Kamikazi Lemmings ...

Over here in Ole Yurrup we is all watching, in some sort of ghastly obsession, the on-going suicidal cluster-fuck that is Brexit. Or perhaps "train-wreck" would be a better word to describe it ... it's an unedifying spectacle, and everyone wishes that they'd just get it over with and put us out of our misery (cries of "Jump! Jump!" come up from the crowds below) but for some reason they seem incapable - or maybe just incompetent - of doing even that.

Don't know exactly why the sorry saga should be quite so gripping - it's not as though there's an actual story-line or anything, things just seem to lurch from one non-event to the next - and it's not even as though I had skin in the game, I mean, what's it to me, really?

Come to that, I'm not even sure exactly why Theresa May should be quite so reviled: certainly, her husband used to watch porn on the taxpayer's dime, and she is possibly not the most empathetic of people, but to be fair she did inherit the whole bloody mess from her pink-cheeked pig-kissing predecessor (last heard of swanning off to a rich mate's Tuscan villa or something) but no-one seems to blame him. At least, not these days.

Whatever, I guess that's one of the mysteries of British politics - along with the thorny question of exactly why it is that Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg weren't strangled at birth. Then cut into small pieces, burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds ... these are topics that we choose to avoid of a Friday night, mostly because although it would be easy enough to wind people up, these are my friends, and I'd rather not be responsible for anything bad happening to them. Like, biliousness, or dyspepsia, or an actual heart attack.

A more kindly eye than mine might look on the whole sorry mess as a fine example of the good old Blitz spirit, the old tradition of having a knees-up and a nice cuppa before muddling through as usual: being less than charitable, I tend to see it as a manifestation of the equally venerable British tradition of total bloody incompetence. Just wish they'd get on with it ...

But on the bright side, Spring has arrived and all the wildflowers are out: maybe a month ahead of time, but I can live with that. The little dwarf irises which somehow manage to thrive in the stones of the pinède, the normal or garden-variety irises which, despite being completely untended, do quite well for themselves on the banks of the road, the poppies, and any number of other flowers which I personally tend to lump together as "plants". Also, the crows have started building their nests: for a given value of "building" which involves making a pile of sticks somewhere and shitting on it in the hope that they'll stay in one place. The corvidae seem not yet to have learnt that crap is not, as a general rule, a good adhesive. As usual, you should avoid walking too close past the church if you happen to have to go that way.

I imagine that this may come as a surprise to those of you who recall my youthful looks and healthy lifestyle, but I really am getting too old for this sort of thing. I had occasion to go past the bar late the other night, not so long ago - bringing the hairy retards back from their evening bowel and bladder exercise - and could not help but notice that it was full of bad company. Which is usually pretty good company, so having dropped the beasts back home (for they are not old enough) I headed back despite myself ... and of course one of those bad companions was Philippe from the château, who welcomed me with open arms and insisted on my accompanying him in a serious effort to empty the one and only bottle of cognac in the place (he'd already managed to polish off the Jack Daniels).

We managed that, completely unaided, and started on the armagnac, but around 2am I came to my senses, reluctantly tore myself away from the den of iniquity, and went back home. Just saying, I can no longer expect to do this sort of thing without there being Consequences later on.

Which, as it happens, there were, for at an absolutely unheard-of hour of the moaning that very day, two extremely youthful young men (well, they seemed that way to me: I'm sure that they were actually of legal drinking age and maybe had to shave once in a while) turned up at the doorstep, having managed to back the front half of a semi-articulated lorry up rue de la Calade to get here. For which, felicitations: I do realise that removal lorry drivers probably get special training in such things but even so ... and then they started unloading the thing.

It was, of course, a swag of stuff from NooZild so we now find ourselves with another dining-room table and chairs, a comfy chair, even more china and silverware (not yet unpacked), and some pictures: so later on I spent some quality time with a laser level and a drill up on a ladder, putting up more picture rails because now that we actually have a bit of room around here and don't have to squirm around boxes just to sit down for a meal, I'd rather like it to stay that way, for a while at least.

Possibly for the first time in my life, I have to admit defeat before a bottle of gin. (Second time if you count the bottle of "Lemon Gin" ie industrial alcohol with artificial lemon oils in it that I once, when a student, consumed more or less in its entirety at a party one night and consequently regretted it bitterly ... staggering bollocks-naked through one of the more elderly halls of residence of Massey University at 5am, in search of a shower, is not a happy memory.) The Lidl budget supermarket chain has all sorts of odds'n'sods that turn up from time to time, and when Martin mentioned the other day that they had some award-winning London gin and some Irish gin with which he was very taken, it became a moral imperative to buy it. That too is something I rather regret doing now.

