We were away for two weeks , about ten days of which were spent in Thezan (the other four getting there).
Our brief when we went there was to firm up times etc with the builder, plumber and electrician, when would they start and when would they finish.

They all came to the house on the Tuesday after we arrived and we did the tour all over again.
M. Fusco, the builder and the man who heads the posse, was a bit displeased because we had changed some of the plans around and said that these changes must be drawn in (fair enough really) otherwise all seemed fairly happy but then , in the attic, M.Fusco started to talk about the roof.
It is fine at the moment he said, but a lot of the tiles are very old and could slip easily.
This is going to be very difficult to fix after all the insulation is put in and really he should have a good look at it now and add the cost of repair to the estimate before we agree.
On balance that seems fair enough but the finances are already starting to squeak slightly from fear.
However Sile and I (using a palette knife as a ruler) did manage to draw the necessary changes into the plans and when presented with them M. declared them “Perfait”

They all seemed happy that they could start in the next three or four weeks and have the job done by the beginning of July.

One nice bit of serendipity happened just before we left.
We had noticed that the rather surly couple next door seemed to be gone, a relief because they had insisted on parking in front of our house.
The new young couple and their little boy in their place were instantly appealing, and we discovered that she was our neighbours’, Louis and Evoline’s, granddaughter.
Then just as we were packing we met the young husband, I explained that we were getting builders in and I hoped it would not disturb them too much.
The young man grinned all over his face; “I work for M. Fusco” he said.
That means we now have a friend in that camp!

A good omen for the works to come.

While Colm and I were clearing out the cupboards in one of the bedrooms in the presbytery we found this tiny contact print wedged behind one of the shelves.
It was only because we had decided to remove the shelf that we found it as it was totally hidden from sight.
Had it fallen behind, or been put there deliberately and forgotten?
(Remember only nuns had lived in this house since thirty odd years and previous to that it had been the parish priest)

On the back in neat French script it says

Novembre 1953
Alain
18 Mois

He would be 56 now.

I didn’t have much time for taking photographs this time in the Languedoc but here are a few shots which I took that I like.

Walking along the hills by the village you notice all the vines are remarkably neat, all have now been pruned to two, or even one shoot.
The wine growers have been out working slowly and hard on their vines all over Easter week end.
The resulting fields are remarkably neat and uniform, the Peuch or hill in the back here is the Peuch Cemtiere which rises over the back of the village.
They bury their dead close to heaven in Thezan

There are many signs of spring now in the fields, quince blossom as well as blackthorn and there, gleaming white in the middle of a field, a cherry covered in flower. Is it wild or carefully nurtured?

We took one trip to the coast and found this deserted beach, mercifully free of cafes or shops. It is called Les Cabanes de Fleury and it is at the point where the Aude reaches the Mediterranean.
We were alone there except for the lifeguards station.

This one is so good I am tempted to call it by its initials; Ahh ! Tart (but I wont.)

It is a direct consequence of the free availability of ground hazelnuts in our local Super U in Thezan, which I find very exotic, and bring home loads of them to use in desserts and cakes.
The other piece of serendipity was finding that some of Joe Moore’s apples were still in perfect nick in my shed, it must be something to do with the temperature this winter and spring.
The recipe is sorta loosely based on the classic French Pear and Almond Tart but I discovered that using the combination of hazelnuts and honey(and do try and get some decent Irish stuff for this) gives the apples a very special and exotic flavour. I served it with some vanilla flavoured fromage frais which we had brought back from the great French fridge clear-out but yoghurt or cream would do as well.

