Pond Scum, and Used-Car Salesmen ...

Both are unsightly, but at least the pond scum is useful ... seriously, if there's one thing I loathe (not actually the case, there are many things I detest with every fibre of my being - orange crimplene shirts, to name but one) it is chasing people up to get them to do something that should have been done, and would have been done much more easily, yonks back.

Case in point, two years ago we bought Margo's little Mito at a garage in Carcassonne. ("Prestige Autos 11", if you want a name to avoid: "Ah, the wide boys", as John sighed later on. Maybe I should have asked him before venturing onto the lot.) In principle it came with cruise control - as it turns out it had a speed limiter, not exactly the same thing but we live with that - but what it did not have was the handbook and, more importantly, le carnet d'entretien - the service booklet. "No problem, squire, I have but to ring the previous owner and I'll have it in a jiffy ..."

Fast-forward two years and a goodly number of phone calls, and I am starting to get exceedingly annoyed. Getting actually angry I find to be usually counter-productive, but I am so close ... especially when, on today's fruitless call, the guy had the temerity to say that he'd willingly give me the owner's phone number and I could chase it up myself.

At which time I pointed out that perhaps it was his job, rather than mine, to do that; that it was in fact illegal to sell a car without these documents - then I said I'd ring again next week, wished him a lousy day and hung up the phone on him.

That last will rankle, I know. It was cruel of me, but a French-person who is not allowed to end a conversation on a superficially cordial note will not be happy. He has not been permitted to make an implicit excuse, nor say that it's not really his fault, you understand, and now he will just have to swallow the guilt. (Mind you, car salesmen may prove an exception to this general rule.) Whatever, I'm glad I don't know if he has a dog, because I'd hate to feel responsible for it getting a couple of unwarranted kicks when he gets home.

For thirty years now I've laboured under the misapprehension that "37°2 le matin", title of a book and then a film, was referring to the temperature. An easy mistake to make, especially as it starts off in Gruissan, in summer, where it really does get that hot in the morning.

But finally, thanks to a hat-tip from a friend, I actually bought the book ("Betty Blue", in English, but just maybe I should get it in the original and re-read it, to see what was lost in translation) and discovered that I was, as usual, completely wrong. Well, maybe not entirely: it does refer to the temperature, but more precisely that of a pregnant woman - 37°2, in the morning.

Those cultured few of you lot out there who've read it before may now snigger up your sleeves at my ignorance if you wish, but I would still recommend it. A rather beautiful love story, for all that the author is French.

End of lit-crit, on to the rest.

Is it something in the water, I wonder, or am I getting cynical, or are they actually breeding kids to be retards these days? I mean, I went off and did something I don't do enough of these days - to wit, grab the camera, fold myself into the car and head off to take some photos. So I was wandering the quiet sun-baked streets of Luc sur Orbieu, snapping merrily away, and I acquired a cortège of two bratlings - ten, twelve, I guess.

And having watched me take photos of buildings and godnose what - I guess the only entertainment in the place is what you make for yourself - the eldest piped up and asked "Sir, sir, what are you doing?". Department of the bleeding obvious, I replied "taking photos?". "Oh. What of?". "Buildings, young fool. They tend not to run away". No, but seriously: you ask someone with a camera pressed to their eye what they are doing? Yoof of today.

Anyways, we is now mid-September and we are still enjoying what passes for summer. Bright, blue and warm; but I have dragged a pair of jeans out for the morning and late-night walks. The cool is pleasant, but still ... Margo tells me that the beginning of next week it should drop to about 21°, before going back up to 26° or so: I can live with that. If it could only stay that way through till November that would be much appreciated, and who knows - stranger things have, as they say, happened at sea.

What I'd really like is for it to be warm(ish) for the first week of October, for on the 6th - the 8th being, most inconveniently, a Monday - shall be commiserating my 60th birthday with a not-so-select group of friends and other semi-professional alcoholics. I shall have to lay in another 40 litres of wine, I feel, and Margo rather maliciously suggested making club sandwiches ("les tartines d'association?") because they always go down well with the French. I am seriously toying with the idea of making up one lot with smashed banana, honey, and Marmite ... would that be bad of me?