The London gin is indeed very good, but the Irish stuff should not have been let out of the pages of a Tom Lehrer songbook ... purely in a spirit of scientific enquiry I set out to discover exactly why I find it so disagreeable, and I can only conclude that it's the presence of coriander (which I've never particularly enjoyed, to be honest, and improve those recipes that call for it by omitting it) and pine in the list of botanicals that make it so foul. Gives it - for me, at least - an oily, camphor-like taste that reminds me of extremely bad retsina. Not that there's any other sort ...

Luckily tonight is pool night oop't bar, and I rather think I shall take the bottle with me and hand it discreetly to Lionel with strict instructions that he can serve it to whomsoever he wishes, so long as it's not me.

Later ... it was probably a good thing. I swear that before picking it up and heading off, that bloody bottle had started following me around the house, humping up against my ankles and trying to make friends. Godnose what would have happened had I kept it another night, the damned thing might have forced itself between my lips (and why, Great Google, does auto-complete suggest "legs" at this point?) as I slept and smothered me. I'm well rid of it.

It's rude to stare at bus stops.

A few days before was la fête de la bière organised by the comité des fêtes, and so having memories (admittedly vague, because of reasons) of last year's effort, I decided to head off. Sadly I did not take my phone with me, for otherwise this post would be enjolivated with a (crap) photo of young Jeremy, wearing neon-green socks, kilt, weskit and tam'o'shanter: all, I suspect, liberated from over-enthusiastic St Patrick's Day participants. But after careful consideration, perhaps it's for the best after all.

This being the south of France things were running late: not only that but I got cornered by Ninou and, as soon as it was decently possible to do so, ran off into the night to avoid having my ears reamed and my brains dripping out of my nostrils ... so it was that I missed the "Fucking Vintage" set.

Well, mostly. Standing out on the terrace much later that evening, the sound of some crowd who really didn't like AC-DC that much but were being paid to play it was pretty clear.

It may seem strange, but you can have too much of a good thing. Take asparagus, for instance: every year, as Spring approaches, we look forward with glee to the arrival of the first tender spears, but now? I'm just about overdosed on the stuff. Or scallops, les coquilles St-Jacques. I dragged a packet out of the freezer (they, and popsicle lobsters, are about the only seafood I'll consider sticking in there) and had my usual way with them ie sear them, flambé them in whisky then finish them off in white wine and cream ... very nice they were too but the next day we still needed something for lunch out on the terrace so I headed off into Lézignan looking vaguely for something edible.

And went past the rather excellent poissonerie, where I couldn't help but notice that they had 3kg of scallops for 20€, what's not to like?

Apart from the fact that the plastic bag they were packed in had a small leak somewhere, so Sarah smelled a wee bit fishy for a few days ... I will admit that by the time you've shelled and cleaned the sods you've not much change out of 800gm, but these were extremely fresh and rather big, with loads of coral: even so they are very rich and in any case that is still too much for the two of us at a sitting. Didn't help that, just for a change, I poached them in white wine and stuck them in a gratin dish with a bit of sauce Mornay, breadcrumbs and cheese on top and under the grill.

(Incidentally, my invaluable Nouvelle Larousse Gastronomique, which is only "nouvelle" for a value of the word involving "forty years old", tells me that in the US scallops are only available without coral. Which seems rather peculiar to me, but it does perhaps explain why, a long time back when I was getting dinner ready for twenty, this American house-guest wandered into the kitchen and asked me - in broken French - what that strange orange stuff was. Go figure.)

Whatever, I have some paperwork to put off: mind how you go, now.

A Cheeky Little Claret ...

So I headed off to the bar the other night for the birthday bash: couldn't be arsed getting out the glad rags so just slipped on a caftan, which is at least extremely comfortable although not, I admit, a particularly 80's thing. Have to say the greatcoat over the top of it looked a bit out of place, but I wasn't trying to make a fashion statement, it's still only the middle of February after all, and things were getting a bit nippy north of my knees. (For reasons which will become apparent later on, I need not have worried quite so much, as it turned out ...)

The place was already starting to fill as I hove up and plonked a half-kilo of foie gras onto the bar as my little contribution to the festivities: old Neville had really outdone himself with a rather funky Elvis wig, mirror shades and tats up both arms. Quite impressive, really. And at least he wasn't being miserable.