Apple Hazelnut and Honey Tart

For a 9 inch (25 cm.) tart or quiche tin

Pastry;
175g (6 oz.) Flour
90g (3 oz.) Butter
3 to 4 tbs. Water

Filling:
110g (4 oz) Butter (preferably unsalted)
110g (4 oz). Honey
110g (4 oz). Ground Hazelnuts (or Almonds)
2 Eggs
Apples;
700g (1 ½ lbs.) Apples (cookers or eaters)
30g (1 oz.) Unsalted Butter
1 Tablespoon Honey

This is very good with ground hazelnuts but they are hard to find here.
To grind your own first roast some shelled nuts in a hot oven for about five minutes, then rub them in a cloth to remove all the surplus skins then grind in a food processor.
If you think that is too much fiddle use ground almonds instead.
Pastry;
Blend the butter with the flour (either by rubbing in or in a food processor) then add in the water and then use this pastry to line the tart tin.
Cover this with non-stick paper and some weights and bake blind until golden brown.
While this is baking peel and slice the apples and cook them gently in a pan with the ounce of butter and the tablespoon of honey for about 5 minutes.

Nut Batter;
Beat the butter with the honey until light.
Beat in the eggs, and the ground nuts.

Spoon the apples onto the pastry base and spoon over the nut mixture.
Bake at 180C/350F/Gas 4 for about 25 mts. (test to make sure the batter is cooked with a skewer)
Serve warm or at room temperature with some fromage frais or quark.

One of the great advantages of achieving a certain age is that, without really doing anything about it, one finds one has achieved, with it, a certain gravitas.
The mad obsessions which one has harboured for years become endearing eccentricities and are no longer regarded as the manifestations of an unsound mind.
I have been plagued by obsessions for years, my son-in-law kindly calls them “interests”.
These range from acceptable interests like cookery, and cookery writers, novels by Patrick O Brian, interests in France and all things French to the slightly less acceptable, like my interests in Judy Collins, the novels of Dornford Yates and everything and anything to do with Absinthe.
There are of course darker interests, of which I will never tell, but one rather sinister one that keeps coming back to me is my shameful interest in St. Roch.

I first came across him in a church in Languedoc, not surprising really as he comes from Montpellier. The picture of an otherwise saintly looking gentleman lifting his skirt just fascinated me.
Once I started looking I found him everywhere and have reproduced lots of his images, varying from the coy to the downright salacious in blogs I have written here and here.

His fame and efficacy as a cure for the plague has spread throughout Europe, my friend Finola found him in full display in a church in Montenegro, but barring one single image my brother found in the Franciscan shop in Cork, there hasn’t been much evidence that he ever managed to make it across the channel to England or here to Ireland.

Then as luck would have it Bertie Ahern stepped in on my side and by christening his first grandson Rocco (the Italian version of the saint) he brought the man right into twenty first century Ireland.

One of the my great joys in the church in our village in Thezan was finding a statue to my patron in the church there. I now sleep easier when there knowing that he is only a hundred yards from my bed.

My friend Clive Nunn has been one of those people who have been understanding about my obsession and suffered many visits to Languedoc churches when we were together there last year as I searched for St. Roch’s image.

Clive’s family have strong roots in Surrey in England and he inherited a lot of memorabilia of that area from his parents.
Just yesterday he sent me the following note and the attachments which follow.

“Mart,
I was tidying books and came across this .
Given that I have had connections with Puttenham for all of my life, I flicked it open.
It opened on this page.
The house in which this discussion took place was my aunt’s house. She died when I was ten and the house must have been sold to the Miss Grigson of the tale.
David Winter, also referred to, is my first cousin once removed: in other words, my aunt’s grandson. He bought the house back within the last twenty years or so.
I just thought that the circle of connections between yourself and your discovery of St. Roch in Thezan and myself and Puttenham just might appeal to you.
Clive”

Clive was of course right, there follows the story exactly as it appeared in the little book.
More food for my obsession but also fascinating to wonder how one of his rare appearances across the channel was nearly lost.

He now has I think, by his reappearances in my life, declared himself as interested in me as I am in him.
Sile reckons that to assuage his spirit we should get a statue of the Saint and put it with the one of Our Lady of Lourdes in our little Jardin de Cure in Thezan.
I think she is right.

I have only one small quibble with the above, which is a lovely ghost story even if it had no connect to my personal Saint, and that is the artist’s impression of St. Roch.
But then who can blame him?
Given the lack of images of the saint in England who would have thought that he should be pictured coyly raising his skirt rather than reading piously in a missal.

