In this mornings Irish Times there is a story about a Cod found off Arklow with a purse in its belly full of Victorian coins.
My mind was immediately filled with memories of the peculiar relationship between our families, both Sile’s and mine, and disappearing engagement rings.
In 1972, when Sile and I decided to get married I went home to announce the engagement to my mother.
“What kind of a ring are you going to get?” was my mother’s first question.
“We aren’t getting engaged” I said scathingly, how Bourgeois I thought, us free hippy spirits wouldn’t dream of being so conventional.
“If you like you could have Granny Daly’s ring “ she said.
All scruples immediately vanished and I accepted with alacrity.
Not only was Granny Daly’s ring a beautiful cluster of diamonds it was also a ring with a history.

When my Granny got married in the 1910’s she moved into a large terraced Victorian house in Blackrock in Cork where she was to spend the rest of her life.
This house had an extensive garden complete with tennis court and large vegetable patch.

Every night as she went to bed she took off her engagement ring and left it on her dressing room table.
One day, not long after her marriage when she went to look for it the following day she found it missing.
Consternation and a thorough house search followed but it was nowhere to be found.
Granny suspected a recently employed maid but nothing was found in her room, notwithstanding she was dismissed anyway.

The searches revealed nothing and eventually the case was closed.

Twenty five years later , in the mid thirties, a gardener was digging potatoes for the family in the vegetable patch and he came across an old rusty alarm clock, one with large clappers on top leading into the works inside.
Before he threw it on the rubbish tip he gave it a shake and, intrigued by the rattle decided to look inside.
In the middle of the works he found, you have guessed it, Granny’s engagement ring.

How it got there was of course anyone’s guess but eventually a putative scenario was put together.

The alarm clock had been the one that stood on the Granny’s table at the time of the robbery . The untrustworthy maid had seen her opportunity to steal the ring, shoved it through the opening at the top with the thought of reclaiming it later, but was then fired before she got the chance.
The clock, in the fullness of time had been retired and ended up thrown by a child into the garden.

It caused such a stir that a piece was written about the ring in the Cork Examiner, a cutting which my mother always kept, along with the ring which she inherited, in her jewel box.

When Sile brought the ring home to her family and told them the story her mother was particularly intrigued.
It appears she too had lost her ring.

When she was first married they lived in Multyfarnham Co. Westmeath.
Every week Sile’s mother used to walk along the banks of a stream to a farm for fresh eggs for the children.

Her engagement ring was a little loose, and, afraid that she might loose it, she used to pop it into the purse in which she used to carry the money for the eggs.
On this particular day she wrapped the ring in a ten shilling note in her purse and set off for the eggs.
When she got there the purse and the ring were gone.
Despite searching all along the path she never succeeded in finding it.

Fast forward another twenty five years and Sile’s mother is watching Garda Patrol on the tele.
The programme on this particular night finished on a little whimsical note.
“A large salmon has been caught in Lough Derravaragh and when opened up its stomach was found to contain a purse and inside this was a pound note wrapped around an engagement ring”
Now Sile’s mum knew that the stream she walked by flowed into Lough Derravaragh decided not to claim the purse because
she reckoned it could never have survived all this time and that –to her crucially- the ring was said to be wrapped in a pound note instead of the ten shilling note she knew she had wrapped it in.

Maybe she was right, when we made enquiries after she told us the story the Garda told us that all found items were auctioned off after a few years so, now, we will never know.

Strange coincidence to think of both family rings being lost, but stranger still that one of them was afterwards found.
I never look at the ring on Sile’s finger without remembering both stories.

One of the few things I am not frightened of is Spiders
so I got a call from Sile this morning to come upstairs
with a steps, a large glass and a piece of card to collect
one from the top of the wall (thus the steps).

She was a beauty, fully three inches across.
I captured her (I think her, I’m not good at sexing spiders)
with the card and glass and then released her on top of the
bin (where I took her picture) I then tried to persuade her to
pose on a sheet of white paper (for contrast) but she left .

Here she is in all her glory-just a little magnified.

Post Scriptum.

