Lanouaille Music Buffet

I was busy last week.  I had several sessions making meat balls (which needed marinating beforehand), a day in Perigueux buying bagfuls of paper table ware (aided by Mary Rogers) and a very lengthy stint on Saturday making shipping quantities of tiny sandwiches (aided by Pamela Roxburgh).  I also sent emails to other women who were similarly occupied saying, for the most part, cook more.  I also walked the dog, made rather sketchy meals to eat with my husband and watched Pointless (most days).   The thing we do most regularly together is to watch Pointless.   But Horrible Histories restarts on CBBC this week and that’s another story.

The burst of cooking culminated in a buffet (with music) at Lanouaille on Saturday.  This was a benefit for the Lanouaille Music School which teaches little children to play the piano and other instruments.  I must admit I prefer to benefit the desperate and the starving but have no objection to little children learning to play the piano and the music teachers seemed a decent bunch.  So it served a useful purpose. 

The cooking women were magnificent.  Between us we produced a buffet good enough to surprise the French (who all know that the English can’t cook).  74, or possibly 75, people came and ate it and listened to Bob Dean, who plays classical guitar, and a local band, Les Amis du Guy.  It worked – it was good humoured, convivial, a success – and I think we made a shed load of money for the Lanouaille Music School so the children of Lanouaille may continue hitting keys and scraping strings.           

 

I didn’t get home till 1 o’clock which is way past bedtime and Mike had waited up for me which was kind and sweet.  Our marriage isn’t all about watching Pointless.    

Language problems

For goodness sake!  Jean Pierre, one of our really nice neighbours, called in the other day with a bunch of lilies of the valley.  I thought I was holding my own conversationally,  until I left him with Mike and excused myself, by saying I had someone in the oven.   I did realise what I’d said about a minute afterwards but don’t think I’ll ever become truly fluent at this French business. 

Mary Rogers and I were having a coffee on Saturday when we got talking to an English couple who were holidaying in France and contemplating moving here.  When we said we’d been here five years and still had imperfect language skills, the woman replied that she thought that she would definitely want to learn French if she lived here.  We said that it was one of our dearest wishes to speak French properly but that we were failing.  English children who move here and enter French schools are usually yacking away in about six months.  I’ve also heard that people who take French lovers do okay, though maybe some of the things they learn to say aren’t suitable for general usage.   But we really couldn’t be doing with that kind of shenanigans.  It’s not just a case of our husbands not liking it – I’m sure we wouldn’t like it either and neither, probably, would the local Frenchmen available.   I have increasing sympathy for women in Britain, such as those from India and Pakistan, who are berated in the Mail or the Sun for their failure to speak fluent English.   It’s not easy.

But hanging around with lots of other English speaking people doesn’t help – although it’s a very pleasant thing to do.  Sunday the rain stopped long enough for a walk round Badefols d’Ans with Sue King and Brenda Durham. 

Badefols possesses a viewing point (point d’orientation) from where you can see the countryside for miles around.   There are two large upright posts which look suitable for druidic sacrifices but, on closer inspection, contain a curved metal strip pin-pointing all the neighbouring villages.    

So we viewed and walked and afterwards went to Sue’s for tea and cake (missed by Mary Rogers who said it was too cold to come out).   Driving home from Badefols afterwards Brenda and I spotted a hoopoe wandering at the roadside.  I know they travel up from Africa about this time of year, but really don’t know if they are able to converse with European birds so it may have been lost.  

The Hay Diet

The weather is on the mend.  A long walk yesterday past the bear caves at Excideuil.  The last time Dolly and I went this way it hailed on us so it was good to walk all the way round mostly in the sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the evening we went to Table d’Erillac in Hautefort for dinner.  This is the very kind restaurant that found my camera a few weeks ago.  As well as serving delicious food, they also make a lot of their own products and line them up against the back wall.    

 

 

 

 

 

The house looked very welcoming when we got home .   We’d gone out fairly early  and were back before 10.00.  

 

We’re not good at late nights any more.  I’m usually falling asleep on the settee at 9.00 though I have taken to waking up at 5.00 o’clock in the morning.  I don’t get up – just lay in bed and read. As the Kindle is back-lit it doesn’t disturb Mike, though he doesn’t like my sneezing at that time in the morning.  “You wouldn’t do that in a restaurant,” he said sleepily and crossly.  “Yes, I would,” I replied.  I had been covering my mouth during the sneeze so it was just the noise he was complaining about.

