Like Cats And Dogs ...

As is so often the case, we open with a Health & Safety advisory: do not, I repeat not, use WWII era canned food. Not that there's anything wrong with it, given that it may have been sterilised in the afterglow from Hiroshima it's guaranteed germ-free, but it may contain surprises. Case in point: it came into what I may loosely call my mind the other night to make a quick dinner - crab and sweetcorn fritters.

Which are normally quite safe and only rarely explosive (and then only if you get the amount of nitroglycerine wrong): you take half a tin of sweetcorn and stick it in the blender along with four tbsp of flour, salt, an egg, some chopped spring onion and as much cayenne pepper as you happen to feel like, and whizz the lot into a thick batter. Then you stir in the rest of the sweetcorn, a tin of crab-meat (such as you will have lying around in the pantry somewhere) and some more thinly-sliced spring onion, before making little balls and deep-frying them.

And that was where it went titsup for me: one of those little balls apparently had live ammunition in it and exploded as I was turning it, which meant a healthy dose of oil at 250° flying up and spattering over the palm of my hand. Left hand, luckily, so I can still look at porn on the innertubes, but it hurt like hell and I spent the rest of the evening clutching a frozen bottle of water.

So let that be a warning to you. I would also recommend wearing safety goggles when deep-frying, were it not that seeing the cook in full hazmat kit does rather tend to put guests off their feed.

Whatever, I was roused from my torpor in front of the screen by a godawful racket in the sitting room, and lurched in to be greeted by a scene of domestic bliss and tranquility all-too rare around The Shamblings. Primary Systems Cat was seated on a chair, watching benignly as Shaun rolled yelping with pain on the floor, Emergency Backup Kitten apparently surgically grafted onto his muzzle. EBK was afraid to let go, and with four sets of needle-sharp claws planted in his nose Shaun was probably not really thinking at 100% of his admittedly limited capacity ... so we separated them, the kitten bolted upstairs and Shaun licked his wounds.

A funny thing, but since then he's seemed far less inclined to go in for Boisterous Play than he used to be. It may not last, but a bit of healthy respect for cats' abilities in the mayhem department would do him no harm.

Anyway, what is it with these people? What makes them think that Spring is here already? There are no buds, no flowers, the branches are bare, but already the bloody cyclists are out, lycra-clad and puffing along uncertainly down the back roads. And they tend to go in packs of forty or so, six abreast and seven or eight deep, so that they can chat happily amongst themselves and incidentally block the lane. It's worse than having an Aixam or a flock of Dutch camper-vans in front. I suppose it's Mother Nature's way of improving the species, or something, because the inexorable invisible hand will get them. Or if ever Adam Smith fails, there's always the front-mounted rocket-launchers that came as optional equipment with the car.

On the other hand, and always looking on the bright side, at least the road-kill will be healthy (apart from the small matter of being dead) and in good shape when it comes time to put it in the pot. (For boiling, I think. Too stringy to roast.) What? You leave run-over game on the tarmac?

So Margo was telling me about the time when she had to get some information about setting up a small business and she went in to see officialdom, as one does, and she happened to ask - I don't know how it came up - "just what is the weirdest one you've had?". The woman looked around, closed the door, and confessed that it was this guy who'd invented a set-top box to detect aliens. Despite not being a Canadian politician he was convinced that they are amongst us, and his box would bleep if one came in the door.

He had the circuit diagrams and everything, and just wanted seed money from the government to develop the product. Seems he was saddened when this did not arrive, but that just goes to show that his paranoia was internally inconsistent. I do not know how he failed to work out that if the aliens are here then they own the government, and are hardly likely to want attention drawn to them by little boxes going "Bleep!". Makes one conspicuous. Buy tinfoil hat.

(Of course, there are other ways to be conspicuous. If, for instance, you are a serving French president, you can go off to see your mistress on the back of a scooter driven by a member of your security detachment. You are likely to be noticed for the simple reason that your scooter will be the only one obeying traffic regulations.)

Why, oh Lord? The Great Google tells me that one search term, and one only, lead people here last week, and it was "girdle for fallen bladder". Have you ever noticed me writing about girdles, or bladders - fallen or otherwise? Incidentally, how does a bladder fall? I mean, it's not as though it's likely to trip over or something, or jump out a window. Not without its fleshy envelope anyway, in which case the actual bladder would probably be the least of one's worries.

And even if we're speaking in the religious/moral sense, of a fall from grace, I remain to be convinced that a bladder can actually be said to be in a state of grace in the first place, in which case it can hardly be said to fall from that state, now can it? Not as though there's some cheeky serpent with an apple wandering around the small intestines, going from duodenum to pancreas trying to tempt various under-esteemed organs (liver and lights, as they're known in the trade - the unmentionables). Not in my abdomen there's not, at any rate.

After a three-week hiatus before and after Christmas the workmen have turned up again, and things are going on apace. It's almost possible to believe that we'll be migrating to the top floor sometime mid-February, while they're gutting the first floor.

