More About Buildings And Food ...

One thing I did forget to mention as I went on about the health & safety regulations to which we shall be required to adhere, and which left me with a totally ghasted flabber: unusually - I will resist the urge to say uniquely - for France, they are not prescriptive. Under other circumstances they would be highly detailed, setting out the required methodology - concerning traçabilité, say, they would specify a minimum size for your receipts, which would have to be stapled (9mm staples only) to pale yellow bristol, one receipt per sheet and then kept, in date order, in a vertical filing cabinet.

And provided you followed the rules it wouldn't matter if you were unable to demonstrate that on such and such a day you had fed (or not, as the case may be) two kilos of scrapies-ridden beef brain to your clients, because you'd done what was set out.

Where are my eyes?

No, these rules just define the result that is required, and how you go about it is totally up to you. If you feel like taking photos of the receipts with your phone and then attaching them to a spreadsheet cell which you've organised by supplier's hair colour you are free to do so. I must admit that kind of shocked me, it is so very un-French.

And even the knowledge that the regulations are not in fact French, but EU directives, does not diminish my wonder one whit, because that means that they were established by a committee, each member of which is jealously fighting his or her own corner and defending the right of their peasantry to scour out the butter churns with pig's urine, as is traditional and right.

This is NOT an argument

I personally find that selling your house is a learning experience in and of itself. Case in point: the incompetence of banks, the magnitude of which never ceases to leave me feeling like a stunned mullet, haplessly gasping for air. I would have greatly preferred to slit my own throat with a rusty hair-pin rather than go back to the Credit Agricole for a house loan, so I trotted around a couple of banks.

This may seem odd, but even national banks - like BNP and Société Genérale - still want you to take out your loan with a branch in the place where you're buying. I mean, what the hell is going on here? I'm pretty sure it isn't done for my convenience.

So anyway, I went off to see the CIC, aka Lyonnaise de Banque, who have the privilege of handling Upstart's banking needs, and explained the situation to them. As I had rather hoped, as the business itself is not shifting they agreed to handle the loan from here, which kind of avoids some otherwise unnecessary trips down south. So far so good, but I suspect that the very idea that this was possible raised false hopes.

Fear not, French banks are as incompetent as ever. I asked for a loan, 70 000€ over ten years, and for some strange reason they sent a first proposition for a seven-year term: interesting, no doubt, as it involves no mortgage and can be repaid early without penalty, but neither of us want to be shelling out 900€/month if we can possibly avoid it.

Then we got scary health questionnaires ("have you, or any family members, ever been insane?"), which we filled in with the usual lies, and there also arrived a copy of the actual loan offer - a proper official document, with places to sign and everything. Sad to say, it was not for us - I thought that was a tad too quick - but at least I now know in some detail the financial state of M et Mme Goudejan. Fascinating stuff.

And while all this is going on, we - or more to the point, Margo - are/is trying to organise movers, for at our age there is no way we is going to even contemplate the idea of loading all our junk into and on top of and trailing behind little Suzy, and getting it down there. No, we are actually going to pay professionals to do all that. But we do need dates for that, and as we can't really sign for Moux until we've signed the sale for here, I was kind of perturbed to learn that we are, in fact, subject to péremption.

This is not quite as filthy as it sounds, all it fact means is that as we are landed gentry with our rolling acres of agricultural terrain, first the mairie and them some other organisation of which I've never heard get dibs on it. Of course, if they decide that they do in fact want it this is considered sufficient reason for the buyers to back out, so the sale cannot go through until both have said "non!".

Now the mairie, who gets first choice, said that fairly early on in the piece, at which point the notaire was allowed to send the dossier off to the second lot. They received that on May 27 and, by virtue of article 37 of the code d'urbanisme or something, have two months in which to reply. So given that they have the sale habitude of not in fact replying if they don't want to grab the land, this could push the signing date back to July 28: the point is that we don't actually know.

Which is a right bitch, not to mention a pain in the arse. There is - this is France, as I keep reminding you - a way to - perhaps - speed up the process: if you send them a cheque for 150€ they guarantee to think really seriously about really replying in three weeks, retroactively, from the date of reception of the dossier. Which sounds kind of time-fuddling to me, but what would I know?

Our buyers are also in a hurry, so they apparently stumped up a cheque which got sent off to the notaire who must then transmit this through to the organisme in question (for you cannot send it off directly, this would be cutting out the middle-man and also against nature) and then ring someone there, hoping to extract a promise that we will get our answer Real Soon Now. Whilst we wait, we're rather in limbo, and it's highly annoying because we cannot set a firm date for signing in Moux or shifting or anything.

Suppose I'd better send a mail off to Peter telling him to let Jim and Celine know that their plans to pop over from England on or about the 12th need to be put on hold. Bugger.

Still, on the bright side, I feel that I have done something useful and Good with my otherwise dissolute life, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Thanks to my entertaining her with Uplifting and Informative Nature Tales, adapted slightly from the truth in order to fit the requirements of a younger audience, little Elise next door can now regale me with stories about the "horrible snails, that crawl in your ears and EAT YOUR BRAIN from the inside".

