Nude Interview With The Vampire ...

You were probably expecting something salacious, but it's nothing at all like that ... I drove back up to Chambery Monday night and then off to an all-day meeting with a client in Lyon on Tuesday: having better things to do I took Stacey off to the Beer Tree that night instead of doing them, to meet up with the usual dissolute companions (yeah, Bryan and Beckham, again) and listen to Tim O'Connor sing.

As a general rule, when it comes to folk music I'd infinitely prefer to slit my own throat and gargle with the blood running down the oesophagus until I pass out, but he's a really nice friendly guy so I made an exception and we wound up staying till around 2am, when Audrey and Camille started making meaningful shooing noises with the brooms, so we took the none-too-subtle hint and left. Having promised to bring them a caisse of rosé from the cave cooperative here in Moux the next time I head up.

So later that day I woke (when I say "later" that would mean rather later than intended), and finding that Stacey had gone off to do whatever it is that teachers do when the little children come rushing eagerly back to school, I wandered blearily out onto the verandah clad in the lightest of tenues legères ie bollocks-naked to bask in the sun and inhale some coffee.

(Have no fear, people. That verandah is secluded and screened from the road by masses of wisteria, so no way was I risking doing time for outrage à la décence publique. Just as well, be a shame to go down for so small a thing. He said, modestly.)

I'd got about halfway through that when the phone exterminated at me: Fabrice chose that time for a quick discussion on where we're going with the software. So I dragged the little Samsung out of the backpack and set it up on the table in the morning sun, and being very careful not to turn on the webcam we started our little séance. A working breakfast, if your idea of breakfast involves nothing more complicated than vast quantities of caffeine and a cigar.

Which meant, as I wished to go past the office and pick up a few bits and pieces, that once I'd tucked the computer away again, pulled some clothes on and done all that and fed Suzy I left Chambéry a bit later than I had in fact intended; as luck would have it the autoroute was more or less deserted (or as deserted as the A7 between Valence and Orange ever gets) so I still made it back in time for Margo to take Shaun off to get tutored.

Now for something completely different: if you head into Narbonne on the D6113, apart from the working girls strung out along its length, dancing forlornly in what they doubtless think to be an enticing manner (and who knows? To some, I suppose it could be ...) you will notice on your left, at Montredon, a sign announcing the presence of the "Sexynine Club Privé Libertin". Purely in the interests of science I googled over to their website, where I learnt that June 28 was the "Soirée Gang Bang" and also, more depressingly, that due to health problems (I do not wish to know) the owner is selling the place.

Given that the last update was in June I would hazard a guess that he or she has not yet found a buyer, so I have a wonderful investment proposition for you ...

Do you know what the main problem with working from home is? The idea is extremely attractive - I should know - you think to yourself something along the lines of "Hah! This will be cool, less stressful, I shall work at my own rhythm and walk the dog when I feel like it, and there shall be a unicorn farting rainbows in every garden."

Sadly, this turns out not to be the case - not as such. What actually happens, at least in my experience, is that the day starts with the bells of Notre Dame next door clanging brokenly into life at 7am, and that lasts sufficiently long to bring Mr. Brain to the surface and start clutching at straws, lest he sink back down into the depths again. Then the thought comes to you that a dose of caffeine is essential, as is the easing of the bladder: once easement has taken place and the coffee machine is gurgling monomaniacally to itself you are reminded, often by a cold damp bit of liver on the inner thigh, that it's time to take the dog for his early morning walk - half a litre of urine and a crap sufficiently far down the street that no-one can blame us for it..

Once these basic bodily functions have been attended to and you've stopped him trying to scarf up squashed figs from the road (because they have Certain Consequences concerning the consistency of his bowel motions) you head back home and the coffee is ready (it is now about 7:30) so you might as well slump out on the terrace with the first mug's worth and watch the sun come up (there is some Latin poem about rosy-fingered dawn drawing the curtain of day that comes to mind, I seem to recall that Caligula really enjoyed playing the part of Dawn but I simply cannot for the life of me remember it) as the dog, for want of something better to do, licks your toes.

Around 8am, as the excitement of having the sun come up yet again wears off you think that perhaps you might as well step into the office with a second mug to check up on e-mail/blogs/porn/news items before some bastard decides to ruin your life with a phone call. Which is pretty optimistic, given that about ten minutes into your browsing the phone rings. To set up a VOIP conference call. And while you're getting that organised, the cellphone rings. With an urgent question. So you're juggling two phones and the keyboard, and trying not to turn the webcam on (see note above).