Very cunningly, I headed off to Chambéry last week, this being when they turned the heating off so as to be able to shift the boiler a couple of metres to the west. This is not because of feng shui, just because we thought it would be rather a good idea to have it lurking in its own little - sound-proofed - utility cupboard with the 150l hot-water cylinder (which has yet to be hooked up - suppose that'll mean they'll be turning the heating off again and this time I will be here, woe is me!) rather than invading our living space.

Also, when I arrived back at Narbonne I found that I was sharing the back of the car with a brand-new Bosch low-pressure spray-gun and a Bosch angle-grinder, equally new. Not to mention a tungsten blade for the grinder, so as to be able to use it to cut tiles. For this is what it is going to come to in the near future: there are tiles on half the floor of what will become our bathroom, and rather than pay Cédric 500€ to lay a thin cement chape over the lot to level it out, I shall spend some quality time with the big jack-hammer drill.

And we shall have to go get some parquet flottant, and some jute matting for the bathrooms, and pick out tiles for the showers, and then there's always the vexed question of paint. But one thing at a time, I guess.

In any case, I am going to wrap this up: EBK is getting too close to the keyboard for comfort. Although he does not yet know it, he's going off tomorrow to get his balls ablated, which means that as of a couple of hours ago he has no food, which means a very vocal, very affectionate and particularly blundering kitten.

Which is fine so long as he sticks to floor level, but when he decides to explore my desk I do rather draw the line.

A Question Of Ethics ...

Now it has been drawn to my attention that some people disagree, on moral grounds, with the very concept of foie gras. I am not going to argue with this, I shall just lean back in the armchair, smile faintly but smugly and shut up, and let them go argue the toss with a French-thing. (I learnt, long ago, to do this at the dinner table - only the armchair there was metaphorical because who has dinner seated in an armchair? - in order to avoid the bloodshed and enjoy the spectacle as the right-wing and the left-wing of the extended family drew knives over the vexed question of whether the rich should be taxed at 95%, or just sent to the guillotine and then taxed at 100%. Never did settle that one satisfactorily, but at least everyone escaped with only light flesh wounds.)

Anyway, the inevitable ensuing argument will be fun to watch because the Frog-person in question, feeling unfairly put-upon and persecuted by Anglo-Saxonality, will bring up fox-hunting as a counter-example. And if you let that one in through the doors, you are lost. That way lies madness.

"For", he will say, "you tell me that the gavage of innocent little furry ducks that go coin-coin* is cruel, what then do you say of the chasing of a poor renard, which you English lords do every day before breakfast?" (The French have some odd ideas about daily life in that green and pleasant - or unpleasantly green - land. For instance, les rosbifs, when not hunting foxes, are eating porridge. Which may or may not be deep-fried. The English have equally odd ideas about the French lifestyle: it seems to be a given that all parisiennes are mind-bogglingly beautiful, and that all men have at least three mistresses, and a beret. To my certain knowledge, the first concept at least is totally baseless, and in these hard economic times supporting four ménages is a luxury that few can afford. Although berets are cheap, but also totally out of fashion.)

It is true that the duck, once past its salad days of wandering freely and fornicating at will in the dusty forecourt, is stuffed each day until its death (quite possibly from heart failure) with golden grain, whilst the fox - if things go according to plan (not necessarily, let's be quite clear on this, the foxes' plan) - gets chased only once in its life.

But no-one, to my knowledge, has interrogated the ducks on the matter - nor the foxes, come to that, who would probably rather be eating duck - and it could well be that they actually appreciate the attention. And in any case, I personally would much rather eat duck than fox, recipes for renard looking as they do suspiciously like those for pukeko stew**. Only with more wine.

Also, it is true that the modern urban French are just as clueless as to where meat ultimately comes from, and as sentimental, as any other city-dweller (maybe that's why horse-meat consumption has plummeted over the last thirty years, as the generation that felt good about eating My Little Pony dies off), but if you scratch an urban Frenchman you'll find a peasant underneath, and those things are notoriously unromantic. And when something tastes as good as foie gras, decently prepared, principles tend to go to the wind.

Maybe my ethics are questionable, but at least I recognise that what I eat is dead animals, and as for the vegans - how do they sleep at night, knowing the torture that is inflicted on their behalf on innocent grains and vegetables? Can you not hear them scream as they're ripped from Mother Gaia's soil? Will no-one think of the children?

(Let it be said too that foxes are vile disease-ridden rodents that are nowhere near as cunning as it's said in their publicity handouts. Don't feel sorry for the little bastards, you'll only regret it later when they rip your throat out in your sleep.)

Whatever, I guess that some of you may have been sleeping under a rock for some time, or maybe it's just that you live in Upside-Down Land or one of the old penal colonies and thus are not privileged, as are we Yurrupians, to know of Stephen Fry, Britain's National Treasure™ and definitive thespian. The Register used to have a regular Fryday, featuring such gems as this and this, and also this, which go some way to explaining the esteem in which all right-thinking people hold the Luvvie-In-Chief. But that is not the point. It's just a bit of background, to explain why I snorted coffee out my nostrils this morning when I read Old Key's Almanacke prediction for November 2014: "The iFry is launched, a simulacrum of Stephen Fry that witters incessantly and is small enough to be tossed into a wastepaper basket."

