, but if tens of thousands of people are fired up [sorry, no pun intended!] with enthusiasm for the project then the impact of our collective action becomes significant. Being a natural ditherer, I always think that the toughest bit of any course of action is the first tentative step. The great thing about this project is that you don't have to don a hair shirt in the process.
Ironically, the people that I know who are the most committed to reducing their carbon emissions live in the Ariege and have the lowest carbon footprint to start with. Karl, our plumber, drives an electric car and knows everything there is to know about reed beds and solar panels. We have talked many times about installing a 'pompe a chaleur' for heating, a brilliant idea if only the cost weren't as high as a brand new BMW! For so many of us, the costs of all this wonderful new technology remain totally prohibitive. The will is there, but the bank manager isn't.
Instead, for now, we have to look at other options. We have already put thermostats on all our radiators [not cheap!] and installed woodburners, which blew the whole of last year's budget, and some more. We are privileged to have masses of woodland so, as we just utilise the dead trees which are carbon neutral, we are able to heat the house in autumn and spring without resorting to a small mortgage to turn on the oil fired central heating. In January and February, though, we have to bite the proverbial bullet and kiss euro bills goodbye in the smoke. Not good for the environment, and not good for our peace of mind. No wonder our friend Jim, in the Gers, takes off for Brazil for the winter!
As we did both of these things before 1st September, I can hardly boast them as part of our 10:10 commitment. Likewise, our loft insulation, which we put in three years ago when we were feeling rather more flush and had run out of salad bowls to put under the leaks in the roof. Thank goodness we did repair the roof when we did, otherwise I dread to think what chaos would have greeted us back in January when the 'tempete' hit. As it was, we still lost a number of pantiles but the 'flexituile' held the water at bay and we were spared the need to repair rain sodden ceilings.
We have to now look at simpler measures to reduce our consumption by a further 10%. Travel is obviously the number one target and I promise I am working on it. I have signed up to the special offers on the SNCF website, but getting to Paris by train 'sous la manche' is still incredibly expensive and you can't really drag lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and hedge cutters in tow, not to mention recalcitrant teenagers. We have, however, taken advantage of the car scrappage scheme to buy a more fuel efficient diesel car which will take the four of us, and the dog, more comfortably and all together. Hopefully, the plaintive moans of cramped children buried beneath mountains of surplus luggage and boxes of books, will be a thing of the past [as indeed should their demands to fly home on their own, in comfort, on Easyjet!].
I have come to the conclusion that the old ways are the best and, inspired by my visits to old, cold, draughty National Trust houses, I am determined to take a leaf out of their previous owners' books. Firstly, curtains. If big, heavy interlined curtains were good enough to keep the heat in Scottish castles in the depths of a Hebridean winter, then they must do the trick down in the Ariege. The poles are in place ready and waiting for the recently scrounged haul from my mother-in-law. She always knew that those muddy brown and sludge green curtains deserved a fate better than the local Scout troop's jumble sale! They may not be the height of interior design chic but if the choice is freezing your arse off, who cares?
Secondly, hot water bottles. Right up until she died, my darling old mum used to put two hot water bottles in my bed in winter whenever I went to stay with her. In my book, they are the ultimate token of love. To go to the trouble of filling a hot water bottle and putting it into someone else's bed is the test of true generosity of spirit. There is nothing in this world like that warm tingly feeling that takes over your body when you climb into a bed so warmed. And, unlike an electricity guzzling electric blanket, the heat stays with you until you blissfully fall into a deep sleep. OK, so the downside is the shock cold contact with an icy bag of rubber first thing in the morning, but, hey, there is no gain without pain!
Thirdly, I am going to disconnect the beautiful old French taps that fill our lovingly resourced period cast iron baths. I was in seventh heaven when I found our two French rolltop baths in Frome ten years ago. Not only had they not been spoilt by having been re-enamelled, they were complete with their original leaky taps. A good scrub and a lick of Farrow and Ball's 'Pidgeon' oil eggshell later, they looked like new and were perfect for our purposes. My bargain buys proved a bit of a disaster a few months later, though, when I had to have the floors reinforced with RSJ's to take their weight. Now, in comparison with showers, their respective water consumption is a 'No! No!'. It's such a shame, but serious times need serious measures. They'll still look good, even if the only way to fill one is with a bucket!
My fourth measure concerns lightbulbs. Because Bardies is so old, we tracked down old 19th century French light fittings and chandeliers, which we had converted. It may not be long before they are lit by a single lightbulb. We already use the new energy efficient bulbs where possible but, being blind as a bat at short range, the long lasting bulbs seem so dim to me. I simply cannot read with them. Can anyone, I wonder? What I don't understand is why a total ban on the old ones seems not to have spurred the manufacturers into producing suitable replacements. Torches and candles may be a short term answer but it would be nice to know that the future wasn't going to be totally dim. 'The lights are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime' was never so apt.
I was pleased to see that EDF have taken the initiative of sending a graph of one's household electricity consumption on each bill, with a comparative one from the corresponding period from the previous year. I am very pleased to see that ours was significantly reduced, largely, I suspect, because the children had spent less time with us. They are hopeless and I am rapidly turning into a fishwife in pursuit of them when they leave lights and the TV on every time that they leave a room. A minor electric shock administered anonymously every time they walk out of a room might do the trick, rather like one of Pavlov's dogs. We, like most people in the Ariege, never leave anything on standby for the purely selfish reason that a storm can roll in overnight and wipe your computer or blow up your television set.