I have just discovered where she left for :- Liverpool.
Look for Liverpool Spider on You Tube and watch her progress !

You can see by my expression that they forced me to do it.

…………..just a bowl of Cherries.

(On the terrace in Faugeres)

And then I got curious.
Where did the song come from?
When was it written?

It turns out that it is an original Tin Pan Alley hit, written in 1931.

Here are the lyrics
(and I’m not saying that they constitute my philosophy of life)

Life is just a bowl of cherries
Don’t take it serious,
Life’s too mysterious
You work,
You save,
You worry so
But you can’t take your dough
When you go, go, go

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh, aha!
Laugh and love
Live and laugh,
Laugh and love,
Live and laugh at it all!

Which in turn gives me an interesting footnote;
“The Berries” is not, after all, an original Cork expression, unless it travelled to Old Grey Whistle Land.

A field bursting with wildflowers near Neffiès in the Languedoc last July.

As photographed in August by Finola

Now that the prospect of the long held dream of a Chambre d’Hote in France is approaching reality and I can talk freely about the prospects of opening within the next year I find myself constantly fielding questions from people about how we managed to get the dream this far.
Some of these people are, I know, fellow dreamers who hope to follow us out to a warmer climate far from the grey Irish skies, some, like those addicted to “Place in the Sun” style television, would never dream of leaving their comfort zone but are happy to enjoy the vicarious pleasure of watching someone else leave theirs.

Ours is a dream that goes a way way back, in fact this is our second shot at it.
Just after we were first married, in the early seventies, we headed off to France and a new life.
We didn’t last long, about two months of working in a Country House Hotel in Anjou.
The place had a rough winter, France went into one of its strike bound phases and so, tails just a little between the legs, we returned home.

Strangely this never demolished the dream.
For the next thirty years we fed the dream with holidays in France, always creeping just a little further south, from Brittany, to the Vendee, to the Lot, the Auvergne, Provence and then Languedoc.

I used to survive the long Irish winter by ticking off the days in my diary until we would arrive again in Cherbourg, or St Malo or Roscoff and start the long drive through the changing landscapes south.

For many years we shared these holidays with Sile’s sister Una and her family, ten of us, four adults and six children, often augmented by an extra in law or two.
In later years, when our children deserted us we often went with a party of friends, again often eight or ten.

This was when I discovered that it was my delight to cook for these people on holiday.
The food in the markets, butchers and supermarkets were so good and fresh that, even though I had spent my year cooking in our restaurant in Waterford I revelled in the busman’s holiday atmosphere of cooking for my friends.

Thus was the dream nurtured and kept alive.
It was never just a pipe dream, every year on our holidays we never passed an estate agents window without gathering up the For Sale brochures and looking for properties which we could afford.
I decided that it was vital that my overconfident but inaccurate French achieved some schooling so have been attending classes for the last ten years, Sile having been exchanged to France during her teens was fluent.

It was sometime in the autumn of 2004 when I had my Eureka moment.

We were eating together in the restaurant having just come back from a week in Wales during which I had not had a moments peace as there was a problem in the restaurant with blocked sewage which was not resolving.
I was quite sure that at this stage Sile was just about fed up with the restaurant which she compared to a child which would not grow up and leave home but rather become more troublesome as it got older.

It was then that I asked my self the question ;
“What would you like to do most with your life ?”

The simple answer was go on holiday to France.
Then , finally , the penny dropped.
If we opened a B & B, in France life could be always like the holidays.

Eureka!

Sometimes fate is kind to one, amazingly kind, and very soon afterwards , before we had even put the Restaurant on the market, someone came and made us an offer which we could not refuse.
The dream was for the first time in strong danger of becoming a reality.

It was however September of 2005 before the last paperwork for the restaurant was sorted and we had bought ourselves a little house here in Waterford that we started to get practical about how we were going to make the dream a reality.
Despite our numerous holidays in France over the years we were at that stage still undecided where we would settle.

The following July, after our daughter’s wedding, we set off on a holiday in which our route was not planned, instead we were going to wander through all of our favourite parts France and thus decide which of these many regions was going to be the home of the B&B.

