tempests and their waves

There are a good many cardinal rules about living in isolated, or fairly isolated, rural areas – such as always knowing at least two mechanics or roof tilers – but amongst the most important concern water and electricity. Rule one: never (if possible) live at the end of a water supply line ; rule two: never (if possible) live at the end of a an electricity supply line. We have transgressed both(remember my over-pressurised water tank?)

Last week we suffered from being at the end of an electricity line. In the beginning of that week, way up towards the Channel, starting in Brittany and raging across northern France in the general direction of Germany, a tempest called 'Joachim' was wreaking havoc. It drove a cargo boat, the TK Bremen, sailing under the Maltese flag as the newspapers quickly pointed out (sub-text not respectable), onto the beach of Kerminihy, with consequent (smallish) release of oil and diesel. More importantly a large number of households lost their electricity supply, numbers started at 400,000 and dwindled to 70,000 as the week went on. It also, as the respected French daily Le Monde pointed out, drew a 'wave' of journalists to the area.

The fringes of this tempest did disturb the Dordogne with unusually high winds but no so high that any local person recalled the tempest/hurricane/ at the turn of the century. But in the early hours of the morning the electricity supply wobbled; it went off, it came on, it went off for a longer period of time and I got cross. Partly I was cross with myself because I had not made my usual preparations for winter – that is get in a large supply of candles, make sure I had enough fuel for the petrol lamps and that the camping gas lamps were somewhere where I could find them easily, along with a spare set of gas mantles.

This may seem exaggerated. Winds such as those on the fringe of Joachim can affect contact points along those lines, hence the on/off supply. And, as an electricity board technician told me: remember that in hunting season which often coincides with tempest season, hunters shoot pigeons. But they can only shoot pigeons that are perched on branches – or electricity lines. And shot is not good for the insulation of electricity lines, it makes for a wear point.

So, last Friday, saw us trying to pack with an on/off electricity supply. I found the candles, the gas camping lamps, even the three petrol lamps which I really must clean. After about an hour the electricity supply settled down. However Joachim was still sufficiently active for my son-in-law to joke (I thought) that he was taking his chain-saw to work. (Every real man in the Dordogne has his own chain saw.) How right he was. As we set off for town, we saw two pines across the road, which he duly cut up and neatly stacked on the roadside.

Electricite de France seems to have enormously improved its reaction time to such wind-driven catastrophes. At the time of the millenium hurricane we were without power for weeks. In our early years the problem was so frequent that I learned how to light part of a room sufficiently with a petrol lamp to read. In fact, I read the greater part of Walter Scott's works in the same circumstances that he probably wrote them – by candlelight and petrol lamp.

Christmas is a-coming, conscience follows hard behind...

Conscience comes with Christmas

It has been said that carrots scream when you pull them out of the ground. Of course one should be using a fork to loosen the soil, then gently shaking off the earth and rinsing them under an outside tap. Perhaps then they will only whimper. But, if they scream on coming out of the ground,what noise do they make when topped, tailed and peeled?

The great eating feast that now is Christmas is a time when some people may want to re-examine their relationship to food, particularly meat. One of the great arguments is about France's essential Christmas (and New Year) delicacy: foie gras. This, for those who have not read a paper for years, is the over-sized liver of a forcibly over-fed duck or goose. The liver is processed in various ways to conserve it but is most appreciated as paté de foie gras mi-cuit. France produces about 20,000 tonnes of duck foie gras, goose foie gras is about three per cent.

The origin of foie gras – known to the Ancient Romans and Egyptians - is the natural tendency of certain ducks and geese to stock their livers with energy producing food for their winter migrations. The main duck breed presently used for foie gras is the cross between a Muscovy and a Pekin duck known as the 'mulard' . Only the drakes are used – ducks' necks are too slender. Once I had to fish a duck out of the grain bin – grain destined for the pregnant ewes – so I can testify to a duck's greed for grain. The webbed feet of ducks have extremely sharp toe-nails, and my hands suffered considerable damage .

When foie gras was still an artisanal product, one made by the farmer's wife mostly for the immediate family, possibly some for the local market, it was probably less stressful for the bird. The bird had wandered round the farm, got in the way, had its own pond, dutifully came in at night – because it was fed grain inside. Then, after some twelve to fifteen weeks in the fields, it was confined to quarters. Twice a day, as it was held in box between her knees, the farmer's wife pushed maize through a funnel down its neck, stroking the neck if the descent appeared to cause problems. There was a relationship between the two during the two weeks this lasted.