Anyway, one thing I don't do often enough is read James Beard. Come to that, I don't read Julia Child as often as I should, but there you go. I am reminded of this because Margo was off at a salon at La Roche sur Foron, and the SNCF was on strike (or, as they prefer to put it, une journée nationale de solidarité et d'action sociale, take your pick), so I wound up spending the night, carless and careless, on the spare bed at Stacey's, and she just happens to have a copy of "The Theory and Practice Of Good Cooking", by the aforementioned Mr. Beard.

So, having nowt better to do, I picked it up and read it, cover to cover. I knew the name, of course: doyen of American cooking back in the 60s and 70s, a cook for whom I have great respect, and also a wonderful writer, about food and maybe other subjects, I do not know. But honestly, who else could talk - with a straight face - about a "blessing of salt and pepper"?

Or, come to that, the "quick hot kiss of butter"? Also, in the section of that book devoted to sautés in their myriad and delicious forms, he bemoans the falling of boeuf Stroganoff: "bastardised", as he so elegantly puts it, "into a stew".

And if you're looking for some good paternal advice, he has this to say: "with braised veal, buttered noodles are good, and you may have green beans. Drink a Beaujolais". Sounds good to me. A man who loved food, and who let it show. Even to the point of criticising the "current French tendency" to cook everything in vinegar: mea culpa, for I do love chicken cooked that way, but I can see his point. Can easily be overdone, and not necessarily something you want every night.

Which may explain why, tonight, after a white-hot day, I decided on a simple warm potato salad: rougette leaves dried and set out on a plate, mustard, honey and olive oil whipped until senseless with a spoon in a bowl before adding lashings of chives and mint and cornichons, then pouring in the cubed steamed potatoes and sliced spring onions and some sweetcorn, stirring well with cider vinegar, and ladling the lot over the lettuce.

At which point some chopped hard-boiled eggs could usefully be added, and if you happen to have some decent bacon you could fry that up and crumble it in too, deglazing the pan with vinegar which could be used on the potatoes. Just saying.

Whatever, I should probably go to bed now as the week is calling: shall just leave you with another of Chairman Beard's great thoughts, on kohlrabi: "sometimes called cabbage turnip, but with the virtues of neither". I really like that man. As for you lot, mind how you go, now.

Broadening My Mind ...

So the pair of us headed off this moaning to Albertville, for a half-day course to learn about food hygiene and stuff. First of all, a word to the wise: should ever, through some odd turn of fate or twist of circumstance, you find yourself at the Chambre des Metiers et des Artisans at Albertville and dying for a coffee, resist the urge to go get one from the vending machine. The word "unpalatable" does not begin to do it justice: "toxic" does it for me but is quite likely actionable, given that I don't think anyone has actually died from inhaling the stuff, although I can't imagine how not. Maybe they hushed it up.

Go out the front door, across the road, turn left and pop into a bar. It'll cost more, but it will probably be drinkable.

Anyway, back to this course ... mainly to let you know what you're up for. Somewhat to my surprise, the legislation concerning tables d'hote is nearly as draconian as that covering restaurants. Fair enough, up to a point: giving people food poisoning is a serious matter and not one to be undertaken lightly, nor to be left to amateurs, but still the whole concept of table d'hote is that you invite people into your house and feed them a typical, preferable regional, meal, as though they were friends or family that had just popped in and managed to invite themselves for lunch by the simple expedient of parking themselves at the table and refusing to budge.

So although you can invite all the family around for Christmas day or Aunt Gladys' birthday and cunningly slip salmonella into the tuna salad without so much as a harsh word being said, let alone inspectors from the service veterinaire coming round to make rude and sometimes pointedly harsh remarks, if you're feeding three strangers for cash things get more complicated. What did you expect? This is France.

I will pass on the aspect traçabilité, where you are expected to be able to show origin, date of purchase and date of use of all animal products consumed over the past six months, and just quickly fulminate on the requirements for the kitchen. Floors, walls and work surfaces must be of such materials as are "easily cleaned". The use of wood (chopping blocks etc) is totally verboten. There must be a separate hand-basin, with foot controls, for the washing of hands, something to be done every time you pick your nose. The different matières premières (meat, vegetables, dairy products ...) must be stored on separate shelves in the fridge ...

I swear, if the same rules were to be applied, as reasonably they should, to any home kitchen that occasionally caters to more than two adults, a kid or two, and the odd cat, no-one in France would bother cooking. Just have a microwave, and live on frozen pizza. Mind you, that is happening. Sadly.

Still, at least I now know that salmonella is completely exterminated once the internal temperature gets up over 63°C, also - and rather more disturbing - that listeria actually prefers to have it off at 4°, and is a frequent unwanted visitor in fridges.

Also, that we shall have to get a Licence II in order to be able to serve fermented, non-distilled alcoholic beverages: this is free on demand at the local mairie, but you do have to undergo a 700€ course on road safety or something beforehand. There had to be some way they were going to get money out of it.