Of course, there is always room for more saving. I am going to use everything in the deep freeze by September each year [always good to delve deep and find things that you put away for a rainy day way back in 2001, or whenever!] and turn it off for the winter, as well as the fridges. I am also going to hide the supplementary electric radiators for emergencies only. It is amazing how quickly one adapts to temperature reductions, especially if it happens slowly. We certainly didn't have central heating when I was growing up, and the house awaiting slum clearance that I lived in at university was so cold that my washing froze in the bathroom. I seem to recall many nights going to sleep in my coat, but that may have been down to too many beers in 'The Buttery'! My mum used to buy me sheepskin lined boots long before 'Ugg' made them fashionable and, even now, I still wear them to ward off the foot-numbing cold of our unsympathetic 'tomettes'.
At the end of the day [sorry for the cliche, but one day it may be!] these measures are as nothing compared with the threat that is before us. We are really not very good at looking into the future, especially the bleak and barren one that so many Africans, South Americans and Australians will face if we don't get our act together soon. I cannot possibly pretend that I am anything other than a hypocrite, an environmentally part-time, self indulgent, gas guzzling, water consuming, heat loving individual, whose actions, alongside tens of thousands, or indeed millions, of others, continually damage our precious world. I wish that I could wave a wand, so that it would all go away and we could get back to the serious business of simply enjoying ourselves. I can't, and neither, sadly, can you. We are all on the same long, hard journey and the sooner each of us takes those first few steps towards a world that our grandchildren can inherit, the easier our shared journey will become. 10:10 is a start, but only a start. Bon chance!
For those of you who don't read 'The Guardian' on line, their campaign was launched at the Tate Modern on 1st September 2009, with the aim of asking individuals, businesses and organisations of all kinds to try to cut their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Not much, you might think, especially from the clean air of the Ariege, but if tens of thousands of people are fired up [sorry, no pun intended!] with enthusiasm for the project then the impact of our collective action becomes significant. Being a natural ditherer, I always think that the toughest bit of any course of action is the first tentative step. The great thing about this project is that you don't have to don a hair shirt in the process.
Ironically, the people that I know who are the most committed to reducing their carbon emissions live in the Ariege and have the lowest carbon footprint to start with. Karl, our plumber, drives an electric car and knows everything there is to know about reed beds and solar panels. We have talked many times about installing a 'pompe a chaleur' for heating, a brilliant idea if only the cost weren't as high as a brand new BMW! For so many of us, the costs of all this wonderful new technology remain totally prohibitive. The will is there, but the bank manager isn't.
Instead, for now, we have to look at other options. We have already put thermostats on all our radiators [not cheap!] and installed woodburners, which blew the whole of last year's budget, and some more. We are privileged to have masses of woodland so, as we just utilise the dead trees which are carbon neutral, we are able to heat the house in autumn and spring without resorting to a small mortgage to turn on the oil fired central heating. In January and February, though, we have to bite the proverbial bullet and kiss euro bills goodbye in the smoke. Not good for the environment, and not good for our peace of mind. No wonder our friend Jim, in the Gers, takes off for Brazil for the winter!
As we did both of these things before 1st September, I can hardly boast them as part of our 10:10 commitment. Likewise, our loft insulation, which we put in three years ago when we were feeling rather more flush and had run out of salad bowls to put under the leaks in the roof. Thank goodness we did repair the roof when we did, otherwise I dread to think what chaos would have greeted us back in January when the 'tempete' hit. As it was, we still lost a number of pantiles but the 'flexituile' held the water at bay and we were spared the need to repair rain sodden ceilings.
We have to now look at simpler measures to reduce our consumption by a further 10%. Travel is obviously the number one target and I promise I am working on it. I have signed up to the special offers on the SNCF website, but getting to Paris by train 'sous la manche' is still incredibly expensive and you can't really drag lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and hedge cutters in tow, not to mention recalcitrant teenagers. We have, however, taken advantage of the car scrappage scheme to buy a more fuel efficient diesel car which will take the four of us, and the dog, more comfortably and all together. Hopefully, the plaintive moans of cramped children buried beneath mountains of surplus luggage and boxes of books, will be a thing of the past [as indeed should their demands to fly home on their own, in comfort, on Easyjet!].
I have come to the conclusion that the old ways are the best and, inspired by my visits to old, cold, draughty National Trust houses, I am determined to take a leaf out of their previous owners' books. Firstly, curtains. If big, heavy interlined curtains were good enough to keep the heat in Scottish castles in the depths of a Hebridean winter, then they must do the trick down in the Ariege. The poles are in place ready and waiting for the recently scrounged haul from my mother-in-law. She always knew that those muddy brown and sludge green curtains deserved a fate better than the local Scout troop's jumble sale! They may not be the height of interior design chic but if the choice is freezing your arse off, who cares?