Fat duck livers produced this way, along with a few fat goose livers, can still be bought in France's rural markets, especially those of the South-West and Alsace, the two traditional fat duck or goose producing regions. At one point in time Dordogne farmers were encouraged to increase their fat duck production with both training and sometimes financial help. One acquaintance of mine built what he proudly called his 'laboratory' where the 'gavage' or stuffing process happened. It was cleaner than many a domestic kitchen. The ducks were fed by himself and several part-time helpers. He was also inordinately proud of the salle d'abattage where the ducks were 'sacrificed' – a word rural French people frequently use in preference to slaughter. He was deeply disappointed that none of his English clients would visit, his French clients insisted.

Domestic production has long since been over taken by large scale industrial production to satisfy world wide demand to the detriment, in my opinion, of the relationship between producer, consumer and consumed. Respect, knowledge and appreciation of and for all forms of meat have gone. In Genesis it is written that “God chose to give man, made in his image, dominion over animal life,..... over plants and seeds”. Nowhere does it say that Man has the right to turn these into protein factories.

the last fly

A sure sign of the end of autumn, the beginning of winter is the disappearance of flies. But there is always one fly left. No-one knows for what he or she is looking but everyone knows that he – or she – is (insert favourite expletive) annoying, indestructible and buzzes without cease, especially at night. And this fly arrives just as the tidy housewife, (sorry 'house-person'), has removed all the hideous glue strips that wreaked such havoc on flies all summer.

This one fly is always to be found in the company of human beings, at breakfast, in the bathroom, or in the sitting room where the same human is peacefully getting irritated by the stupidities offered by television companies. Irritation piles upon annoyance when the daft, dazed insect drops into the soothing evening drink and adds frantic paddling to its insistent buzz. The squeamish will probably pour the whole drink down the sink, the more parsimonious will spend a few moments with a teaspoon saving the fly's life and the contents of their glass. Both will miss the best part of an episode of whatever they were watching. It is, of course, worse for those who are reading and absent mindedly reach for their drink. Since words are so much more absorbing than pictures they may not spot the fly until it touches their lips. Beurk.

But the most annoying habit of autumn's last fly is its insistence on exploring the darkening bedroom of humans trying to get to sleep. Like most flying insects it aims incessantly for any form of light, even an alarm clock with luminescent hands is not spared. Again and again it beats itself against this last sign of warmth. The irate human, sleepless with fury, attempts to swat it. But this is a dangerous activity for the fly cannot always be accurately located and hitting your best bedside lamp with a rolled up copy of some respectable newspaper will do more damage to lamp and paper than to the fly. Even if you do not fall over your slippers.

And what do you do when the fly has got stuck in one of those formerly fashionable sixties Japanese paper lantern lampshades? You can switch the light off but then the insect appears to use its buzz as an echo locator to find a way out. This can take an eternity, or so it seems. (Eternity is the length of time whose duration cannot be shortened by the person suffering it – my definition.)

The plastic fly swatters made in multitudinous hideous colours, probably in China, are more accurate instruments of death than rolled up newspapers or flicked napkins. The present ones that we have are hexagonal and have very flexible stems. The head, or killer end is decorated with a grinning face which may or may not terrify the fly in its last few moments of life – if you are accurate. But flies fly very fast and rest in places you do not wish to hit even with the most flexible of fly swatters. The best you can do is to chase the fly from the place it wishes to be to a place where you can safely – safely for you and your goods – swat it. Perhaps these latest fly killer models were designed with the encouragement of the late Chairman Mao who had very decided views on flies. He preferred them dead and enrolled the entire population of China in this ambition.

A fly swatter is, of course, very different to a fly whisk. The first, as I have just mentioned, comes in awful plastic colours. The latter can be a thing of beauty, an elegant weapon, used to distance the fly from the human face. The human in this case was often a very important person, especially in his (or her) own opinion. Somewhere in the attic we have a couple of antique fly whisks: carved ivory or bone handles garnished with white horse hair for use by the important person him or herself. They are very efficient at distancing flies. I have tried them, but they are not killer weapons at all. It is difficult to concentrate on a text whilst moving horse hair rhythmically before your face.

When houses are closed up for any length of time during the autumn to spring transition, it will be seen that the 'one fly' is a myth. There are actually numerous flies but they only show themselves individually. And humans cannot tell one fly from another. Hence the idea that there is 'one' fly all over the house. However, whilst they may manifest themselves singly, flies die collectively, usually on window sills. There is is a splendid piece of doggerel verse in the Penguin 'Verse and Worse' collection which – along with the fly whisk – is somewhere up in our attic, but unlike the fly whisk I could not find it. The rhyme, to the best of my memory, ends:

'but flies is wise,

when winter comes,

they dies.'

