Miraculous that, despite being about 1500 kilometres apart, today, on my birthday, thanks to the marvels of Skype Video, I have managed to talk, face to face, with my three daughters, my son-in-law and my grandson.
The world is shrinking fast.

04.00

And then, to make a liar out of me, my friend Michael (aka Mud Slide Slim) Video Skyped me from Andalucia.

Making it an even smaller world.

I was writing an email to someone in Ireland when I wanted to ask them to do something for me. “If you are agreeable…” I said and then stopped myself short.
I was suddenly convinced that I had the wrong word.
I was sure I was asking these people if they were pleasant. Wasn’t I ?

I was being caught by one of the false friends of translation.
Those words which are almost identical in both languages yet which, over time have changed nuance and have drifted somewhat apart.

When the grandson was here, last summer we stopped at a café on the Gorge d’Heric where he oogled and conquered a French Mamie at a nearby table.
“Mais il est agréable” she said, I thought it was maybe a little quaint to use that word about him, a little Jane Austin in fact when weather and walks were discribed as “agreeable”.
Just before Christmas, while on a walk ourselves, we met a lady from the village who remarked to us that the weather, which was unseasonably mild was “trés agréable”
The penny started to drop, the French agréable was a word which now meant pleasant or friendly and had in fact lost its meaning of agreement, as of two people deciding to adopt the same course.
The reverse had happened in English where the French meaning had now become old fashioned.
Thus my problem with the communication with Ireland.
I was using the word in the English sense having got accustomed to the French one.

To be sung (kinda) to the tune of The Beatles
“When I’m Sixty Four”

Now that I’m older
Lost most of my hair
(And any left is white)
I’ve little fear of being locked out of the house
If I go out at night

But despite being grumpy,
Rotund and vague
I still have lots of fun
And if ye still need me
I’ll continue to feed ye
Now I’m sixty one

On yesterdays walk about we noticed that despite the still bitter cold the Almond trees have started to flower. Roll on spring.

Remember the little Orange pot we bought in the Trocante in Beziers a few days ago ?
Well I got curious about it and had a look at its bottom.
It had a mark.

So, nerd that I am, I started to trawl through the internet, through French pottery mark sites, to see if I could find something about it.

No mark appeared even vaguely like it.

Síle then suggested as it was obviously a Marmalade Pot surely it must be English, the land where Breakfast Marmalade is a religion.

She was right.

There I found the mark , dating the piece at around the 1850’s and if I could read all the letters it could also tell me who made it.

Rather nice to think that one hundred and sixty years ago our little pot was resting by a toast rack somewhere in middle England.

Several years ago I met a lady at a function who had her leg in plaster.
When I asked her what happened she explained that she broke her leg on a skiing holiday in the French Alps.
My ears pricked up, I was interested in French medicine.
“How did they treat you ?” I asked her.
She got a dreamy look on her face “I have never been treated better ” she said. “The hospital was like a four star hotel, I was thinking of breaking the second leg so I could stay on ”

Nearly three years ago when Clive and I made our first trip out to France to work on the house we ended in accident and emergency in Beziers hospital and being enormously impressed by the treatment given there.
(That long story is told here or on 7/3/07 in the archives if that link don’t work.)

It makes you wonder as why the hospital services in France appear to be so much better than those in Ireland.

In this mornings Midi Libre there is a story of a man of 60 going into accident and emergency in Beziers hospital, being misdiagnosed by the doctor on duty and as a consequence he died eight days later.
His son pursued the matter in the courts and as a result the doctor was fined €5000 and sentenced to a year in prison.
The question I ask myself is would that happen in Ireland ?

About fifteen years ago when we were travelling back from a holiday in the south of France we saw the signs that there was a Foire de Brocante in Chaumont-sur-Loire, on the river bank just below the castle.

There Síle was taken by a green leaf shaped dish (top right hand in the picture below) and so began her initiation into the world of collecting .
Over the years she has got together a small collection of these plates, pots ,and dishes which pretend to be green leaves, vegetables or fruit.