After the second or third rosé, as things were definitely getting busy and the music got cranked up (pretty dire but less so than I'd feared, what the hell were we all smoking back in those days?) it became clear that someone with too much time on their hands and the sort of sense of humour that finds fart jokes bloody hilarious had headed off to the little shop in Carcassonne that sells farces et attrapes and bought a job-lot of particularly hairy merkins, for Lionel was wandering around with a tray of the things, distributing them to all and sundry. They were supposed to be attached with a little loop of elastic and I can tell you that it does rather cut the circulation: Albert S., smarter than I, hooked his over one ear, where it looked quite rakish.

I pulled myself away around 8:30 - the place was booming but a man - no matter how dedicated he might be - can only drink so much, and all that rosé needed a bit of company. In principle I could have eaten there but it was by reservation only and I had not reserved: also, I think that over the years I've eaten quite enough bloody tartiflette to last me a lifetime, thanks very much.

Luckily I'd had the foresight, after getting the latest batch of foie gras ready, to cut some hampe into very thin slices and put it in to marinate, chop up an onion and some garlic and steam a bit of broccoli, so the stir-fried saté beef was pretty much ready to go when I got back. Which was a Good Thing, for I shall admit that I was just a bit wobbly at that point, and being in charge of a sharp knife could have been too much to ask.

Took the two younger dogs out for their late-night walk after that (being somewhat steadier on my feet at that point), and as I'd rather expected people were still turning up and, despite the cool, spilling out onto the street, so being a glutton for punishment (and a semi-professional alcoholic) I went back, sometime before 11. Managed to slither my way in (standing room only, and it looked as though they'd tried to pack about 60 people in there before the yoof spontaneously overflowed on to the pavement) and got yet another glass of vitamins - sadly, just at the time they put on a Boney M mash-up, starting off with rah! rah! bloody Rasputin and getting worse as it went on, which meant I damned near spilt it.

Did my usual trick and squirmed from group to group, chatting of this, that, and of t'other, but after a while and another few glasses it seemed like a reasonable idea to find a wall not too far from the bar and prop it up, lest it escape. At which point, having more or less blended into the background, I took up my favourite hobby and started seriously watching people.

As spectator sports go it really is rather good, requiring no special equipment apart from the ability to be inconspicuous: my only fear is that one day, as I'm scanning the crowd, I'll spot someone in the shadows on the opposite wall, studying me. It's happened once or twice, and I find it rather unnerving.

It seems that every single self-service pump these days comes equipped with a 9" LCD display, the better to serve you untargeted and (incidentally) completely crap ads while you're filling up the car. I mean, personally, when I'm giving Sarah her 60l of finest diesel I am not actually thinking about getting the trees that don't exist in the garden that I don't have trimmed so it follows that the ad for "Languedoc Elagage" is - apart from being crap - completely pointless and totally wasted on me, but whatever: fortunately, I no longer have anything to do, even peripherally, with publicity campaigns.

The thing is that these really cheap montages with their nasty soundtracks are interspersed with ads for the media company (two guys with a camcorder and a dog in someone's garage) that is responsible. At our local Intermarché, this turns out to be one "Poop Digimedia": I am not sure why anyone thought that was a good name.

Completely off-topic, but it turns out that there are advantages to being 60. For some strange reason my presence is required in Bordeaux on Monday, but as it's a four-hour drive and I'm supposed to be there for about 9:30 I thought I might as well check the train situation. And as I'm now over 59, the return ticket, first-class, from Carcassonne to Bordeaux cost me all of 50€: even with an overnight stay on Sunday night at a nice little hotel in the centre of town it still works out cheaper than taking Sarah through, and also means that I can get up at a reasonable hour and have a decent breakfast and still be on time for the meeting.

Having turned up at Gare St-Jean mid-afternoon I then had to find my way to the hotel, which was located just around les Quinconces. Luckily, Goofle maps exists: but I am enough of a Luddite to not have spotted that I can try to persuade the damned thing to give me pedestrian directions, so it sent me all around the bloody one-way system (also, Bordeaux has all these grands boulevards which are off-limits to cars, so I had to avoid those as well: shame, as the hotel was just off one of them: cours de l'Intendance, if you feel like looking it up ...).

Having come to my senses the next day I decided to try the walking directions, and let it be said that it was fine: were it not for the fact that my phone is, of course, set up for English and the silly bitch was trying to speak Frog. So, "turn left from Boolyvar Cl-e acute accent-mon-soh on to roo Gene Jor-e grave accent-z": truth to tell, I found it easier to make her shut up and just follow the map rather than trying to decipher boulevard Clémenceau and rue Jean Jaurès.

Incidentally, Suez/Lyonnaise des Eaux Mission Control at Bordeaux has a control room worthy of NASA: a big grid of twenty-odd huge screens up on one wall, in front of an enormous horseshoe-shaped desk with twelve screens, keyboards and various rodents, and then a large glass-topped desk with an absolutely ginormous touchscreen set flush into the top, for when you feel like playing at Minority Report ...