It's a slow day right now, so get yourselves ready for the Peculiar Case of the Cheese-grater in the Evening. As Watson would have said. No baying hell-hounds, no blood smeared on the walls, nor a peg-legged sailor with a cleft palette, just a cheese-grater that should have been there, but wasn't.

Anyway, it was not upon a dreary winter's day under a dismal London pea-souper that I turned up to call upon my friend Mr. Holmes of Baker Street, but rather last Tuesday evening, when it was in fact quite fine and sunny, and to be totally honest I had just arrived home, had no intention of calling on the great detective, and in fact never did so. His services turned out to be unnecessary, just as well really for I don't actually know the guy, and given the situation he might well have insisted on payment in advance.

To be clear on the circumstances of the case: finding myself with nowt but mince in the fridge, it seemed obvious that Italian-style meatballs, with a hint of lemon, in a rich tomato sauce would make a suitable light dinner, accompanied by buttered pasta, as is our wont.

Now pasta has, of course, one drawback: our Mediterranean friends have not yet devised a way of getting cheese into it. So grated cheese on top - parmigiano reggiano or, if you prefer, a dried Sardinian cheese - is more or less mandatory. And as the meatballs simmered away in their lascivious sauce, and the spaghetti went al dente, it came time to prepare the garnish.

Cry havoc! and let loose the Spanish Inquisition, for no cheese-grater was to be found. Baffled we were not, for we knew that Jeremy had prepared pasta for his party on Sunday night: the answer was obviously that the article in question is not actually missing as such, just poorly filed. So we inspected all the kitchen cupboards - yes, all of them, even those that are not, technically speaking, actually in the kitchen, not in this time zone anyway - and when that turned out to be fruitless, we ransacked the pantry.

Jeremy had his party in the cellar? Let us process down, holding torches (for it was getting dark) and clutching the life-preservers in our ulster pockets (what the hell are those, anyway? Life-preservers, I mean. You are seriously trying to tell me that Sherlock Holmes wandered about at all times with an inflatable dinghy in his pocket?), to check the contents of the cellar. Many interesting things are there, but apparently innocent of any trace of a cheese-grater.

It is not, of course, impossible, that he should have taken it up to his room: there are coffee mugs - and coffee dregs - in there that first saw the light of day in the last century: with some trepidation we opened the door and inspected the sordid den of iniquity. As dennish, and as iniquitous, as one could wish, but Still No Frikking Cheese-Grater.

At which point, dinner being about ready, we resorted to shaving slivers off the cheese with a sturdy knife and - none the worse for it, let it be admitted - sat down to our humble meal. But not without a certain inquietude: it is not an easy thing to eat with a tranquil spirit knowing that your cheese-grater has suddenly and inexplicably vanished. What sort of madman enters one's house and makes off with a cheese-grater, leaving behind the cheese?

Be reassured, there is a happy ending. Jeremy himself arrived, around 23:00, and I subtly questioned him on the matter ...

"Jeremy! Where the hell's the cheese-grater?"
"What, that? Oh yes, here it is in my backpack. Got a call, took it to work in the morning."

Could someone please tell me what type of restaurant it is that does not have a cheese-grater to call its own? Apparently, one where the chef does not believe in the utility of such instruments, and will not have one in the drawer. Or perhaps he had an unfortunate experience as a child, I do not really wish to know.

Now our eldest son would, he claims, normally have left a note explaining that the cheese-grater had neither absconded nor been kidnapped: but as he planned on being home at midday, long after it would no longer have been needed, he thought that superfluous. Which just goes to show, because at midday he got sent off to Metro, the big professional discount shop, with the company card, a blank cheque and instructions to buy, amongst other things, a cheese-grater.

A little something for the weekend: I was driving up the hill from the centre of town back up to the office the other day, having taken advantage of the sun to perform my mid-week libations at the Beer Tree, and found myself behind a big ute that, judging from the rakes, brooms and assorted lawn-mowers, belonged to one of those helpful people that do gardening for money.

This turned out indeed to be the case: when I got close enough to read the sign it mentioned "entreprise de jardinage", so spot on there, what I had not expected was the rather unfortunate - to my way of thinking, anyway - name of the owner, M. Ratpatron.

Inexplicably, it dawned fine and sunny this morning, so despite my innate skepticism I tootled off to the market in a relatively good mood, ready for all that life might throw at me. On condition that that was buckets of cherries, say.

Anyway the fresh herbs are now out there in great handfuls so I stocked up on chives and parsley for the freezer, and a huge bunch of basil for which I shall  have to think of some use, and they all went in with the rougette atop the apricots and flat Italian white peaches (some of which are destined for a peach crisp, I think) and stuff, and then wandered vaguely back to head office to meet up with the infamous Bs and check up on the rosé.

Somewhat to my surprise Beckham was actually there more or less at the appointed hour, not having managed to pull anyone the previous night, and then Bryan shuffled up on his zimmer frame a bit later, so we ordered something healthy and restorative and sat in the sun watching things happen and talking, and the conversation turned, as it will, to pederast necrophile ducks and then, logically enough, to the cruelty of killing off - or at least seriously reducing the numbers of - the pigeons that infest Chambéry.