At 10:30 the conference call is over but there's enough to worry about that you don't really want to take the time to go have a shower (which is a shame, as it's much-needed) so you carry on until 12:30 at which point, feeling a bit peckish and just because you can, you take half an hour for lunch. Because at 13:30 the phone will start going again.

So it goes, with the odd nicotine break, until 18:30, when you decide that you can still fit a couple of hours in after dinner ... you can easily wind up doing a 12-hour day, which is not really the object of the exercise. Still, just knowing that you can go out on the terrace for a quick smoke - or take the laptop out there with you - does keep the stress level down.

And whilst we're more or less on the subject of the effective use of time, I am currently doing - amongst other things - a contract for my way-back-when employers, Miqro. Their client is Schneider, the big multi-national industrial group, and those people are amazing. They love to have a progress meeting at least once a week, either by internet or face-to-face (which, of course, involves a trip to Bordeaux or some other distant hole) and at one of the earlier ones, the meeting closed with a decision to create a working group and to put development on hold until it had reported back with its conclusions.

Which, two weeks later, it duly did. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there, I grant you, just that the remit of the working group was to find a way to accelerate product delivery by saving four days in development time. So putting it back by ten days would seem to me to be counter-productive, but what do I know?

Whatever, I is a happy parrot as I have discovered an Arab butcher at Lézignan. Who was happy to sell me a well-aged (if I'm any judge, and I am) cote de boeuf for only 15€/kg (so I got a kilo, it seemed the prudent course), and while I was at it I picked up a shoulder of lamb: it's barbecue time at The Shamblings, people. Hopefully, not the last of the year. Mind how you go, now.

For Crimes Committed ...

Monstrous Municipal Monuments, n° 7

... ie remarking idly that perhaps having dinner at some point would be a good idea, I have been quietly but firmly directed to ensconce myself in the kitchen, where I am currently reflecting on a) the reasons for this cruel banishment and also b) something to do with whatever I can find in here. Let me see, any number of tins of exotic beans, there's some farine de pois chiche, farine de mais, a bit of roasted corn on the cob left over from the other night, a rather friendly-looking aubergine, tomatoes and peaches ... this can mean only one thing.

Yes, apart from the fact that I'm stuck in an apparently empty kitchen, not something that happens at The Shamblings ... it means, tada! desperate improvisation. Well, not actually panic-stricken rushing about like a mad thing as such, just a bit of inventiveness ...

So first of all I sliced that aubergine in 5mm slices lengthways (the little bugger did not thank me for that), put some baking paper on a tray (and bless the person who invented the stuff, saves so much on washing-up), poured olive oil over that and then smeared the aubergine slices around on both sides to coat them before dusting them with some herbes de Provence and sticking them in the oven to roast for 30 minutes, turning them halfway through. (This technique, whilst not as quick as frying the sods, does use a hell of a lot less oil and is consequently considered to be Healthy, and possibly even Good For You.)

While that was going on I split, drained and chopped some tomatoes and stuck them in a frying pan with a chopped onion and a bit of lurking poivron, just to dry it out a bit, and sliced the kernels off the corn-cob and scraped the the starchy bits off with the back of a knife before adding all that to the pan with a helping of corn flour to stiffen the mix. Give it five minutes, stirring, and turn the heat off.

When the aubergine slices are brown and soft, use them to line a rectangular cake mould (silicon is my friend!), leaving some overhanging over the sides, then put a few rounds of goat cheese along the bottom. Beat an egg into the vegetable mixture along with some baking powder, add more corn flour if necessary (it will be) to get a reasonably stiff mixture (or, if you are feeling like work, could just use the egg yolks, whip the egg whites and fold them in as for a soufflé and forget about the baking powder) and stick the lot into the prepared mould.

Fold the flaps of aubergine over the top and stick the lot into the oven: forgiddabahtit for half an hour and finally, when it's smelling done and feels springy to the touch, unmould the lot onto a plate, slice and serve with decent bread and salad. If you happen to have some spicy salsa that would go well, if not I guess there's always ketchup.

Anyway, Jacques and I drove back down here on Monday, after I'd bidden a tearful farewell to the rental car (a Renault Clio, but surprisingly well-equipped): kind of to my surprise we were untroubled on the roads, although I must admit that those who were northward-bound didn't seem to have it as lucky. If the traffic jams on the other side of the autoroute were anything to go by.

