The thing about history. . .

You learn something every day. The seed for the latest rumination started in fact some years back. I was involved with a local arts centre and at various times, had discussions with a West Indian contact at the Community Relations Council, who despaired at the way Black history was being taught, recorded and discussed, as well as the lack of information in local libraries. 

Multi-cultural British history started a long time ago.Some of which I learnt about at school, in my history classes from my charismatic teacher, Miss Overton. But there were many other elements that I didn't find out about until much later, including some very recent discoveries. One of which is that Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar had a foreign crew of 1400 from 25 nations, of which a third were black. How many years have I walked by and around Trafalgar Square and not noticed the black face on one of the plaques?

Mr Gove's attempts to remove Mary Seacole has stirred up a flood of criticism, but also useful website details and interesting re-postings. There's one on you tube called Nelson's Black Sailors. It's short but riveting stuff: 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWnrc5BGGf8www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWnrc5BGGf8. 

History came up for discussion at one of our Anglo/French groups yesterday, over lunch. Where does a country's history actually begin? There are so many different types of histories. Our multicultural history would start I suppose with the Angles. But conventionally apparently, recorded history starts in AD 43 with the Roman Invasion. What about the Domesday Book - our earliest public record, or the Magna Carta. Given that the M.C. set us on the track to constitutional law, perhaps that should be the point when British history as we know it, began. Back at school one of my A-levels was Social History and another Economic History. The list of histories is extensive.

Someone said yesterday that the majority of Americans feel they don't have a history.  Is this true? There a multiple histories in the States,  including that of rampant European colonialism. Maybe it's the time of the War of Independence where American History could be said to begin. We've an American couple who've joined the Anglo-French group recently. It would be interesting to hear what they think.

Doing a Dawn French. . .

This is not a strictly accurate title for the subject. What it should be is, doing a Dawn French doing a Geraldine Granger (Vicar of Dibley). For those of you who have watched every episode of the VoD.,which includes me - I'm also the proud possessor of the DVDs - you will I'm sure remember the one where there is a water shortage and G.G. has to lick, sorry, decides to lick her plates clean, as a means of avoiding using the limited water supply.

I have decided to lick my ice cream bowl with the same degree of enthusiasm. So what if there's a chocolatey moustache, chocolatey pistache crunch round the corners of the mouth, or a light brown smudge tainted with pistache on end of my nose. Who cares! I am Ice-Cream Woman! The one difference between us gals (beside the lack of frontal baps on my part) is that Miss G.G. didn't have to endure the look of disapproval from the other side of the table!  Decadent plate licking? I don't understand. Our water supply has been cut off while urgent maintenance is undertaken in our road between 8am and 5pm. I filled up jugs, containers, pans etc. So purely as a means of additional support, controlled plate licking of ice cream bowl would seem to be a small but practical contribution. I'm thinking, if it's alright for Geraldine Granger why not for Madam at no 3 rue des vignes!!

Anyway regardless of what Monsieur thinks, he's just devoured the last of the aromatic pistachio Viennetta, which no doubt for ice-cream purists means 'slumming it', but I don't care. It was GRRRRREAT!

Ice Cream

I've never been a great fan of desserts. I do eat them, especially when friends have kindly invited us to dinner and have gone to the trouble of making something.  I'm not even a chocolate fan, except when it comes to maltesers and cadburys chocolate flakes. Even then I can make a flake last for a couple of days and an average size bag of maltesers last for a week. I remember being in a play where I had to mime eating a box of maltesers. That is until the last night, when I found someone had emptied a bag into my box as a parting gift. It's very sad I know but I have always preferred savoury things to sweet things.

Ice cream however is another matter. My passion for ice cream (I don't eat it every day however) started when we were still living in Harrow. Up until then I'd been an ordinary and occasional 'cornet with flake' girl. But there was a restaurant in North Harrow that had for a dessert, home-made meringue nests with home-made ice cream. Whenever we went there I always had that. Heavenly. Then I discovered a recipe for Champagne Charlie - a glorious concoction topped off with ground amarettos, which became a Christmas special in our house. I should also mention the hazelnut ice cream cake - beyond description (sound effect of a sigh).