Except for that one keeping you awake at night.

where is Agatha Christie when you need her?

As I was going down to St Astier the other day (- pls, no panic, this will not be a poem) I saw a pair of men's shoes in the road. Highly polished, seemingly new, black mens' moccasins were lying on their sides about a metre from the kerb, noticeably on the newly laid tarmac of the road. One shoe showed a protruding, equally black sock, the other had a sock quite near-by. It looked as though they had been thrown with some violence into the road but it was not evident whether it was from the near-by house or from some passing car.

The shoes gleamed, so obviously not a case of spontaneous combustion on the part of the wearer. An unoccupied mind can devise hundreds of stories about the provenance of these shoes, the reason for their place in the road. Had an irate lover thrown them from the house...but then why no clothes? Would a man limp, shoe-less, the five kilometres to St Astier, even if the rest of him was clothed? The same could be asked if they had been thrown from a car. Or perhaps he was wearing shoes but these were his favourites that were thrown after him...It intrigued me sufficiently to almost buy the local paper and see if there was any information, but self restraint won the day. Anyway, a nice line for all students of 'Creative Writing' 101.

The hamlet in which the shoes were abandoned is what might be described as 'dormitory' for St Astier were either to be any larger than they are. It comprises probably less than 20 houses, most of them post-war. One is a former animal/equipment shed that has been extended, modernised and prettified by its owner. It now has an extensive vegetable garden and the geese and chickens have their own salubrious dwellings. Across the road from this is a more dilapidated homestead. Obviously a former farm worker's cottage, with sufficient land for subsistence farming, its present owner has succumbed to a bad attack of self sufficiency. He appears to be trying to re-do the roof of the building, technically not very difficult but it takes time. Horses and donkeys succeed each other, trying to survive on the rapidly vanishing grass. Another owner but of a brand spanking new house has also succumbed to a degree of self sufficiency and is attempting to put up his own wire fencing. Results so far, fencing one, owner nil.

Lurking in the woods behind the hamlet, is a road that leads to the barracks above St Astier – a training ground for the various riot control police of EEC countries.

The trainees are never seen in the town and little is known about them. Except that one day I was shopping in my local supermarket in the quiet hour between twelve and two, Intermarche at Chancelade, when a near invasion force of local police, plus some national gendarmes, came swooping into the car-park. They escorted fifty or so embarrassed, youngish men, into the shop. The few shoppers and check-out girls were all agog. Girls gathered together and demanded information. Apparently these young men were future Afghan policemen on a training course in St Astier.

The hamlet's houses are all on the ridge of the hill leading down to St Astier. Driving in from La Chaise, we are reminded of the speed limit – one can only drive through at 70 kmph, a standard for all the hamlets on the road between Tocane St Apre and St Astier. I tried to have this limit applied to La Chaise, which is not actually a hamlet, but was officially informed that the traffic past our gates was insufficient and did not go above the approved speed limit. Once out of that hamlet above St Astier, the speed limit is lifted and those who wish, can take two hair pin bends at more than 70 kmph. Fortunately local residents, even when not totally sober, are reasonably sensible.

I darkly suspect the blanket, one size fits all, Napoleon thought of it first, administrative regulations here,for example, speed through hamlets should be restricted to 70 kmph, once the hamlet is passed, back to the overall road speed of 90 kpmh – regardless of bends. These preconceptions take a long time, some practical good sense, to change.

Of saints, summers and soldiers

The day after Remembrance Day, Saturday 12^th November, we had lunch on the terrace. It was over 20ºC, brightly sunny, no wind. Perhaps it will be seen as the high point of St Martin's Little Summer, the days before had been bright, the days to come are promised to be sunny and dry. A vast skein of geese, perhaps the last, had noisily flown overhead, general direction North Africa, probably Morocco. French commercial radio was vaunting the attractions of the new foie gras, without specifying whether goose or duck. Oddly, there seemed to be no forwarning of Beaujolais Noveau, usually launched on the third Thursday of November.

And the locals were right: these last few sunny days produced a vast harvest of different kinds of fungi. There were the usual '40 kg of cepes in a hour' stories and even the lady who helps with my house came with photos of a mushroom (penny bun, of course) that she had found, it weighed 1.5 kg and was 20 cm across. But she did admit that most of it was inedible.