At least, Beckham seemed to think it was cruel: Bryan quite reasonably pointed out that they'd tried contraception and that hadn't worked, and I'm sad to say that my contribution to the train of thought was simply that the problem with that was not only finding enough people to put the tiny rubbers on their little columban willies, but also having them be in the right place at the right time.

And at that point the meeting broke up in some disorder as we all thought of things we really ought to be doing, and headed off to enjoy the fleeting sunshine before the thunderheads rolled in.

Need My Eyes Checked ...

A quick feel-up on the battlefield

When we left New Zealand all those years ago we were laden down with many gifts from friends and well-wishers anxious to see our backs, such as plastic tikis, "humourous" pukekos, and souvenir tea-towels depicting typical scenes in NZ life. Immediately upon arrival in Ole Yurrup we distributed the tikis as second-hand presents to our effusively grateful and seemingly feeble-minded hosts and abandoned the pukekos to their own sordid devices in a mosquito-ridden swamp south of Vitré, where for all I know they continue to thrive, but we kept the tea-towels: a good thing too for we were impecunious in those days, also too lazy to go down to the supermarket when a late-night need came upon us, and later on they made good impromptu nappies.

Have you seen my dagger?

They've been washed since, of course, and most of the stains have faded, and many of them still adorn the kitchen here, spread out over various benches and things to stop dust getting on them, for we can be quite fanatical about having clean, dust-free Formica. One such, depicting "Rock-pool Residents Of Our Country", is draped casually over the dishwasher, rumpled in an interesting way, and as I sat down last night for my solitary quiche it caught my eye and I read "fuck poo sid".

And that is all. I have no idea how that came to be, I merely report it.

So I had lambasted (not the same thing as basting lamb) our favourite son for the crime of polluting his computer, if you recall, and just last night I had occasion to turn on the old W2K tower that sits in my office at home, which acts as a secondary backup for photos and such, and which hosts projects for which the tools are so certifiably ancient that they won't run on any other flavour of Windows ... it also has an obsolete but still perfectly functional scanner connected to it, over the parallel port (think I must have bought the very last motherboard that still had one of them things), and the occasion was in fact that I had some stuff to scan and then e-mail off.

And I scanned the stuff in, sent it off, and then as the thing was on thought I might as well look at porn go check out a few blogs do some research and so what happened? Damn thing couldn't even find Google. Hum, thought I. This being W2K had to do things the old-fashioned way, so remembered where the Device Manager lives, uninstalled the network adapter, reinstalled it, and lo! I have internet again. Now should I, I thought, look at that vintage Andrew Blake movie, or should I try my luck? Feeling lucky, punk?

Of course I made the wrong decision, and about three minutes later it became evident that once again, there was no internet. Having better things to do I delved into that, and discovered that I could in fact ping other machines on the home network, but not the router, or anything behind it.

Now I is confused, and probably befuddled, and definitely clueless. No way you will get me to believe that two network adapters can fail in the same sort of erratic way in such a short interval, so I can only think that some sort of stealth update to the bloody router has left it in a psychotic state where it's dropping connections for W2K machines. Bugger me if I know.

At least there are still a couple of tins of foie gras in the fridge, despite our best efforts to get rid of stuff before we move out, and there are some potatoes, which lead me to make Rossini-burgers.

I thought I would make at least a token gesture (a rude one, admittedly) in the general direction of healthy eating, so rather than using actual burger buns I grated those very potatoes, squeezed as much water as I could out, mixed them with some salt and grated cheese and then fried them in incredibly healthy duck fat into what we call paillassons (lit. straw doormats) but you might know them better as rösti or latke.

When these are lightly browned and nicely crisp the actual assembly is a breeze: place a mound of caramelised onions, preferably deglazed with some balsamic vinegar, on one doormat and top that with some crisp lettuce, tomato, a thick slice of foie gras and sauce béarnaise with chives. Stick another doormat on top and eat. Margo reckons that just with the liver it's too rich, and that I should really have stuck some steak in there as well: she could well be right but what the hell, I was hungry and managed to down mine. With asparagus on the side.

Once again, we are baby-sitting the retarded Irish setter for the weekend. Weekends seem to be getting longer, by the way: I used to think it was just those two days when you didn't spend all your life at the office, but things have changed - Angie turned up on Wednesday night and leaves on Monday.

Anyway, more to the point as Margo is off working tonight until some ungodly time in the wee hours, I am baby-sitting the beast. At this moment, at any rate. The day started off as well as could be expected: I opened the front door, stepped out, turned around to get the umbrella and before you know it the damn thing (dog, that is) is standing excitedly in the middle of the road, barking at clouds and hoping to go walkies. I had to go catch a train so went up, woke Margo, let her know that the dog was out and headed back out: as soon as I opened the front door he came straight back in, obviously a bit let down that no-one wanted to play.