By now commercial brands were picking up in quality, such as Häagen Daaz; Green and Black's. But it was Walls Carte D'or which started the alarm bells, when I discovered that their delicious coconut ice cream available at any supermarket in France, was not available in the UK. 

My ongoing and enthusiastic market research, has revealed a disturbing feature of the British ice-cream supply. On our island we only see about a third of the flavours available, pretty much across the brands. Yesterday in Leclerc I just happened to be passing by the ice cream section. Taking the Viennetta range as an example, how many flavours do we get/see in the UK. Four? Five? I lost count here after the tenth. Aromatic pistachio. Mmmm. There's still a bit left in the freezer. Us Brits., simply don't know what we're missing. Sometimes you can find these flavours in a deli or a special outlet that has it's own special price to go with. But generally speaking we seem to have a significantly more limited range of flavours available. And that, in this world of free markets, is a great shame!

Shrieks of laughter!

Some of our neighbours are out in the road with their children having a snowball fight. We had a good dollop of snow during the night, so probably - hopefully - a snowman will appear before too long.

Is the snowman one of the few remaining male preserves? As much as I believe in female equality it's difficult to get excited about a snow-woman. To start with it's more difficult to say. I can hear the shrieks 'let's build a snowman!' 'we want a snowman!' But it doesn't sound so good when it's 'let's build a snow-woman!' 'We want a snow-woman!' Or is it just a question of what I'm used to.

Our first snow landed a few days ago. Not heavily, so children in the village school were able to play outside, their shrieks of excitement wafting across the gardens. It's a great sound. Sound is a major feature of the village's personality. And like everything else, it's seasonal. At the moment there isn't a lot, except for occasional voices and cars. But as the year rolls out, along come the tractors and the vans, the cocks and chickens start up, accompanied by the bleating of the goats. Then of course we have the hunting dogs that live higher up on the other side of village. Eventually the hunting horn rehearsals begin and the road parties. Life follows the mood of the season. Winter time everyone hibernates, spring we start to thaw out and summer we're in full throttle. In the Autumn things start to wind down a bit and then we're back full circle into winter quiet.

Even so there's a lot going on. Yesterday we went into Chinon to meet friends for a coffee. Came back home. Afternoon we went into Chinon to meet another friend for tea. Then straight after we went to the cinema to see Renoir. Met another friend there. Really interesting film which we didn't know much about, other than obviously it concerned Pierre Auguste-Renoir or so we thought. It is largely based on fact. There was far more to it of course. Visually stunning and with the tonal qualities of a Renoir painting, we were introduced to the reality of an old man's life as he fights his personal battle with extreme and painful rhumatoid arthritis. Renoir continued with difficulty to paint, surrounded by a household of women who look after him - all of whom at some time have modeled for him. Renoir by now was a widower, physically frail and largely confined to a wheelchair.  A young girl arrives to model for him, eventually becoming his muse. Then his son, Jean Renoir, who later married the muse and became a film director. But in this story Jean is a young man who having survived, returns from the terrible war in northern France, to the otherworldly life on the Renoir estate in southern France. Here everyone is oblivious of the physical cost.  The film presents a sharp contrast between Renoir's sumptuous female forms and the ugly realism of wounded human forms. Terrific film which deserves at least a second viewing.

Wounded in the kitchen and other things

Light on leaf

It's interesting how awkward it becomes to do your usual everyday things, when you've sliced the top of your thumb and you have a whopping great big plaster on it. Been dicing vegetables for goodness knows how long and have only had three accidents, including one with a mandolin. Now that really did hurt. For the jokers, I mean the kitchen equipment, not the musical instrument. This time I have done it in style:  messy and inconvenient, and a timely reminder of how essential the thumb is to the daily routine. Fortunately I'm right handed. It was my left-thumb that got beaten up. Even so there are things which are definitely trickier to do. Important things like taking photos! Washing up, ironing! Pshaw!! Most of the buttons and dials on the camera are on the right hand side and can only be pushed or turned easily with the right hand. On the left hand side there is one dial which is in thumb turning position. So trying to hold the camera while at the same time, turning the dial with my left index finger instead of my thumb isn't easy. Blurring when planned is one thing. Unwanted blurring is quite another. Anyhow Mike has now kissed it better, and miraculously it healed overnight!