Brittany and Normandy were the first discarded because of their unreliable climate, we reckoned we could get much the same at home in Ireland.

The Loire, where we had first worked, was a contender. We knew its castles and rivers, its beautiful affluent villages, terrific wines and it was only a few hours from the Atlantic ports- buy was it too a bit far north?

Burgundy, again terrific wines and the scene of many a great night in gourmet hotels on the way back from the South, was a great and undiscovered area but again we thought a little too far north.

The Auvergne, the poorest and most like Ireland of the French areas, was full of interest but in the end discarded as it was not adequately served by airlines.

Provence, which we loved, had , thanks to Peter Mayle, just become too dear.

This left us with the South West, the provinces of Aquitaine, Midi Pyrenees and Languedoc Roussillon.
The Atlantic coast of Aquitaine was never really a contender, we were looking for a Mediterranean rather than an Atlantic climate and anyway we didn’t really know the area.

By the end of that holiday the field was narrow, but yet not decided.
I think the make your mind up decider was a Ryanair moment the following February.

We decided to go to the coast of Languedoc, to stay in Marseillan and to talk to estate agents while there.
The handiest way out was Ryanair to Montpellier via London.
On the way out Sile lost her passport on the plane, we ended spending an undesired week end in London and having a firm conviction that a direct flight from Ireland would be a must if we hoped to persuade Irish customers to come.
Carcassonne had flights from Shannon and Dublin direct, so that was the decision.
The Dwyer’s new venture must be within 100 klms, or one hour from Carcassonne.

The first places we looked on that holiday were by the sea or close to it.
These helped us enormously to decide on the Must Haves of our new venture.
So here was the essential list;

1) Within 100klms of Carcassonne
2) In a town or village (we had seen how country dwellers had to wrap their houses in security on departure, in the towns and villages neighbours watched out for neighbours.)
3) Said village must have at least its own Baker, and preferably a butcher and a weekly market.
4) The house must have at least three lettable rooms which could be made into “en Suites” and another in which we could sleep.
5) A Good Terrace for eating out during the summer (and the autumn and spring)
6) (And this was a sticky one) A garden big enough to put a swimming pool-the French word for this was Piscinable . This was not because we intended to immediately put one in but wanted the chance of doing so in the future
7) It must be within budget, or if needing lots of work, be considerably below.
8) We must both fall in love with it, this effectively meant it must be of some age, quirkiness and beauty.

This was, we soon began to realise an extremely tall order.

Our first houses which we looked at in February of 2006 were failures, principally on numbers 6 and 7, or in other words they had no gardens, little or no terraces and were too dear for us.
We soon realised that proximity to the coast came with a price, the nearer the dearer so we decided to move our search further inland and it was this in mind that we organised ourselves for intense house hunting during the following July and August.

This time we came prepared.
We contacted the agents well in advance and had lined up hosts of eager estate agents to show us around properties during the month of August.

One of the lessons we did learn early on was not to mention Chambre d’Hotes as most of the agents then only brought you to established ones which were for sale.
We were very sure we wanted to do our own thing and not pay for anyone else’s goodwill.

And so we spent a fortnight of seeing some totally unsuitable properties.
Some were in a shocking state of disrepair, often with unfinished renovations.
One was infested with fleas which we discovered in the agents car on the way home and spent a hilarious ten minutes half stripped by the roadside vigorously grooming each other.
Lots had gardens alright but at some distance from the house, lots were too small,
one had its terrace accessible only through the bathroom, some were hideously modern (and too dear) some were just too near pounding traffic.
Some in were in villages which had died years ago (often having a weekly visit from a butcher or a baker) some were in towns which were too big.

We saw one in the village of Azille which ticked a lot of boxes but, at the end of the garden there was a huge remis, a sort of barn, in stone which was obviously just about to fall down, too scary but the best to date.

