My Father was a racing fanatic, he regarded backing horses as a science and used to spend days studying the form books and devouring The Irish Field.

I really don’t know if he would have horrified or delighted with this piece written by one of his sons about another in last weeks Irish Field .
The Irish Field were delighted with it and gave it nearly a full half page of their paper on Grand National day- and I rather think my father would have forgiven me my unscientific approach and been delighted too with my win.

Hello Patsy Fagan,
You’re the apple of my eye
Hello Patsy Fagan,
You can hear the girls all cry
Oh you come from Tipperary,
That no one can deny
You’re a harem scarem divil may carem,
Dacent Irish boy”

Just to explain the reference to the grandson being “The Apple of my Eye” in the last blog I have to bring you back to the song above.

I have no idea where it came from, other than it is obviously an emigrant song, from England possibly, or Scotland.

For some reason I decided to make it Fionn and my song and have sung it to him whenever we are together.

Now the rest of the family have started to use it as his theme tune.
You sing it to him and you get a seraphic grin, a total stillness and then. an imperceptable bending of the knees in time to the music.

Hello Patsy Fagin,
You’re the Apple of my Eye.

Yesterday summer came very suddenly to the Languedoc (and to most other parts of Europe too from what I can see.)

On Thursday night we lit our stove against the evening chill while we played scrabble indoors, on Friday night we ate dinner outdoors on the terrace.
By Saturday afternoon the temperature had reached 26 C outside and we sat in a state of lethargic pleasure in the terrace, enjoying the sensation of the sun so much that we had abandoned plans for a hike and a picnic up the mountains and instead just let the sun heat and cheer us.

It is our first spring in the Languedoc and the weather is a constant surprise to us, both colder and hotter than we expected and that often on alternating days.
It is I think a much later spring than most other years and checking back on previous Easter holidays spent here the trees and the blossoms do seem to much less advanced than past Aprils.

My brother Ted phoned me last night to tell me that he had sent the story of my heroic winning streak on Mon Mome in last years Grand National to the Irish Field and it had been printed by them in this weeks edition.
I haven’t seen it yet but in Ireland you should manage to find a copy.
You can read my version of it here.

The same brother Ted has been fighting with cancer for the last year and wrote very courageously about this in the health section of last Tuesday’s Irish Times.

On the subject of sunshine (and winnings) do take a look at Caitriona’s latest picture of the real Mon Mome, grandson Fionn here.
Is it any wonder he is the apple of my eye.

Last year Clive found this garden etagere in a brocante so, with the help of my old Stainless Steel window boxes from the restaurant days, I have decided to turn this into my herb garden (I am just not prepared to let them be a culinary feast for the escargots in the garden proper)

Top row;
Chervil, (very scrawny) Tarragon, Flat Parsley,Chives and a little Curly Parsley.
Middle Row;
Mint (in a pot to stop it spreading) Basil, a white bedding plant for variety, More Chervil (my favourite herb) and Lemon Thyme.
Bottom Row;
Fennel, Sorrel Thyme , Wild Garrigue Rosemary and Rosemary.

Incidentally the French call these Aromatiques while in the garden.
They only become Fines Herbs once they come indoors.

One of the things that keeps coming up in the “Moving to France” books is the shock of the author (almost invariably an Englishman) when he comes up against French bureaucracy.
We are going through one of our first encounters with French red tape at the moment.

We discovered from our Irish insurance company that they were only prepared to continue to insure our car for six months in France, thereafter we would have to be insured with a French company.
Since our bank already have organised the insurance of our house we went to them and our charming young banker gave us a quotation for comprehensive insurance which would be identical to our Irish one and within a fiver of the annual cost.
One sting in the tail was that within six weeks we would have to re-register our car in France.
We called to the sub prefecture in Beziers and got the long list of papers which we would need for this re-registration.
Among the mass of paper which we had to get was the certificate that the car had passed the French version of the Irish NCT (British MOT) test.

Then all of our ex-pat friends started to tell us about the difficulties therein.
The principal difficulty seemed to be with then beam direction of the car lights.
Our various ex-pat friends gave us various reports as to how this would best be organised.
One Scotsman told us that he had had to pay €600 and completely change the headlights in his Toyota , another, having been assured by her garage that having pasted on holiday deflectors would be sufficient, was sent away to get her lights changed also.