Secondly, hot water bottles. Right up until she died, my darling old mum used to put two hot water bottles in my bed in winter whenever I went to stay with her. In my book, they are the ultimate token of love. To go to the trouble of filling a hot water bottle and putting it into someone else's bed is the test of true generosity of spirit. There is nothing in this world like that warm tingly feeling that takes over your body when you climb into a bed so warmed. And, unlike an electricity guzzling electric blanket, the heat stays with you until you blissfully fall into a deep sleep. OK, so the downside is the shock cold contact with an icy bag of rubber first thing in the morning, but, hey, there is no gain without pain!
Thirdly, I am going to disconnect the beautiful old French taps that fill our lovingly resourced period cast iron baths. I was in seventh heaven when I found our two French rolltop baths in Frome ten years ago. Not only had they not been spoilt by having been re-enamelled, they were complete with their original leaky taps. A good scrub and a lick of Farrow and Ball's 'Pidgeon' oil eggshell later, they looked like new and were perfect for our purposes. My bargain buys proved a bit of a disaster a few months later, though, when I had to have the floors reinforced with RSJ's to take their weight. Now, in comparison with showers, their respective water consumption is a 'No! No!'. It's such a shame, but serious times need serious measures. They'll still look good, even if the only way to fill one is with a bucket!
My fourth measure concerns lightbulbs. Because Bardies is so old, we tracked down old 19th century French light fittings and chandeliers, which we had converted. It may not be long before they are lit by a single lightbulb. We already use the new energy efficient bulbs where possible but, being blind as a bat at short range, the long lasting bulbs seem so dim to me. I simply cannot read with them. Can anyone, I wonder? What I don't understand is why a total ban on the old ones seems not to have spurred the manufacturers into producing suitable replacements. Torches and candles may be a short term answer but it would be nice to know that the future wasn't going to be totally dim. 'The lights are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime' was never so apt.
I was pleased to see that EDF have taken the initiative of sending a graph of one's household electricity consumption on each bill, with a comparative one from the corresponding period from the previous year. I am very pleased to see that ours was significantly reduced, largely, I suspect, because the children had spent less time with us. They are hopeless and I am rapidly turning into a fishwife in pursuit of them when they leave lights and the TV on every time that they leave a room. A minor electric shock administered anonymously every time they walk out of a room might do the trick, rather like one of Pavlov's dogs. We, like most people in the Ariege, never leave anything on standby for the purely selfish reason that a storm can roll in overnight and wipe your computer or blow up your television set.
Of course, there is always room for more saving. I am going to use everything in the deep freeze by September each year [always good to delve deep and find things that you put away for a rainy day way back in 2001, or whenever!] and turn it off for the winter, as well as the fridges. I am also going to hide the supplementary electric radiators for emergencies only. It is amazing how quickly one adapts to temperature reductions, especially if it happens slowly. We certainly didn't have central heating when I was growing up, and the house awaiting slum clearance that I lived in at university was so cold that my washing froze in the bathroom. I seem to recall many nights going to sleep in my coat, but that may have been down to too many beers in 'The Buttery'! My mum used to buy me sheepskin lined boots long before 'Ugg' made them fashionable and, even now, I still wear them to ward off the foot-numbing cold of our unsympathetic 'tomettes'.
At the end of the day [sorry for the cliche, but one day it may be!] these measures are as nothing compared with the threat that is before us. We are really not very good at looking into the future, especially the bleak and barren one that so many Africans, South Americans and Australians will face if we don't get our act together soon. I cannot possibly pretend that I am anything other than a hypocrite, an environmentally part-time, self indulgent, gas guzzling, water consuming, heat loving individual, whose actions, alongside tens of thousands, or indeed millions, of others, continually damage our precious world. I wish that I could wave a wand, so that it would all go away and we could get back to the serious business of simply enjoying ourselves. I can't, and neither, sadly, can you. We are all on the same long, hard journey and the sooner each of us takes those first few steps towards a world that our grandchildren can inherit, the easier our shared journey will become. 10:10 is a start, but only a start. Bon chance!
Friday 28 August 2009
Of Borders, Bees and Buddleja
August is a funny time in the garden, although the late, much loved Christopher Lloyd might disagree. It is betwixt and between at the best of times, never mind when there has been a mini 'canicule'. Before I left Bardies [in time to celebrate Freddie's major milestone of being able to enter the best of the UK's public houses legally!], we had had very little of the summer rainfall which usually takes our house guests by surprise. Despite my forewarnings, because of our southerly latitude, new visitors to the Ariege assume that we have a Mediterranean climate. Without fail, most people arrive with shorts and teeshirts and very little else, other than a swimsuit or bikini and a bottle of high factor sunscreen. When the storms roll in, I scramble for my surplus winter woollies for them all whilst Peter stokes up the woodburner.
Not this year. The heatwave has continued unabated and I have had to rely on a small army of friends and helpers to water the parched garden and top up the thirsty swimming pool. For some annoying reason, which we've never quite established, the pool was installed without an automatic water top up system. Thus, when the water level drops below the level of the filters, the pump stops working and the algae have a field day. I have recurring nightmares about green pools full of 'Fungus the Bogeyman' creatures!
The borders were looking tired a fortnight ago, despite everyone's valiant efforts. The lavender was already over the top and the roses and oleanders were consuming every bit of their lacklustre energy on staying alive. Apart from the anenomes, which seem to thrive here in August, and the geraniums and petunias in pots, the only real colour in the garden is from an unruly mass of yellow 'hypericum' which seems to spread further and further each year like an invading army on the advance. It is more commonly known as 'St. John's Wort' and I often think that, had we had Bardies during my bleak days of post-natal depression in the early 1990's, I might have saved myself from two years of unmitigated misery.