In other news, kittens bounce. Backup cat was feeling adventurous the other day, picking his way delicately along the top of the barrier around the terrace, and eventually came to the vertical wall at one end and thought he'd jump up. See kitty jump! Watch as he scrabbles to the sheer concrete with little claws! Gasp! as he goes "plop" onto the street three metres down. About 30 seconds later he'd rushed around the house, jumped up another vertical wall and thence onto the roof and back down to the terrace. Hardly limps a bit, but seems a bit warier now.

I honestly do not know how I managed to escape alive from Carcassonne this morning. As is my wont I headed off to the market - a bit later than originally planned, for I had to intervene when I discovered Margo trying to throttle her computer but that's neither here nor there - and visited the usual suspects, and as I had to stop off at a supermarket on the way back home anyway, to pick up some small preserving jars for the foie gras that is even now macerating in sherry, I thought I might as well make a brief call to a place that Margo had pointed out on more than one occasion.

It is called "Discount Alimentaire" and I kind of expected it to be, like many of these hard discount warehouses, a place where you had odds'n'sods of end-of-stock items, or the last three palettes of duck gumbo that Carrefour couldn't push out the door. Unbelievable "bargains" that you know you'll never find again, barring exceptional circumstances. As it happened, I was wrong not totally correct.

Half the barn-like interior was taken up with fresh fruit and vegetables - now some of those, I will admit, looked as though they'd seen better days but others were fine: just have to be picky, I guess. The far end was the butcher's stand, along twelve metres or so, with a real butcher behind it, and I shall have to go back some time when I really need meat because it would be criminal to pass up a nicely marbled côte de boeuf at 13€/kg, or a shoulder of lamb at 9€/kg. Being halal I doubt I'm going to find pork there in the near future, but I can live with that.

But what really turned me on were the aisles in the centre, laden left and right with herbs and spices and dried fruit and sauces and godnose what else. Now I know where to go if I wish to buy some za'atar, or spices for keuftes, or dried hibiscus flowers. Or a kilo bag of Madras curry, come to that, although that's unlikely because I'd have difficulty getting rid of all that in six months and I will not have stale spices around the kitchen.

Thought I did really rather well to finally make it out with so little: some tortilla wrappers, filo pastry, toasted sesame seeds, mixed grains to go into some bread, some more orange essence and a kilo of powdered almonds. (For it is time right now for the galette des rois, and both of these last are essential if you want to fill one with a properly fragrant frangipane cream, redolent of oranges and butter.) So I was quite pleased with myself. But I will go back, next time with a decently capacious shopping basket. And maybe a gastronomic dictionary.

Anyway, I have those two livers to see to, and four large plump mushrooms to be stuffed with herbed pork mince before going into the oven - and I suppose that the puff pastry is not going to make itself. So I had better get into the kitchen, and make myself busy. Mind how you go.

*French ducks - those raised for their livers at least - are an odd breed with a cleft palette and prolapsed anus, and consequently incapable of going "quack" as God intended. They make a noise transcribed phonetically as "coin", which sounds like a whoopee cushion deflating under an elephant. Or a noisy liquid fart, on a kazoo.

**For our foreign readers - a NooZild delicacy, equivalent of the famous French pot au feu, in which a stringy, muscular, and particularly rancid waterfowl (the "pukeko" in question) is stewed for days in a cauldron with stones: granite and schist are considered indispensable, and a few lumps of quartz are held to add flavour. When tender the bird is removed and disposed of with extreme prejudice: the cooking liquid is served as a soup; the rocks are carved at table and, garnished with pebbles, make a satisfying, if somewhat heavy, main dish for a festive occasion. Vegetables are considered superfluous. Oddly enough, a cheap retsina accompanies the meal to perfection: paint-stripper makes an adequate substitute.

A Pleasant Surprise ...

Well, as Christmasses go that could've been a damn sight worse. Our good friend Tom turned up a few days back, prepared for the howling frigid gales of which we'd dutifully - as thoughtful hosts - warned him, so it stayed obstinately fine and windless. And Christmas day itself dawned bright and sunny, and as time wore on the sun got hotter, and my carefully prepared plans went out the window and we dragged a table and chairs out onto the terrace and sat out eating foie gras and barbecued chicken and jacket potatoes and salad. And getting rid of a couple of the bottles that have been sitting around here for long enough: a 2002 Bordeaux cru bourgeois and a 2005 Macon blanc.

There are any number of variously elaborate recipes for preparing foie gras, including soaking in milk, but I went for the simplest I could come across: pepper the thing, roll up in muslin and shoehorn it into a terrine just big enough to hold it, cover with a good dessert wine (I went for a mixture of Banyuls and medium sherry, somehow there was less Banyuls in the bottle than I recalled) and put the lid on before putting it in the oven for 45 minutes or so, on low.