 

But I do love my Kindle Fire as I can look at other stuff as well as books, check emails or read news stories (mostly in very small print).    I was reading something this morning about the Hay Diet (invented in the ‘20s by William Hay) and was surprised by “dieters believe that the body’s natural ability to digest food and bum fat is hindered…”    Uggh, I thought.  Who but a cannibal would digest bum fat? It must be a clumsy way of saying that this diet shrinks your bottom.   No, all wrong.  It was the small print – it actually said “burn fat”.  I was trying to explain this to Mike later.  “Hay diet – hay diet,” he said, “Who’d want to eat hay?” Strange, the gaps of knowledge in so educated a man.

Various occupations of pensioners

Sunday morning we acted as marshalls for CACC (the local athletic club).  I know I mentioned doing this before, last month.  This time we had to stand guard at the camp site by the river and persuade pairs of runners and bikers to cross the river at the shallowest part.  The ones that had competed last year had done it before, but some new ones looked fairly shocked.   I’ve done this crossing myself in the summer when the river is flowing gently, but it has been raining a lot over the past month and I didn’t fancy the athletes’ chances.  However, only one person fell over and that just involved a wet knee and not a complete dunking.    And it didn’t rain.

Monday was one of the two book clubs I turn up for in the month.  This was the NEDWA book club (for ladies) at the Kitsch Café in Excideuil.   I rather messed up.  I have become so devoted to my Kindle that I imagine that all books can be obtained on it.  This isn’t the case, so by the time I had realised that this month’s book wasn’t available to download, it was too late to order a copy.  Or rather, I did order a copy and it didn’t arrive in time.  So I hadn’t read it.   The book was Crooked Angels by Carol Lee and dealt with physical problems related to mental health issues.  The ensuing discussion was an eye opener with one or two people even saying that they thought that people with mental health issues ought to “pull themselves together”.  I truly didn’t realise that people of my age still felt like that.  But there were others who bravely owned up to having  mental health problems themselves in the past.    My personal view is that we're all mad.  We're all constrained by our own points of view.  It's just a question of degree as to whether we can function or not. 

Tuesday Mike and I had a day in Perigueux and a good bicker -  over whether it was worth repairing my bike or not.  He is against as I don't use it much - I am for as I'd like it in useable condition.  We flung the matter around a bit and got quite heated but then went to the Chinese buffet place for lunch and calmed down. 

Dolly has become so insistent on her walks that she has taken to going to sit in the garage whenever possible to ensure that I shall not drive off without her.   She was installed there when we got back from Perigueux.   Karl, who was repairing our big front gate, had been asked to release her from the house, and she had hastened to guard my car.  We would like to dissuade her from these garage visits but, unfortunately, it must seem to work for her because I do walk her daily, anyway.    

Yesterday evening was fine enough to sit on the terrace for a game of scrabble.  It did rain a little but we braved it out.   Scrabble with umbrellas could be a new craze - we know how to live,  you know.

 

 

This and that

I was woken at 3.00 am yesterday morning by Dino Murby loudly banging a metal tag round his collar onto his emptied metal water bowl.  This is the dog equivalent of a rain dance and worked.  Dino, who resembles an Irish wolf hound with four inch legs, is visiting for the week.  He is old and fairly amiable and Dolly is managing to tolerate him. When he’s not asleep and snoring, his main purpose in life is the pursuit of food.  He follows us around the house with the clear question, “Can you eat it?” in his eyes.   We tried giving him the odd treat in addition to his regular meals but found that he is believes in biting the hand that feeds him and almost has your fingers off in his haste.  I now throw treats at him and find he is a skilled mid-air catcher. 

We did have a spot of bother round Lake CouCou the other day, when he identified all the fishermen’s tents as potential kitchens, hastened towards them and entered one or two.   He managed to get his snout into a tub of wiggling bait before I caught and leashed him.   His eating habits have one advantage – he will eat any scraps, however humble and insignificant, that fall from the work surface during food preparation.  Mike believes that Richard and Sue, his owners, should hire him out as a floor cleaner.       

Due to the length of his years and the shortness of his legs, Dino has had to remain on gardening duties with Mike when Dolly and I do our longer walks.  We met up with Sue King and Brenda Durham on Wednesday for 7.5 kms worth of Grange d’Ans north.  I have tried this once before on my own, but took a wrong turning and didn’t complete it.  I only say this because on both walks, an old French woman darted out of her house and began cross examining me/us.  She may have been being friendly in a  brusque way.  We did our best to answer her questions.  (Mostly the equivalent of “You’re not from round here, are you?”)   I was just explaining where I lived, and the exact location of our house when she said that she couldn’t understand us if we couldn’t speak French.  This was a shame as I had thought I was speaking French, as did Brenda and Sue.    We were probably sounding like the policeman in Ello, ello and the elderly French are certainly intolerant of bad accents. 