Our fields were polka dotted with field mushrooms and puff balls – the latter known more imaginatively as 'wolves' farts' in French, presumably because of the malodourous cloudlet that is released as children stamp on them. So even I succumbed and went mushroom picking. But, self restrained, I only managed 3 kg of the simple rosée des près, the standard 'mushroom' sometimes also known as the champignon de paris. In the latter case it probably grew in a cellar and never knew grass. One thing I have come to rely on over the years, and it is a useful safety guideline: fungi always come back in more or less the same place, if not always in the same quantity. If they are not in the same place, but look the same – be very, very careful. I collected a basket load of 'mushrooms' from a hitherto virgin patch of grassland, assuming that the spores had spread. Handling them at home, I noticed they went slightly yellow; on checking with my mushroom bible I discovered they were indeed the vomit inducing version of agarics.

As often in prolific fungi years, the witches' circle becomes more obvious. This year I observed that the mushrooms that were under the walnut trees circled around the tree, probably at just that point where its horizontal roots ended, certainly it was at the limit of the tree's branches. There is one edible toadstool which always comes up in the same place in good fungi years which – I think – is the shaggy ink cap. As it rises from the ground, in a semi-circle round a scrawny, possibly dying, walnut tree, it looks like a child's drawing of a phallic symbol. Then it opens flat and looks just like one of those hairy parasols set around a decaying seaside cafe. I am told it is edible but will leave it to others to try.

Remembrance Day, the 11^th day of the 11^th month at the 11^th hour, is the official feast day of St Martin who brings us this brief autumn summer now Americanised as 'Indian' summer. St Martin was a soldier in the Roman army in the early 300's who cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar outside the town of Amiens. He eventually became Bishop of Tours – against his will, apparently, he was kidnapped from his hermitage and forcibly enthroned. Tours is a town reknowned for its fine wines, fine wood and excellent spoken French. Legend has it that St Martin encouraged the creation of vineyards. It may not be very religious but the symbols most often associated with him are the goose – a roast goose is eaten in his honour – a horse and sword as reminder of his military days. St Martin's day (or days) also marked the formal end of the medieval agricultural year. Livestock that could not be over wintered was slaughtered and conserved for the lean days ahead. I wonder whether St Martin was in the minds of those who settled the 'war to end all wars' on his feast day

The Rain! The Rain!

At last, at last, the rains have come! After all the drought ridden summer months wondering whether there would be enough early dew or scotch mist to dampen the fields and stimulate the grass, the daily chore of watering the ungrateful vegetable garden, the rains have fallen.

The arrival of the autumn rain is always a frighening moment in deepest rural South West France. It is the moment when the house owner discovers whether or not the roman tiles on his roof have slipped, allowing the water in either through the channels or through the cracked covering tiles. Foresighted owners have been up on their roofs, cleaning the gutters of dried leaves – only the long-lasting summer meant these fell in one go, unexpectedly, along with the rain. A blocked gutter means rain back-firing up under the tile channels and dripping through the plasterboard ceiling below – with a sleep-disturbing vengeance. Terra cotta roof tiles are slippery in the wet and it is recommended that only expert roofers walk on them – but with the rain, roofers (like London taxi drivers), dissolve into the mist and owners have to be patient and find last year's buckets.

This is the age old story of Dordogne roofs, delightful roman style terra-cotta tiles, provencal style, but unsuited to the higher pitch of local roofs, hence sliding and slipping and propping and generally getting too heavy. Somehow the locals do not seem to demand that their roofs keep out rain, unlike northern Europeans, there is an 'ah well' attitude. And just as a Dordogne male is not a man without his own chain saw and cement mixer, he must also be able to fiddle with his roof. Fortunately in the thirty odd years we have been year, improvements have been made to the basic tile concept, all aimed at attaching the tile in various ways to the underlying roof, with varying degrees of success.

But there is a joyous side to the advent of these downpours – going out in the rain to see what has happened. I clapped my long unused boots together to shoot out the spiders, millipedes, earwigs and any other univited insect that had taken up residence during the summer. I did the same with my long, green plastic, serious agricultural rain coat. Insects scuttled, grumbling, into the further reaches of the conservatory as I vainly searched for my hat. Then, armed with mobile phone (in case I slipped) a serious rain hat, the boots and rain coat and the standard plastic bag for collecting things, I set off to see what, if anything the rain had achieved.

The first day's answer was - not much. The earth was so hard baked, the rain had hardly penetrated. The soil of the vegetable garden did look fertile again and the comice pear tree, planted just last year, and sporadically watered since, looked as though it had decided to live. The carrots revived, as did the bugs in them. The courgettes were rotting and the aubergines were failing to colour. The odd chilli pepper strove to produce a red bean. Down the fields the hard marbles of sheep shit at long last began to dissolve and carry their goodness into the soil and there were signs of the faster intestinal transit of the wet grass.