And to one side of the desk an executive leather swivel chair, of the type in which Bond villains love to lounge, and on the chair a rather tatty cat basket, and in the basket a cheerful tortoiseshell cat who has - it seems - adopted the place. The only problem, really, is that as the place is considered vital infrastructure and is currently in DEFCON 3 the cat - who doesn't have security clearance - has to be swiped in or out as required, by someone with an access badge.

Also, I'm not entirely sure what they put the cat food down as on the operating budget.

The hotel itself was very comfortable and the staff not only competent but also friendly: however, the bathroom in my room had obviously been created by the simple expedient of sticking up a partition about 50cm from one of the walls, then heaving toilet fittings in there to see what stuck. So you had an ancient shower at one end (with the traditional half-hour wait for hot water to actually arrive), hand-basin in the middle, and then the toilet ... when you were on the toilet your knees were under the hand-basin, and to get from there to the shower you had to squeeze - naked, for there was no room in there to undress - through a 15cm gap between the partition and that ice-cold porcelain. I'd still recommend the place, just be aware that you need to be rather lithe if you're planning on taking a single room.

Also, don't eat out in Bordeaux. The choice of eateries is vast, and the wine is uniformly excellent, so you're likely to spend an hour or so just agonising over where exactly to go.

Whatever, a couple of weeks back Dr. Lignères - the local vigneron who has a sideline as the village quack (maybe that should be vice versa, but I rather think I've got his priorities right) - lured me into his office on some pretext in order to take some blood samples. Not something I really enjoy: not because of the pain or anything, it's just that I'm pretty sure that when I get called back to have the results explained at me, there shall be Words said about the fact that my blood is, in fact, about 90% ethanol. But he insisted ...

And so, a week later, a plain brown envelope turned up at the house - addressed, just because, to one "M. Trésor" Bimler - containing the results. Much to my relief they don't seem to test for the alcohol level, but everything else is resolutely normal (my cholesterol is perhaps towards the low end) and there are no signs of prostate cancer. Which is probably a Good Thing.

And finally, Nicole has taught me something new. Having set up her Livebox and TV decoder and fixed the Homeplug problem it was only natural that she should call me when her new printer failed to work ... the first two rules, under such circumstances, are to ensure that a) it's got power and b) it's plugged in. I wasted half an hour downloading new drivers and suchlike, having ignored the second rule: guilty as charged, Yeronner, but let it be said in my defence that I did not believe it possible to plug a USB type B connector in upside-down. Now I know better.

The Ricardo Memorial Lecture ...

Having better things to do the other day, I found myself - as one will - up at the bar, getting some vitamin supplements. Magali clambered down from her precarious perch, trying to hang a disco light up for the next weekend's festivities (because it'll be the bar's birthday), for the obligatory exchange of smacks on each cheek, and once I'd shaken hands with Lionel and the three or four elderly guys seated at the bar and got my drink, life went back to normal - that old tradition of redoing the world. (No, I am not joking, the French phrase is "refaire le monde" and it is a game best practiced when a) you have no idea what you're on about and b) you are slightly lubricated, thanks to pastis ...)

And of course talk turned to the eye-watering amounts that the French must pay in social security charges, and taxes. You really shouldn't get me on to that one, because having been self-employed for the past 25 years or so I have actually lived with it for most of my adult life: suffice it to say that the word "entrepreneur", for all that it is in fact French, is almost universally employed in a pejorative sense. Because the French are, at heart, a very conservative people, with statist ideas dating back at least to Colbert and his ilk, and their idea of a magnificent career is that of an uncivil servant. If you can make it through the exams and become a fonctionnaire (aka "petty bureaucrat"), then you have reached apotheosis - a job for life. Hell, I have heard people speaking admiringly of some distant nephew or something that managed to get employed by the police nationale ... these are the ones that follow the Fred Colon school of policing, and tend to avoid going anywhere that policing might actually be necessary.

Anyways, as a member - these days - of the professions libérales I do have a bit of the respect grudgingly afforded to the sort of semi-official people with whom one must deal - like notaires, avocats and - horrors - huissiers: but still there is a certain wariness. Not to say, disdain. Because if you're not employed by the state, or failing that a state-owned business, or even just employed by someone else, you are obviously gaming the system and screwing honest hard-working employees out of money that really belongs to them, in some hazy and ill-defined fashion. (Of course, if you're not employed by the state then your boss is doing exactly the same thing but that's OK, when you get too annoyed you can always go on strike and smear dogshit all over his 40-year old Renault Fuego, which is all he can afford ...) But from the point of view of the smug, self-satisfied 40% with secure government jobs, the self-employed are somehow grinding the faces of the poor.