He left Wednesday moaning, on to Toulouse to see family, and I headed off to the market. I'm a sucker for these things, and the shopping basket slowly, and quite unintentionally, filled up. No truffles, sad to say, but baby yellow courgettes and a decent salad and tomatoes and some grenaille and a fresh goat's cheese and diverse fruit - also, knowing that J-C and Babette were turning up that night on their way back from Banyuls I was torn between the tuna steaks at the fishmongers (only 10€/kg, for godsake) and the travers de porc a bit further along.

So with my usual decisiveness, I bought a kilo of each, on the grounds that whatever didn't get eaten that night would be used at some later point - basically, I was waiting for inspiration to strike, and putting off the decision until the evening. Which is fine by me, because as it turns out I just seared the tuna rapidly on both sides and then fried up a mass of onions and tomatoes and poivrons with the odd herb or two and a decent quantity of pepper, stirred in a slosh of white and stuck the whole mess in a baking dish. The tuna went on top, the thing got covered with tinfoil and into the oven with it for half an hour. Gave me time to make dessert.

Speaking of herbs, I had always been under the impression that they ran rampant down south, but as it turns out they seem to keep themselves to themselves. To find rosemary I have to wander up past Henri Bataille's mausoleum, thyme grows in clumps on the outskirts on the other side of the village, and so far I've only come across sage up on the flanks of the montagne d'Alaric. Which is a bit far to trot if, on the spur of the moment, you decide that nothing else will do but a bit of fresh sage with your pig-meat.

But we did go out the other night, taking Shaun for his evening walk, and harvested nature's bounty. He very good-naturedly sat calmly as I spiked myself to death on juniper bushes trying to pluck a few of the blue-purple berries (no, I am not going into making bathtub gin, but they do go very nicely in a stew, or a rich red wine sauce for simmered ducks' legs), and then munched a few blackberries as we carried on.

For there are indeed masses of blackberries, which no-one else seems to think of: there are also elderberries which are ripe now and look as though they would appreciate being turned into sirop, or jam, or reduced into a jelly to serve with meat instead of cranberry sauce.

There are also figs, and I rather kicked myself, later on when I was getting a couple of flammenkuche ready with sour cream and onions and Serrano ham, for not having picked some so I could have stuck slices on top, instead of being reduced to using confiture de figues. Let that be a lesson to me.

Anyway, for a few days now I've had a craving for a rolling-pin, and Margo wanted to check out materiel anyway, so we headed off to Narbonne to check the dump out. Successfully circumcised the one-way system and arrived more or less in the centre of the old town - a car-park being unexpectedly close to hand we left Suzy there, with instructions not to make a fuss, and set off on foot.

Now Narbonne was once a major Roman city - they used to call this side of Provence Gallia Narbonniensis after Jules (Caesar, that guy) settled most of his pensioned-off troops from the 10th legion down here - and it has a fair few vestiges. Not, perhaps, as much as Nîmes (which is lucky enough to have a crocodile as its city animal), but still ... for instance, in the place de l'Hotel de Ville there is a pit, in which are exposed some 30m² of the via Domitia. Looking at it - those Romans built really crappy roads. I mean honestly, it wasn't even flat! (Come to that,I'm not really sure how they get away with calling it a "road", there are laws on truth in advertising you know) You try taking a Mercedes over it. Go on, I'll wait until the tow truck arrives.

Whatever, Rome got sacked but life apparently carried on in the provinces, because news took a while to get from A to B back in those days I guess, and in any case there was an arch-bishop to look after things: can I just say that

1. arch-bishops have no taste, and
2. they really, really want everyone to know just who it is that has the power around here.

Also, they are by no means subtle. The palace of the arch-bishops of Narbonne is an immense fortress: kind of brutal, but at least you know where you are. Which is outside, looking up. And let it be said, the cloisters are calm and very beautiful. I suppose they had to have somewhere nice to go and relax after a hard day oppressing the poor.

And the Hotel de Ville is just next door, they've installed the fonctionnaires in the old chateau so all in all it's quite impressive. Mind you, trying to imagine the municipal employees galloping across the cobble-stones and under the great stone archway before handing the reins off to a flunky and heading for their desks kind of boggles my mind.