A serious exercise in border planning is required. We have done very little to the garden at Bardies during the last ten years, other than our feeble attempts to tame the worst of its excesses. When we moved in in 2000, it resembled the lost gardens of Heligan. Underneath banks of triffid-like laurel, with trunks the size of telegraph poles, and an array of densely packed undergrowth, we have tried to rediscover the lines of the original borders. With the help of Sarah and Pascal, we are now slowly getting there.
The garden had been beautifully laid out by our predecessors over a century before. Unlike the formality of many French gardens, they seem to have opted for an adventurous planting scheme, which, surprisingly, even consisted of yuccas and palm trees! Much of its original shape was clearly defined by the two hundred year old box hedging, which forms six separate garden spaces to the right and left of a central avenue of box. We nabbed one for the pool and its 'plage', behind which, because of the slope, we planted a rockery. The other five, however, are now in desperate need of a serious rethink.
Obviously, colour, form and shape, as well as suitability to our very erratic climate, are major considerations, but my priority will be for a bee-friendly garden. Now, more than ever since the advent of the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder, it is incumbent on all of us to do whatever we can to help arrest the decimation of the world's bee population. Einstein prophetically said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have four years of life left. No more pollination, no more plants, no more man." More recently, Jeff Rooker, the Labour Peer, calculated that it was only ten years before the honeybee became extinct, and that was in 2007. We are facing a major 'catastophe'.
There are many reasons speculated for the present crisis, including the use of a pesticide containing methyl parathion called Penncap-M, whose active ingredient resembles pollen and is therefore carried back to beehives where it does untold damage. The use of mobile bee colonies for industrial pollination is however, in my view, the principal reason. The California almond industry alone is estimated to require the transportation of 40 billion bees. Other crops dependent on the reckless movement of mobile hives include nuts, beans, soya, rapeseed, sunflower, maize and most fruit and vegetables especially citrus fruits and apples. In total, approximately 90 commercial crops are involved, leaving the bees with compromised immune systems resulting in the invasion of the hives with parasitic pests and resultant disease.
Whilst there is not much that we at Bardies can do to right the wrongs of the commercial food producers, we can at least encourage our own bee populations to thrive. The previous owners at one time had bee hives and made their own honey, for we discovered all the old equipment as well as old honeycombs in the garage. We still have bees at Bardies, but they are not in hives. Last year they were at the top of one of the bee-loving lime trees, planted in 1913 for the birth of Simone Henri. This year, they seem to have found a home under the pantiles in the roof above the dormitory. Their space must be limited because they have swarmed twice. We have been told that it will be virtually impossible to remove them completely because they will always find residue honey. I have to say that as long as no one gets caught in a swarm, I'm not too bothered.
Peter was at Bardies last week, watering the garden and salvaging the lawn from the worst of the summer's heat. As he was not due in to Gatwick until 10.30pm, with an eye on future planting, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon at Great Dixter, before picking him up. I went along after a jolly lunch in Rye with some friends who live in nearby Peasmarsh, and we were all blown over by it. It is stunning. I used to read the legendary Christopher Lloyd's articles in 'The Guardian' and have a copy of his book of collected pieces called 'Cuttings', but nothing prepared me for the sheer physical assault on my senses from this floral tapestry of colour, form and scent. There is nothing to compare it with. He was the Van Gogh of gardening and Monet's garden in Giverney, although beautiful in its own right, looks positively pedestrian in comparison! If someone asked me to describe Great Dixter's garden, I would simply say, "Colour! Colour! Colour!"
So now, after spending a small fortune on Amazon collecting up his works, I am sitting planning my own Bardies tapestry. It will be different, of course, because without Fergus Garrett, a small army of helpers, a huge budget and a further 50 years of longevity, I couldn't get close to anything at Great Dixter. I plan, though, to use colour confidently as a result of his inspiration and, in the process, to create a garden full of flowering plants with plenty of nectar and pollen to encourage honeybees. We already have lots of lavender, rosemary, sage, lilac and ceonothus but we need plants that will provide nectar and pollen year-round. I have barely taken my nose out of his 'Succession Planting for Adventurous Gardeners' [Christopher Lloyd 2005, published by BBC Books] in the last few days and already, I have ordered collections of penstemons, aliums, salvias and buddlejas to kickstart my 2010 project. Bees and buddleja in next summer's border will be a marriage made in heaven. And we'll have Blues at Bardies too, to celebrate it. What bliss!
PS For information: bee loving plants for spring include astilbe, bluebells, flowering cherry, ceonothus, crab apple, daffodils, forget-me-knots, hawthorne, helibore, pulmonaria, pussy willow, rosemary and viburnum; for early summer, antirrhinums, aquilegia, astilbe, campanula, fennel, foxgloves, geraniums, potentilla, stachys, sweet peas, teasel, thyme and verbascum; for late summer, angelica, asters, buddleja, cardoons, cornflowers, dahlias, delphiniums, eryngium, fuschia, globe thistles, heathers, ivy, lavender, penstemmons, sedum and verbena; additional bee loving plants include alyssum, aubretia, basil, cosmos, cotoneaster, globe artichokes, gypsophila, honeysuckle, hollyhocks, lilac, lime trees, lupins, marigolds, marjoram, mint, poppies, pyracantha, sunflowers and zinnias.