Now I will have to go down a wee meander.

This January, as is my wont I bought abouy 10 kilos of Seville Oranges to make my years supply of Orange marmalade.
There is really nothing to beat it for eary morning zing on the tongue.
I made the first five kilos worth,(froze the second five kilos to make later [they are here with me in France]) with prerserving sugar, as is my wont, but because I was making it in Ireland and all my large preserving pans were in France I made a mess of it and didn’t get it to a rolling enough boil to achieve setting point in the little pot I was cooking it in.
Undaunted I decided to bring the unset preserve out to France and there, with the help of a couple of bottles of liquid pectin (bought in Ireland) I persuaded it to set.
For the last couple of weeks we have been gorging on this delicious marmalade each breakfast.

Back to today.

One of the joys of French shopping is that it is always possible to sneak in a little second hand browsing into all the boring stuff.
Today was no exception.
In between trying to discover the best method of hanging our curtains we took a little sneaky peek into the Trocante which is in the middle of the largest shopping centre in Beziers.
There we both fell for this little orange pot.

It is definitely a match for the Green Pottery but also it must be the most perfect Marmalade Pot.

John Doonican, who’s father Val must have been one of Waterford’s most famous sons , has written to me asking about the Tramontane wind that people talk about in this part of the world.
It is a most interesting question and has set me off Googling and Wikapediaing at a great rate.

My first personal contact with this wind was when we were doing the tour of the castle in Carcassonne. At one point the guide made a little joke about the wind in the turrets and then explained that she always made this joke at this part of the tour because “In Carcassonne it is always windy”
This wind is the Tramontane.

From what I can gather this word Tramontane, which most likely means the Across Mountain (wind), has been used for hundreds of years usually to mean a cold northerly wind coming from (you have guessed it ) across the mountains.
Often in Italy (where it is called the Tramontana) and other eastern European countries this is a wind which has been chilled by passage over the Alps.
This of course means that it is very closely related to that wind which whistles down the Rhone Valley and which is the scourge of Provence and the Cote d’Azure; the Mistral.
The Tramontane in Languedoc however is something different and quite specific.

Between the Atlantic coast of France and the Mediterranean there is a natural corridor caused by the Massif Central to the north and the Pyrennees to the south and it is down this narrow corridor that our version of the Tramontane travels- or indeed near Carcassonne often gallops.
Therefore , in the Languedoc, it is a north westerly rather than a northerly wind and indeed it is often welcome here in the heat of summer.
In the winter it is not always so welcome and at the moment it is being blamed by the weathermen for our most unseasonal snow.

This piece I originally wrote in Sept 2006 and it has been requested to be repeated by my friend Isabel

How to Iron a Shirt

Now that I am semi-retired with much more free time than my wife, who still teaches, she reckoned that it was about time I started to tackle some of the house work.
As a 57 year old male I am, I think , reasonably well house trained. The kitchen holds no fears for me and I can, should I feel the need, tackle the hoovering/ dusting tasks (the fact that I don’t feel the need as often as my wife is irrelevant)
The one black hole in my house skills canon however, and that one that my wife determined to rectify, is laundry.
Not being prepared as yet to trust to me the higher levels of the washing machine, with its pitfalls of colours and fabric types involving one in the third level skills of sorting and reading washing instructions, my wife decided to start by giving me a series of tutorials on ironing.
I had up to this always imagined that I could iron and had been known to rub the iron over something if needed.
That this involved only taking the creases out of those parts which would be exposed to the world was, I assumed a general practice.
However it must be confessed that if I was appearing anywhere where I was likely to be closely observed I would get herself to do the pressing.

It is now about three months since I started to iron and I think I am getting the hang of it, so much so that I have decided to share my new found skills with the world.