In any case, I eventually found a bit of solid bamboo about the size and weight of a baseball bat at Geneviève Léthu and the bored-looking guy behind the counter shoved it into a enormous paper bag as he wished me a nice day, and we set off to see if Margo was going to be able to find what she wanted - sadly, after traipsing through the ruelles of the vieille ville the answer turned out to be no. At least whilst she was looking I got to lick the windows of the Bose stereo shop. But we found ourselves, at the end of it all, in the rough vicinity of what was supposed to be, according to Google, "The English Food Shop", so we headed off there.

Oddly enough - for these things tend to be ephemeral - it was indeed where it was supposed to be, and we very bravely went in. There was a freezer packed with pork pies and bacon, a fridge with what looked like (and, I can now tell you, tasted like) good mature cheddar, and the shelves were crammed with Hovis and HP sauce and sherry and crumpets and marmelade and Marmite and carrot cake and ready-made curry sauce and gingernuts, the whole thing presided over by an impressive-looking Swiss woman who put us at our ease by asking if there was anything in particular we'd like to see on the shelves, seeing as how she was putting together an order for stuff from the antipodes to satisfy the particular needs of some of her special clients: you guessed it, Maoris playing rugby for the Narbonne team.

I actually think we did rather well, making it out of there - eventually - only 50€ lighter in the pocket. And that enormous paper bag came in quite handy after all.

Disturbed! Mind Threadworms ...

... not that I'm trying to encourage that sort of searcher, oh no, just mentioning it. Also, "dressing for pleasure", which seems to have wound up here, although godnose why.

So anyway, Friday finished up with a bit of excitement around these parts: a forest fire about 6km away I guess, between here and Douzens off to the west. First we knew about it was the great billowing plumes of yellowish-grey smoke, and then a big twin-engined turboprop came flying slow and low overhead, circling and banking so hard that if there were any passengers they'd certainly have lost their lunches on the first pass.

Then a fleet of four or five Canadairs came lumbering in over the rooftops, banking around to drop their loads of water and, according to urban myth, unwary swimmers. They must have made six flights, heading back to Narbonne after each pass to top up with a skim over the sea. They're impressive beasts.

Now there is no market around these parts of a Saturday - unless I go through to Narbonne or Carcassonne, which I suppose is not really any different from heading off to Chambéry - which left me at kind of a loose end. Of course, I had other things to do, which is probably why I decided to go for a walk instead of doing them.

As luck would have it, the GR77 - grande randonnée, one of the countless hiking trails that criss-cross France - goes right in front of the house before heading up into the montagne d'Alaric, this being named after Alaric II, king of the Visigoths back in the 5th: according to the local legend he had a chateau built up on the heights and buried his treasure in a cave there, whatever was left of the spoils from the sack of Rome. Oh, and when I say montagne, this is relative: its highest point is something like 560m, and we're at about 90m here ...

Anyway, I was actually kind of enjoying myself as I ambled along the rocky track, with the cicadas doing their thing noisily in the trees and the hot air full of the smell of pines and sage and rosemary and thyme and lavender - then it dawned on me that the stones were bouncing the heat back on me and that the pines, too far off to offer any shade, were doing an excellent job as a wind-break, and that not only was the air hot, it was also still.

But I carried on regardless, until I made it to the ruins of the prieuré de St-Pierre on a little outcrop of rock just off the main trail, where there was a blessed breath of air, and upon discovering that the camera battery had chosen this moment to go flat on me I decided that I could probably turn back without loss of face.

Monday I had to head back up to Chambéry for two weeks, minding the shop whilst Renaud's off on holiday at Arcachon, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone, combine business with pleasure, and any other metaphor that happens to spring to mind: we went off to the local Intermarché, picked up a 7m3 van, bundled ourselves and Shaun into the thing, and drove merrily off into the morning, destination St Pierre and the final emptying of our left-over stuff from Sue's Garage.

And rather to my surprise, everything fitted in - even the sewing machines at which Margo frowned and said "I'm sure I left orders that those were to go to the tip" - with a bit of room in which to swing a very small cat, if you'd no objection to a bit of blood.

So we were feeling quite pleased with ourselves, all things considered, as we headed back to Montmelian to pick up Jeremy and take him out for a birthday dinner. Under protest, I must say: oddly enough for someone in his line of work, he really only eats to live. Also, he's got this thing against eating in restaurants, which I suppose is kind of understandable.

We twisted his arm, he grudgingly consented, and we went past la Fine Fourchette, which isn't half bad in my experience: it was closed. It is August, after all. On top of it, the 15th of August, which over here is a public holiday, for some reason which escapes me.

