Blogs from Ariege, Midi-Pyrénées, France, Europe - page 4

A couple of days ago, I found myself part of a conversation between two local women, and Confirmed Batchelor. Confirmed Batchelor does very well for himself: he grows lots of his own veg., makes scores of pots of jam every year, and generally cooks and caters. But he’d just upset my two friends. ‘You WHAT? You bought TOMATOES? At THIS time of year? What FOR?’ They both had a real go at him. Why buy out-of-season fruit and vegetables when there’s plenty else to choose from, maturing naturally every month of the year? Why buy stuff that’s been air-freighted who knows how far, or that’s been forced into ripeness against its will under glass and polythene, so that it’s big, it’s colourful, but it’s also anaemic in flavour and cottony in texture? My friends were quite ... read more

Utterly exhausting, but what views. We're home now and it's 8.30 p.m. Can I go to bed now please?... read more

Yesterday was our First Big Hike of the year with our walking group. Last week’s was cancelled because of the aftermath of the storms, but yesterday, good weather had been ordered. Driving through Tarascon & Vicdessos to Auxat, there were gullies of snow on the roadside - hardly anything really, so Malcolm and I at least were unprepared for what lay ahead. Our walk started with a stiff upward climb towards a village, Saleix, so pretty and manicured that it was obviously the choice of second homers. After that though, we climbed quickly, initially going through occasional, then constant patches of light snow. The weather was wonderful, brightly hot and clear, and yet clean cold air refreshed our faces. Then the snow got deeper. Inexperienced types like me struggled to emulate King Wenceslas’ pageboy, and follow ... read more

We’ve been back in Laroque for 6 days now, and life has been full of incident. Our crossing from England was rough, and it turned out that this was an indication of things to come. Since we arrived, there’s been rain of the kind that Noah would have been quite familiar with during his time on That Ark, lasting hours at a time. But that turned out to be nothing compared with what happened on Saturday, the day that south west France went on Orange Alert (if you lived round here), or Red Alert (if you were slightly further north west, or in Perpignan, where they had 185 km. per hour gusts). It was bad enough here. We didn’t dare go out, with roof tiles, corrugated sheeting, and whole trees all whizzing through the air as ... read more

It’s been a good day. As you all of course know, it’s Stir Up Sunday, the day when all good God-fearing women of the parish knelt in church, and on hearing the collect for the day ‘Stir up Oh Lord the hearts of Thy faithful people…..’, sprang up crying ‘Mercy me! Stir up! I must go and stir up my Christmas pudding!’ Despite my lack of God-fearing, I’ve always liked observing old traditions, and when some French friends expressed an interest in being involved in making both Christmas pudding and mincemeat, they decided we could make a day of it. We could take everything up to their house, have lunch together, and then get stuck in. Ingredients were a bit of a challenge. I’d had the foresight to bring vegetarian suet from England, but never imagined ... read more