And still in this festive vein, I is a Happy Camper, for my birthday present arrived rather early. I am sick to death of bloody box graters removing my knuckles, and the sheer excess (and the cleaning overhead) of thinly slicing potatoes using some special disk-like blade (which you can never find when you need it) in the kitchen whizz is enough to put me off the idea, and in any case I am supposed to be able to do it quite adequately with a knife ... which is true enough but life's too short, so I ordered a de Buyer mandoline.

It is very pretty, and quite spotless, and I think I shall leave it unused for the next six months so that it stays that way - just take it out from time to time to look at it - which brings me to my current problem, this being "where the hell shall I store this thing, in my tiny kitchen?".

Because all the cupboards are full, and chucking out cooking gear is not an option because despite what one might think there is in fact very little of it that I do not actually use. (Apart from the bread-maker, which followed us down from Savoie and sat in the pantry for five years until, just the other day, we managed to palm it off on Julian & Batu, and maybe two of the three waffle makers we seem to have. And a number of the six muffin tins. Also the electric frying-pan that Margo bought some years ago, unwrapped, and put on a shelf - from whence it has never, to my knowledge, moved an inch.)

As a temporary (and, therefore, permanent) measure, I suppose I could shift one of my huge cast-iron casseroles someplace else: it's only moving the problem around, I know, but if I can keep doing that long enough it will eventually cease to matter.

Also, going off to MatCol and buying another couple of decent, sturdy stainless steel 30x40 baking trays that won't warp in the oven (making a hideous pinging noise in the process, and incidentally tilting your little gratin dishes just enough so that the crème brulée custard runs out) didn't really help matters in the storage department.

Whatever, the bells started a random cacophony this morning, bidding the faithful to prayer, as it seems that the ambulatory vicar is here today. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer of the faithful, and even more sadly they are mostly on the elderly side, and thus arrive by car.

And being as what they probably got drivers' licences - if in fact they did - back in 1914 or something, the concept of not double-parking, thus blocking in we innocent heathen folk, seems to be totally alien to them. Probably a Good Thing then that I didn't really need - or want, come to that - to head off to the supermarket this morning.

Be all that as it may, it is far too nice a day to worry about such small matters, for there are more important things to occupy my mighty brain. Such as, for instance, just how shall I while away an idle afternoon, waiting until it's time to head across to Montbrun for drinkies, and whiling away an idle evening?

This is the sort of problem with which we are constantly confronted down here in the south, but I (rather nobly, I feel) suffer it so that you don't have to.

Cheers - speaking of which, maybe it is time to open another bottle of rosé. Need moah vitamins.

No News is Good News ...

I can almost see tomorrow's headlines in "Midi Libre" or "l'Independante" (both rags, incidentally, taking their names from the comforting fiction that somehow, southern France was so not under German control during the most recent world war): something along the lines of "MOUX (11700, Aude): les habitants de ce petit village paisible sont encore sous le choc: ça fait depuis 70 ans que rien s'est passé la semaine dernière."* Well, we rather like it that way. True, it does make things a bit predictable sometimes, but what's actually wrong with boring?

In fact, "boring" is a very appropriate word for cleaning stoves. I have my huge stainless steel English stove with five gas rings and three ovens (a grill, one natural convection and a large fan oven for patisserie) and it takes an entire Sunday after-groaning once in a while just to keep it pristine. Unmount shelving, spray, rinse and repeat. There's a lot to be said for watching paint dry.

There seems to be something about a pristine wall that brings out the worst in the French. Case in point: the wall of the Musée des Beaux Arts at the eastern end of rue Verdun, leading off from place Gambetta in Carcassonne. I went off to the market there today, for the first time in about six weeks (most of the tourists have now gone, good riddance), past this wall, and there was a mother - with her mother (I'm guessing) in tow - encouraging two young boys to piss on it.