Síle insisted (against my judgment) that the only way we were going to find out what exactly needed doing was to go for the test and then just do what the man said.
That decided we went to the local Control Technique to get it done.
This does seem to be a much more informal test than the Irish one, no queuing or booking necessary but, as it takes much the same time, I imagine it is just as thorough.

Anyway we passed, he gave us a list of jobs which we should get done soon (replace one of the bulbs on the back numberplate etc.) but said that none of those would stop us passing.
Sile said to Monsieur “But what about the lights ?”
“They are perfect,” he said.
So now we are much relieved, richer, but still confused.
Is it possible that our Renault Megane sensed that it was back on French soil and adjusted its beams accordingly?

So now, once we have got:

A certificate of conformity from Renault England, ( Don’t ask)
A photo copy of my passport,
A copy of my driving licence,
A copy of the Irish Bill of Sale,
A current utility bill,
The original registration certificate of the car,
A vat tax clearance certificate for the car (available in St. Pons)
The pass certificate from the Control Technique,
And completed the long and complicated form (our French neighbour Dani helped us fill it in)
Then:
we can present ourselves to the Sub Prefecture
during the hours for Etrangers
(the last time we arrived at the time not for Etrangers but Madame, after a repremand, relented and gave us the form anyway)
and acquire a French number plate.

I’ll let you know how we get on.

One of the strange differences between our naming of live animals and their meat (Pigs/pork, Cows/ beef, Calfs/ veal, Deer / venison) is that we insist on calling what we would clearly call hens in the coop, chicken, when we put them on the table.

I have frequently come across older recipes which called for boiling fowl in their make up, clearly these are looking for a meat which won’t grill or fry and requires some stewing to make it palatable.
We had hens at home and even though we would often eat them roast, some I clearly remember were boiled for a long period and served with parsley sauce.
I also remember that these tasted particularly good.

Last saturday we went to the organic farmers market in Beziers.
There the chicken man, from whom we have bought delicious chickens, had on his counter a more mature speciman labelled a Vielle Poule, or Old Hen.
I asked him would this be a suitable candidate for making into a Coq au Vin and he agreed enthusiastically.
It cost me about €8, not cheap for a chicken but about half the price of this mans organic free range youngsters of the same size.

Yesterday I gave him the full Coq au Vin treatment, long slow cooking in reduced red wine, barely simmering in a very low oven, garnished with crisp chunks of streaky bacon, shallots and mushrooms, and scented with garlic, bay leaves and thyme.

I let the old lady simmer slowly in the oven at 140C while we went shopping for the afternoon and the reward was the most beautiful smell which filled the house when we got home.
This was a definite reminder of my childhood, a scent which our modern conception of chicken has left behind.

After that I would love to report that new culinary heights were also reached in the eating.
In fact the legs were excellent, succulent and moist. The skin strangely was tough and the breasts were perfectly edible but very dense and dry.
The best part of the dish was the strongly aromatic sauce which was full of flavour and quite delicious and really permiated the rice which we ate with it.

I now want to buy another and make a Poule au Pot, the Irish Stew of the French peasant.

FAME

We were at dinner in SoHo
and the couple at the next table
rose to go. The woman paused to say
to me. I just wanted you to know
I have got all your cookbooks
and I swear by them !

I managed
to answer her, Ma’am,
they’ve done you nothing but good !
which was perhaps immodest
of whoever I am.

– Les Murray

One of the things which we have gradually discovered since we have moved out here is the undiscovered splendours of the Parc Regional de Haut Languedoc.
This is a large area of mountains and garrigues (moorlands) within about 30 minutes drive from our house which seems to have just about everything for someone who enjoys being outdoors.
I do not any longer consider Canyoning, Mountain Climbing (when it might involve ropes) or indeed Riding (when it might involve horses) as fun things to do but am partial (when persuaded) to take a canoe trip down the river or a pleasant walk in the hills.