So anyway I got home that night, sidled carefully in to find that Margo had put up the old baby barrier so that he was shut in the living room. Took that down - not really any point now, I thought - and negotiated the barricade of old armchairs to get into the kitchen. Get out the makings for a hamburger (with the left-over foie gras from the other night, decadent I know but I don't care), start making the buns and then suddenly notice a total Absence Of Dog.

Living room, empty - apart from the usual junk. Hall: empty. Suddenly suspicious I headed off upstairs, and sure enough, there he was, lounging on the mat in the TV room. Sad to say the poor thing has not yet worked out that stairs are bidirectional and so does not believe that he can actually get back down, which is probably why, until I get up the strength to carry him bodily down, I am stuck with him sitting with his nose snuffling my privates as I try to type.

I stand corrected: Angie does in fact know how to get down stairs. It's a variation on the old problem with which so many of us are familiar, "how to get the donkey down from the top of a minaret?" The answer, of course, is that you just have to persuade the donkey that it really, really, very urgently wants to get down from the top of the minaret, and nine times out of ten it will do so completely of its own accord and without leaving a donkey-shaped rustic carpet splattered on the street thirty metres below.

Of course, in a few rare cases there may be some collateral damage, but there is that old saying about omelettes and eggs, and in any case there are plenty of donkeys. Look on it as improving the species.

But what I was trying to say that Angie can easily be persuaded to come down the stairs: it suffices to go up there and put his leash on, at which point, convinced that he is about to go walkies, he will happily find his own way down and sit whining at the front door until you actually do the deed.

Which I eventually did, and decided at one point that I might as well go whole hog and broke out into a run. The dog, of course, thought this was a wonderful idea and loped along at my side, still only in third gear but happy to have got out of a trot until, getting to the uphill bit, I thought "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and let him drag me up.

And eventually, through the mysteries of topology, we arrived at the top of our street and headed back down, the damn dog not even breathing heavily, so I broke into a sprint. All well and good, until about half-way down my phone leaped from my pocket and fell heavily into the gutter just ahead of the storm-water grating, then split into three - phone, back case, and battery.

Had I mentioned it was dark at this time? And I was sure I saw something shiny jump down the grating and disappear with a sad gurgle. Happily it apparently did not belong to me, because I managed to collect all the bits and dry them nicely in the microwave (just joking children, you really do not want to try doing that with your shiny new iPhone) and slot them back together. Gave me an excuse to clean the screen too, which was in some need of it. They can talk all they like about their fantastic oleophobic glass but it's crap if you ask me, the damn things are always covered in greasy smears. One reason I have to really restrain myself from biting when people reach out with their fingers to try and point something out on my computer screen.

Must have been the Zombie Big Day Out today, if the ashen-faced shambling hordes at the market were anything to go by. Either that, or they'd decided to have a spring-clean at the Parkinson's ward in the hospital, and had pushed everyone out for a quick shuffle whilst they vacuumed under the beds.

Whatever the reason - and I admit I arrived later than is my habit, what with Morpheus clutching me to his bosom and all - they were there in multitudes, elderly, grey or blue-rinsed, muttering quietly or shrieking "bonjour" in harpyish hoarse whispers to old acquaintances glimpsed between the legs of those taller than themselves, and all towing their goddamned shopping baskets behind them as they shuffled slowly on. Ice ages are mere mayflies in their lives, come or go, they'll still be there.

I take revenge as I can, politely open doors for them just because at least I still can, but I fear it's a lost cause. They out-number us now, humanity is doomed. We all know about that inverted age pyramid, what I'm not looking forward to telling Jeremy is that the ones at the top all have Partial Death Syndrome, and there's a hell of a lot of them.

Skynet? Leave it to Beaver ...

Early Buck Rogers-style  jetpacks were not a
commercial success

So today being the Sunday just before the lundi de Pentecôte (yet another public holiday, yay!) it is the day of the grande brocante here in St Pierre, and as has become traditional in the past few years the day did not so much dawn as stagger blearily into existence, accompanied by much rheumy gagging and a sullen, cold rain. It has cleared up a bit now - just enough to let me see that there's fresh snow up on the Arclusaz behind us.

Actually, I could have done without that. Of course, lulled into a false sense of security by a few consecutive days of good weather, we turned off the central heating a couple of weeks back, so now with the outside temperatures reaching a high of maybe 10° we is sitting inside huddled in blankets, crouched around a guttering candle to keep us warm. I exaggerate a bit, I admit, but I did go light the fire in the kitchen.

I had, in a vague way, thought that perhaps we'd be out having a barbecue about now, gnawing on undefinable bits of charred blackened meat (sometimes I get a bit over-enthusiastic with the accelerant) and swigging gallons of rosé to wash it down, but I can see that those plans are going to be put on hold for a few weeks. With any luck we'll be able to have at least one before we leave the place, invite all the friends and neighbours around and get them to pick through our stuff before we confide it to the movers, but even that looks kind of doubtful just at the moment.