Not this year. The heatwave has continued unabated and I have had to rely on a small army of friends and helpers to water the parched garden and top up the thirsty swimming pool. For some annoying reason, which we've never quite established, the pool was installed without an automatic water top up system. Thus, when the water level drops below the level of the filters, the pump stops working and the algae have a field day. I have recurring nightmares about green pools full of 'Fungus the Bogeyman' creatures!
The borders were looking tired a fortnight ago, despite everyone's valiant efforts. The lavender was already over the top and the roses and oleanders were consuming every bit of their lacklustre energy on staying alive. Apart from the anenomes, which seem to thrive here in August, and the geraniums and petunias in pots, the only real colour in the garden is from an unruly mass of yellow 'hypericum' which seems to spread further and further each year like an invading army on the advance. It is more commonly known as 'St. John's Wort' and I often think that, had we had Bardies during my bleak days of post-natal depression in the early 1990's, I might have saved myself from two years of unmitigated misery.
A serious exercise in border planning is required. We have done very little to the garden at Bardies during the last ten years, other than our feeble attempts to tame the worst of its excesses. When we moved in in 2000, it resembled the lost gardens of Heligan. Underneath banks of triffid-like laurel, with trunks the size of telegraph poles, and an array of densely packed undergrowth, we have tried to rediscover the lines of the original borders. With the help of Sarah and Pascal, we are now slowly getting there.
The garden had been beautifully laid out by our predecessors over a century before. Unlike the formality of many French gardens, they seem to have opted for an adventurous planting scheme, which, surprisingly, even consisted of yuccas and palm trees! Much of its original shape was clearly defined by the two hundred year old box hedging, which forms six separate garden spaces to the right and left of a central avenue of box. We nabbed one for the pool and its 'plage', behind which, because of the slope, we planted a rockery. The other five, however, are now in desperate need of a serious rethink.
Obviously, colour, form and shape, as well as suitability to our very erratic climate, are major considerations, but my priority will be for a bee-friendly garden. Now, more than ever since the advent of the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder, it is incumbent on all of us to do whatever we can to help arrest the decimation of the world's bee population. Einstein prophetically said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have four years of life left. No more pollination, no more plants, no more man." More recently, Jeff Rooker, the Labour Peer, calculated that it was only ten years before the honeybee became extinct, and that was in 2007. We are facing a major 'catastophe'.
There are many reasons speculated for the present crisis, including the use of a pesticide containing methyl parathion called Penncap-M, whose active ingredient resembles pollen and is therefore carried back to beehives where it does untold damage. The use of mobile bee colonies for industrial pollination is however, in my view, the principal reason. The California almond industry alone is estimated to require the transportation of 40 billion bees. Other crops dependent on the reckless movement of mobile hives include nuts, beans, soya, rapeseed, sunflower, maize and most fruit and vegetables especially citrus fruits and apples. In total, approximately 90 commercial crops are involved, leaving the bees with compromised immune systems resulting in the invasion of the hives with parasitic pests and resultant disease.
Whilst there is not much that we at Bardies can do to right the wrongs of the commercial food producers, we can at least encourage our own bee populations to thrive. The previous owners at one time had bee hives and made their own honey, for we discovered all the old equipment as well as old honeycombs in the garage. We still have bees at Bardies, but they are not in hives. Last year they were at the top of one of the bee-loving lime trees, planted in 1913 for the birth of Simone Henri. This year, they seem to have found a home under the pantiles in the roof above the dormitory. Their space must be limited because they have swarmed twice. We have been told that it will be virtually impossible to remove them completely because they will always find residue honey. I have to say that as long as no one gets caught in a swarm, I'm not too bothered.
Peter was at Bardies last week, watering the garden and salvaging the lawn from the worst of the summer's heat. As he was not due in to Gatwick until 10.30pm, with an eye on future planting, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon at Great Dixter, before picking him up. I went along after a jolly lunch in Rye with some friends who live in nearby Peasmarsh, and we were all blown over by it. It is stunning. I used to read the legendary Christopher Lloyd's articles in 'The Guardian' and have a copy of his book of collected pieces called 'Cuttings', but nothing prepared me for the sheer physical assault on my senses from this floral tapestry of colour, form and scent. There is nothing to compare it with. He was the Van Gogh of gardening and Monet's garden in Giverney, although beautiful in its own right, looks positively pedestrian in comparison! If someone asked me to describe Great Dixter's garden, I would simply say, "Colour! Colour! Colour!"
So now, after spending a small fortune on Amazon collecting up his works, I am sitting planning my own Bardies tapestry. It will be different, of course, because without Fergus Garrett, a small army of helpers, a huge budget and a further 50 years of longevity, I couldn't get close to anything at Great Dixter. I plan, though, to use colour confidently as a result of his inspiration and, in the process, to create a garden full of flowering plants with plenty of nectar and pollen to encourage honeybees. We already have lots of lavender, rosemary, sage, lilac and ceonothus but we need plants that will provide nectar and pollen year-round. I have barely taken my nose out of his 'Succession Planting for Adventurous Gardeners' [Christopher Lloyd 2005, published by BBC Books] in the last few days and already, I have ordered collections of penstemons, aliums, salvias and buddlejas to kickstart my 2010 project. Bees and buddleja in next summer's border will be a marriage made in heaven. And we'll have Blues at Bardies too, to celebrate it. What bliss!