We’re just back from a fortnight in France. I had great notions that this time I would post a diary of the time there and, with this end in mind, I wrote the piece below the day after we arrived.
Typically, that was that, my entire diary entries for the two weeks.
Anyway for what it’s worth here is the good intention.

Wednesday March 19th 2008

Thezan les Beziers

We arrived here at 8.00 exactly on Sunday evening having driven the 1100 miles from Roscoff in just 12 hours.
I love the drive down through France, it is only by driving through the country, North to South that you begin to see the many different countries of which France is composed.
Roscoff is Brittany, the quarter of France which my friend Isabel unkindly calls “West Cork with croissants”
Brittany was our first holiday experience of France, this was the place we came camping with the children when they were little, the ideal trip because you only had to travel a couple of hours from the ferry, only a few hours of cantankerous children in hot cars waiting for the holiday to begin. And it was hot, hotter than we had ever experienced in Ireland, we lived in some fear of the children being burned from contact from this burning foreign sun.
Something has altered this hot Brittany over the years, is it climate change making it wetter and colder there, or is it that we now , having experienced the weather further south, have risen with this to expect more sun for our holiday.
On Sunday as we drove through Brittany we also drove through driving rain all the way.
The same rain also followed us through the Vendee, which would have been our destination of choice when the children were able to travel a little further.
The Vendee is strange part of France, flat wheat fields and huge expanses of sunflowers, no hills and a population traditionally royalist and strongly catholic.
We travelled through the Vendee on the 14th July 1989, the centenary of the fall of the Bastille and bought our daughters tricolour ribbons to celebrate the day.
We stopped overnight in an old farmhouse Chambre d’Hote where Madame looked in disapproval at the ribbons and said “Ici, un celebre pas 14ze Juillet”.
After the Vendee one travels through the Charante, but not through the interesting coastal bits, pass by the great riverine parts of France, the Dordogne and the Lot, again places where we had experienced fine family holidays.
It is not however, until you pass through Bordeaux that it begins to feel that you are passing through into the south, and, it was here on Sunday that the rain began to abate and the countryside to show that it was no longer gripped by winter.
The proliferation of vines of course help to give this impression, not that these are in any way lush at this time of year. Now is the time of pruning the vines and most are now reduced to one single shoot to concentrate the power of the grape into as few grapes as possible to add intensity to the wines of Bordeaux, still some of the most expensive in the world.
The next major town after Bordeaux is Toulouse, truly our gateway to the Languedoc, not only was the rain stopped at this stage but the bone dry roads indicated that there hadn’t been any falling there all day.
The temperatures now began to rise into the early teens, blue sky appeared and the vegetation changed also. We could now see orchards of plum trees in blossom near Agen and cherry and almond in flower as came into Languedoc.
The glimpse of the walls on Carcassonne from the motorway is always a moment of some triumph, we now know we are only an hour from our French home.
On Sunday it was dark as we approached Thezan so we missed the sight of the village with the monts d’Enserune ringing it from the north.
But the house was intact, having lain dormant for four months it was still dry and unvisited by any alien life forms. There was even a supply of Picpoul de Pinet to console me for the journey.

OK I have been going on a bit about the elusive view of the Pyrenees from the terrace of our house in France.

It is strange, the villagers say that if you can see the mountains, (they are nearly 150 klms away!) it is a sign of rain.

Just last week Sile’s brother Colm called me to the terrace in some excitement.
Not only were the mountains amazing clear to the naked eys, they were also covered in snow and beautifully lit by the morning sun.

The photo was disappointing, what looked incredible with the naked eye just looked like a faint detail in my camera.

Then Colm had an idea, he held his camera up to the lens of his binoculars and with this makeshift telephoto lens got the best shot of these elusive beauties yet.