On an unrelated matter, for some time now I have been kind of perplexed at where the traffic for this blog comes from. Most of it comes from our country cousins across the pond, then there's NZ and France more or less tied for second place: the UK and Russia (mostly coming from a site apparently dedicated to the Citroen C3, which is a bit weird but why not?) complete the top five. But over the past week, most hits come from India. WTF? So then I looked at the referring sites, and could not help but notice this one: tits.net.erolove.in.

I suppose that's pretty clear: caveat emptor and all that, I have not gone there nor do I suggest that you do so unless you have locked your browser down tighter than a cat's arsehole. Just saying, and if you do go check it out, don't blame me if you catch something nasty.

Also, may I just say how incredibly pleased I am that Jeremy was never interested in a career in IT? Although I'm sure he'd be good at it, in a niche way, as a saboteur perhaps. Just put him in a computer room for half an hour, and after a short while all the machines there would start to fail. Subtly, and mysteriously.

So he's had a couple of power supplies blow up, or just fade away from exhaustion, a machine that quite inexplicably one day gave up the ghost, a laptop that got stolen (probably trying to get away from him): not so long ago I lent him one of my old work machines, it was hardly a favourite and certainly no racehorse but it chugged along quite reliably until, a while back, he started losing the internet.

And as I had a few hours to spare this afternoon, I thought I might as well look into it. I have to admit to being perplexed. I don't know how he did it, come to that I don't even know exactly what he's done. First suspect is the cables and then, maybe, the Homeplug box that gets him ethernet over the power lines, then maybe something gross that he's downloaded ...

Being a methodical man, I checked first of all that the cables and connections were OK by the simple expedient of using them with my laptop: all OK. I suspected a virus, or somesuch, but the machine is a dual-boot setup with W2K and XP, he's only ever booted under W2K and just to make sure I tried booting off Linux from a USB key ... did that help? Did it hell.

What appears to happen is that the machine starts up all happy and nice, gets its IP address and everything, and then after about three minutes it is no longer capable of finding websites. Packets go out, packets come in, but address resolution does not work. Can't even find the router, should I type in the IP address (192.168.1.1, like everyone else) directly. Under XP I can "repair" the connection, which incidentally clears the ARP buffers and hooks up again with the DNS server, and it will work again, for three minutes: under W2K I can just disable and then reenable the connection: same thing.

When I have a day or two I shall maybe plug the thing behind a dumb switch and look at the network traces with Wireshark, but what seems to me to be happening is that after a short while, ARP seems to be failing: maybe the packets don't get sent out. Don't know, hence the need for Wireshark. Running on a different machine, so that I can see what is on the line.

Is a puzzlement. Not a puzzle I really need to resolve, but it's annoying. I just cannot for the life of me see how a network adapter can fail in such a manner, it's not even heat-related because I don't have to power the machine off to get it to work again, just reset the adapter. It being a tower I guess I could just try to find a PCI Ethernet card and stick it in, but those are getting to be pretty rare birds these days, as are USB WiFi dongles. (I used to have three or four of those suckers, no idea what's happened to them over the years. Probably off performing monstrous hybrid couplings with the dust bunnies in the darker recesses of my office, I guess.)

Whatever, what I suppose I'm really trying to say is that you should never, ever, lend Jeremy a computer. Even if it is just to help him out. He, and they, just do not seem to get on.

Still, I suppose that his existence, and that of others like him, just goes to show that we have nothing to fear from the vaunted Rise of the Machines. They will collapse into cybernetic catatonia.

Anyway, more or less as Méteo France promised, we are having a lousy week. Intermittent rain, cold gray skies, and the high temperatures only just scrape in to the double digits. It would be nice if it at least cleared up for the weekend, given that Margo's taking the car up to Alsace or somewhere this weekend, but I am - as the French say, dubitatif. Guess I'll be trudging around the market, the bag even heavier than usual because I really need to buy another few kilos of spuds on top of the usual suspects, in the rain.

You know, sometimes I worry that I obsess a bit too much about food. Hope springing eternal, as it will, I'd picked up some blettes (OK, call it silverbeet if you like, but not blattes) at the market with absolutely no idea what to do with the damn things. And then, late one night ... luckily I wasn't in the bath, for the results would have been disastrous for those on the lower floors, a thought came to me.

And the next day, serendipitously crossing the path of a packet of lamb mince at the supermarket, I coveted it and, as one will, went and bought it. At which point things became quite simple. Breadcrumbs, cream, salt, an egg yolk and lotsa chopped mint mixed up with the lamb and then the beaten egg white folded gently in, and the whole mess spooned on top of the blettes (which I had had the foresight to half cook beforehand so that they were nicely limp - thank god for microwaves) and then wrapped into neat little packets before going into the frying pan to meet their maker, with a bit (well, quite a lot really) of white wine, chopped tomato and garlic to see them on their way.

