Our friends Anne-Marie and Patrick, who live about half of their time in Thezan, about half in Brittany came up for an apero last evening.

One of the last times we had met them they had shown us around the old Cave which Anne -Marie had inherited in the village and let us taste a marvellous (and delicious) Vin de Noix which dated back to the 1890’s.
Read about it here.

Last night, knowing my fascination for old things, they brought another present which they had found in the old Cave

It was another wonderful old dusty bottle this time with a label which read;

Alcohol
90%
1943

She reckoned it was some of the Marc from the wine which her Grandmother had intended to make into a fruit flavoured Eau de Vie.

Because it had sat there for nearly 70 years some of the alcohol had evaporated through the (intact) cork.

“Ca ” said Anne-Marie” est le portion des Anges ”

Now my only problem is which fruit will I grace with its presence.

Friends I and P are staying with us at the moment, as they live in the north of France they always make use of their trips south to slip over the border into Spain and stock up on the stuff (practically everything) which is cheaper there.
About two hours after they had left they rang to tell me that they had had an incident on the motorway.

The traffic on the Languedocienne, which is the main artery between Iberia and Eastern and Northern Europe, was dire and they were creeping along slowly when they were rammed from behind by a large four wheel drive Mercedes.
They swung around to see the man in the car hurriedly folding away a map which he had been reading.
There was about €1000 worth of damage done to P and I’s car.
The culprit blustered and swore but eventually headed back to he car to get his insurance papers for P to copy.
But he didn’t.
Instead he threw the car into gear and flew off down the motorway.
Now my friend P is no slouch behind a wheel so in they got and gave pursuit.
Eventually they spotted him in the distance and started taking photos of the number plate.

But then a kindly God stepped in and delivered sweet justice.

Out on the road stepped a gendarme and stopped our culprit in flight for a random check.

P and I stopped behind and told their tale to the Gendarme. They were believed instantly (The evidence was on the front of the culprit’s car and on the back of theirs )
The Gendarme took down all the details of the incident and stood over the miscreant while he gave Paul all of the necessary details.

With a member of the police force now as witness I doubt if my friends will have any problem being paid.

Sometimes they are there, just when you need them.

I have been bopping about over the last week having a hectic schedule between guests arriving and lunch parties and have been very remiss about blogging. The next few days don’t look any better so I have decided to retell a story which I put out on the blog four years ago.
It is about how I nearly became a Duke and the brother Ted got a letter from a Duchess.

When I was a child my father used to tell me this story about his young days.
Apparently as a young man he courted for some time a young lady from county Cork called Anne(Nancy) Sullivan.
She afterwards married the Duke of Westminster, and became the very proud owner of Arkle, one of the finest racehorses of all time.

My father used to tell me earnestly, that if he had married Nancy Sullivan, instead of my mother, that I would have grown up to be a Duke.
In my innocence I of course believed him, and saw myself, but for a tiny accident of birth, clothed in Ermine.

A long time afterwards my brother Ted’s horse won a race in Fairyhouse. He was presented with the cup by none other than the Duchess herself.
When Ted probed her gently to find out if my Father’s stories were true, her reply was;
“Ah John Dwyer, of course I remember him well”

So my Father spoke the truth, I could have been a Duke after all.

Brother Ted gets his cup from the Duchess

Post Scriptum on 25th May 2006

I just got a letter from my brother Ted gently telling me that I got this story quite wrong.
The truth however, as is often the case, is even better than the fiction.
Ted in fact made no connection with the Duchess on that day in Fairyhouse.
(My Father obviously had not told him the same story!)
When he got home our Mother told him that he had just been given a cup by an old flame of Dad’s.
Now Ted, like myself, is not one to let an oppurtunity for contact slip past him.
My father has a set of handwritten hunting reminiscences which he put together shortly before he died.In these he talks about all of his old hunting friends including Nancy Sullivan, as the Duchess was known then.
Ted sent a copy of these on to her with a note as to how he and she had met in Fairyhouse.
The Duchess sent a charming hand written reply. I will quote a few lines from it
“Dear Ted,
I cannot thank you enough for sending me those reminiscences of your Fathers-best present I’ve had for years. How I wish I’d known that day at Fairyhouse that it was John’s son that had beaten us , I’d have been almost pleased!
…..your Uncles Dick and Jack were two of my dearest friends, as indeed was your father-even more so!” (her exclamation mark!)

Doesn’t she come across as a charmer! I don’t blame the Da or indeed the Duke for being smitten.
But she does establish byond all doubt that my father and herself did indeed have a wee tangle in the twenties.
I don’t know how you feel about it Ted but I am polishing up my Coronet!
.

Teased by the distant view of the fields of poppies from our bedroom window we decided to go out this morning in the cool, before breakfast (it is very hot at the moment) and find them out.

Here is some of the shots I took.
It is amazing how exhilarating it can be looking into a sea of red.

From our window. (I never noticed the bird until I opened the picture)

The building (part Cave, part dwelling) which they call Lamarre and looks like it was transported in the piece from Italy.

Just two weeks ago I told you here about a chance encounter in a car park, after a concert of Síle’s, with an old school mate of mine and his wife, Tony and Mary.
We hadn’t seen each other since 1964, a mere 46 years ago.

Síle and I went back with this tale to our friends Barry and Mary and there the world did another bit of shrinking.

From the name Barry recognised the couple, and that he had worked in the bank with Mary for about 15 years.

Once he mentioned Mary’s maiden name I immediately recognised her as a sister of a another buddy of mine from the sixties.

But it doesn’t end there.

Ray, another friend of Barry and Mary’s, called in on them shortly afterwards.