Last week in the bookshop in Beziers we found a book of walks in our part of the Languedoc; Balades en Terres d’Orb and yesterday, Easter Monday , joined by our friend Finola who is visiting, we tried out one of these called “Raouta Saoumas”.

The title is in Occitan and I have not as yet been able to translate it, but it possibly means the route of the summits.
The walk is an old mule track around the village of Saint-Nazaire-De-Laderez, a small sleepy village about 20 mts from us.

Rooftops of Saint Nazaire

We climbed up through the village and made a fairly steep ascent until we reached a pass between two hills.

This provided us with our first bit of joy, from there the whole of the south of Languedoc was stretched out before us, right down to the Mediterranean.
We could make out the towns of Beziers and Sete which must have been about 50 klms to our south. If we had managed to remember the binoculars from the car we would have been able to recognise all the other villages of the valley below us.

The next bit of the walk was a passage through garrigue, fairly splendid in late spring with violets and grape hyacinths on the chemin, and sloe blossom and almonds flowering on the wayside.
After a fairly tough scramble down a very shaley path (Sile’s walking poles were appreciated)

we got to the prettiest part of the walk, along a wood path, shaded by chestnuts which passed an old Olive mill from the 1800’s traversed the mill race,

crossed a stream and led us gently, passed Mimosa trees, just beginning to darken to dull yellow, back into St Nazaire.
There we enjoyed a beer in the Auberge des Acacias and congratulated ourselves on a fairly long walk on what turned out to be one of the first warm days of the season.
According to the book it should take an hour and three quarters, it took us an hour more.
They grade it Moyenne in their difficulty rating, the toughest over facile and tres facile.
We reckoned it had enough challenge to make it rewarding and enough rewards to make those challenges worthwhile.

I have taken to going on the terrace first thing each morning to check if I can see the Pyrennees

This morning they were faintly visible and some words of a song from the sixties came to mind.
They seemed appropiate to my morning ritual so I googled them and found they were from a Donovan song:

First there is a mountain
then there is no mountain,
then there is

Oh, the snow will be a blinding sight
to see as it lies
on yonder hillside

(admittedly there is lot of other stuff about caterpillers, snails and calling Juanita’s name, which has nothing to do with mountains, so I have conveniently omitted it)

In May, 2005 I first posted this blog.
It referred in fact to a holiday we had had five years before.
I had a vague notion of editing it as it is really too long but have decided to leave it just as it was,
just as it really happened.

Isn’t it a lovely name for your in-laws, your beautiful parents. Somehow it doesn’t carry any of the sting of “The In-Laws”.
My Father died about 15 years ago and my Mother about 7 so I had adopted my in-laws as my own.
Just before she died my Mother had come with us to America to my nephews wedding.She had thoroughly enjoyed this so we were determined to do something similar with Sile’s parents before it got too much for them.
They had come with us on holiday to Provence, and to the opera in Orange, in 1997 but that was “en famille” with Sile’s sister, brother-in law (read beau frere) and most of our (combined) children.
By the Summer of 2000 we were a much depleted holiday group, the children having decided to go on their own holidays, so it was just the two of us, Una and Martin, (beau frere and belle soeur) and les beaux parents who set of for a week to the little known Aveyron department of France. Our destination was a gite by a tiny village, La Fouillade, just south of the town of Villefranche de Rouergue.
We had passed through Rouergue on the way back from a holiday in Provence the previous year and had fallen in love with the area. It was in that wonderful state of being “undiscovered” and the Grande Place in Villefranche with its rock faced cathedral, by itself warranted a return visit. We thought it would be a nice quiet place for the beaux (but ancient) parents.
The whole holiday was in jeopardy for much of the spring as Sile’s mother (universally known by us as Mamo, from the Irish for Granny)had an operation to have an arthritic knee replaced quite close to our departure date and there was a question of whether she would be fit enough or not.
In the end she was, just.
Sile and I were elected to travel with the Beaux Parents as Martin and Una would already be in France, and arranged to meet us at the gite.
We were travelling by Air France to Toulouse with a change in Paris. Fired with the memory of previous Air France flights when disabled passengers had been given preferential and advanced passage from planes we booked a wheelchair for Mamo in Charles de Gaulle.
As our luck would have it they decided to reverse the previous procedures on this flight and made us wait until all the passengers had disembarked before they hydraulically lifted a by now fuming Mamo (“I am perfectly capable of walking you know!”) off the back door of the plane and on to a wheelchair.
The result of this was that we missed our connection and had to be put up overnight in Paris by Air France.

