Went through Roquebrun today to discover that the Mimosa were flowering in The Mediterranean Garden, we haven’t ever managed to see these before.

The large tree in our small garden in Thezan is known as a Chinaberry.
At this time of the year when it has lost its leaves and grown its berries you can see why.

I was given a book by Charles Timony called Pardon My French by my wife for my birthday.
It is a dream of a book for a language nerd like me.

The author loves pointing out those huge moments when the dictionaries let us down, in fact exactly when we become lost in translation.

I have picked out a few of his plums and will probably give you some more in the future.

When I was stopped by a large family group in Collioure a few years ago and asked to photograph the whole family together I rather nastily said “Dits Fromage” at them which they all dutifully did, their mystification evident on their faces.
What I should of course have said was “Dits Ouistiti”which is how the French make themselves smile. In a similar vein the true Coq, as against the Cock, says Cocorio instead of Cock a Doodle Doo.

There are a couple of instances where our French dictionaries in school positively let us down. Un Tapis, is not really a carpet but a rug, Moquette is in fact the word for what we call carpet, Velo is the word for bicycle much more so than bicyclette which they told us was the word in school.
Another one worth remembering , especially if it is your tipple, is never order Scotch in a pub or Café. If you do will be given a roll of sellotape.

As I promised her are some shots of the work in progress.

The main reason for this trip was Clive and I putting in the kitchen.
This is progressing well,

The cooker-surely the most important bit, is in.

This was a detour Clive had to take.
Given that there are going to be 9 people here at Easter we wanted to get the bathroom functioning in the attic and to do this the plumber was waiting for us to install a floor.
This was done this afternoon.

Last bit of work in progress is the yellow Jasmine which is quietly doing its best to cover the terrace awning.

As soon as you get off the ferry in Cherbourg you are always faced with the prospect of a long wait to pass by the police in immigration.
The French believe in making this a fairly intimidating procedure and the soldiers by whom you have to pass are usually fairly taciturn and armed with guns.

On Saturday last we eventually inched our way up the line until we were stopped by the grumpy looking soldier on duty.

“What it you are transporting in this vehicle” he said in French.

“A kitchen” I said apprehensively.(Were we going to have to unpack the lot for him?)

But suddenly the brotherhood of food surfaced.

” A kitchen ” he said with a huge grin “But that is a good thing”
And with a smile he waved us through.

“I’m sixty now so I can kick back a little bit.
Sixty is the new fifty and dead is the new alive.”

Stephen King

Since I read Julia O Faoilean’s novel I have always wanted to find a woman in a wall.
Since her novel referred to an anchorite who voluntarily immured herself in a convent I felt my chances were much better since we purchased the presbytere here.

Amazingly in the course of the building work the builder found two perfect sites for the same woman , both twere boarded up doorways but both unfortunately turned out womanless.
She has arrived finally and in a most unexpected manner.

Isabel’s daughter, Lucy stayed with us last summer and was quite enchanted with the myriad layers of wallpaper and the colours we were uncovering as we stripped off layer after layer.
This made me look at these walls again with a new eye.

That was how I found her, buiried among the layers.

Can you see her, a blue figure among the many colours.

She is going nowhere, Clive has agreed to make a frame for her and she is going to be the star of our dining room.

She is difficult to name, she obviously takes her stance from the Statue of Liberty, but our statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in the Courtyard has nothing to fear as she doesn’t look the least bit religious.
I suppose I should call her Marianne after the iconic bare breasted symbol of the revolution

I have gone down to Thezan with friend/carpenter/designer Clive Nunn to install the kitchen in the Presbytere.

We headed off on the Oscar Wilde, still run fairly impeccibly by Eastern Europeans, I say fairly impeccibly because while the boat is still very friendly and clean the food seems to have taken a turn for the worse.
Our barman on the way over was called Vlad which caused much amusement to us.There seems to be no end to the jokes one can make on a name forever associated with an impaler.At a Eurotoques meeting in Brussels a few years ago I met a putative member from Hungary who had been christened Atilla by his mother. A fairly common occurance in Hungary he assured me but a difficult choice for an Irishman to take without shock.

We had a lovely sun filled trip down through France, did the whole 1,100 klms in just under 11 hours, mainly because it was a sunday and the autoroutes are clear of lorries on that day.
The house was welcoming and full of sun, yesterday the temperature on the terrace reached a comrortable 28 centegrade.

The kitchen is coming on nicely and i should have some good work in progress pictures before the week is out.

There was a photograph competition in last Saturday’s Guardian with the above title as topic which was won by Graham Chesters with this picture he took in a village (obviously very like ours) in the Languedoc.

This is a scene I have often seen but this man was clever to capture and name it.

I know it’s not our village because the hinges in Thezan are different but they are similar enough that it probably is a village close by.

We lived in a house in Cork called Tree Tops which was directly over the river Lee and all boats passing in or out of the port were clearly visible from the house.
My mother , as was normal at the time, gave birth to all seven of us (I was the last) in her bedroom overlooking the river.

She always claimed that as I was being born, on 13th March 1949, she heard great noises and celebrations coming from the river.
Her doctor (and friend) Billy Kearney went to the window and told her that it was the Inisfallen coming up the river back from Fishguard bearing the victorious Irish rugby team who had just won the Triple Crown and were carrying the cup in victory to Cork.

They didn’t win it again until 1982, when I was 33 (an significant age as all Christians know)

Could my 60th be a good omen for The Grand Slam (last won by Ireland the year before I was born) ?

Post Script at 12.15.

I have just had an inspiration and searched the archives of the Irish Times.
There sure enough it states that on Saturday 12th March 1949 in Swansea the Irish beat the Welsh to win the Triple Crown.
This gives them perfect time to be sailing up the river in Cork on Sunday 13th.