Hint - given the price of foie gras, it may be cheaper to buy a terrine of the right size to fit the liver you have, rather than the other way around. Just saying. Happily, I have a selection.

Next time, I shall have to remember to pepper the liver a bit more heavily before putting it in the terrine, also to cook it on a lower heat, but it was far from being a disaster. So there shall, indeed, be a next time.

Then, to get into shape for dinner, we went off to the beach. Bit south of Narbonne, shade north of Port Leucate. It was gray and overcast and desolate there, but lovely - like most beaches in winter - and Shaun ran and gamboled like a mad thing on the sand, looking for the most disgusting dead thing he could find. Dogs can be so gross.

And once we'd got properly sandy and got the tang of salt up our nostrils and generally worked up a bit of an appetite, it was back home for those pan-fried venison steaks (beautifully tender after 48 hours in their marinade) and gratin dauphinois and goldenrod broccoli, finished off with blackberry charlotte just because I could. A wonderful day, hope yours was as good.

Of course it had to go titsup, and as we ate and the fire blazed (just for the fun of it) the rain started to pound on the roof as we wolfed down the food, and it kept going all through Boxing Day. Seems to be traditional or perhaps, in the words of my esteemed but junior colleague, "an ancient charter, or something". Still, we managed to avoid the gale-force winds that buffeted northern France, and so far still no snow.

Friday was another perfect day, so having better things to do and being anyway in dire need of cigars I took Tom off to the cité at Carcassonne. It is a massive pile, not too much the worse for the wear over the centuries, and I must admit that I rather appreciated the visit myself - must be something like 17 years since last I took a look. Doesn't seem to have changed much in that time, with the (welcome) exception that poop-scoop bag dispensers have been installed around the place so you're no longer at such risk of slipping on dog turds on the picturesque cobbled streets.

Then Saturday was market day again, and we had to sort out Tom's phone card and his train through to Turin on Sunday, and I wanted more suet (because there really is nothing like decent suet pastry once you've tasted it), which meant Narbonne.

Got the market done under a beautiful windless clear blue sky and about 15°, I guess - not too bad for winter - and dumped the loot in little Suzy before heading back into the centre of town. Found an Orange boutique without too much difficulty, and after only five minutes a black-skirted blonde with knee-high white patent-leather boots deigned to look up from her iThing and notice us.

She was actually very polite and gave no hint that she thought she was dealing with pond-scum, and very kindly warned us that if he used his phone for data whilst roaming in Italy he would be paying through the nose (actually, "hideusement chèr" were her words), that he would be unable to top up his account outside France, and that he had nothing particular to do to activate the data part of the deal. So we thanked her obsequiously and bowed our way out of the shop, freeing her to go back to propping up a display case and for all I know watching cute cat videos.

Being as how the shop was on the place de l'hôtel de Ville we thought it would be a decently touristy thing to step into the palace of the old arch-bishops, and thence into the cathedrale St-Just itself: another huge building and personally I cannot get over how the stone is so massive and so delicate at the same time. Also, as Jon Lord once remarked, they have a massive organ.

They shooed us out as the clocks started striking twelve - never, of course, at the same time, that would be too much to ask for - but we must have left by the wrong door for when we got out onto the street the sky was gray and a playfully chilly breeze was pushing a few drops about, and by the time we made it to the gare there was a light drizzle falling and the clouds were the colour of lead. Sad to say Tom will have a long trip: the plan was to shove him on the Narbonne-Valence TGV at about midday, thence to Chambéry and from there another TGV through to Turin.

But it had not clicked in our tiny minds that it is the Christmas holidays after all, no room at the inn and all that is part of the tradition, and the TGV was booked solid. But the young woman at the desk with a Provençal accent you could chew on for hours thoughtfully proposed another itinerary - one not requiring reservations, one of the few inconvenients with the TGV - and lacking other options, we took it. It does involve getting him to Narbonne by 8am to catch the TER to Marseilles, and from there on he'll have to fend for himself getting to Nice, from there to Ventimiglia, and then on to Milan and, eventually, Turin. A fifteen-hour trip, all up. Always assuming, of course, that no inconsiderate bastard has the sheer bad manners to foul things up for everybody else by throwing themselves under a train, as they did that morning between Montpellier and Nîmes. That really screws up the timetables.

Never mind, not much to be done about it, and at least the English Shop was open as we headed back towards the canal and it started drizzling in earnest. So as the husband-and-wife team carried on munching on crusty baguette and pâté and cornichons I gathered up my suet and some Colmans mustard powder and some black treacle (because I'm sure it'll come in handy, maybe for the next ham I do) and a bottle of sherry ("Stay clear", said he, "of the QC stuff, it's crap. It'll do for cooking, or French housewives ...") so I made sure I picked up some Croft's and paid for that and then we headed back out into the rain, which was starting to get all petty and spiteful at that point, and back to the car, for I had an appointment with a cassoulet.