I suppose I wasn't the only one to comment on this - I mean, there are actually public toilets inside - but at least I said something offensive in English: someone else was not quite so lucky for as I ambled off towards place Carnot I could hear the elder harridan screeching something rather like "Ok, mossieu doesn't like it? Too bad for the dainty mossieu! I bugger your mother and I piss on your shoes!". Sadly, I was out of earshot by the time she started on the really inventive invective: one should never miss out on a learning experience.

As it happens, the revised DP for the glass-brick window in the wall came back, approved, ten days or so ago, and now that French parents have done the rentrée and gone back to work (for a given value of "work", your mileage may vary) and the bratlings are all back at school, Cédric turned up to finish off the job.

It's going to take me a while to get used to it being so light in the stairwell now: had rather got accustomed to going up and down something that looked like the gloomy stairs in some watch-tower in Mordor, lit only by sputtering sheep fat. And today he replaced the two rotting pillars that nominally held the verandah roof in place: I say "nominally" because in actual fact it was only supported by the metal framing of the sliding glass doors. So now we have light, and access to the terrace which does not require a hydraulic jack to get the doors open. A great advance, here at The Shamblings™.

For the first time in a very long while, I went off to the little Vival on avenue Henri Bataille - the local superette, if you will. The very first time we'd been living here but a year, and I wanted a baguette and maybe a croissant, but it was made clear to me - without this actually being said - that this was a local shop, for local people, and that all the baguettes in that vast pile were reserved: truth to tell I felt rather lucky to get out of there as myself, rather than as part of the filling for some sort of meat pie.

But the other day I really wanted some garlic sausage, and I absolutely could not be arsed driving 10 km off to the Carrefour at Lézignan to get some, so I went back to the Vival. It being 15h, it was of course closed: it's kind of quantum, and only opens whenever the manager gets entangled. I think. But Margo told me that I needed to go back about 17:30, when there was a 90% chance of collapsing the wave-form, and this is what I did and lo! the door was open, and I stiffened my spine and walked in.

Not only was there a garlic sausage on the shelves ("a" garlic sausage, because it was singular, and I did not check the use-by date), but I was not told that it was reserved for a regular customer and she actually allowed me to pay money for it! And rather to my surprise, she, our Dear Leader, and I then spent the next ten minutes chatting away merrily about the history of our house: the granite slabs on the floor (sadly, now covered beyond recovery with rather gross floor tiles) and the marble chimneys, ripped out and thrown away.

And I returned triumphantly home, holding my sausage proudly over my head as others might hold a banner, and then I cut it into thick slices and stuck it into one of my vasty cast-iron casseroles with the lamb shanks, dried beans, leeks, stock and garlic that had been simmering away, on and off, for most of the week: and then we had it for dinner.

Anyways, it came to me last night that a decent Thai prawn curry would be a Good Idea for dinner. I had raw prawns in the freezer, coconut cream, red curry paste and onions and peppers: what could possibly go wrong? In point of fact, nothing did - it was quite delicious, although hovering at the heat level above which Margo will not touch things (her personal Scoville line, if you will) - but I now remember why it is I don't cook prawns as often as I might like, for peeling the little bastards must be one of the most tedious, thankless tasks known to mankind.

Whatever, you may have noticed that August is over, marking the unofficial end of summer in these parts. Everyone has gone back to work, and every moaning small children trudge unwillingly to school. And in the mornings and evenings, when I take the hairy retards out, it is a pleasantly cool 17°, and I know that sometime soon I shall have to bring my jeans out of estivation.

But it is still one of the most beautiful times of the year around here: the low sun lights the house all golden in the morning, when I'm out on the terrace with the first coffee of the day, and at night the sky is deep blue overhead, with stars shining so hard.

But the days are still bright and warm, and although the barbecues have been tucked away we may well head off mid-week to la Perle Gruissanaise, to eat seafood and drink the excellent la Clape wine under the sun, watching as the yachts go past and the seagulls turn overhead.

Mind how you go, now.

*"The inhabitants of the quiet village of Moux are still in a state of shock: every week, for the past 70 years, nothing happened last week."