Which is probably fair enough. It's a harder job than you might think (the grinding bit, that is), and no-one thanks you for doing it - certainly not the poor, whom you'd think would be used to it by now. Dirty work, but someone has to do it.

Where were we? Redoing the world, that's right. So the old guy at the end of the bar piped up and said "What we need is a decent war. A proper one!" Then, apparently, everything gets blown to bits and at the end the state will step in and dish out enormous amounts of cash for reconstruction and we'll have yet another trente glorieuses. Yep. Simple as that. Lionel has his own ideas, and as he said, "I am not an economist" which is a) true and b) probably a bloody good thing for all the rest of us, but his concept - mind-boggling in its elegant simplicity - is that if, like Renault, say - you have replaced people on the assembly lines with robots, you should have to pay 3000€ per month in tax per robot.

This figure being arrived at quite simply, because you'd pay about 1000€ for a human bean working an 8-hour shift, so a that for a robot that works 24/7 you should pay at least three times more ... Some obstreperous bastard at the other end of the bar pointed out that the prices of cars would automatically go up, but apparently the answer to that is price controls. I'd not thought of that, mind obviously not stellar enough, I shall forget all about that Nobel for economics.

So I finished my glass, said "goodbye" all round, and was kind of glad to walk out into the sunlight under a bright blue sky - because I don't get paid for nodding when people say stupid shit.

Of course it went downhill from then on anyway, because it does: I was just topping up the oil in Sarah's power steering circuit when Neville spotted me and came by for a decent moan. Or a whinge, whatever. But more of a moan, I think. Whatever, can't call it communication because it's strictly one-way, but ...

Now don't get me wrong. Despite being, to all appearances, constructed entirely of sticks, string, spit and chewing-gum, Neville is a warm and generous man, and I actually rather like him. In small doses. For his emotional ground-state is one of paranoia, perpetual anguish, and a vague feeling of ineffectiveness.

Maybe it's something to do with coming from northern England? Or maybe he's actually a reincarnation of Goethe? He is totally convinced that, no matter what he does it will a) be wrong, b) be useless, and c) The Man will stick it to him anyway. (I'm not entirely sure exactly which man, but it may be an entire class.) He might actually be right about the first two, but it doesn't matter because he will go and do it anyway ... and don't get me onto the subject of that ageing VW combi that he fell in love with and bought despite everyone from whom he asked advice saying "Don't go near it with a bargepole or any other kitchen implement" ...

Still, with the incompetent cluster-fuck that is Brexit looming ever closer, he really should stop talking to other Brits. It only makes him worry even more. Last night he and Reet had dinner with a couple of other ex-pats who foolishly mentioned that they were looking at getting cartes de résidence, and then mumbled something about their health insurance, and of course that went straight to his brain.

Never mind that, in preparation for the Doomsday scenario, the French are putting legislation in place to ensure (if the UK is willing to do the same) that Brits in France will continue to be covered by the extremely generous French social security system, never mind that he doesn't actually have a top-up private health insurance scheme (unlike about 95% of the French) and so is unlikely to see any major changes there, never mind that he's not paid income tax in either country for the last ten years (but still moans bitterly about the fact that he might have to) ... that bloody Man is still, somehow, sticking it to him.

(Actually, I tell a lie. About three years back he did in fact get a tax bill - I remember the wailing and lamentations at the time - for the princely sum of 340€. Which, by a strange coincidence, happened to be just about the amount of money he had lying about in an undeclared bank account in the UK - to this day he is convinced that The Man found about it, and decided out of spite to confiscate it. Yep, that Man is an evil, shafting bastard.)

I listened with half an ear as this litany of woe washed over me (and FFS Neville, ten years in France and you still don't know that "au" can mean "until", or "up to"? WTF?) then closed the bottle of oil, wiped my hands and said "Sorry, Nev. Can't help you with that one." Which was, oddly enough, completely true. And sent him off to see Rory, who might know more about such things than I (and there's another thing: an English ex-pat who lives in France and yet positively loathes the EU, to the point where FU EU is spray-painted on one of the unfinished walls. Godnose how he deals with the cognitive dissonance in that one ... luckily, not my problem), and then, to clear my head, headed off for a walk in the hills, which are just starting to smell like gin again.