And here started our troubles.

Air France couldn’t have been nicer. They fed us in the nicest restaurant in the Airport and then packed us off by taxi to Hotel Bleu Marine which they assured us was nearby.
Would that the taxi driver was equally well informed, we could see it all right, behind the high fence of its enclave, the taxi driver joked , (yes a Parisian taxi driver joked!) that if we went around a certain roundabout for a fifth time he wouldn’t be able to charge us any fare.
After the fifth (and we weren’t paying anyway) we found our way and arrived at the cavernous foyer of the Bleu Marine.
The foyer was decorated with the usual assortment of lounging beaux monde who, while busy sipping their digestifs, watched the , now very bedraggled, Irish procession head towards the tiny lift which was of course at the very end of the foyer.
We packed in, just, with Daideo last, his back to the doors and creaked up to the fourth floor.
Arriving at the fourth the doors opened, no budge out of the beaux pere, I realised that he had his back to the open door and couldn’t see it.
“The door is open Daideo” “Where ?” says he, fair enough. But at that stage they were shutting and we made our inevitable journey back to the ground floor.
As the lift doors re-opened on the motley Irish some of the clientele in the hotel foyer actually stood up to better see this strange group of people who had evidently come in just to have spins up and down in the lift.

Eventually we made it to the bedrooms, aware that we had to get up at about 5.30 to get our re-scheduled flight to Toulouse.
The next disaster was likely our fault. We woke late, called the parents late, and all scrambled down to the taxi in a rush.
We were half way to the airport when Mamo clapped her hand over her mouth and said “ my teeth !” “they are still under the pillow.”
To have gone back to the hotel at that stage would have meant missing a second flight so we consoled Mamo as much as possible and headed to De Gaulle and onwards to Toulouse.
The next disaster had a certain surreal edge to it.
We hadn’t carried our “in hold” luggage with us as Air France had assured us they would be on our flight in the morning. As they were.
That is all but Sile’s and my large suitcase which held our entire clothes for the holiday. We watched at baggage carousel number 1 in vain. All the other luggage was there but our large red suitcase was missing.
At this stage there was some urgency to get the parents to the house and get at least a cup of tea inside Mamo. Sile sent me to sort out the suitcase while she collected the hired car. We still had a 100 kms or so to go to La Fouillade. Off she went while I went up to the nearest Air France official, to start the investigation of the missing suitcase.
Considering the quality of my French we understood each other well enough. He explained that I would have to go to a special department, high in the upper floors of the airport as that was the only place where I could lodge my complaint. He explained to me how to get there, and then disappeared towards a lift.
After some confusion I arrived at the relevant door. Knocked. “Entrez” said the man I had just spoken to! He showed no sign whatsoever that he had ever met me before!
Shook, I resolved to go on with my missing case story. I repeated to the man the same details I had already told him downstairs to which he reacted as if he had never heard them before. I was in his office for some time as I had to ring the owner of my Gite to get the postal address to which, my official promised, my case would be delivered within a few days.
I was still bothered and slightly bewildered later as we left his office (together like old friends.)
Then he said something very peculiar, “Did you try Carousel 12?” “That is the trans- Atlantic carousel but sometimes……”
Intrigued I went with him to carousel 12 where, our large red suitcase was making its solo stately circuits.
Pathetically glad to be reunited with it I asked no further questions and fled to Sile and our hired car.

We found our way successfully out of the airport (we don’t always, we spent a long time trying to exit from Nice Airport once) and the first part of out journey was trouble free. The next disaster was perhaps to have greater consequences than any of the others. As a result of this particular mishap every time I drive a hired car in France Sile is convinced that we are going to hit the right hand ditch and recoils constantly from it.
While driving through the town of Gailliac, (brilliant red wine ) I mis-judged a high pavement and shredded both the tyre and the wheel on the right front.
We hurt no one but limped noisily down to the nearest parking place to check the damage. We then had a stroke of luck. We pulled in next to a French Camper van. Monsieur leapt out, grasped the situation immediately, took over the entire wheel changing, sent his wife to the van from where she returned with a basin of warm water, soap and towels so I could clean up and generally made us feel that “cead mile failte” should be a slogan for the French tourism board to use.
That was, to some extent the end of the disasters on the outward journey.