Sad to say, it was indeed raining - nay, positively pissing down - when I left this morning to head off to the market. And as luck would have it I had to stop off at Montmelian to go into the bank which meant that having decanted myself from the train at some appalling hour and transacted my business, I had an hour to waste before the next train through to Chambéry. And my mood was not improved on the train when it did arrive to discover that two seats ahead of me there was a bulging young muffin-top with her headphones blaring out a muffled bass beat just loud enough to keep me awake.

One day, I swear, I am going to lose it, go over and point at the little signs all over the place which say, in an encouraging way, that phones and MP3 players should be kept DISCREET! for god's sake, rip the things off and trample them underfoot, like young lions and serpents.

Be that as it may, couldn't help but notice, as I did the rounds, that there were rather fewer stall-holders out than usual: nothing to sell, I suppose, what with all the fruit being late anyway and most of what there is having rotted on the vine, or contracted leprosy, or whatever. At least there are Spanish strawberries, which pleases me, even if the average Frog-thing, in that loveable pig-headed chauvinistic way of theirs, would rather slit their own throats with barbed wire rather than eat them. Even if they don't have the chutzpah to attest that they have no flavour (as though the industrial French ones, raised on dehydrated pig-shit, tasted of something other than sticky water with a slight arrière-gout of crap) they will fall back on the assertion that they're as full of steroids as Lance Armstrong, and consequently unsafe for human consumption.

It is often said - usually by those lucky enough to live somewhere that actually has a climate - that the English have only one topic of conversation between themselves, although they will occasionally make an effort for foreigners and make polite enquiries as to the health of the family. This may or may not be true, I've not really spent enough time around the English to be able to constate on the matter, but I can affirm that it's certainly true of the French.

Start talking with a Frenchman these days, and within five seconds the talk will turn ineluctably to the weather, how gross it's been, how foul it is, and how absolutely disgusting it is likely to be for the foreseeable future. I have not yet dared to mention this in polite society, for I'm afraid that the implicit comparison would be unappreciated, but if I have to suffer through one more conversation in which I learn, for the Nth time, that a) it was better before and b) it's all the fault of the bloody Socialists, or the Greens, or whatever the pet hate of the day is, I will do so.

And I'm afraid that I really did not want to hang about any longer than strictly necessary, so I missed the festival du 1er Roman, where Beckham was set to claim her fifteen minutes of fame with a public reading of excerpts from her magnum opus. Shame really.

Per Ardua Cadastre ...

... It's bloody hard work, surveying.

First of all you have to set this bloody concrete monolith, with some sort of plastic Eye'o'Sauron/reflective pyramid thingy on top, into granite and locate that using GPS, or magic, or something, and then you have to hike around a lake and take sightings of it from different angles, apparently so that you know where the rest of the lake is, and can write that down on a bit of paper with billions of squiggly lines in red and black.

Now normal people would not find that too difficult, it's the wet stuff that one of your brand-new Nikes has just stepped in. Also, there are baboons jumping into it, for a swim. Or maybe a fight. Or a bite. (More likely, knowing baboons. Nasty foul-tempered sods.) But NO CROCODILES, for they are not friendly campers.

At least, that's what it looked like to me, back in the day in darkest Africa. It was quite a long hike, much of it just up and down, on land where you could sell both sides of the same acre. And it's not as though anyone actually cared. Least of all the lake itself.

Or maybe I just got the spelling wrong, and it should have been "Per Ardua, Cadavre". Which, under certain circumstances, could make more sense. Hard work will kill me.

Sorry, don't know what brought that on. I thought I'd try the first bagel recipe I came across, given that David Lebovitz has nothing to say on the subject, and I have to admit to some doubt when I came up with something with absolutely no fat in it. No butter, no oil, no milk: just unadulterated flour, salt, water and yeast. (OK, a bit of sugar to encourage the yeast to do its thing and go forth and multiply, but that hardly counts.)

Speaking of which, when first we turned up in this benighted Yurrupian country one of the things that perplexed us was the number of flours on display on the supermarket shelves, each labelled prominently as T50, T55, T60 ... I think you get the picture here. As, back in NZ, you were happy if the flour in the packet turned out to be what it said, had few weasels weevils in it, and were totally unconcerned about its gluten content, this confused us.

And even not so long ago, you could go in and find farine, and farine spéciale pour gateaûx, so you knew more or less where you stood, provided cake-making was on your agenda. But I had the occasion the other day to go off and get some flour, along with the rest of the groceries, and Margo had helpfully noted "wholemeal" and "strong" on the shopping list.

OK, wholemeal wasn't that difficult - I hope, I bought some farine complète and I guess that'll do the job - but for strong flour ... I wound up buying some farine pour pain maison, after carefully reading the label to make sure that there was nothing in it but flour, but it was not easy to find. All those handy labels seem to have disappeared, rendered useless and obsolete by the disappearance of home cooking. Although there were handy instructions as per its use in a bread machine, which I suppose speaks volumes.

Because I, for one, will not use them. Bread machines, that is. I actually like the otherwise pointless ten minutes spent kneading, the rather erotic (to me, anyway, which also says something) feel of the dough under my palms, and the satisfaction as it starts to turn out silky and elastic in my hands. On a good day, anyway.