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Cravant in snow

We are waiting for snow to arrive. At the moment it's in Paris and is working it's way down to us for later this afternoon. It's unlikely to be a problem, being very damp and with more rain forecast  over the next few days. But can't imagine it will be the last of the snow. Usually we come over later in January with heavier snow arriving in February. We'll see. The pic is from our village at the end of January last year. We're lucky in that the wine producers always turn out with snowplough attachments on their tractors and clear the roads in the village, so everyone can get about. Get to the main road however, between us and Chinon and last year, it was like an ice rink. No one from the council seems to want to pick up that responsibility. We'll see what happens this time round.



Tell you what though it has got decidedly chilly. 
Madame who lives with her husband in an old house on the corner is our temperature marker. She first appeared in the blog last year. We saw her this morning on our way back from Chinon and stopped for a brief chat. She was sporting one of her spring dresses, her cross-over apron, thick tights, slippers and...a cardigan. When she wears one of those, you know winter has arrived.

Not that 'chilly' figures much in her vocabulary. She's a tough cookie. But it did feature in our French conversation this morning. We meet upstairs in an old house (owned by the organisation) which like a lot of old buildings is difficult to heat. Our conversation leader Danielle arrived to find us huddled together with coats and scarves on. 'Très frisquet aujourd'hui' she says, 'very chilly/nippy today'. The way you pronounce it sounds like friskay. English humour kicked in of course,  'feeling a bit friskay' are we etc etc. Had to explain to Danielle what frisky meant in English. 

Frisquet is a great word. I've entered it into my top ten favourites. In pole position is gusset. There is something about that word that just curls me up. It's originally a Middle English word from old French, gousset, which means pod or husk. I had thought it would appear in my online Shakespeare Insult Kit list. How about:  you beslubbering beef-witted gusset  bladder or you mammering flat-mouthed canker-blossomed gusset harpy. Really starting to roll now. Unfortunately there is no sign of gusset anywhere on that list. Hugely disappointing. What's more I'm not going to put in a link. Don't want any craven dizzy-eyed minnow types getting hold of it and getting carried away!

It's surprising what you can find if you know where to look

That certainly applies to our cupboards and wardrobes, since we've finished sorting and reorganising them with all our newly transported gear. There were a few finds along the way. Bits and pieces that had somehow got pushed to the back or caught in something else and then been forgotten about. Until of course they are needed and then couldn't be found. So you buy another. This is presumable why in France I have amongst other things, two rolling pins, two potato mashers, five pairs of scissors, two steels for sharpening knives and 4 packets of cocktail sticks. Oh and two jars of marmite. But that's totally understandable, so doesn't count. Not that there'll be any problems finding new homes for the unwanted surplus items. We haven't exactly been lazing around since we got back, so that's all in hand.  The marmite of course stays here! 

I'm looking forward to living in one place. There are definite drawbacks to having a double quantity of cupboards to get things lost in. You tend to go slightly demented trying to remember firstly, what's in which house, and then where in that house and which cupboard. Usually it turns out to be the wrong guess and it is in the other house. So the relentless searching of the first few days after you've arrived back is in vain. In any case to begin with you can't find anything, because you have the storage layout of the house you've just left, still firmly in your brain. But as of now we've just three more months of dual house life to go before one-house sanity kicks in.