Pizza is not really one of my go-to eat-out meals, but the choice of restaurants in Montmelian is rather limited so we drove past La Scala and the doors were open - for family and friends only, it seems, as the woman who came out informed us. In desperation we asked whether or not there was another eatery worth going to in the place, or even one that was open - "Eh oui monsieur, il y a Le Clé des Champs sur la nationale ...", as if we would be able to drag Jerry in to eat where he cooks.

Off then to Chambery, passing by Challes just on the off-chance (everything closed, might have known it), parked, and started hunting. OK, so the dump is considered to be kind of dull after 20h even in the height of the season, but that evening it was clinically dead. The quiet of the grave was broken only by the tourists wandering vaguely, I assume looking - like us - for somewhere to get a meal that wasn't going to fight back, or be all passive-aggressive.

The Beer Tree was closed, as was Modesto, and I categorically refuse to go into Cardinals since they redecorated and removed the slightly shabby charm of the place (and the meals and service are, at best, mediocre in my experience), and we were starting to experience hunger pangs, so we wound up at Le Vivaldi on rue Croix d'Or, having - you guessed it - pizza.

And there's an interesting question. I put it to you, if you were a tourist, freshly arrived in Chambéry after a long coach trip from Turin, would you actually choose to go find an Italian restaurant and eat pizza? I thought not. But those flocks of tourists I spoke of earlier swooped down with gleeful cries and settled in to do exactly that. I dunno, whatever happened to the spirit of adventure?

Not that the pizzas were actually bad. I had one that they called "le Corse" - fig jam, prosciutto, goat's cheese and a drizzle of honey - and it was very pleasant. The damn thing was far too big, of course, and I must admit that with all the honey it got a bit cloying towards the end. But washed down with a couple of glasses of an excellent Corsican white it hit the spot.

Whatever, Margo drove the van back down the next day, hopefully arriving in time to take Shaun off to his first doggy obedience class (see where that gets us, ha ha) but it was my lot to head off up to the office, answer the phone if required and generally look after the place. Not that there was much looking after required, everyone's off on holiday and I think in those ten days I fielded one phone call, which turned out to be a wrong number anyway. Hardly any mail either, and no bills, which is always a pleasant surprise.

Then the other day I was wandering around the market, smile on my lips, a song in my heart - for it was a fine sunny day - and vast quantities of ripe deformed tomatoes, peches plates and other goodies in the bag and could not help but notice a subtle transformation here in provincial France. I have moaned and whinged about it often enough: it used to be that if you wanted a light meal or whatever after the morning's exertions you had buggerall choice apart from the eternal café-croissant or a full, huge and usually totally uninspiring meal involving sad steak and soggy chips.

Things have changed in Paris I guess, Dave Lebowitz writes lovingly of the shabby-swish little cafés serving original food, Le Camion Qui Fume which sells the best burgers in the Ile de France, and other such delights that we stuck here to vegetate in the provinces can only dream of enviously, but still ... going through Carrefour the other day, right next to the fish department was a gleaming sparkly-new erection of wood and stainless steel in which a couple of Japanese-looking guys presided over a fresh squishi bar.

And then, as I headed down avenue de Boigne off to the market I went past a brand-new shop, elegantly kitted out (more stainless steel) and dispensing cups of freshly-made, steaming noodles. At the market itself there was once a rather glum little place that sold sad, soggy-looking pasta: in its place something upmarket in glass and stainless steel (is there some sort of trend here, I wonder?) selling fresh ravioles, fettucine that looked as though they'd just rolled it out (which they possibly had) ... laugh if you will, but I think that just maybe the French are starting to work out that there are other cuisines than their own, and to rediscover the simple pleasures of eating.

Finally, some alarming news, I guess: my preferred journal of reference for the hard sciences had this warning Nude swimmers warned of GONAD-GOBBLING FISH ON THE LOOSE for those who like to go skinny-dipping off the Scandinavian coast-line. So just mind how you go.

The Bells, The Bells ...

It's an odd thing, but for my entire adult life I have been using a marble slab to roll out my pastry and croissant dough, and never once have I felt the urge or, indeed, the need to stick a plastic bag of ice cubes on it half an hour before use, as recommended in all the best cookbooks. Well, down here I have had to change my habits. As the temperature inside the house is something like an even 27° my marble slab has settled down to that, all the way through, and that is just too damn warm: the smears of butter in the dough become puddles, which is not good.

So should ever you notice that I have ice packs all over the kitchen bench, you will know the reason why. And it is not because of the night before.