Still, maybe by pure luck, it turned out well. With 250gm of flour, yeast and sugar dissolved in 200ml of warm water, the whole lot mixed up with a wooden spoon and then kneaded vigorously: definitely made a nice dough. Maybe I should change my flour-buying habits. Into the microwave with it for a minute at 100W to warm it up and encourage it thusly to rise, before knocking back and making it into eight doughnuts.

The fun part, of course, is poaching the little buggers. Actually, the fun part is trying to prise them off the greaseproof paper without them becoming some sort of deformed pretzel before dropping them into the simmering water, and there's also the fun to be had trying to persuade the sods to turn over, using only a slotted spoon and an electric cattle-prod.

I knew vaguely that bagels were supposed to have stuff on top, so I left a couple nature for Margo and brushed the rest with milk before liberally sprinkling them with sea salt, poppy seeds, nigella (well, it says "Best Finest Black Cumin Seed" on the packet, but I'm not convinced that the shop in Nepal was too concerned about actual veracity, what with poetry being beauty and beauty, truth ... whatever) and whilst I was at it, some anis. Because I do not seem to have any caraway. Or maybe I do, but it was hiding at that time.

Still turned out delicious mind you, after twenty minutes in the oven. Chewy outside and a firm dense crumb inside, they were fine for my lunch today, with a bit of cheese and whatever. No need even to toast them.

(Note to self - did have a stash of caraway. It was lurking in a jam jar in one of the spice cupboards, and has since been consigned to the footnotes of history or, in this particular case, the dustbin of the household, as I must have bought it about 18 years ago and after all this time it smelt of nothing more than old paperbacks, more particularly an abandoned John Grisham legal potboiler with wooden dialogue and really cringe-inciting sex scenes. A mercy killing, really.)

Completely unrelated, but as I was walking around the market the other day I noticed this flappy noise, eventually realised that I was the one responsible, and then looked in surprise as the sole of my left shoe went flying off into the distance. Christ, I only bought the damn things in '96, whatever happened to quality and workmanship? Or am I being unreasonable here, expecting my clothes to last me a lifetime?

And speaking of flappy noises, there was music being practiced - and I use the word advisedly - this morning. Not that I would personally care to call the piano-accordion an instrument - not of a musical nature at any rate - but this guy was there, squeezing away at the dismal box and singing quaint old French songs (think "As I were a-tupping a maid that day", you get the idea) as though his life depended on it. For all I know, it did. Maybe he'd been hired by disgruntled stall-holders to go play in front of a too-successful competitor; maybe, despite the evidence, he actually enjoys the break from the screedlehorn and belchpipe. Whatever, my visit to that particular area was rather brief.

I mean, I will do a lot of things, some even without being paid, although that does rather go against my principles, but I can see no earthly reason why I should listen to that sort of stuff. Unless, of course, I am indeed paid, and as it happened there seemed to be a dearth of benign idiots with bulging wallets in the neighbourhood. And as I didn't really want to buy mushrooms anyway, it was no great hardship.

On a brighter note, I did manage to find some more asparagus, which will go rather nicely with our pavés de saumon tonight, and the nectarines are getting to the point where they are both affordable and edible. Should ever we see some sun in these gloomy lands at some point we will have a glut of the little suckers, which will mean a number of bavarois au fromage frais et fruits de saison which will please Jeremy no end, for he particularly likes that as a dessert, but right at this here point in time that seems rather far off.

The week has been busy - although luckily Fabrice, my other petit suisse, has headed off on holiday so that's three hours a day I won't be spending on the phone (and just what the hell do they think you're doing all that time? Being productive? You know, I think they probably do.) - mostly running around seeing banks to see if they will lend us relatively small amounts of money, Margo getting quotes from movers and stuff like that. For it is true that, just looking at the accumulated things we have here does rather strike fear into the heart when contemplating shifting it all.

At least Jeremy should be alright, his dossier for the OPAC is complete and, I hope, handed in, so with any luck he'll very soon be living it up in a taxpayer-subsidised cheap apartment, and no longer Our Problem. Also, should he ring to ask "Hey! Can I come down to see you with girlfriend (meuf, not a particularly nice word) number X" we will be able to reply, with straight faces, "sorry sunshine, booked out, no room at the inn". Well, that would be nice, anyway.

Before I leave you, may I just point out that these have been naughty little cherubs? Not only are they playing Silly Buggers with the Congenitally Deformed Seagull of Happiness, but they have taken all their clothes off and seem to have painted themselves with really cheap woad, which is not the right colour and has already started to run in spots. Also, they're kind of obese, which I would put down to bad diet.

Only the fact that they appear to be sitting on the Perpetual Toilet Paper Fountain has preserved their modesty, and if you ask me when Venus gets home from the nightclub with whatever seedy demi-god she's managed to pick up (shame about her looks these days, she used to be really hot but 2000 years does rather take it out of you) there will be Words Said, and the odd fessée or two. Well-deserved, in my opinion. Cheeky little sods.