Salsify's cousin-Scorsonère

Chinon market was up and running well yesterday, Thursday. Our first time back since we arrived. Surprised at the number of stalls as at this time in previous years it's been much smaller. The clothes stalls were missing - they're pretty much for spring/summer - so it was down to the food essentials. Picked up vegetables from the bio-stall. Just love their produce. It all looked soooo gorgeous. They had Salsify. Heard of it, eaten it at restaurants a few times and like it, but not seen it before in it's natural state.They also had a vegetable called, Scorsonère, which is basically a black salsify. So we bought some to try. Picked up some shitake mushrooms that are grown locally on the way to Saumur, from Chantelle, who specialises in mushrooms and had about six varieties on sale. After heading along to one of the Anglo-French groups we belong to, we called into look at a weaving display. Spinning, weaving, dyeing and knitting are well supported here. Annie Erens a French friend, is particularly fascinated by it and has been studying and practising it all for some time. She's usually behind all the weaving events in Chinon, so was there when we called in yesterday, along with a lady called Iliana, whose is originally from Lithuania, which has it's own weaving pattern designs. So was all really interesting. Years ago Mike made me an inkle loom and I taught myself to weave on it. Eventually I got rid of it and haven't the same enthusiasm to return to it now. In any case photography is really my main thing. But it was certainly good to see looms being used. Some of the work was so fine with the same delicacy and intricacy of design as lace work. Quite amazing. Don't think I'd have the patience.

Log fires burning

Log fires are irresistible. There's a quality about the heat along with the glow of the flame that warms the spirits as much as the bott, knees and other chilled parts of the anatomy. And a log fire quickly brightens up a grey day.  We got back to French grey-dom on Thursday after nearly two months of English grey-dom. The house was fine, but definitely needed a few burning logs to take off the edge. We keep our supply of logs in our garage along with a chain saw. Not an item I ever thought would feature on our list of domestic essentials. Chainsaws, at least in my mind, are associated with remote living and lumberjacks. But here, our log supplier chops and delivers in large pieces, so we need a chainsaw to cut them to a more practical/usable sizes.  Log fires are the norm as the main heat source. Modern houses like ours have central heating, but the cost of electricity is pretty high compared to the cost of logs so like everyone else, we had a stove installed and it's brilliant. Really does the job.  Mike has become a real dab-hand - avoir le tour de main - with the chainsaw and lighting the fire, I am a novice by comparison.

So Thursday morning, after an overnight crossing, we arrived with loaded car.  Our move to France has officially begun. It was so loaded with household paraphernalia, I'm surprised we weren't doing wheelies all the way back home to Cravant. Wasn't sure how 'wheelies' translates in French, so looked it up. There are a couple of options. Le wheeling or la roue arrière. I prefer Le Wheeling. It's more succinct and fun. I suppose it would be used with faire (+le wheeling). But translator sites seem to come up with la roue arrière as the primary expression. So. . . I'm surprised with the amount of gear that we had loaded in the car, que nous ne faisions pas la roue arrière sur le chemin du retour en France. We had boxes and cases with clothes, shoes, books, crockery, musical instruments. If customs had done a spot check on us we'd have been pretty pissed off having to unload that pile. Fortunately in all the time we've been coming to France, (twenty-five years including holidays and work) we've only been spot-checked once.The customs officer looked in the boot and found a large teddy bear staring back at him. Mine of course - Beeton, whose slightly rotund proportions suggests the digestion of one too many of his namesakes recipes. Hope he doesn't read this!

Anyway everything is now unloaded and scattered about the place, and being unpacked bit by bit, as we attempt to reorganise cupboards and pick out the things here we want to get rid of.  We've caught up with neighbours, had calls from friends. I've been to a committee meeting for one of our Anglo/French groups, and can now confirm a photographic exhibition in October for two weeks from Sat 5th. There are five of us involved. Steph, the only female chef in town who owns and runs La Treille in Chinon, which is a hotel as well as a restaurant and strangely, without a website, had her first baby in November, just after we'd left. Yesterday we saw and met Juliette for the first time. She is so pretty with dark brown eyes, a real shock of dark hair - un amass de cheveux châtain foncé. We bought a Galette des Rois - a traditional 'cake' for Epiphany of puff pastry and frangipane from our favourite Chinon boulangerie in Place Mirabeau. Light as a feather and a perfect level of sweetness with a little trinket inside -as our Christmas Puddings used to have & perhaps still do? Being commercially made, our trinket was a tiny pink china macaron. Real macarons are very popular here and locally made, with a fantastic choice of flavours and colours. Today we're into Chinon again for the 'small in winter' Sunday morning market and lunch at Café des Arts. 

So - we're off to a good start in 2013. Hope it's started well for you too.