PS For information: bee loving plants for spring include astilbe, bluebells, flowering cherry, ceonothus, crab apple, daffodils, forget-me-knots, hawthorne, helibore, pulmonaria, pussy willow, rosemary and viburnum; for early summer, antirrhinums, aquilegia, astilbe, campanula, fennel, foxgloves, geraniums, potentilla, stachys, sweet peas, teasel, thyme and verbascum; for late summer, angelica, asters, buddleja, cardoons, cornflowers, dahlias, delphiniums, eryngium, fuschia, globe thistles, heathers, ivy, lavender, penstemmons, sedum and verbena; additional bee loving plants include alyssum, aubretia, basil, cosmos, cotoneaster, globe artichokes, gypsophila, honeysuckle, hollyhocks, lilac, lime trees, lupins, marigolds, marjoram, mint, poppies, pyracantha, sunflowers and zinnias.
Saturday 8 August 2009
Ma Jeunesse Fout Le Camp
I have a confession to make. In a blues playing, jazz loving, rock and roll household of aspiring musicians, I am totally addicted to the utterly compelling 'chansons' of Francoise Hardy. Her 1996 cheapie compilation album, 'Les Chansons d'Amour', which I bagged on Amazon for £2.98 before I left the UK, has been this summer's 'Bardies feelgood album'. We always seem to have one album which none of us ever tires of for the duration of our stay. Previous year's choices have been Bruce Springstein's 'The Rising', Tinariwen's 'Water is Life', Ian Siegal's 'Meat and Potatoes', Miles Davis's 'A Kind of Blue', and Murray Perahia playing Handel and Scarlatti and Glenn Gould humming along to 'The Goldberg Variations'. Our taste is certainly catholic.
I still can't get 'Tout Les Garcons et Les Filles', with its catchy tune and evocative lyrics, out of my head. It reminds me of my white 'Correges' boots, of which I was so proud, and ironing my long wavy hair in front of 'Ready Steady Go' before going out on a Friday night. Cathy McGowan may have been the height of Sixties chic for us English girls but there was no one to beat Francoise in the style stakes. As someone recently said of Carla Bruni, "A beautiful woman in a Chanel trouser suit could recite a telephone directory in French and still sound good." Francoise Hardy really can sing as well. When I browsed through a phenomenally expensive and damaged paperback about her in our local St Lizier 'Les Mousquetaires', called 'Tant de Belles Choses' by Pierre Mikailoff, I was struck by a photo of her in concert at Olympia from 29th October 1965. She was the original trouser suited chanteuse.
Her songs grip you immediately, even, I'm sure, if you can't understand her native tongue. Raw emotion needs no translation. All the great singers, from Callas and Sinatra to Ian Siegal and Bruce Springstein, have it. Whilst we may not be able to define it, we all know it when we hear it. They speak to our souls, and we feel better people for it. They lift us up and free our hearts. They make us sing, or dance, or both. They make us, momentarily at least, forget our troubles. They give us the words for love, and they explain away our sorrows. You are never alone whilst their music plays, and what a joy it is. Oh, Francoise, as you sing 'Ma jeunesse Fout Le Camp' [ 'My Youth Went Away'], I wonder where the years have gone? But, then again, methinks, how lucky we have been with the music of our time.
Along with 'Chansons d'Amour', I also bought Jaques Brel's 'C'est Comme Ca' and Serge Gainsbourg's 'Initials SG' [at equally cheap prices] from Amazon. I love them too, though not quite as much. I first heard of Jacques Brel [1929 -1978], the Belgian singer, when Alistair Campbell raved about him as one of his choices on 'Desert Island Discs'. The song he chose was amazing, and I thoroughly agree with everything that AC said about him. I am just sorry that somehow my youth passed him by [Jacques Brel, not Alistair Campbell!]. Not so, the gravelly voiced, chain smoking Serge Gainsbourg though. How many of us girls only realised what we were missing, as we groped behind the youth club with some spotty, downy chinned fellow adolescent, when we heard Jane Birkin singing [?] alongside him in 'Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus'? The song may have been rubbish, but the sentiments were life changing! There are much better songs on this album, but none of us will ever forget 'Je T'aime'.
After nearly choking on my Friday night fish and chips a few months ago, when I saw Carla Bruni Sarkozy strutting her stuff [well, sitting on a bar stool actually] on the late Jools Holland show, I was going to ask the question, "What is she for?" I was even more determined to slag her off when I saw her singing alongside Bono and all the other 'look at us, we're so important and we're going to change the world' celebs performing at the absent Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party bash in New York. But something held me back. I don't know what it was. OK, so I know she's thin, she's beautiful, has a stunning retro chic wardrobe and has had more famous men than I've had hot quiches.