Because a few weeks ago I picked up a 2kg bag of haricots tarbais (the best kind, apparently), and there was bacon, and cuisses de canard confites in the freezer, and as I was going peacefully about my business at the market I somehow acquired, along with everything else, a large chunk of an excellent garlic sausage and some lamb breast, so it seemed only reasonable to put them all together to create what tinned baked beans can only dream from afar of becoming. In another life, perhaps.

Cat, Flanked By Rat ...

Sometimes, you really have to wonder. I was looking for a midnight snack (hey, I don't worry that much about my waistline, it's not as though I actually have one anyway), delved into the cupboards and pulled out a packet of Chocolate Cookies! With Delicious Chocolate Chunks!! I mean honestly, who do they think they're fooling? Everyone knows that sales would plummet if they adhered to the truth in advertising standards and proudly announced the presence of Chocolate Chunks That Look & Taste Like Rat Droppings!! (May contain nuts!!!)

(Seriously, they're not that bad. I can tell you they don't look a bit like rats' droppings, and I've eaten seen a few in my time.)

Anyway, right now we is a-decking of the halls with boughs of holly, a-wassailing (a justifiably obscure sport involving a smallish bishop and a sharp pointy stick, and much merriment and a lot of screeching when the balls go into play), and any minute now I'm expecting a Hey-nonny-nonny. Or yet another "humorous" version of "The Partridge Family In A Pear Tree".

For over here in Ole Yurrup Christmas is icumen and the municipal handyman, aided and abetted by the mayor's idiot nephew, has been going around tying bunches of ill-assorted 40W bulbs to trees, buildings, and anything else that neither moves, nor protests too much. Which means that some of our neighbours, elderly folk who are none too nimble, are now nicely illuminated. Although they do tend to spark a bit when they accidentally earth themselves.

It's actually a bit of a bugger because place Carnot at Carcassonne has been invaded by a skating rink for the duration, and the market stalls have been pushed out into the surrounding streets and out in front of les halles. I just start to get used to it, work out where the decent places are, and then they go and shift it all around on me. Bah!, and humbug.

Still, we are trying to get into the proper spirit and to this end will head off on Monday to Richard and Mary's (these are neighbours, not a 70's pop group with long hair and, unfortunately, acoustic guitars) place for a party that will, apparently, go on until the unheard-of hour of 10pm! What are things coming too? (Not, I fear, wild debauchery. Although I may be pleasantly surprised.)

Also, I have been looking for Christmassy menus which involve neither too much excess (I would guess that's an oxymoron) nor oysters. I do not think that this one, from a restaurant during the Paris siege of 1870, would be appreciated around here ...

Hors d'oeuvre

Tête d'âne farcie

Stuffed asses head

Potages

Consommé d'éléphant

Elephant consommé

Entrées

Chameau rôti à l'Anglaise 

Roast camel, English-style

Civet de kangourou

Kangaroo stew

Côtes d'ours rôties sauce poivrade

Roast bear chops in pepper sauce

Rots

Cuissot de loup, sauce chevreuil

Haunch of wolf in game sauce

Chat, flanqué de rats

Cat, with rats

Terrine d'antilope aux truffes

Antelope terrine with truffles

... those of you with long memories will recall that 1870 was the year that they ate the contents of the Paris zoo. Due to waking up one fine morning and finding the fridge completely empty.

Actually, for once we shall be relatively restrained. I bought a fresh foie gras and stuck that in the smallest of my terrines with some Banyuls and a dose of medium sherry, left it to soak and then stuck it in the oven to cook for 45 minutes: hope it turns out alright. It's my first time.

Then there's a chicken to be roasted, with as much garlic as I have about the house, for lunch - and some venison steaks, currently marinating in red wine, olive oil, vinegar, juniper berries and crushed peppercorns, destined for dinner. Possibly with baked potatoes, sour cream and chives. But I think that we shall take a good brisk walk between the two meals, just to make sure that we eliminate any surplus.

Sad to say, our woodland friends and extended Playmobil family did not make it down here with us, preferring to stay in Saint-Pierre. So this Christmas, exceptionally, you will not be entertained by their amusing antics.

Just one geeky bit, I promise, and normal service will be resumed until at least the New Year: but this "Smash the toxic Patriarchy inherent in all computer programming languages" was too good to keep to myself. (I assume that I am doing your work for you, by unflinchingly braving the torrents of filth and porn on the interbits and snatching a few golden nuggets for your delectation, selflessly oblivious to the harm it may be doing to my moral fibre. Those of you who do it for yourselves are to be congratulated.)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays - whatever - to all and sundry. Take care, now.

May Contain Nerds ...

So despite mùy moaning (sorry about that, Margo's learning Spanish) today turned out like it is supposed to in the tourist brochures - clear blue sky, sun swinging lazily golden through it, and no wind. These little details are important.

Whatever, made it a pleasure to take Shaun out for a trot at an ungodly hour of a Sunday morning, with the sun low in the sky and my boots crunching on the frost where the shadows still lay, the only noise the odd "Boom!" as a hunter, heavily fuelled by red wine, took a potshot at another hunter, doubtless mistaking him for a goat. Despite the camouflage jacket, which goats normally eschew, on the grounds that it would be unsporting. Also, inedible, which is very important to goats.