(it rained the following day)

Post Scriptum
The “Dancing” is intended to be a metaphor which probably deserves explaining.
The mountains appear and disappear behind their curtain of clouds with such gay abandon that they remind me the words of the song “Lanigans Ball”

I stepped out
I stepped in again
I stepped out
I stepped in again
I stepped out
I stepped in again
Learning to dance at Lanigans Ball.

or The Loss of J. J`s Net

On the second of May in the year ninety nine,
Twas from Kilgarvan Pier that we started.
The lake was dead calm and the weather was fine
Not a sign we would end broken hearted.
There was Siobhan and Sile and Michael and I
And young Julia Jean their last daughter
We were full of high hopes, our spirits were high
No foreboding of mayhem and slaughter.

On the following day, the third of the month
We took the “Two Birds” up the river
[We took the “Two Birds” cos we hadn’t a punt
Though the depth of the stream made us quiver] It was while we were moored at a bend in the stream
That the crisis occurred to the daughter
While trying to surmount over my meagre bulk
The fishing net dropped in the water.

Oh then there was crying and shouting galore
While the rescue attempt was effected,
But despite heroic use of a boat-hook and oar
The fishing net wasn’t collected.
With grief laden hearts we returned down the stream
Netless and sadly depleted
Our tears wet the poop decks, our gloom a bad dream,
And on me terrible punishment meted.

I was forced to retire to the depths of the hold
To atone for my dastardly actions
I was fed on stale bread and on water so cold
My whole body went into contractions
My heart was so full of my grief so obscene
And my food –I was thoroughly off it
So I made restitution to Julia Jean
That having suffered net loss made gross profit.

I was reminded of this, previously unblogged, poem by the comment of Head-The-Ball this morning.
This was in fact my first attempt at poetry, written nearly nine years ago, intended (with a added financial inducement) to cheer up his young daughter, now a young adult, when my clumsy bulk had contributed to the loss of her fishing net

(or If Sydney Smith Can Do It, So Can I)

For your forgiveness everyone I beg
For giving out this recipe one more time
Again I tell you how to poach an egg
But this time do the blasted thing in rhyme.

First get some water, fresh from tap or well
And pour into a poaching pan or pot
Put this upon the heat and wait a spell
Till seething water tells you that it’s hot.

Into this water add a spoon or two
Of the best vinegar made from wine or malt
But one thing you must never ever do
Upon your life don’t dream of adding salt

Now from a hen who lives on primrose path
Break in a cup an egg so fresh its hot
Insinuate this in the bubble bath
(Which is the water boiling in the pot)

But only now the therms should be reduced
The water should just shudder on low heat
From that time when the egg was introduced
Until opaque and lifted out to eat

How long that this should be is up to you
It hangs on how you like your egg to be
Soft yolkéd after one minute or two
Or hard boiled should you give it four or three

Now lift it forth by use of slotted spoon
And let it stand over the pot to drain
Don’t dream to put it on the toast too soon
Or this will taste like cardboard after rain

Now put it on the slice of wholemeal toast
Which you have buttered should you like the taste
(It all depends on what you like the most
The taste of butter or a slender waist)

And then, at last the the breaking of your fast
When finally your hunger pangs you quell
But for a taste forever unsurpassed
Anoint with pepper and some Fleur de Sel

It is a grubby cellar, the room is full of the usual suspect types, the man with a beret pulled down over one eyebrow, the young man surreptitiously smoking Gauloises, the Edith Piaf look-alike with, I think, a poodle secreted in her coat.
The facilitator looks directly at me.
I realise I am the one to begin.
Trembling slightly I stand up.
“Hello” I say in a trembling voice “My name is Martin and I am a Francoholic”

There is a murmur of assent (and two whispered D’accords)

“I should have seen it coming” I went on “For many years I was a Francophile, no more than one holiday there a year, a glass or two of French wine, some Piaf records”

A harsh voice from the back asked “Do you know the words of any Brassens Songs?”
I bowed my head “Two” I whispered
“Have You seen Claire’s Knee?” my answer was barely audible “Three times”

The voice from the back was now firm.
“You know what you must do”

I was escorted into The Room..

There a light mist sprinkled down perpetually down from the ceiling.
On the table was a plate with a pizza with orange cheese and pineapple on it.
Through a microphone came the sound of Ryan Tubridy.
The room was suffused with a damp grey light.

My brain washing began.
“I love living here” I said, “I love living here” “I love living………