This time in St Pons de Thommieres.
Unusually his bubo seems to have
descended nearly to his knee.
Considering it is supposed to be at the groin
he may be making medical history here.
He is here depicted carrying a reversed spotlight
and with not one but seven scallop shells
telling us that he has walked the Camino St Jacques
seven times.
Fair doos to him.

My old friend and best man or as they say in a more flattering form in France, garçon h’honneur, one Michael Healy, achieved a certain significant birthday while staying with us in France.
His official party took place in his sister Teresina’s house in Cork on Saturday (and very well she and other sister Olivia did us)

The Muse had, of course, to be dragged forth for the occasion.

This effort has several references which pertain to a shared childhood and long (50 year) adolescence.
Where possible I will provide footnotes.

How oft do my thoughts in their fancy take flight
To the home of my childhood and all
And to young Michael Healy shod in black and not white
Singing Bach down in Corks City Hall.
When my heart was as light as the wild winds that blow
Down the Mardyke through each elm tree.
Where we used to duck games and then later duck mass
On the banks of my own lovely Lee

Oh what joys should be mine ere this life should decline
To sip sherry in Spains southern shore
To hear the Flamenco, and on Sardines to dine
And drink Cava as fast as t’will pour
And so I’ll return with the friend of my youth
For fifty years, a true friend to me
And we will drink Spanish wine , and remember our youth
By the banks, of our own lovely Lee.

* Refers to an ancient Cork mating dance in which scores of post pubertal schoolchildren walked up and down Patrick Street (Pana) in an attempt to impress the opposite sex and so get a shift*

† A Pub,frequented by students, now subsumed by the tautologous “The Le Chateau”.

# This refers to a pirate radio station which Michael ran from a biscuit tin on the back of a Honda 50.

‡ Refers to a rather more substantial Pirate station run, through the medium, (before, needless to mention, it was either popular or profitible ) from a caravan in Rosmuc.

*A Type of early Cork embrace, no longer practiced due to the intervention of the monastic orders.

The occasion of the first reading
captured by Olivia O Flynn

The beautiful Canal du Midi has been in operation since it was opened in 1651.
A tremenduous feat of engineering in any century.

We first saw it in February of last year when we started house hunting.
The tree lined banks look great even when bare in winter.

This is the same stretch of the canal last summer taken from the Oppidum,a Roman fortified town above it.

The same Oppidum marks the only place the canal has to go through a tunnel.

This was a floating hotel in La Redorte on the canal

And this a converted British long boat, appropriatly called “Doolally”

“I thought I saw an eagle, though it might have been a vulture
I never could decide”

If Leonard Cohen (The story of Isaac) is allowed to prevaricate thus…..

We were walking near the tiny village of La Voulte in the footholds of the Monts d’ Espinousse when we heard a mewling seagull like cry overhead.
Looking up there were four very large birds flying high over us.
My brother-in-law Colm, an expert in all things natural, said “I think they might be eagles”
Using my most tele-photo of lens’s (which isn’t up to much) I took this shot of one.
Is it an eagle? You can decide.

Incidentially the Monts d’Espinousse seems to be the name for those mountains that close the Vallee d’Orb to the north.
We were having some difficulty naming them as they seem to be also called the Montaignes Noires (which they could be said to be a part) and also the start of the Massive Central (also true.)
The village of La Voulte had a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Roch which was unfortunately locked.

Just to underline the total Spanishness of our part of Herault the annual festival in Beziers in August is the Feria.
This is a flamenco, bullfighting, but mainly serious boozing event.

They always produce a superb poster for the event, these often become collectors items afterwards.
This years poster was no exception. It was based on a photograph taken in the forties by local photographer Cuna.
The colours were so good, I have decided that when the time comes for us to decorate, they will be the only ones other than white, which we will use.
We have already bought some deck chairs, acting as temporary easy chairs, which match beautifully.

We made only one foray into Beziers during the Feria but had a nice moment while we were there.
Local heart throb bullfighter, Cayetano Ortiz, who is of pop star status here and quite ridiculously young to be bullfighting but whom the papers were full of, kindly sat just near us for lunch in the Allees in Beziers and I was able to photograph him.

Also please note that even though we didn’t spend much time at the Feria (no-one would go to a bullfight with me) we did at least get the t-shirts.

I gather that while we were away in the summer there was some controversy about the high rate of Irish suicides.
There was a letter to the Irish Times yesterday which prompted me to email a letter to them for the first time ever.
They didn’t publish it but now I can do so myself.

Martin Dwyer
107 Griffith Place,
Waterford

Madam

In Patrick J. Pynes letter, on September 5th, he wonders if the drink-driving laws and their curb on rural socialisation are contributing to the increased male rural suicide rate.

He cites Dr Anne Cleary of UCD as saying that the Mediterranean countries, with their slower pace of life, have fewer suicides.

He misses the point. The French drink driving laws are just as severe as ours, it is the French tradition of living together in villages, not isolated in their farms that makes the difference. I have just come back from a summer in the Herault in Languedoc where the villages are spread out like the buttons in an eiderdown with no dwellings in between. At night the farm workers and the vignerons come back to the villages from their vineyards. Here they are quite likely to take their chairs out onto the streets and enjoy each others company for the evening.

Yours etc.