Anyway, I had occasion to head back up to Chambéry, and hopped on the Narbonne-Lyon TGV mid-afternoon. Left with plenty of time on hand, and as usual wound up hopping on board with only a few minutes to spare: don't know what it is with Narbonne, but once you get towards the centre of town it's always jammed. Note to self: next time, try taking the ring road up north and then coming back down to the gare by the back passage. Would have to be quicker.

The trip was enlivened by the presence of a group of burly Poles on their way somewhere from Barcelona, conversing jovially in their curiously vowel-less language. When we got off at Lyon I saw that the conversation had been animated, at least in part, by a now empty pack of 36 bottles of 8° beer ...

The next day was a "journée nationale de solidarité et d'action sociale", better known perhaps to you as a day of rolling strikes and go-slows, but in Ole Yurrup we do not care to use such language as it could offend. I'd feared the worst because these things usually start off with limbering-up exercises the previous day, but luckily I was spared any dérangement and the TER decanted me at Chambéry just in time to miss the last regular bus out to La Ravoire (par for the course), so I grabbed a kebab and a glass of red and tried to stay warm until the first night bus turned up, an hour or so later.

I don't know why it was, but when I dropped the hire car off on Saturday I ambled off to the gare and picked up the return tickets I'd ordered that very morning. Normally I just pick them up as I leave, it only takes a minute or so ... but whether it was prescience or just plain good luck, it turned out to have been a Good Thing.

Another one for the collection

For from La Ravoire to Elephants on a Sunday morning there is but one bus, which leaves at 11:06 and arrives at 11:24 - which leaves plenty of margin to catch the train that heads out at 11:39. Under normal circumstances anyway, for as I waited at the bus stop in the bright chilly air it became apparent that the buggers had changed the timetables for Christmas and had totally neglected to inform their bloody web site, and that the bus had absolutely no intention of turning up just at that moment.

I really hate cutting things fine, but Stacey got me to the station with all of a minute to spare, and most of that was eaten up by dashing up and down stairs ... made it onto my train, anyway. Flustered, and sweating profusely (I really should train more for just this sort of thing).

As usual, having booked the tickets I'd not bothered to actually look at them, apart from the headline articles like departure time - problems with correspondances happen to someone else, in my experience - and so I had it firmly in mind that I was going to get off at Grenoble and have an hour to grab a decent café-croissant and check up on spices and stuff at Carrefour d'Asie: somewhat to my surprise they've actually finished work on the lines between Grenoble and Valence (not before time) and the train chugged on and deposited me at Valence-TGV at the appointed time. On the bright side, I have to admit that the sandwiches there are a cut above the usual railway fare. Not difficult, I admit, but they are freshly made with a good crusty demi-baguette and not smothered in mayo.

Always think that at some time I can get away from niggling technical problems, such as why Margo's laptop won't send mail anymore (bloody Avast with bloody automatic update bloody breaking things) for a while, and every time I do I am inevitably disappointed. Somehow. Usually my own fault, let it be admitted ...

Patron saint of facial eczema, with a client

Now I have three laptops, two of which are reasonably svelte and the third is an enormous brick with the firepower of a battle-cruiser (and about the same weight), and it is the main Linux development system about these parts. I also have various little Linux boxen at different stages of development (and all more or less in bits, held together with string), and all these things are hooked up to the home network. Those of you with long memories and a high boredom thresh-hold may recall that I set up RDP servers on the Linux machines, so that I could just log onto them from my Windows machine and let them do the heavy lifting, without any of the hassle of having to press a button to swap keyboard, screen and rodent between any of them.

And so it came to me, as I was heading out the door to go up to Chambéry, that instead of lugging around in my long-suffering backpack some 6kg of armour-plated Intel Core i-7 and a few boxen in various states of undress and disrepair - just on the off-chance certainty that at some point, if I didn't have them with me, I would seriously need them - that it would be so much easier, and much lighter on my back, if I could just log into the home network from wherever I happened to be, and do what needed to be done.

Your standard half-competent geek would probably have organised that with a few obscure incantations and a thousand-line shell script while the car was warming up, but I am not quite in that league and so I waited until getting back before plunging into the soul-destroying misery that is French "help" screens loosely translated into something approximating English that Orange choose to deploy on their Livebox ADSL routers. Because, dearly beloved, I was going to set up a VPN! (Wasn't that clever of me? Just say "yes", I will be insufferable but you never know, it might get me to shut up earlier.)

First step, fairly obviously, is to go through a dyndns service to get me a URL, so I don't have to go and check what the router's IP address is each day: I don't know why, but the front-end software on the Livebox offers me the choice of exactly two such services, one of which is no longer free. Suppose I should be grateful that I had the choice.

Alternatively, I suppose I could have hacked the Livebox, but such an act would probably have voided the warranty. As they say. (Not that that would have presented any major problems. Going on past experience, if you turn up at an Orange boutique with a Livebox that no longer, for some reason or another, actually works, they just look at it gloomily, try once to log on and fail dismally because I've changed the password - Doh! - and then say "Eh ben, c'est foutu", hand you a brand new one and toss the old one into the landfill.)