My petty jealousy seemed unworthy. I thought, purely for reasons of research, and also to compare her with the indominatable Mademoiselle H, that I might buy one of her albums. I didn't, largely because they were three times the price, but I did watch the video on the Amazon site that goes with her 'Comme Si de Rien N'Etait' CD. I am prepared to eat my chapeau! She may not have Francoise's voice, or indeed a good voice, but she certainly has that indefinable something. She talks of her music and her need to work on her voice, which I thought showed an disarming humility. She obviously loves her music and her relationship with her producer, Dominique Blanc Francard, is clearly an artistically fruitful collaboration. When she talks of the loss of her brother, of whom she sings in 'Salut Marin', I was moved. I think I shall buy the CD after all.
Music was, as ever, one of the main topics of conversation at Bardies. We have been hesitating about doing Blues at Bardies next year, our third festival, because of the economic downturn and, quite frankly, because it costs us an arm and a leg to put it on. We have always been happy to subsidise it to the tune of a big party but the costs of flying over musicians from the UK, in addition to the exhorbitant social security charges of French musicians, and wining, dining and accommodating people for a whole weekend have escalated beyond our budget since the pound has plummeted so horrendously against the euro. Last year we made the mistake of trying to mix and match it with our silver wedding anniversary celebrations, which meant that it was neither one thing nor t'other.
A year is a long time though and now that the recordings have finally been mixed, we are gobsmacked at our achievement. The calibre of musicianship and the quality of the music is mindblowing. It is easy to forget this in the sheer exhaustion of the aftermath. After many bottles of wine and much late night discussion, we have decided to go for it again on the proviso that we can, at least, make it more or less break even. We will never cut back on the quality of music on offer, but we are looking at ways to be more practical in our very amateur organisation. We have some great ideas, of which you will hear more in future blogs. I am desperate to get Ian Siegal back again [Ian, if you read this, we'll give you and Kat a free holiday into the bargain!]. His recording from the 2006 festival is sensational.
We also think it may have swung the decision of our 'locateur' to rent Bardies later this month, because Peter sent him some downloads. He [the locateur] says that we must do it again and that he wants to book his tickets now, just on the basis of a couple of songs from Ian. High praise indeed, but we are not too modest not to know that we have something very special going down here. A few house rentals will certainly help to amortise the costs. We are thrilled to say, after our 'inspection', that we have officially been invited to be included in the 'Alistair Sawday Special Places to Stay'.
When we bought the house in 2000, we never intended it to be anything but our home. Now, with teenage children desperate to hit the European nightclub scene, we have decided to bite the bullet and use a couple of August rentals to boost the flagging coffers. One friend told us about 'Owner's Direct', the most user-friendly of websites, where we now have a listing, and another about 'Schoolstrader.com', which is to 'ebay' what Primark is to Selfridges. It's not the quality of the merchandise that's at issue, it's the sheer, cluttered scale of the operation. Chateau de Bardies is the most beautiful place, and so special, so I'm not sad to share it with like-minded people. In actual fact, I'm rather chuffed because I know that everyone will fall in love with it, just as we did.
So now, we're back in England for a bit. Freddie is 18 tomorrow, the reason for our early exit. We came home yesterday, via Paris, which was 34 degrees on Thursday night. We stayed at the Hotel Clement, in Rue Clement on the left bank directly opposite 'Le Marche Saint Germain', a real find. The whole area buzzes with life and, for a brief moment, you can close your eyes and imagine what it was like in those heady days of 1968. Many of the old bookshops have long gone, now turned into trendy bistros, but the spirit remains. It was my lucky day, because I did manage to buy a copy of Francoise Hardy's 2008 autobiography, 'Le Desespoir des Singes' from a 'bouquiniste' for 8 euros instead of 21. I am determined to rent a cheap apartment here in order 'to do' Paris once again before my zimmer frame beckons. My youth may have gone away, but I'm not quite ready to give up the ghost just yet!
I still can't get 'Tout Les Garcons et Les Filles', with its catchy tune and evocative lyrics, out of my head. It reminds me of my white 'Correges' boots, of which I was so proud, and ironing my long wavy hair in front of 'Ready Steady Go' before going out on a Friday night. Cathy McGowan may have been the height of Sixties chic for us English girls but there was no one to beat Francoise in the style stakes. As someone recently said of Carla Bruni, "A beautiful woman in a Chanel trouser suit could recite a telephone directory in French and still sound good." Francoise Hardy really can sing as well. When I browsed through a phenomenally expensive and damaged paperback about her in our local St Lizier 'Les Mousquetaires', called 'Tant de Belles Choses' by Pierre Mikailoff, I was struck by a photo of her in concert at Olympia from 29th October 1965. She was the original trouser suited chanteuse.
Her songs grip you immediately, even, I'm sure, if you can't understand her native tongue. Raw emotion needs no translation. All the great singers, from Callas and Sinatra to Ian Siegal and Bruce Springstein, have it. Whilst we may not be able to define it, we all know it when we hear it. They speak to our souls, and we feel better people for it. They lift us up and free our hearts. They make us sing, or dance, or both. They make us, momentarily at least, forget our troubles. They give us the words for love, and they explain away our sorrows. You are never alone whilst their music plays, and what a joy it is. Oh, Francoise, as you sing 'Ma jeunesse Fout Le Camp' [ 'My Youth Went Away'], I wonder where the years have gone? But, then again, methinks, how lucky we have been with the music of our time.
