This is my response to the arrival of winter and the recent events in Ireland.
There is nothing more warming or comforting than a soup , a good soup with atin’ and drinkin’ in it and why not make a dinner of it ?
Why relegate it to lunch when its origins correctly place it in the evening.

I remember that when we worked in the Loire in the seventies the locals referred to their evening meal as La Soupe, which a recent comment from another local inhabitant informed me was also what this meal was called down here in the Languedoc.
(Thanks Rita).

Surely this refers to the evening meal usually being just that , a soup , as indeed so must our “supper” spring from the same premise.

Lewis Carrol’s verse puts Soup correctly in its appropriate time.

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau–ootiful Soo-oop!
Beau–ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo–oop of the e–e–evening,
Beautiful, beauti–FUL SOUP!

So how about this depression crushing chowder for supper ?

Gather together.

50g Butter, Oil or Duck Fat ( I used duck fat )
200g Streaky Bacon, diced
2 Large Carrots, diced
300g Jeruslaem Artichokes or the same amount of Parsnip or White Turnip, diced
300g Potatoes diced
50g Plain Flour
200g Frozen Peas
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 litre Stock (A good quality cube will do)
Fresh Ground Pepper

Get ready all your stuff.
Dice the bacon and then scrub and dice the carrot, artichoke and potato without peeling (there is no need and the skins add to the flavour)

Melt the fat in a large pot.
Cook the bacon first in this until it browns then add first the carrot, and then the potato and artichoke and fry these briskly for a few minutes.
Now add in the flour and stir in well.
Next add the stock, the soy and the peas .
(You can also at this stage add any bits of cold meat you may have about the fridge, some sliced ham or salami for instance, just dice and toss in )
Let this come up to the boil and then simmer gently until the veg are all cooked.
(test the carrot, it seems to take the longest)
Taste for seasoning , it will take pepper but may not need salt.
Serve this in big bowls with plenty of bread , you will have loads for four, including seconds.

This was the title of all articles on Ireland prior to independence so I can only assume that it will again be the title of all articles from yesterday.
As one of the rats who left the sinking ship (despite that then it was still floating well) and in France surrounded by French and all other members of the EU by first reaction is embarrassment as I am sympathised with about my old , infirm , relative which is my native country.

A friend in Spain says that the most frequently heard sentence on the lips of the media there is “But we are not Ireland”.- by which we can infer that they mean they had no Iberian Tiger economy to be prodigal with.

Of course I am not detached from Ireland in any real emotional or fiscal way, our pensions (created by ourselves over our long working lives) come from Ireland, we have three daughters , one and a half grandchildren and countless relations and friends all scraping their livings there and the great majority of my customers also come from Ireland.

But still the distance does make me a little detached and the goings on and revelations of the last few years have made me fear that instead of dragging ourselves out of trouble we were digging ourselves further in.
Therefore my embarrassment is tempered by feelings of relief ; the elderly infirm relative is at last being taken into care.

My brother Ted wrote an optimistic letter to The Paper last week which I quoted a few blogs ago.
I can only hope that his optimism is justified.

I do not blog ever about politics, this is as close as I intend to go, but to not mention the huge elephantine presence of the IMF in the Irish room was impossible.

My neighbour here in Thezan , who comes from Mallow County Cork , inherited a Kaki tree – Persimmon to you and me- which produces huge quantities of fruit about this time.
The picture above is the third batch he has given me.

Having read up a bit via the internet I have discovered that they make a great jam if you remove the astringent skins.
I have been passing the whole fruit , roughly chopped , minus stems and stones through my ever reliable Moule Legumes (which holds the skins neatly ) and making a delicious puree like jam by boiling this up with the juice of a lemon and its weight in sugar.

The result is delicious , and now , it looks like I’ll have enough to get me through to the summer.
The land is a great provider.

I have just remembered this one (I think I may have tried to supress it) which happened some time in September.

Daughter Eileen and her copain Phil; were with us and we had decided to visit the lovely village of St. Guilhem le Desert- founded by a cousin of Charlemange in a narrow cleft of the Cevennes.

Because of its position it is particularly hard to find a parking place there so they had recently , since our previous visit , build a carpark a couple of kilometres away and do a free shuttle bus into the village from there.

So we dutifully parked the car and I went up to the kiosk, manned it seemed by a small gaggle of students, and asked where the shuttle departed.
The student at the window promptly collapsed into giggles and through weeping eyes asked me to repeat what I had said and then stood back so the others could hear my reply.
This resulted in general hilarity, before the nearly speechless first fellow pointed the way.
I was annoyed and somewhat mortified when I went back to Madame and told her what had happened.
I repeated my simple request to madame looking for an explanation.
She also laughed , and then explained.