Having got through that I then had to go set up the actual VPN itself, which is an arcane process. There are doubtless people out there who actually enjoy arguing the merits of Diffie-Hellman elliptic wossname level 3 vs level 5 over breakfast, or working out exactly how long it would take, down to the nearest microsecond, for the NSA to break a 17-character message encrypted with AES-512, but I am not one of them. Quite frankly, it kind of goes over my head. So I gritted my teeth, and went through all that.

Anatomy lessons, C13

This being done, I now have to test it, as I'm sure something will foul up. Shall doubtless have to open holes in firewall, or something. Which means that I shall have to have access to a network other then the home one, preferably from the comfort of home so that I can make changes as required without a 10k trip from McDonalds (where the Wifi is apparently free, if you don't include the price of having to eat a Miserable Meal) back here just to change a single encryption setting to see if it works. Bummer. Ah well, put that one on hold for a bit.

In unrelated news, I was idly flicking through The Register and if you ask me, the Crown prosecutor should be hauled up immediately before the beak for grievous verbal harm, violence with intent, outrage to the public dignity and wanton cruelty to the private parts of speech -

I mean honestly, "will now be commenced"? What's wrong with plain old "begin", which has the added advantage of being short, simple, and Anglo-Saxon? Maybe it's true that lawyers don't speak the same language as the rest of us. (Or maybe I'm just being overly-sensitive. It could've been worse, like "will now commence to start" f'r'instance.)

Think I mentioned that Jacques got kicked out released from hospital after his operation, headed straight back home and sat down to a serious surfeit of morilles. They found a few left-over bits of cancerous tissue and so he's on six months of chemotherapy, which he reckons is a right bitch. I reckon the old bugger is virtually indestructible, so I'm not going to worry too much for the time being. See how it goes.

Anyway, I have things to do and although that doesn't usually stop me it does involve paying work so I'd better at least make an effort to look as though I'm on the case.

The Letter "F", Of Course ... *

Having some pears to hand, and vague memories of having seen a tub of mascarpone in the fridge, I'd rather set my heart on a pear and mascarpone tart to follow the roast saddle of lamb: sadly, it was not to be. There was indeed a tub of the stuff, lurking at the back behind a jar of pickled beetroot, and even though I am normally of an optimistic disposition I have to admit that seeing that the use-by date was late August did make me a bit dubious.

But wait, there's worse to come!

So I got it out, and put it on the bench, and finally, being terminally fool-hardy and somewhat retarded on occasion, I opened it. You ever have one of those "It's Alive!" moments? Where something gross and greasy, with a mouth out of Alien that looks like it's borged the waste disposal unit, leaps out of the toilet bowl thirty seconds after you've vomited in there, frantically waving foul tentacles at your face? Well, this was kind of like that, only it was orange, and seemed friendly enough. It heaved itself into the sink and gave a cheery wave as it disappeared down the plug-hole, leaving only the tub and a lingering smell of rotting milk as souvenirs.

And a vague farting noise, which persisted for some time, but personally I put that down to the drains.

Looking back on it, I guess it got opened in Savoie back in June, then made it down here in the half-thawed chilly bin on our epic voyage and promptly got put into the fridge, where it had evidently been lurking with intent (and botulism) ever since. That kind of put dessert on hold: I suppose I shall just have to go and buy some more, but I shall try not to let it get quite so ripe this time. Being accepting of different cultures is one thing, but having lactose-based life-forms squatting the fridge is another.

Out here in the wops we is so far from civilisation that gravity has only recently been installed in some houses in the village (some of the older residents don't actually want it, arguing that being able to float in their wheelchairs up and down the stairwell is in fact rather convenient - think Dalek - but we must move with the times and in any case the mairie has finally coughed up for a bulk delivery which must be got rid of somehow, before the mayor's idiot nephew's wine cellar turns into a proto-black hole, one of the things they don't warn you about in the T&C on Amazon by the way), and we are far enough from any major conurbation that the street lights don't in fact light up the sky, which thanks to the eternal wind is clear and dark blue - which means that we get a wonderful view of the stars, shining so hard.

I am far from being an expert but I can pick out the Pleiades (that's the little fuzzy blob where you can never count how many stars there are if you focus and actually try, but if you look away and pretend not to be paying attention it's obvious that there are in fact seven but I always get paranoid because I'm pretty sure there's one more trying to sneak up on me from behind while I'm looking at the others) and Charlemagne's Wain (which would be the Big Dipper, for those across the pond) and Orion, currently low in the east, is a snip. But I will never see it in quite the same way again, having looked at this.

Anyway, for your general edification and just because I feel like it, back to Perpignan ...which is, in fact, a lovely city. Apart from the bloody wind, which I am told is not - despite appearances - perpetual. In summer, for instance, when you could really appreciate it under the baking sun, it's not there.