Along with 'Chansons d'Amour', I also bought Jaques Brel's 'C'est Comme Ca' and Serge Gainsbourg's 'Initials SG' [at equally cheap prices] from Amazon. I love them too, though not quite as much. I first heard of Jacques Brel [1929 -1978], the Belgian singer, when Alistair Campbell raved about him as one of his choices on 'Desert Island Discs'. The song he chose was amazing, and I thoroughly agree with everything that AC said about him. I am just sorry that somehow my youth passed him by [Jacques Brel, not Alistair Campbell!]. Not so, the gravelly voiced, chain smoking Serge Gainsbourg though. How many of us girls only realised what we were missing, as we groped behind the youth club with some spotty, downy chinned fellow adolescent, when we heard Jane Birkin singing [?] alongside him in 'Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus'? The song may have been rubbish, but the sentiments were life changing! There are much better songs on this album, but none of us will ever forget 'Je T'aime'.
After nearly choking on my Friday night fish and chips a few months ago, when I saw Carla Bruni Sarkozy strutting her stuff [well, sitting on a bar stool actually] on the late Jools Holland show, I was going to ask the question, "What is she for?" I was even more determined to slag her off when I saw her singing alongside Bono and all the other 'look at us, we're so important and we're going to change the world' celebs performing at the absent Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party bash in New York. But something held me back. I don't know what it was. OK, so I know she's thin, she's beautiful, has a stunning retro chic wardrobe and has had more famous men than I've had hot quiches.
My petty jealousy seemed unworthy. I thought, purely for reasons of research, and also to compare her with the indominatable Mademoiselle H, that I might buy one of her albums. I didn't, largely because they were three times the price, but I did watch the video on the Amazon site that goes with her 'Comme Si de Rien N'Etait' CD. I am prepared to eat my chapeau! She may not have Francoise's voice, or indeed a good voice, but she certainly has that indefinable something. She talks of her music and her need to work on her voice, which I thought showed an disarming humility. She obviously loves her music and her relationship with her producer, Dominique Blanc Francard, is clearly an artistically fruitful collaboration. When she talks of the loss of her brother, of whom she sings in 'Salut Marin', I was moved. I think I shall buy the CD after all.
Music was, as ever, one of the main topics of conversation at Bardies. We have been hesitating about doing Blues at Bardies next year, our third festival, because of the economic downturn and, quite frankly, because it costs us an arm and a leg to put it on. We have always been happy to subsidise it to the tune of a big party but the costs of flying over musicians from the UK, in addition to the exhorbitant social security charges of French musicians, and wining, dining and accommodating people for a whole weekend have escalated beyond our budget since the pound has plummeted so horrendously against the euro. Last year we made the mistake of trying to mix and match it with our silver wedding anniversary celebrations, which meant that it was neither one thing nor t'other.
A year is a long time though and now that the recordings have finally been mixed, we are gobsmacked at our achievement. The calibre of musicianship and the quality of the music is mindblowing. It is easy to forget this in the sheer exhaustion of the aftermath. After many bottles of wine and much late night discussion, we have decided to go for it again on the proviso that we can, at least, make it more or less break even. We will never cut back on the quality of music on offer, but we are looking at ways to be more practical in our very amateur organisation. We have some great ideas, of which you will hear more in future blogs. I am desperate to get Ian Siegal back again [Ian, if you read this, we'll give you and Kat a free holiday into the bargain!]. His recording from the 2006 festival is sensational.
We also think it may have swung the decision of our 'locateur' to rent Bardies later this month, because Peter sent him some downloads. He [the locateur] says that we must do it again and that he wants to book his tickets now, just on the basis of a couple of songs from Ian. High praise indeed, but we are not too modest not to know that we have something very special going down here. A few house rentals will certainly help to amortise the costs. We are thrilled to say, after our 'inspection', that we have officially been invited to be included in the 'Alistair Sawday Special Places to Stay'.
When we bought the house in 2000, we never intended it to be anything but our home. Now, with teenage children desperate to hit the European nightclub scene, we have decided to bite the bullet and use a couple of August rentals to boost the flagging coffers. One friend told us about 'Owner's Direct', the most user-friendly of websites, where we now have a listing, and another about 'Schoolstrader.com', which is to 'ebay' what Primark is to Selfridges. It's not the quality of the merchandise that's at issue, it's the sheer, cluttered scale of the operation. Chateau de Bardies is the most beautiful place, and so special, so I'm not sad to share it with like-minded people. In actual fact, I'm rather chuffed because I know that everyone will fall in love with it, just as we did.
So now, we're back in England for a bit. Freddie is 18 tomorrow, the reason for our early exit. We came home yesterday, via Paris, which was 34 degrees on Thursday night. We stayed at the Hotel Clement, in Rue Clement on the left bank directly opposite 'Le Marche Saint Germain', a real find. The whole area buzzes with life and, for a brief moment, you can close your eyes and imagine what it was like in those heady days of 1968. Many of the old bookshops have long gone, now turned into trendy bistros, but the spirit remains. It was my lucky day, because I did manage to buy a copy of Francoise Hardy's 2008 autobiography, 'Le Desespoir des Singes' from a 'bouquiniste' for 8 euros instead of 21. I am determined to rent a cheap apartment here in order 'to do' Paris once again before my zimmer frame beckons. My youth may have gone away, but I'm not quite ready to give up the ghost just yet!
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