Also, this weekend's theme is - apparently - the 80's. Which makes me shiver with anticipation (not) at the thought of the music we'll be listening to ... but now I must head off into the wardrobe and find some authentically 80's clothes. I know, most of my wardrobe does in fact date from the 80's - all those pure wool slacks and the business shirts I paid good money for back in the day when we were working and had disposable income, and which followed us over to furrin parts - but sadly, at some point (possibly when I developed colour vision) the banana-yellow cord trousers which were, god help us, in fashion at one time, and the paisley shirt in tasteful muted browns both disappeared. Probably a good thing, really.

Fecking Frigid ...

I've said it before but it's worth repeating: anyone who thinks that the south of France is uniformly warm and sunny really needs to check into one of those secluded resorts where the staff talk in cheerful but hushed voices, and the amenities include rubber cutlery, padded walls and those stylish shirts that do up down the back ... Today the sky is light, bright blue and the sun is shining valiantly: a few clouds are scudding high above for the simple reason that our lazy wind, the Cers, is gusting up to 80 kph. Let it be admitted that it's an absolutely brilliant day, ambient temperature's about 5, maybe 6° - the wind-chill, of course, knocks 10° off that.

And in but a short while I shall don the armour of righteousness ie sunglasses, scarf, closely-buttoned jacket, overcoat and gloves and go out to find a few bay leaves (some things have to be done, noblesse oblige and all that) to accompany a bit of slow-roasted pig towards its apotheosis along with yams (yay!) and kumara and stuff like that: but it will be a short walk, as short as I can make it, and I will stick to the more sheltered paths. Not that that's saying much, but you sometimes get at least the illusion of some respite from the breeze.

As an aside, I really don't know why it should be only the Brits who get such a bad press for - supposedly - always talking about the weather. Assuming that you yourself are foolhardy enough to go out for a walk, and that someone else is stupid enough to be out with the same goal, and that you should happen to meet, I rather think I've got the ensuing conversation scripted.

As such things will, the washing machine chose an Inconvenient Time to stop working: made even more inconvenient by the fact that the thing puts itself into lockdown - ie the door is actually physically locked - while it is running, or when it feels that there is an error. (For those of you not familiar with these things, I should perhaps explain that about 99% of European washing machines are in fact front-loaders, with a sort of porthole thingy at the front into which you feed any foul linen that is to be cleaned, with the drum mounted directly on the horizontal motor axis at the back. Although there is a subset, destined for tiny Parisian apartments, wherein the drum turns about a horizontal axis anchored at both ends and driven by a complex system of cogs and pulley-belts, and access is via a sort of trap-door. This latter sort do, I admit, have the advantage of not requiring a 20kg counter-weight on the axis, but are otherwise small, cheap and completely shite.)

So as opposed to a washing machine made the way that God intended, with the drum rotating about a vertical axis and - crucially - top-loading, once you start a wash cycle in one of these the door locks and stays that way until it ends, because otherwise you might open the door by accident and wind up with water all over the floor, and that would not be nice, now would it?

By sacrificing mice (I think) Margo managed to persuade it that there was not any water in it, and it reluctantly let us extract the washed but sopping load: then I went off and called the local service-person to organise a house call.

How to feel like a bloody idiot: the first thing he did, of course, was to wrestle the beast into an inclined position and then open the cap on the pump filter, from whence he extracted the half-eaten toe-end of a sock, and a toothpick. I honestly have absolutely no idea how these things came to be in there: as Jeremy is no longer with us missing socks are not an issue any more, and as a general rule we do not wash toothpicks. Still, I now know - for next time - and I suppose we shall have to start calling it the Eater Of Socks or some other cutesy name.

Once again it's the occasion for one of the occasional Health & Safety hints from The Shamblings™: this time, it's just to say that you should not pick up an ouch! burny! ramequin one-handed, from above, and try to deposit it elegantly on a plate. This is because it will slip from the oven glove's tenuous hold, fall (bouncing off a chair en route) to the floor and shatter, and then send food-splatter all over the tiles. Not to mention the chair.

Unusually, we have a solution for you: quite simply put, get at least one dog and invite it (or them, in our case) in to take a look at the problem. In about five minutes the floor will be completely innocent of any traces of scallops, shrimp, and creamy sauce (the exact details will, of course, depend on what exactly you had in your ramequin), and the cane chair seat will never have been so clean. So now you know.

So anyways, last night was that peculiarly French ceremony, les voeux du maire et du conseil municipal. For those of you who came in late and thus missed the beginning, this is a little ceremony sometime in January where (the mayor's idiot nephew having been shut in an outhouse for the duration) the mayor gets up and gives a speech telling all and sundry what happened last year and what is planned for this one; assorted dignitaries do the same; then after the obligatory wishes for health and happiness for the new year it's open season on the tables laden with crisps, pizza, and Label 5 paintstripper whisky. Usually there are lots of kids in attendance, because they're bloody expensive to feed and this one evening you can stuff them on pizza and soggy-bottomed quiche ...