We had we knew kept the best wine to the last.
Freddy Rueda in St. Genies de Fontadet had the reputation for being a good man to sell.
We arrived to St Genies in the middle of August and met his agent, Charles, in the local café.
He had a large bundle of properties in a file .
We had seen so many unsuitable properties at this stage that I decided to level with him, Charles had been to university in England so communications were easy.
I basically gave him our essentials list and also told him we wanted to end up with a B&B.
Charles immediately put down the file, extracted two properties and said “Fine, now I know what to do, I will show you two properties, one just for comparison purposes and the other you will buy”
He then brought us to a house in Autignac, big enough but with the garden down the road from the house, then he brought us to the Presbytere in Thezan les Beziers.

As we were going in he stopped at the door;
“This house has something you didn’t ask for but I’m sure you actually want when you see it; A View.”
It had, also it ticked all the other boxes.
That night Sile and I argued up and down for hours on end, in agonies of indecision, could this possibly be the one?
The following day we went back to the property in Azille, I think that was the clincher, there was no doubt the Presbytere was head and shoulders over that house.
The following day we made an offer, by December all the red tape had been satisfied and it was ours.

Now nearly two years later the project is on the last long stretch. We now have our four bedrooms with their four bathrooms, our space in the attic for ourselves just lacks a bathroom and all we have to do now is decorate and furnish the entire house.
I will keep you informed.

Well the Terra Madre has been and gone, an incredible amount of work by Donal Lehane and Darina Allen and scores of people (myself not included, as I escaped to the Languedoc, but thanks to Eamon Barrett for adopting that particular mantle)

Anyway, now that the dust has settle it appears to me to have been a terrific success.

The core of the whole event was the workshops when various experts were put into a room together for several hours and asked to answer the question
“If I were the minister what would I do?…
The results of these discussions were fascinating, and read out to Ministers Trevor Sergeant and Michelle Gildernew in a full and open forum.

The social events were also terrific, from the Lord Mayors reception with some brilliant , and previously unheard Balfe songs beautifully sung, to the Feast in the Manor Street Campus where Michael Quinn from the Castle fed 750 of us on spit roast pig and lamb.

The huge farmers market was a treat, I kept bumping into Waterfordians hoping it could happen again. The highlight of that day for us certainly as the results of the match don’t bear thinking about.
Two nice moments.

Eileen O Callaghan from the ICA told me this one;

At the Organics meeting, where there were some preserves for the tasting a man approached her, having tasted a particularly delicious jam, and asked her;
“Is the woman who made that taken?”

While we were all being addressed by Trevor Sergeant the sudden swirl of bagpipes started in the background, knowing that our president Mary McAlise was due, Sergeant started and said “Is that the President?, then quickly recovered and said “She is a multi talented woman !”

I find it hard to credit that the whole event hasn’t been covered by any of the national papers, Shame on them!
However watch Nationwide over the next few days, you may even be able to spot yours truly battling with the elements on a culinary walk around Waterford .

One of my daughters, who visited us in France during the summer, told me not to be going on about the weather when I got home because everyone in Ireland would hate us if we did.
She has a point.

This photograph, therefore, purports to be a shot of the campanile of the Mairie in Olargues (a handsome plain building in a beautiful village), in fact it is a taste of the deep blue skies which were our summer canopy.

We arrived back from France, after two months away, just last Thursday and, as we heading up to Tearmonfeckin on Sunday, and thereby through the M 50, I determined to crack the intricacies before I went.

(perhaps I should add here that , due to constant complaints, they have decided to abandon the toll bridges on the M 50 and replace with tolls acquired by new fangled technology)

In the IT web page I accepted Conor Pope’s decision, as I would be a fairly infrequent user, to just register for video recognition rather than get a tag so I clicked on the Eflow site, gave them all the usual information about my mother’s maiden name, and then , checking back, found that I was registered.

So yesterday we passed the “toll free” point and very fast it was, I reckon it took about a half hour less to get on to the Belfast Road.
There were no obvious cameras, but lots of boxes about that could have been.

When we got back to Waterford last night I went into my account with eflow to see if we had been spotted.
Sure enough we had, once at 9.30 and again at 4.15.

Bit scary really to know that from now on Big Brother will know all of my movements north, how long before he knows all of my movements everywhere?