So Perpignan was one of those bits of France that used to be Spanish - or vice versa, depending on which side of the frontier you happened to be on, and where the frontier actually was at that point - but that's rather moot because back then neither Spain nor France existed as such so I suppose it just belonged to whoever happened to be living there at the time, which is not so bad if you're talking about a house but could be unsettling for a country. Whatever, Jaime the Nth of Aragon waltzed into the Balearic Isles one day and took over: being a tolerant chap, as things went back in the day, he hardly slaughtered any Jews (he needed their cash to keep coming to fund his wars), and even went so far as to leave the DJs and the ravers undisturbed in Ibiza.

An act which has come in for much criticism from modern historians, who tend to be a moralistic lot and who dislike having to pick their way between recumbent mostly-nude bodies on their way from the cheap hotel to the beach in the mornings. Which just goes to show that they should have taken up something more profitable than ancient history, upon which they would have been able to afford decent holidays in a hotel where the interior walls don't actually fall down if you sneeze in the wrong direction, and the crap that washes up on the beaches is mostly driftwood and not drunken pasty-faced London twenty-somethings after a hard night on booze and ecstasy.

But I digress. This James left Aragon and Catalonia to his eldest son, as is only right and proper, but he happened to have a second son, also name of James (are royalty always that boring when it comes to choosing names?) to whom he left the kingdom (as it now was) of Majorca and associated territories, which just happened to be a few strategic cities on the Mediterranean littoral, Perpignan being one of them. (This went down like a cup of warm snot with the older brother, as you can imagine. They were not, apparently, a happy family.)

Whatever, young James comes into his inheritance when his father shuffles off this mortal coil, has a bride lined up and everything: small problem, no palace. This is important because a) queens like palaces and b) a court with no palace is basically a bunch of people in fancy dress crapping in a paddock which c) may give the peasantry Ideas, never a good thing. Bigger problem, no cash. (See "Jews, extracting money from, wars, for the fighting of" above.)

So they went ahead and built the thing anyway. I'm not saying it was done on the cheap, just that dressed stone costs the earth and takes bloody forever, so they built it with courses of brickwork and flat river stones, laid herring-bone fashion to distribute the weight correctly. And stone facing when and where they had the money, and everywhere else - well, stucco did a pretty good job of covering it up.

It's an impressive heap, all things considered. Vauban, military engineer par excellence, got sent in later on of course, when the Languedoc and Roussillon were assimilated asked to join the kingdom of France (Louis XIV sent an invitation, and "non!" was, apparently, never the correct answer), probably giggled a bit but decided there wasn't much more he could do and settled for fortifying the rest of the city. According to the plans that must have been something: it's all gone now, torn down and used for other things.

(Another thing I did not know: Louie had 3-D relief models built of all the major French cities, with special attention paid to the fortifications. Fairly obviously, they were not 1:1 scale. They were stored in the Louvre, and available for consultation by his generals any time the neighbours or the peasantry started to get uppity. Perpignan has on display a replica of the one Vauban had built.)

But the city got rich: being a port city there was trading, of course, but in the 19th century it got even richer on, of all things, cigarette paper. (Well, to be honest, a couple of families got obscenely rich.) In those days, if you wanted a fag you'd take your paper, cut a square out (for it came in big sheets) and roll the baccy up: now this guy had two brilliant ideas - first was to pre-cut the paper into just the right size, second one was to package it in a cunning cardboard box so that when you pulled one sheet out, a bit of the next sheet was pulled out and sat there shyly, ready to be taken in its turn.

He patented the idea, and came up with a trade-mark: his own initials, with the losange of the city of Perpignan between the two: sadly, everyone thought that the losange was just a capital O and so to this day it's JOB cigarette papers.

In any case there were vast quantities of cash floating about and before developing a social conscience and going off to improve the lot of the poor and indigent (who doubtless deserved to be that way anyway, as witness the fact that they were indeed poor and indigent) it was deemed reasonable and proper to spend it on monumental piles to house the family, the cigarette paper factory and, down in the cellars, the poor and indigent workers. And for some reason, one Viggo Porph-Petersen, from Denmark (or Sweden, whatever, Scandinavian, lots of blondes running about with no tops on in summer), turned up one day and got taken on as architect.

His style was - eclectic. An incestuous coupling between Gothic, Flamboyant and neo-Classical, but the odd thing is that it works. You want turrets? Got turrets! Dormer windows? The cuter the better! Iron ghost-chasers on the mansard roof? Hell, let's have three! Sadly, a lot of his buildings seem to have seen better days, but even dilapidated as some of them are they are wonderful.

Later on art nouveau became the in thing, and one of the major boulevards is still lined with the swanky apartment buildings and private houses from around 1910, and the cinéma Castillet is still standing - and still used as a cinema. Although it did get upgraded to include a sound system, something which would have been redundant back in 1911 when it was built.

The history lesson is over: I am going back to soaking up the sun under the clear blue sky in what's left of this wonderful golden Sunday afternoon, and you lot can get back to your barbecues.

* I know, I know, "What is the capital of France" is definitely a trick question. Just checking you were still awake.