Martin Dwyer

I don’t think of the Michelin as a bible, it is like most guides extremely fallible (admittedly my opinion of them has risen since they, albeit posthumously, discovered “Dwyers”) but in France it is the most reliable guide I have found.
When we are travelling in France there are a few symbols in the guide which we look out for.
The first sign is the one of the Michelin man licking his lips, this is the Bib Gourmand award given to “establishments offering good quality cuisine for under €26” this is almost inevitably a restaurant which specialises in regional cookery.
The second sign we look for is the two coins one, this indicates that there is a meal available for under €17, the third sign to look out for is the comfort one, this is indicated by the amount of Monopoly hotels in the sign, going from five to one.
We have discovered that one is totally adequate for our needs and is certain to be the cheapest option.

On the way back from Languedoc last week we decided that as we had to be in Cherbourg at 6.00 in the evening we would certainly need an overnight stop on the way and the town of Pons, near Bordeaux offered us a good resting place.
The Hotel de Bordeaux ticked most of the buttons.
It had a Bib Gourmand, the coins sign, and two hotels on its comfort rating, this gave us a room for two for €56, for the room and breakfast an extra €10 each ( the only sign of cheekiness as that was a fairly basic bread, jam and croissant job.)
Here is the Dinner menu we ate:

Sweet bell peppers stuffed with a salt cod and garlic puree,
drizzled with olive oil with a Madras curry Chantilly
Or
A panful of “petits gris” (snails) with pesto
ewe’s milk cottage cheese and tomato sorbet

*****

Superposition of sardine filets, piperade and slithers of chorizo
Or
Guinea fowl breast, risotto with squid ink and a thyme jus

*****

Platter of fully matured Regis Moreau cheese

*****

Peach crumble, red fruit coulis and apricot sorbet

I had the peppers to start, which had been meticulously skinned, filled with superb Brandade and the accompanying whipped cream with curry concoction was surprisingly delicious, resulting in one licked plate, as was Sile’s delicious plate of Petits Gris (It amazed me that she picked them, she has been waging a one woman war on the same creatures in our French garden all summer, but then, maybe there is a way of taking advantage…)
I had the sardines for a main course, again beautifully prepared, not a single bone, no mean feat when it comes to sardines, the Piperade acting as the whipped cream in the Millefeuille and the crisp, fried lengthwise slices of Chorizo acting as a delicious pastry divider. This was again unusual, brave and very effective.
Sile’s Guinea fowl was so delicious I didn’t get to taste it but the risotto (again an unusual choice of garnish) was very good and not in the least fishy.
The cheeses, at least 60, on offer all in perfect nick, were superb.
I spotted and devoured a Banon de Chevre, a leaf wrapped Goat from Provence which was poured, rather than sliced on to my plate, cheese heaven.
The new French standard dessert is “Le Crumble” which is their take on that British classic. They get it slightly wrong and make the topping with too much nuts and not enough paste, the peaches were good however and the Apricot sorbet superb.
At the end of this delicious meal I was inspired to finish up with a digestif and asked the waiter could he recommend a local one.
He looked at me in surprise, realised that I was in earnest and then brought back the Cognac menu, this had about sixty different brandies on offer by the glass from the area, I hadn’t realised we were just down the road from the eponymous town.

Taken from our bedroom a birds-eye view of the
terrace where we ate our dinner in the Hotel Bordeaux.

Now comes to the hard part, what did this cost.

I am more aware than most that all restaurateurs in Ireland are getting constant stick on the price of their food. I too was on that firing line just four years ago.
But in their defence let us examine the above menu.
There is no Fillet Steak there, no Sole, no Smoked Salmon starter.
How many restaurants in Ireland could offer Sardines as a main course and hope to sell even one in a night?

The cost of our dinner(excluding drinks) in the Hotel Bordeaux was €22 a head.
(This is less than a cost of a smoked salmon starter in a smart Dublin restaurant last week)
Don’t you believe that the French have lost the art of catering.

Having agonised and worried through all the names in and out of the dictionary.
Having drifted through Les Trois Soeurs, Le Jardin des Soeurs, Le Jardin ge Cure,Les Oies Sauvages, Chez Martin, Le Cure de Soleille we have decided to go for the obvious and continue to call the house by the name by which it is known to the whole village;Le Presbytère.

The minute we mentioned to any catholic over a certain age that we had bought
Le Presbytère they got all dewy eyed and said that that was where they had to go for Catechism classes, (catholicism not being recognised as a state religion in France, and taught in schools as it is in Ireland) as a result everyone in the village knows where we are.
The obvious proximity of presbytery to church means that even strangers with a small amount of initiative could follow their noses to the house, the church, as is common in France, being in the dead centre of the village, on top of the Pech or hill on which it was built, is the tallest building and can be seen from all sides.

Our house is the one dominated, in the summer, by the huge tree, just underneath the church and in the centre of the picture.

So thats it, from now on we shall be known as;

Le Presbytère
Chambre et Table d’Hôte
14, Rue René Lenthéric
34490 Thézan-lès-Béziers
Hérault
France.

Wow! It makes me feel like we are getting somewhere.

This requires a certain leap of faith but it was the moment when I first glimpsed the Pyrenees from our terrace.

If you examine the photo with an open mind you will see, just over the copse of trees in the background, a faint shadow in the sky. (Believe me it looks much more defined to the naked eye) this is the Pyrenees, and if my shaky understanding of distances and perspective is right, it should in fact be Mount Canigou. Its certain lack of definition stops us from calling the house Pyrenees View, or Radhairc Na mPyrenees as we would do in Ireland.

This was the button chest in a haberdashery shop in Serignan

This was a chest full of kitchen earthenware in
the museum of faience in Raissac

This the storage cupboard in the kitchen in our presbytery

And this beautiful cheese souffle was made by my little Moulinex