I usually manage to go but this year it was cold and dank and windy, and besides I had something cooking that really needed some attention, so I missed out - but as will happen in a small village, I got the blow-by-blow account later. I was not the only one to be AWOL, apparently: our Dear Leader has managed to sufficiently piss off enough people that attendance was particularly sparse, and the speechifying was over and done with in a mere ten minutes - which has to be some sort of record.

Still, there was one thing of interest to me, namely that fibre is to be rolled out to the home in 2020. This will be a Good Thing: do you know just how frustrating it is to know that all that lovely fibre-optic cable is running under the main street (with a branch off north to Montbrun), and to think that it is dark, and that I am not connected to it? It doesn't help, either, that Orange and Bouygues and Free keep rubbing it in by sending me emails to suggest that maybe, as a professional, I should upgrade to their Fibre Pro contract: of course, when I check up as to eligibility on the appropriate website (for hope springs eternal) the brutal reply is always "No!". I has sads.

It is very true that one of the most difficult things to do in a foreign language is to use obscenities correctly. I mean, you really have to be expert ... so why do the French persist? I can still remember when we first turned up here, in Brittany, coming across a huge black-on-yellow poster for a tour by some particularly obscure English pub band which screamed "THE FRENCH FUCKING TOUR!!!", but that was a long time ago, thought that just maybe they'd got it out of their systems.

Sadly, this turns out not to be the case. The little Moux newsletter turned up at the door the other day and as one will I read it avidly, checking out births, deaths and marriages (no, I am not joking, I do that), a brief summary of some guy's master's thesis in archaeology, studying the Castrum de Moux (this being the ruin half-way up the Alaric), and turned eagerly to the announcements of the summer events. From which I learn that the vaguely Irish music at the beer festival towards the end of April will be provided by a French group calling themselves "Fucking Vintage". Gods help us all.

Whatever, time goes on - as it will - and the days are getting longer: the almond trees have their startlingly pink blossoms and soon enough it will again be Spring. Also, we seem to have missed out on the snow that was half-promised for last night ... point is, if I want to get this out the door before March I should probably hit the post button now. Mind how you go.

The Letter "D" ...

... is an extremely important one, as Martin never tires of reminding us, for without it the part of Callan would have been played by one Ewar Woowar. (For those of you too young to remember the eponymous TV series, forget it.)

Anyways, after five years settling in here at The Shamblings™ it seems we really will have to leave, as the place apparently does not exist. Or so I deduce, from the fact that a UPS overnight delivery took a week due to repeatedly sending my parcel back to the Narbonne distribution centre to get the address corrected because no-one could find us: it seems that a lot of GPS systems still don't have "place St-Régis, Moux" in their database. And those that do tend to misdirect people to Fontcouverte, four km to the east ... still, I would've thought that the driver might just have phoned me. I mean, I think that's the whole point of my supplying them with a contact phone number.

Also, up till now I have managed to go blissfully through life thinking that "Murkin" was a word used by people from Canuckistan to refer to their rather more boorish neighbours to the south. But my illusions have been rudely shattered, for I have just found out that a) I got the spelling wrong and b) a "merkin" is in fact a pubic wig. It's rather a shame really, I would so like to pull that one out at Scrabble.

Christmas is approaching, and the supermarket shelves are groaning under the weight of packets of Révillon chocolates - the only things worthy of gracing a French Christmas table - (there are also bloody Ferrero Rocher, and those disgusting cherry liqueur things, not to mention marrons glacés but the less said about all those the better) and the big cooler cabinets are stocked with duck thighs, duck breasts and - my favourite - raw foie gras.

I was very restrained, and only bought three: which I shall now have to devein. Not, I admit, the part I really enjoy, but it has to be done. (If you happen to have access to a supply of hypertrophied duck liver, and have no moral objections to eating the stuff, the recipe - more a technique, really - I use is here.)

(By the way, should "recidivated" be a word? As in, the act of recidivism. Because I did go back to the scene of the crime, as it were, and bought another two. Just so there's no risk of my running out. Also, I really did want to find out what would happen if I marinated one in Baileys and very strong coffee. I'll let you know how that one turns out ...)

Strangely enough, for a country that prides itself on its food, France seems to have had perhaps more than its share of food-related scandals. There was the time when literally rotting duck was sold in the supermarkets (the odd thing being that no-one actually seemed to notice, perhaps they thought that's what "gamey" is supposed to be), horse meat being passed off as beef, and of course that time when a great fuss was made when it was discovered that the pigs in the big intensive farms were being fed on dry food which involved a fair percentage of shit - both their own, and human.

