Our phone was playing up a little bit last month, so maybe I missed a
call from Him upstairs, advising me to build an Ark and load up the sheep, two
by two.
Yes, in just over a month we have gone from an arid desert to sodden paddy-fields,
as it rained solidly for 40 days and nights depositing 400mm of water – no,
that’s not a misprint, 400mm
- over a foot, in old money! Already
the lambs in the lower field have all been issued with snorkels, the dogs are
permanently wearing water-wings and the postman now arrives by boat, bringing
with him our previous year’s extortionate water bill. Plants that had been
scorched near to death by 15 months of drought, then battered by a month of
arctic temperature are now standing forlornly in a foot of water wondering what
the hell is going on. But, for once, I’m not complaining. It had to come.
Mother Nature will always balance itself, so Spring is as good a time as any to
put it right. Thankfully I planted the potatoes in time.
The sun is out again today though, feebly pretending it has never been
away, and facing me with the arduous task of cutting the grass which is now a
couple of metres high and harbouring a thousand species of swamp-life. This
morning, Tommy the tractor took one look at it and shook its bonnet, coughing
uncontrollably, its pistons protesting so much I nearly called in the paramedics.
Surrounding crops of wheat that were heading towards another French famine are
now a vibrant dark-green and bulging at the gateways, ready to flood the Common
Market and send local farmers rushing to buy more new shiny machinery with
their exorbitant profits.
All in all, things around here are looking a little bit healthier.
Unless, of course, your name is Nicolas Sarcozy.
As I write, the electoral race is still on but at least Madame La Penn’s
neo-nazi party is no longer a serious contestant, although she did get a rather
alarming 17% of votes in the preliminaries, as the nation showed its support
for the tightening of France’s
immigration laws. If she had her way, the country would be cleansed of all
people and things un-French. Her policy on banning the wearing of sandals
with socks would have possibly emptied three-quarters of the population of
the Dordogne in one fell swoop and - for a
while there - my little enterprise of selling berets, garlic strings and rusty
bikes to ex-pats in Eymet market looked like a Nobel-prize contender.
However, the general word on the street is that the Left will get back in
to power and that France’s
soaring unemployment problem will be addressed by creating a few million new
government jobs by the turn of the year. This, of course, will inevitably lead
to thousands more complicated forms dropping through our letter-box and another
rain-forest will fall in the name of bureaucracy. The fact that the next 5
years of this head-in-the-sand administration will leave France more
bankrupt than a Greek building contractor seems to have conveniently eluded the
narrow minds of the electorate, who have chosen the Left purely because they
are fed up with Sarcozy’s haircut.
Anyway, enough with lunatic politics – if I ever have to vote, it will
be with my feet.
Recently, this hermit has been approached by a company specialising in global
travel, to write a series of short travel guides about these parts. Despite the
limited financial incentive on offer, it was a challenge I relished with both
hands and feet. Nothing motivates you to take notice of things around you more
than having tourists visiting, apart from having to write about it - sensibly. Last
week I found myself waxing lyrical about a few places I have never visited,
using research rather than first hand insight. However, after a night of
disturbed sleep, the cold-sweat of dawn persuaded me that we should perhaps validate
some of this information before submitting it - for fear of being exposed as
cad.
So it was last weekend, we visited the delightful town of Monpazier, an hour north
of here, with some friends. Having written-up that it claimed to be the most
beautiful village in France,
I was on tenterhooks, to say the least, that it wouldn’t disappoint. I need not
have worried. Monpazier is probably one of the most charming and idyllic
Bastide towns imaginable – if I may go into travel-geek cliché mode for a
second – sitting atop a raised mound with
stunning views, it offers ornate archways surrounding the cobbled square,
leading into quaint narrow streets littered with fashionable boutique shops and
delightful up-market bistros – unquote. I had also read up on one of the delightful bistros on the internet, towards
which we were destined for lunch. Imagine, then, my sudden empty feeling when
we discovered that it was….er…Empty!
And we all know what to think about eating in an empty restaurant?
Should we, shouldn’t we?
Should I just go home and scrub the paragraph I had eloquently penned
about its superior location overlooking the medieval gates to the castle? Not
to mention its menu full of sumptuous dishes?
Or should we take a plunge, announce our mission and unscrupulously demand
the best seat in the house and four free meals? In the end we over-came our
indecisions and nervously shuffled in - anonymously
– and I am so glad we did. The food was nothing less than exquisite, the
service impeccable and the ambience – once a few more punters followed our initiative
– exceptional. It was only after we paid the bill that I mumbled that I was
writing up this very bistro – called simply Bistrot 2 - in a global
travel guide that could possibly bring them up to a million punters. We Brits
are so gracious, aren’t we just?
On the way home, we called in on Chateau Beynac, another place I had
advised my readers to visit for its opulent uniqueness. It was the setting for
the film, Chocolat, I advocated – a must see! What I had failed to
mention, until I visited it personally, was that it was so busy with endless buses
full of obese American tourists that it was nigh on impossible to find a seat
at its overpriced poorly-furnished street cafés, whilst choking on the fumes of
grid-locked horn-honking traffic being bottlenecked into its one street via one
of central France’s busiest main roads.
A valuable lesson learned, we are this summer tasked with visiting a
lot more of France’s
hotspots; not the worst chore one could bestow on a couple of near-hermits, I
suppose. I might even get some calling cards printed.
Now we are back into social season, the other week we invited a couple
of friends for dinner and, last minute, they asked if they could bring along
their daughter and boyfriend who had come to stay for the weekend. Never being
one too bothered about extra numbers – ‘no problermo’, said I. Now bear in mind
these two friends are both Irish, from Galway, and live in Amsterdam,
although they have recently acquired a holiday home near us in France which
they are renovating. When they arrived, Wendy suddenly reminded me that both
the daughter and boyfriend were chefs, - a fact I had forgotten – at Claridges
in London, no
less. And I was serving them rabbit-bloody-pie! Too late to change the menu to
something more Gordon-bleu now, they would have to slum it like the rest of us!
At least I wouldn’t be written up in a travel guide? In an attempt to distract
them from the misgivings of my meagre table offerings, I engaged Pat, the
boyfriend, in polite conversation, only to discover that, although he lived in London, he was from Kidderminster.
‘What a coincidence, I’m from that area,’ says I.
‘Well not exactly Kidder,’ he revealed, ‘but a tiny village called
Clows Top, near Rock!’
It transpired that I knew his
Father, also Pat, Mother, Uncle Mick and pretty well all the rest of his
family, the Langdons, personally.
What a small world… the topic certainly took the heat off my rabbit pie!
On the subject of pie, with lambing well and truly over, and gigot
d’agneau looming mouth-wateringly on the near horizon, we were somewhat startled
to find 2 more of them born this week. Not just two ordinary lambs either, as
one of them is a quite striking piebald colour. I’m not too sure what his
father is, but with those spindly bow-legs and black and white striped body, he
looks like he is crossed with a grand piano! I have named him Minstrel.