 Thursday I wandered round Excideuil market which I do love - a proper old style French market in a proper old French town.  Small but full of plenty - flowers, fruit, herbs, fish, cheese and even very small tables at which farmers or local gardeners display their single stock – bottles of nut oil or baskets of small plums . 

 

 

Yesterday was not full of incident.  I never  got back to sleep after the 3.00 am incident of the metal tag and was consequently slowed down all day.  The good news, though, is that Yvette Bickerton is now out of hospital and Mike and I visited with two dogs and a cake.

 

     

 

 

This Stuart Hall business

This Stuart Hall business has me worried.  For anyone reading this who doesn’t follow British news stories, Stuart Hall is/was a television broadcaster who has worked for the BBC most of his life.  At the age of 83 he now stands accused of indecently assaulting young women and girls over 30 years ago, more specifically between 1967 and 1985.   The papers are suggesting he may expect a prison sentence.   As he has a heart complaint and a short life expectancy it is probable he will die in prison.

From the number of complaints coming in, it is clear that Hall has been a sexual predator and something of a creep, but I am bothered by the nature of the complaints reported so far.  One woman, now in her 60s, claimed to have had most of her life blighted after Hall bought her a vodka and lime and tried to stick his hand up her skirt when she was 16.  Another woman, now retired from the police force, has made a formal complaint that Hall grasped one of her clothed breasts when she was 17. 

 

Whilst retaining the ability to carry a long haul grudge, these women appear to have completely forgotten the way the sexes related to each other in the 60s and 70s.  Some men, certainly not all, were grabbers and prodders.  We warned each other off them with bad jokes. “Watch out for him, he’s got desert disease” (Wandering palms – ha ha).    With our short haircuts and our miniskirts we were branded as “Dolly Birds” and the tabloids said that youth was the most desirable thing and probably the younger the better.  The re-birth of feminism in the 60s not only opened up work and life opportunities for women, but it started to lay down rules of what was and was not acceptable.   And by doing so, it also changed the way that men and women related to each other.

It is significant that there have been no offences reported against Hall since 1985.  It seems he knew when to pack it in.  If we are now going to prosecute him for ancient fumblings, we are going to have to seek out all the sexually predatory men of the 60s and 70s.  And, goodness, there were a lot of them.  But, of course, no-one can remember their names as they weren’t on the telly.

Creatures

Mike came into the bedroom last night and said, “I have sprayed the mice in the bathroom”.   We are both at a stage in our lives where we forget words or get them wrong, so it didn’t  take too long to realise he was referring to there being another visitation of ants in the bathroom which he had dealt with.   Apparently menopausal women are also bad on words.  I am long past this stage but still forget words and have to give desperate clues like the woman I heard of who had to cry, “Pottery – circular – for eating from” when all else failed her. 

Ants are noted for being hard working and organised, so goodness knows what they want in our bathroom.  We really have nothing for them.  When you are young and you think of yourself being older there are some things that you never imagine you may one day have to do.  Such as this morning when I was throwing beakers of cold water at the back of the bath to sloosh the dead ants into the bath so that I could turn the shower spray on them and send them down the plug hole.  I was reluctant to wipe them away and have an ant filled cloth, and the mop and bucket would have been tricky.  The beakers of water method did work, though.   When I was about nine years old I had to write an essay on what I would be doing when I was 21.  I said I would have a small car and a white lady poodle (the height of sophistication).  By 21 I had neither and never achieved the white lady poodle, but slopping dead ants down the plug hole certainly never came into it. 

I’ve said previously that our house is very old and subject to invasion by differing creatures.    I was going to have a bowl of muesli for breakfast having dealt with the ant corpses, when I realised that a small hole had been gnawed into the bottom of the packet and there were tiny black bits mingled in with the oats, fruit and nut.  So I didn’t have a bowl of muesli and had to give the cupboard a good clean out. 

There are lots of beautiful tree lined walking tracks in the Dordogne.  These are usually unoccupied and very relaxing, ideal for trying to clear your mind and not thinking of tomorrow or yesterday or anything but the track ahead and the green leaves;  a bit like walking through your own meditation.  I was walking very calmly and mindlessly when the dog found a huge pile of dung and rolled in it, with great joy.   It is not possible to shout, “No, no, stop it – get out of there” calmly and meditatively.  I can’t do it, anyway, but thankfully, she stopped it.

I was listening to a cuckoo today and wondering why they continue to call out.  It’s a bit late in the season for trying to attract a mate, most of the birds have done that already, and they can’t be warning people away from their nests as they don’t have them.  I think we have got cuckoos wrong.  I think they call out after they have dumped their eggs in other birds’ nests.  And it’s not “Cuckoo, cuckoo” they are calling but something much ruder.    But if you claimed to have heard the first "F**k You" of the spring, no-one would be interested.