So it's kind of ironic that the results of a study published the other day in le Gorafi show that there are possibly dangerous amounts of McDonalds in human faeces.

Completely unrelated is the fact that I shall be back on my usual dry-toast-and-tepid-water post-excess miracle diet, for Angela and Martin, finding themselves with a surplus-to-requirements haunch of sanglier, invited Rick and Mary and Margo and myself around to eat it last night. He'd stuck it in a bucket with a few gallons of red wine and the usual suspects in the aromates department (ie juniper berries, bay leaves, carrots and the rest) a week ago, and had hauled it out that morning to go into the oven for eight hours of slow-roasting.

And once that was in and cooking, Angela set about making gougères and baked red cabbage and concertina potatoes and cauliflower cheese ... this last being something I personally will not touch, be it with a barge-pole or any other kitchen implement, due to unfortunate memories of la grande cuisine Anglaise wherein an otherwise innocent vegetable is boiled into something that most closely resembles, in texture, colour and aroma, a half-rotting brain. Margo tells me that it was in fact absolutely delicious, and I am quite willing to believe her, but it's just one of those irrational phobias I don't seem to be able to get over.

So we started off with cheese puffs, then foie gras before attacking the pig and its trimmings, which Martin insisted on our washing down with copious quantities of a 100% syrah from the Côtes du Rhone, then after a pause for the nicotine junkies (and doing our bit for global warming), we got onto toffee pudding with caramel sauce; which is every bit as sticky as you probably think. And because, somehow, we were not totally bloated, we polished off the last bits of the foie gras along with a vendanges tardives Gewurtztraminer. Which pretty much finished me off.

Hence this morning's resolution to be rather more restrained, at least until the next time.

Which turned out, as it happened, to be some ten hours or so later, because I'm not going to skip heading off across the plain to Montbrun for drinkies of a Sunday evening.

If you ask me (that's a purely rhetorical question, I'm going to rabbit on anyway) artificial intelligence - at least the sort that gets stuck into phones and suchlike - is not yet fit for purpose. Case in point, the auto-complete feature. It's tripped me up a couple of times when writing text messages: once I had written "Enquiring minds want to" at which point the bloody thing suggested "vomit", and another time I'd got as far as "Right now, I'd really like to be eating" and the word that popped up was "you". Which, if not necessarily inaccurate, was not entirely appropriate, all things considered.

And as that has brought us back to the subject of food once again, as time goes by it seems that the Christmas-time contents of the big chest freezers in the supermarkets get more and more exotic. Used to be there was just venison and ready-marinated sanglier, set to go directly into the oven: a few years after that they were joined by kangaroo and emu steaks.

This year I couldn't help but notice the vacuum packs of zebra, llama and, of all things, crocodile steaks. I have eaten crocodile before and I can't see any point to ever doing it again: as far as I'm concerned the stuff tastes like chicken and is even more gelatinous than a lamb shank.

Speaking of which reminds me that there's a rather large (for these parts) flock of sheep and lambs pastured below us, down by the railway lines. We'll have to avoid going that way for a while: not only are they well-guarded by three or four lovely bergers des Pyrenées who take their job very seriously, but the road down there is covered in what the dogs think are exotic puppy treats. Do not want.

Christmas day was bright and sunny, so we had high hopes for the traditional Boxing Day walk oop't Alaric ... sadly, it also seems to be a tradition that the weather should turn overnight to dull, gray, cold and windy, and on top of it the bloody chasseurs were running a battue des sangliers up there, and personally I have no wish to become a statistic.

So Martin and Angela and their two dogs and I (everyone else had begged off, deciding - not unreasonably - to stay curled up inside, in the warm), thinking that discretion was the better part of valour, headed east instead, down to the Chateau La Baronne (excellent wine, by the way) and then up and over the east-west ridge that projects from the eastern end of our little mountain.

Then we found a relatively sheltered spot not too far from Martin's Chicken Bush (don't ask) and as I'd thought to bring a ham-and-egg pie and a bottle of red and three glasses and a corkscrew (somehow, you always seem to forget the little, important, things) and we had our little picnic.

Whatever, tonight it's the end-of-year bash at Ann and John's, and finding myself - beyond all understanding - with a piece of cod, and given that I always have root ginger and garlic and chilis and actually managed to get some lemongrass which doesn't look too foul at Carrefour the other day, I shall go off and turn it all into little Thai-style fish cakes to take along. Maybe some salad too, so that we can all play at hunt-the-slug ...

I missed out on the chance to wish you all a Hairy Gristlemaus, so you'll just have to make do with a Furry New Bear.