The trees dripped, more fir-cones had fallen but closed, there were more acorns and chestnuts on the ground and the last of the walnuts were scattered under their trees. Most walnuts by now had been hollowed out by passing rodents but we were feeling generous. With the nuts down came the leaves, turned yellow brown in the course of a weekend, the maples still defiantly holding on to their own.

But the ponds, small and large, had hardly been affected. The duck pond nearest the Farmhouse, its bottom covered in lush grass, was barely wet, the solar powered fountain still disconnected for lack of water to spout. The Black Pond in the Woods, which is fed by the run off from the road, was doing better, but still the green growth of opportunistic grass and lentil weed showed. The pump lake, at the very lowest point of the land, has shown some intake of water but the reed and grass growth was hardly affected. We still keep it fenced off so that animals cannot get stuck in the mud.

But, oh the joy of the locals! The rain, the rain, if followed by warmth – which the local weather forecasters did not hesitate to predict (at times one would think weather forecasters were elected) would lead to another crop of champignons! Perhaps some 'trompettes de la mort' would show up (late because there was no rain on Halloween) or there would be more 'boletus edulis'....there were certainly a lot of agarics, rosée dès près, the simplest of field mushrooms. Sadly a considerable number turned yellow when handled, vomit inducing but not deadly.

just add a log

This year the renewal of my regular, all consuming winter love affair was unexpectedly early. In fact it was not initiated by me at all. Normally, I plan many days ahead, preparing mentally and physically, cleaning, scrubbing. This time JP and I had taken a quick trip to London – day one travel there, memorial service on day two, day three return trip, alas, we are in that age bracket – and got home at dusk to be greeted by an all pervading feeling of warmth. Not just the feeling of warmth, but the smell of wood fire warmth. The Rayburn had been lit.

Now you may consider it daft to have a relationship with a cooker, even one that heats hot water and services some radiators, but I feel that the Rayburn and I are partners. One cooks with a solid fuel range, not on it. In fact, says she waxing indignant, cooking on a wood fired range requires a great deal of critical path analysis, long, longish and longer range planning. It also requires a rough knowledge of the heat output of various woods, at least by size of log if not by type. It demands a considerable degree of man management skills to get the wood as near as possible to the lengths and widths that cook wants and cooker needs, rather than those that satisfy male egos. (I draw the line at learning to use the circular table saw.) The cooker, also, has to be understood.

My Rayburn has three principal functions, it heats water, it heats an oven and it heats a hotplate. All this is done by directing hot air flow from the firebox. Very simple technology. But one has to allow for weather conditions: the Rayburn does not like rain or damp, the flue will not draw properly unless it has previously been made very hot. This cannot be done except with small, thin logs, preferably chestnut. Then cook has to remember to add thicker, oak logs to keep the fire going, ready for cooking. It loves cold, the flue roars away and one spends a considerable amount of time damping down the fire, opening draft intakes, putting on green wood (bad) leaving just enough embers to revive it in time to cook lunch.

Of course, with such variable fuel, the temperatures of both hot plate and oven are not easily controlled. Recipes demanding that something be cooked at x degrees for y minutes have to be radically modified. Cook in or on hot, less hot, barely hot, areas until ready is the only guidance. The temperature gauge on the oven door is more indicative than accurate. I can feel the temperature of the hot plate by holding my hand above it – but once the insulating lids are open, the oven starts to lose height. And the oven is not evenly heated, main heat input from the firebox side obviously. Cook has to remember to turn oven contents regularly. Fortunately I have been comforted and supported by my inherited, first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique which does not give temperatures and only approximate times in its recipes.

Once I have re-learned its vagaries the Rayburn is back in my heart again. Even the fact that hanging over the hot plate is not good for the complexion; that it makes everything so dirty that I have to wash my elephants and other ornaments once a month; that it is erratic and sometimes has to be relit; that bringing in logs is no fun; all this is forgiven, for it does cook beautifully. I even know how to sweep its flue though now, old age and common sense dictate, I have delegated this activity.

The Rayburn is the third person in our winter marriage. We ask if the other has 'fed the cooker' recently, decide which one of us will 'put the cooker to bed' and know that the first person out of bed in the morning will 'wake the cooker', whatever the weather. And I push to the back of my mind that in a few months time, with the inevitable progression of seasons, cooker and I shall cease to work together.

As the marketers of the Betty Crocker ready cake mixes discovered way back when (the sixties, I think) a cook (usually but not always a woman and wife) likes to feel s/he has created the food being offered to the family. Hence the famous egg that had to be added to the eponymous cake mix. Working with a wood-fired range is hard work, rewarding work but, oh, how I wish it was not so hot and dirty!