Tuesday night I shall have to cook a decent meal for six, and apparently live up to some sort of high standard, the reason being that Saturday night we went round for that barbecue at Pirate Philippe's and kind of felt obliged to invite them over in return. I have to admit that the wine consumption was way down compared to the apéro earlier on, not such a bad thing I guess, but he did bring out an excellent Spanish brandy as a digestif at the end of the meal.

Then the next night Sophie is dropping in on her way back from la maison rose at Nogaro, bearing - I hope - gifts of myrrh and frankincense foie gras. Which means another classy dinner to worry about. (Update: as it happens, and knowing Sophie, I wound up just doing burgers - with home-made buns, mind you. And pickled beetroot, and all the other trimmings. And a vast salad, to satisfy the dark side of the rabbit in her. With lemon and goat's cheese soufflés for dessert, surprisingly tangy and delicious. Well, I found them to be so anyway, and as there were four of us, I'd made six, and by the end of the evening there were none left, I would hazard a guess that everyone else felt the same.)

Anyway, these problems are still in the distant future, being as what it's but Monday. Now crueller souls than I say that in France they love to complicate your life: this is not true, they just want to make sure that it's as shitty as possible. Don't really care if it's complicated, it should just be soul-destroyingly miserable.

Case in point, we have moved and, not only that, we have (Shock! Horror!) changed départements. In a normal country this would, I guess, be no big deal but we are in France and so we have one (1) month from date of arrival here in the Aude to go get a new carte grise for the car, failing which we are in infraction and liable for a swingeing fine.

So this morning we woke with the bells (have no choice, really, unless we use ear-plugs: that late-model trebuchet de table I saw advertised recently is looking more and more attractive, as is the 75mm howitzer at the army-surplus place) and headed off to the préfecture at Carcassonne, to get our papers in order. I guess it is summer, so by dint of studiously ignoring the GPS Of Doom we navigated the one-way system successfully enough and even found a park not too far from where we wanted to be, and on top of it the queue for modification de carte grise was not long at all.

Not content with that, we thought, being as we were there and all, that it might as well be an idea to change the address on our cartes de résident: not such a good idea really, as the one and only guichet dealing with such matters was, apparently, occupied by someone really, really, conscientious, so the wait between n° 503 (when we came in) and n° 507 (our turn), seemed kind of interminable. (As Woody Allen once remarked, in one of his rare humorous moments, "Eternity is very long. Especially towards the end.")

And when we finally did get in, the guy said "Ah. Changement d'adresse, changement de département: va falloir prendre rendez-vous ..." So I thought bugger, in one week I'm off for ten days, hope they can fit that in ... "eh bien, j'ai une possibilité le 3 octobre". I suppose I really needn't have worried. Still, he was really laid-back about it, and fetchingly dressed in shorts and sandals: don't see that much in Savoie.

Also, we is getting another dog. We got one ten days back from the SPA, but the morning after he arrived he jumped the balcony, landed on the tiles above the garage, and then jumped down onto the street 2m below and eagerly ran off: about a week after that he wound up back at the bénévole who'd been looking after him since he turned up at the pound, so we thought that there was no fighting that and she'd decided that she really wanted to keep him anyway, so we did what was best for him and let him go ... sadly, but we neither of us wanted to go through that again.

But then she rang, to say that there was a berger des Pyrenées at the pound at Narbonne, waiting for adoption ... and Margo went off to take a look, and turned up back at the house four hours later with Shaun.

He seems to have taken to us, and to have adopted us anyway, with special love for me. Their best guess is that he's around 18 months old, but he's still kind of puppyish. Probably just as well, we might be able to train him properly. And it is a Good Thing I need new jandals anyway, as one of mine has become his uncuddly toy. But he is very loving, and hardly jumps on people at all, although he did pay particular - and suspicious - attention to Sophie's dress, probably tugging it to see if it would come off.

Now if ever you have occasion, as we did on Wednesday, to head off through the little départmentales that link the teeny villages around here, like the D72 that will - eventually - get you from Puichéric onto the D11 and thence to La Redorte and Azille, you may notice that in all these townships there are clusters of loudspeakers mounted around the place.

Moux is no exception, and I must admit to wondering at first whether or not they were some relic from the Cold War, destined to broadcast coded messages ("Les carottes sont cuites! Je répète, les carottes sont cuites!") to warn the peasant population of the imminent nuclear holocaust destined to cleanse them from the face of the earth, with only those in the underground bunkers (sadly constructed of nothing more impressive than corrugated iron and baling wire) deep beneath the mairie surviving the initial onslaught of the godless Communists, and the swift but regrettably equally lethal riposte of the godawful Free World™.