It’s a small world ! he said. “I was all through college with Tony and we lived for years in the same estate in Cork, my wife and Mary are great friends!”

The upshot of all this was that Barry and Mary gave a lunch party for all five of us yesterday it was an occasion of much nostalgia.

” Whatever happened to B****?” I asked, (I fellow I was sure was bound for the priesthood.)
“Well he got a terrific job in New York, discovered he was gay and now comes back to Cork every few years with his partner”

Discovering the ones who had since died, those who had divorced but mainly the ones who had done well for them selves and had become the leading citizens, the doctors, dentists, and the lawyers of Planet Cork.

A great time was had by all.

It’s great to be old.

So many of our friends, when they come to visit, have come into our kitchen (living, dining room) and said that the pictures I have put on the blog do not do it justice.

I think they are probably right, it is a particularly difficult room to photograph and I have tried it with every combination of lights on and off, and from just about every concievable angle, I thought.

This morning I came in from the terrace (where I had been enjoying a sneaky coffee while the house slept) and saw the room in pale morning light with only the light from the fan on the counter so I grabbed the camera for another go.

Interestingly it does give a better impression of Clive’s kitchen than most of my other shots.

So I swung around and took the other side as well.

Not definitive but I think I’m getting there.

(The eagle-eyed among you will notice that we have now succumbed and bought a TV. The only thing I can offer in its favour is that because it is black and thin as tissue paper it slips into the background when off and is (I swear) almost never on.)

Daughter Eileen was with us last week and shot these Poppies near Roquebrun.
They are everywhere at the moment, turning whole fields bright red.

When I talked about our tree about two weeks ago ago I said:

Sitting on the terrace you are immediately facing into our tree, a Melia Azedarach or Lilas d’Inde or Persian Lilac.
Just at the moment it is working hard to entertain us.
Having just had its winter pruning it is working especially on its greenery and tufts of leaves are visibly growing as we watch it.
It also is producing its blossom, purple scented bunches which will be in full flower in about two weeks time.

Well its moment has now come and the whole house is gently scented with a pale lilac perfume.
But before I give you a picture of the tree in blossom I have been looking up the Melia on the internet.
The berries ( we call them ballies) are poisonous to humans (you have to eat loads though) and the wood is good for furniture being a relative of Mahogany.
The berries if soaked in water produce a spray which kills aphids (A Good Thing) and even better, the ballies were traditionally (before the acceptance of plastic for the purpose) used to make Rosary Beads.
So There.
Here is the picture of the tree from the Red Room:

When our friend Finola was out at Easter she found little cakes in the Super U which she bought for tea.
These were made by the jam people Bonne Maman and called Financiers,they were little rectangular cakes, crisp on the outside and then chewy, buttery and almondy in the centre.
Delicious.
They were, I discovered, called Financiers because of their resemblance to gold ingots when baked.
A good cake for a recession.

I went off to the internet to find a recipe.

Someone somewhere made a version from Hazelnuts which she claimed came from Patricia Wells Provencal Cookbook.
This surprised me, i owned one book of Provencal cooking by Patricia Wells called At Home in Provence but didn’t know she had written a second and one with recipes from my local area. A quick search of the internet revealed a second hand copy selling from a crowd called Thriftbooks in America for a couple of quid (it seems the book was only produced in America) so I sent away for it.
Thriftbooks duly sent it over and (having been posted on April 4th) it arrived yesterday , just six weeks later.
Obviously they are still using Clippers to send their wares.

Anyway I went through the book from stem to stern and no sign whatsoever of my Financiers.
Back to the internet where I discovered from another source that the recipe was in fact in Ms Wells “Bistrot Cooking, a book I already possessed.

No bother though, the Provencal book is superb and I will be using lots of local stuff from it.

In the meantime I made the Financiers, changing things about a little fron the Wells version (I had seen a few on the net by now) and have to confess that the results are brilliant. Better even than the Bonne Manan version Finola bought which started it all off.
They are crisp and chewy, buttery and nutty and with a nice affluent hint of brandy, as becomes a financer.
Here is the final version.

Financiers aux Noisettes et Cognac.

First preset the oven to 230C /440F

180g Butter
210g Caster Sugar
90 g Ground Hazelnuts (or Almonds)
70g Plain Flour
5 to 6 Egg Whites (5 from large eggs, 6 from medium)
2 or 3 tablespoons brandy

First heat the butter in a little pot and simmer it until it turns a nutty brown.
Then pour it into a bowl and leave it cool.
Mix together the three dry ingredients well (a mixer is handy now)

Add in the egg whites and keep mixing until well blended.

Add the noisette butter and the brandy and beat some more.

Now fill little muffin tins with the mixture (unless you happen to have some rectangular Financier moulds) I used about 18.

Put into the oven at this temperature for 10 minutes.
Then reduce the oven to 200 C (400F) and leave in for another 10, then turn off the oven and still leave them in for a further 10.
A fiddle but worth it.

Eat with tea or coffee, with icecream or sorbet or (as I will do tomorrow) with chocolate mousse.
Wonderful.

Since we came back after Christmas we have been wading through the many miles of French bureaucracy to make a French citizen of our Renault Megane.

At last, last week the Carte Grise (the Meganes Green Card) came through and Síle went this morning and got our new number plates made.

We got a last minute, and most uncharacteristic, bout of caution and decided not to let the whole number be on the blog.
But if you look carefully you can see the F on the reg and the 34 (for Herault)
and the red symbol over it which is the sign of the Languedoc Roussilion.
It looks like the car, like ourselves has decided to stay.