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."