We found the gite which was lovely, all unspoiled in a meadow of wild flowers.

The family on the terrace at la Fouillade

The accommodation was very comfortable, the house holder had left us a large quantity of excellent Gailliac wine to get us going, the local boulangerie had good croissants, what more could one want?

Exploring the area was another bonus.
We had previously been to Albi which has a superb Cathedral and also some terrific Brocantes which kept me happy. Cordes sur Ciel, which truly justifies its name, we had seen from a distance but now got to explore.

Myself and my beau famille on the steps of Albi Cathedral
((N.B. Mamo’s white cloth bag)

Any notion that Mamo and Daideo would be left gently relaxing on the terrace of the gite was quickly dispelled as they proved ready, if not entirely able, to gallivant off with us on our explorations.
But all the time we were conscious of Mamo’s unease at her lack of teeth.
We rang the Blue Marine Hotel and yes, they had found the teeth but no they could not send them on. Could we not call in for them on the way back?
When we consulted the timetables this was impossible, so Sile, emboldened by her mothers unhappiness, rang the hotel again. She had decided to bribe, if necessary, whoever answered the phone to help us out.
Then we had our second stroke of luck.
The girl who answered this time was helpfulness itself.
Of course she would help. As she lived near Charles de Gaulle she would drop them there herself at the Air France office.
Sudden relief of all parties. (We afterwards sent her a silver Celtic necklace as a thank you)

And so, at the end of a most unusual holiday, we set off home.
The flight again involved us in a change in Paris. As we got towards De Gaulle Sile pointed out to me that the terminal for Ireland was some distance from the one we were going to arrive in at.
The decision was made, she would run on ahead to (hopefully) collect the teeth while I would bundle the parents along as fast as possible. (We had about an hour before our Dublin flight)
And bundling was indeed what I turned out to be at.
We discovered that the best means of transport between the two terminals was with a series of moving walkways.Both Sile’s parents use walking sticks and were a little unsteady even with these.Therefore a decision on how we would proceed was necessary. Another small matter was that
Mamo carried with her a white open topped cloth bag with all her presents for home which could not be let down or it would spill its contents all over the concourse.
This was how we eventually proceeded.
I carried both sticks and the cloth bag. I carefully ladled them both on to the walkway and lodged them on to a hand rail. Then, carrying the sticks and the bag, if I ran like hell I arrived before them at the end of the section of walkway.
There I could catch them gently as they were disgorged by walkway one and lodge them, again gently, on to the next one.
And so we proceeded over what must have been about six of these until we eventually arrived at our terminal and a disappointed looking Sile.
It turned out that there were dozens of Air France offices at the terminals.
Sile had tried several of them and all in vain. It looked like we were going to have to return without the teeth.
Now however the immediate priority was to get our flight for which several “last calls” had been delivered as we leap frogged along towards our check in desk.
As we approached the desk I saw a parcel sitting on the desk a small box, about the size for a set of teeth. My heart lifted, could it possibly be…
“Madame Ronayne” said the charming check in man “ I have a parcel for you”
The relief was immense.
Our reward for the whole holiday was on the flight back when Mamo opened her parcel and then, after a discreet bow of the head and a little adjusting, raised her head and graced us all with a magnificent smile.
Her first full smile for a week.

One additional moment on the holiday should be mentioned before I finish.
When we got into Toulouse airport on the way back we called into the Air France office to enquire about the whereabouts of the offices in De Gaulle.
There was a very upset Irish girl there with whom we started to talk.
It turned out her luggage had been mislaid and she was facing a holiday without clothes.
“Have you tried carousel 12 “ said I.
“That wasn’t the one our flight used”said she.
“Try it anyway” said I and pointed her towards it.