The point must remain moot, for quite frankly I have no idea, nor any great wish to find out, but they are certainly not unused these days. There you, are, sitting out on the terrace toying with a glass of vitamins, and suddenly there's this Orwellian moment when a loud buzzing wakes the cicadas as the old valve amplifiers get 230V stuck into them somewhere they weren't expecting it, followed by a brassy fanfare that sounds like someone farting into a tuba and then, The Announcement. "Mouxois, Mouxoises! Le club du 3ème age vous informe qu'un grand tournoi lotto aura lieu ce soir, à 19h, à la déchetterie. N'oubliez pas vos assiettes et vos couverts!"

At these times I half-expect to see giant white balls bouncing majestically through the streets of the village, implacably pursuing a fleeing man in a blazer, but I guess I've just watched a few too many episodes of The Prisoner in my misspent youth.

Just saying, but I sent a mail off to those of you whose e-mails I have with our new address and phone numbers. Some of those got bounced back (thinking especially of you, Julianne, amongst others) so all of you who didn't get that and who are interested should just send me a mail (the old address still seems to be valid) and I'll get back to you. That is all.

Also, I note that the 8th was International Female Orgasm Day. I hope you celebrated it fittingly.

I Have Small Black Warty Balls ...

No sex please, we're French

... read on, you'll find out. But first, thanks to the services of a wiry, efficient and heavily-accented repair-man (but nowhere near as incomprehensible as the tanned studly youth who connected our phone), we have rediscovered the Joy of Dishwashers. It used to be Mad Karen's (the dishwasher, not the tanned studly youth, but she does tend to dream) but got passed on to us when she left the apartment in Chambéry to go off and seek love and self-fulfillment at Mumblefuck, and it gave us a few years of loyal service and, let it be said, great physical pleasure, before, one day, it decided to stop working.

A quick google showed that many people had experienced the same symptom and had cured it by enthusiastically shaking the thing, which sounded kind of like voodoo even at the time but when in extremis you'll try most anything, and we shook it and, for good measure, threatened and then insulted it: it sullenly consented to work again, but a week later it stopped and steadfastly refused to budge. Even tempting it with an exceptionally greasy plate had no effect.

At the time we had other worries so we left it sitting there in the kitchen, but when we shifted down here we thought that we might as well bring it with us - thinking that maybe the change of climate would soften its stony heart, who knows - and on installing it in its place, hied us to a magasin electromenager to ask for their help. And so they promised to send their best man the very next day and, somewhat to my surprise, for this is the south after all, the guy duly turned up with a bulging tool kit. And a sack of spanners and stuff like that.

He listened to our tale of woe and then, taking the obstreperous machine by surprise, wrestled it to the ground and had the bottom plate off in mere seconds. (Maybe this is why the French from around here are so good at rugby.)

Then he dived into its guts and pulled a large hunk of broken glass out of the pump - could not, as he said, have been good for it - and tried it again. Still no joy, but never despair, he had its skirts up again and this time twiddled with the motor, which he said seemed grippé. And eventually, after half an hour, a cold beer and a mere €60 for the déplacement and his time, he had it working and was headed off to his next life-threatening emergency. My hero!

I know I said that we went off to la nuit de la poésie on Saturday (and I flaked, pleading fatigue): I failed to mention one of the more amusing parts of such gatherings, which is that there is always a number of older persons, mostly male, casually dressed but spotless, chattering enthusiastically and showing every sign of the bon vivant. The meal was no exception to this general rule, and the conversation was more than usually fun.

A bon vivant in its natural habitat

For these gentlemen of a certain age were discovering smartphones, and bragging about how their twitter was bigger than yours, and how on the Samsung Galaxy III Tab (pronounced with capitals, just like I wrote it) there was a facebook. Which is apparently the web, or something like that. And as for your iPhone, it pisses warm spit, in their considered opinion. Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, today being Wednesday it was market day at Lézignan, and having been duly warned by Margo - who'd headed off there last week with Janet and Kevin - I went early, like arriving at 8:05. Which was indeed a Good Thing, because I managed to get there just before the rush, and even found a park less than 2km away.