A shuttle bus is a navette , I had got it wrong and asked for a navet- a turnip.
I confess I blushed with embarrassment.
Obviously from the reaction in the kiosk this was a fairly frequent occurance- they probably kept a book on the idiots who got it wrong.

What truly irked was that of course I knew well that navet was turnip.
I mean hadn’t I spent my adolescent years using the pig French phrase ;
C’est un navet bizarre pour les livres
As a translation of the Cork expression of quizzicalness :
“That’s a queer turn up for the books”

Last week when I wanted to write about my Godin I asked Madame Dwyer what sex it should be. Madame told me that this depended on what the word was describing so I went to the much used dictionary and discovered that (thank God for M. Godin’s dignity ) a stove was masculine, but , that were one to change M. Godin’s sex and call him La Poele he would suddenly become a frying pan.
Mind you I also discovered that if he remained a masculine noun he could easily become a cloth with which one would cover a coffin.
A versatile man is my M.Godin.

All this leads me to a piece in the local ambidextrious news sheet Blablablah about the pitfalls and pratfalls of French synonyms.
Take La Selle for instance, a saddle but also a stool, as in a crap not one you might use for milking.
This would tend to make you a little careful of its use.
It is also pronounced exactly the same as, but is a different sex from Le Sel; the salt- be careful what you might ask to sprinkle on the poached eggs.

Now as I have gone on and on about all month I observe my Novembers dry.

This is a very difficult concept for the French , mainly because they don’t hit the bottle that hard anyway.
I was at a party last week of Síle’s choir and my neighbour at table asked me would I like some wine.
I explained my position and further, in a desperate attempt to get him to understand I said that I did it for “Ma Foie “- my liver.
M. looked all solemn and didn’t pursue the discussion .
Then it struck me, I had got the sex wrong, the liver is masculine, I should have said Mon Foie , Ma Foi is- of course- my faith, my poor neighbour thought that he was saddled ( La Selle feminine of course) with a religious maniac for the night.
At this stage Madame intervened and explained all- and not for La premiere fois (f. time)

Pictured by his Mammy in his new French jumper sent by the doting grandparents (who will see him and -hopefully- his new sister/brother in just over a month.)

And still surviving my temperance.*

I stuck this stolen cartoon up at this time three years ago to remind my self that my duties to the alcohol industry start in just a week’s time.

* I have to thank my daughter D (who, together with boyfriend Ano, also keep November dry ) for the information that the November abstinence lasts only until 28th, the traditional Samhain Tréanas being a lunar month.
Ahem.

In Rebecca.
Hitchcock used these curtains to great effect throughout the film.

or
The Curtains

The French, because they have shutters, don’t go in for curtains like we do in Ireland.
When we were planning the decoration of the rooms we decided initially to follow suit and leave the windows clear.

Not a great idea.

Our Irish customers told us that they spent their time hiding, feeling that they might be exposed to the people on the Place de L’Eglise.

Then we found some nice sheer linen ones which, like Irish net curtains, gave one privacy.
But not of course by night.

We were lucky enough to inherit some old linen sheets from an aunt of Síle’s and it was herself who got the notion that a sheet, cut up the middle, would provide the right amount of privacy without spoiling the slightly monastic simplicity of the bedrooms.

La Chambre Famille with thier new Rideaux.

She was right.

We have since found similar sheets in vide greniers here, all with beautiful drawn thread work, which are being used for other bedrooms.

This is another picture of the new curtains, included only because it instantly reminded me of a scene in Hitchcocks Rebecca.
I can see the dread Mrs. Danvers silhouetted by them.

20 years ago on holiday in Provence I found my first Absinthe glass in a brocante in Fayence. In fact it was a pair (one of which is pictured above)
This started me on my whole mania for these glasses and at this stage I must have about 30 of them.
They tend to come in various shapes and sizes but this shape , my original purchase was always my favourite.

It was the one Monet used in his painting The Absinthe Drinker.

And the Swiss painter Ihly painted the same glass (somewhat the worse for wear) in his painting of the same name.

This is one of my favourite paintings.

But despite scouring Antiques, Brocantes and Vide Greniers for the last twenty years I never succeded in finding one the same shape.
Last year it was decided that, as we now have seven huge boxes of glass stored in the cellar here in Thezan, I should stop collecting any more and now devote my life to giving them away.
I agreed (but made a mental reservation, should I ever be lucky to find one of the original shape )

And so it happened.

About three weeks ago our trudge through the antique fair in Pezenas in pouring rain, was rewarded by a pair of originals.

And, just last week in Cébazan at a Vide Grenier, I spotted another.

None are quite the same size- that is part of their charm.