First thing to do is to have ready a hanger hanging on a hook somewhere clean ready to receive the crisp freshly ironed shirt.
Then set up the ironing board.
(If you haven’t already been shown how to do this it may take some time, I speak from experience here)
Next plug in the iron and then fill it with water should it be a steam iron.
(If it isn’t don’t)
Next read the label on the shirt with its ironing instructions (this is the little picture of an iron on a label, usually hidden down a side seam.)
Count the amounts of dots on the picture of the iron and then set the iron on a setting with one dot more than the picture. (the manufacturers always err on the side of caution in this, should you believe them you will spent hours of effort pressing to no avail. All women are born knowing this fact.)
Now shake out the shirt and, as if you were hiring a car and checking it for scratches or dents, check for previous stains or scorch marks.
If you find any mark their exact location on a chart.

The first thing to press is the collar.
This like all parts of the shirt should be ironed inside out.
(this reduces the risk of scorch marks on the side that shows)
However as we in fact wear our collars inside out this is the one piece you press on the outside.
Work from the outside edge of both sides of the collar in towards the middle, this way you avoid unsightly creases at the front seam of the collar.

Now, holding the shirt inside out, hold it by the seam that runs across the back under the collar, this is –I believe- called the yoke, or else the yolk or else something completely different. I am relying on my mother’s term here and she, it turns out, was an most unreliable witness.
She may well have called it the yoke on the basis that she couldn’t remember its proper name.
Now iron this yolk/yoke carefully.
The next bit to tackle are the sleeves, first the cuffs.
The cuffs are a bit of a doddle, just lay them inside out and hammer away.
The sleeves are a different matter altogether.
Apparently it is a sign of extreme lack of skill to leave creases on a sleeve, this is how you avoid it.
With the sleeve inside out take it by the seam and then smooth the whole sleeve down with your hand.
Now iron the sleeve but, and this is the tricky bit, stop just before you get to the edge of the length.
Now reverse the sleeve and on the other side do exactly the same.
Because sleeves are not symmetrical you will have miraculously managed to iron all the sleeve and have left no crease.
(If you can’t manage this the first time don’t worry, the knack eventually comes with practice)
A small note here, don’t proceed to the main body of the shirt without doing the second sleeve.
It is extremely disappointing to arrive at a triumphant conclusion only to find an unironed sleeve hanging guiltily from the side of the crisp shirt.
I speak from experience again here.

The next stage is to tackle the main body of the shirt.
Start with the back and iron the tail, that is that piece which stretches from the yolk/yoke down. This bit too is a doddle.
Next bit to do is the side with the buttons.
This bit also requires a little care.
Laying the shirt inside out press away on the body and then cautiously approach the placket on which are hung the buttons.
(Excuse me for being a little technical here)
Now I have two methods for tackling these.
The differing methods depend on my mood and the thickness of the buttons.
Method one is to hammer away over the buttons as if they weren’t there, this gets the placard reasonably flat and is the fastest. (Remember this will be fully hidden by the placard holding the buttonholes)
The disadvantage of this method is that sometimes this causes a button to shoot off its moorings, or, more unusual this , melt.
Either way this can involve one in the skill of “sewing” which is a different one altogether to ironing and one where I am sorry I can’t help you.
The safer, if slower option is that once you come to the button area you then make little incursions with the mere point of the iron in and out of the spaces between the buttons.
Then, and this one I still find tricky, you have to press that tiny area of cloth between the buttons and the edge.
This has to be done by reversing the shirt and daring to iron on its correct side.

Last and easiest bit, like the biblical best wine , is that side which has the button holes. The only potential disaster area on this is should it contain a pocket.
First check that the pocket is totally empty.
Then approach the whole area with caution, turning frequently to make sure that the pocket hasn’t got itself into a pleat.
Take your time, it usually works out in the end.

And then that is it.
Now take the shirt carefully and hang it on its awaiting hanger, then move it out of any dangerous areas and into a sterile environment as soon as you can.

Then proceed with the next one..