Only a small sample yet I know, but I do find these things to be so much more animated down south. Had I been there later I suspect I might have been buffeted to death, as it was it felt as though much of the surrounding countryside had already arrived, intent on letting everybody know. Muscled old women were darting hither and thither to chat with cherished friends they'd not seen for all of half an hour, small children were rushing underfoot, and the males of the species were, thanks to the magic of the cellphone, seated at a bar busily regaling their pétanque partners with a blow by blow account of how good the melons looked. And the fruit and vegetables, too.

Me, I found a spice merchant (always handy) and a couple of stalls selling nowt but paella: the cheese selection was pretty limited though, and also hideously expensive. I mean, €26/kg for Morbier? Then there were any number of stalls with tiny dried sausages like matchsticks, and primeurs by the bucketful, and it was at one of these latter that, for the first time in my life, I bought a truffle.

Cheap at only €100/kg and smells, quite literally, like shit - no, not quite true, more like a bucket of soil might smell if someone had thoughtfully stuck a dead chicken in it a few months back, and left it to ripen. I shall have to think of something to do with it now. I'll let you know how that works out. But first of all I shall go consult the authorities, for there are differences of opinion as to whether the little buggers should be peeled, or just well-scrubbed: I would hate to get it wrong.

Later ... that wasn't too bad. My cookbooks being still in the back wall of cardboard boxes and thus inaccessible, I resorted to the Great Google and came upon a recipe from Epicurious which I combined with another one I vaguely remembered, just for fun. Luckily I happened to have a duck breast, so I used my fingers and small ouch! ouch! sharpy knife to separate fat from flesh, leaving the two attached down a 1cm strip lengthways. (Are you following me here?)

Then, having carefully washed my truffle, and peeled it (peelings, and the rest of the truffle, are now in a closed jar with a few eggs for when I feel like making an omelette) I took some very thin slices off it (mandoline? I spit at mandolines. A good sharp knife is all that's necessary) and stuck some of those between fat and flesh before sticking it in a hot pan, skin side down, to start cooking and render some fat.

When that was done, out went the duck and in went some cubes of potato, to fry in the duck fat with a bit of salt and be joined, ten minutes later, by some petits pois and chopped shallots ... then they too went into a bowl and into the pan went a couple of chopped mushrooms, finely chopped truffle, more shallot and, when browned, a sprinkling of flour.

For a proper sauce perigueux you'd have to use Madeira but I have none of that on hand, so the pan got deglazed with some Banyuls, the sauce thus obtained enriched with a slab of butter and some chives, then the duck breast sliced and chucked back in to be reheated and served with the potatoes and peas on the side. Can't complain, I suppose.

Thursday Edgar's surrogate mother (Edgar, incidentally, has not been seen since Sunday morning, with any luck he's flown off and found a flock somewhere) came past and invited us to an apéro at midday. That sounded pretty good, so we pulled on our glad rags and headed round at the appointed hour ...

When we were comfortably installed under a parasol at the table in the courtyard out back, her partner Philippe did the honours and asked what we'd like to drink, and came back with a dripping bottle of white from the Chateau de la Baronne ("un copain", he said, "et son vin n'est pas mal non plus") and a red for Margo, and Caroline busied herself with chunks of melon and poivrons marinated in olive oil (what else, around these parts?).

We started talking, as one will, and shortly into the conversation Philippe noticed that the bottle of white was empty, and headed off to get another one to go with the pizza ... must be evaporation or something, because they'd just promised to introduce me to the young Italian oenologue for the chateau, who also happens to be an impassioned cook, when he was obliged to find yet another bottle.

And another few bottles later, once we'd put the world to rights, discussed the lamentable tendency of the English to keep to themselves in a sort of ghetto without taking the trouble to even try to learn French, found out that he'd had a varied career in "import-export", as he put it delicately, down in the Pacific and now went around with a gang of Polish workers renovating chateaux, and that she has a landscape gardening company in Toulon, it was around 18:00, and we found ourselves agreeing to come back the next evening for a barbecue. Hopefully, we'll find out more: I am dying to know how the guy came to spend time flitting between Wallis & Fortuna, northern Africa and Cuba.

Under other circumstances the words "gun-running", "arms dealer" and "smuggler" might come to mind, or maybe "civil servant", but I am willing to give the chap the benefit of the doubt and admit that he might, just possibly, be a business-man with wide-ranging interests. As they say. Shall let you know, as and when.

Mind how you go, now.

Oh yes, Orange seems not to have disposed of my e-mail address - at least, it still appears to work - so do keep using it if you feel the urge. Bye, I'm off to make dinner.