I am an Emigrant.
September 16, 2014
09:31 AM
I suppose that now I must label myself as an emigrant. I haven’t lived for any decent period of time in my native country since 2008, a whole six years ago now.
Strangely I find it hard to see myself in this role, as this emigrant person- I suppose because the emigrant had always a certain image in literature and films, the forever lost Paddy pining after his native fields and friends or the hugely successful millionaire returned Yank.
I am very definitely neither of these and find it very difficult to relate to either- the reasons are many.
Most important I suppose is my age when I decided to move, 59, the moment when one is dipping ones toes into the Troiseme Age the time of pensions and grandchildren. It also marks the time when you have made friends with whom you are entirely comfortable with and trust- you know that your friendship has staying power and a mere couple of thousand kilometres distance is not going to shake this.
More important even than this is the family, my own children and grandchildren, my brothers and sisters and brothers and sisters in law. In a strange way the same rules apply as those relating to friendships. Some you move out of contact with and then contact again only to find that all the old affections are intact, those affection forged in the family home and then again reinforced with the shared experiences of growing older together.
I suppose really that I have put the cart before the horse here and should have said that old friends become a sort of family and the rules of acceptance of people complete with the odd stray wart is part of the process of growing old together- or growing up together in the case of the nearest and dearest.
Then there are two major factors which differentiate between me and an old style emigrant, one is modern communications and travel,You know the stuff I mean, emails, mobile phones, Skype, Face Time, Face Book, Twitter, texting, and then Ryanair and the revolution in airline costs.
The other factor is in fact a lot more deliberate on our part : The fact that we have a B&B.
This provides us with the space to put up with quite a lot of people at the same time and old friends, and even old acquaintances, can stay with us comfortably without being invited.
This makes it very easy for friends to stay, maybe only for a night if they are on holiday in France, this in turn keeps the friendships simmering gently on a back burner.
The one thing we never anticipated when we moved here was the wealth of new friends we would gain in Le Presbytere. Old nodding acquaintances becoming buddies, long lost buddies re-entering our lives and brand new friendships with people from all over the world being formed over dinner and a few glasses of wine on the terrace of Le Presbytere.
All this without mentioning the friends we have made here, from all over the world, of people who like us have moved south in search of the sun.
So emigrant yes, but not to be pitied like Bob Dylan’s “who wishes he should have stayed home”
The Elbow
September 16, 2014
06:28 AM
Last week I am waiting in the queue for the check-out in the Super U when I suddenly get a huge pain in my elbow, I grab it, as you would, and hear a click as I push the joint back into its socket, out of which, for some inexplicable reason, it had decided to jump.
And so. since then, every day and sometimes several times a day, it has decided to repeat this particularly painful and nasty trick.
My first recourse is the internet which doesn’t give much comfort- spontanious ones usually need surgery to be fixed- ones caused by falls can sometimes be encouraged back to submission by exercise and physio.
My GP backs this up today and so I have to get an ex-ray tomorrow and have an appointment to see a surgeon on Thursday.
I’ll keep you informed.
Visit from a Chevalier.
September 13, 2014
11:04 AM
I had a most distinguished visitor last week,Eileen Ryan, my old French teacher and great friend from Waterford who ran Alliance Francaise for many years and last year was awarded Chevalier des Palmes Académiques by the French Parliament.
Off Set Door Two
September 10, 2014
15:16 PM
Some years ago, I can no longer remember where or when, I bought a Penguin book of DH Lawrence’s travels in Italy, it was published in 1972 and I obviously bought it second hand somewhere with the idea that sometime along the line I might read it. I picked it up to read for the first time last week and started to read his reflections on the town of Volterra in Tuscany I was brought to a stand by his description of the Porto dell’ Arco the famous Etruscan gateway into the town.
Here I must digress.
While we were doing up Le Presbytere we found at least two doorways which were not cut straight through the wall but set in an angle through it.
One of these is now internal so we made an unusual, if slightly oddly shaped, display cupboard for some of my glass collection.
We had a Swedish Urban Archichect visiting a few years ago and he was taken by the angle of this doorway. He explained that they were a feature of some of the older (16th, 17th, century houses in the area) but he had no idea what was their original purpose.
However it appears that thanks to Mr.L awrence I have at last found the reason for these doorways. I quote ;
“It is a deep old gateway, almost a tunnel, with the outer arch facing the desolate country on the skew, built at an angle to the old road, to catch the approaching enemy on the right side where the shield did not cover him.”
Thank you Mr. Lawrence.
The Off-Set Door as it is now
As we discovered it
Door to our Cellar
Door in the Jewish Quarter of Pezenas
The Camper Van
September 7, 2014
13:41 PM
An English couple arrived in the door to us this afternoon, English but with properties in France and in the West of Ireland, I will call them the Johnsons.
They accepted our offer of Barry’s tea gratefully and we sat down on the terrace to introduce ourselves. They having asked us the usual questions, “What’s an Irish couple doing in France etc.” I then asked them how they had heard of us and what had persuaded them to book in for a few days out of the blue. Mr. Johnson then cleared his throat and proceeded to tell us the saga of The Camper Van.
In England they had invested in a second hand Ford camper van which they had thought to use to explore France, no sooner had they brought the vehicle down to their French abode but she seized up and would only travel in first gear, the local French garage confessed themselves flummoxed and sent in on to the Ford dealer in the nearest town. They announced that it needs a new gearbox, €4,500 worth of new gear box. Our friends were surprised but decided to proceed as otherwise their entire investment would have been wasted. However there was more news a few days later from the French garage. Having tried all the usual avenues he regretted but he could not source a new gearbox for the van. The Johnsons then rang their local garage in Ireland’s west and the mechanic told them that he felt he could manage something, if they could get the van back to him.
After much negotiation with their travel insurance the Johnsons discovered that they were covered to be repatriated back to Ireland with the van and so hired a car and watched their precious van put on to an ambulance and driven to Cherbourg. They were able to drive the van on to the ferry (“first gear was working fine”) and had made arrangements to be met at the other side with another ambulance to bring them up west, Mr. Johnson in the ambulance Mrs. in the hired car.
The driver explained early on to Mr. Johnson that they were going to have to detour to Waterford (my old home town) and change drivers as the time in his taco graph was up. So down they headed to Waterford and changed drivers and they headed off on the long road west.
Mr. Johnson and the new driver fell into conversation on the way and he told him about his life and his house in France. The driver in his turn told him about a man who “was a brilliant chef” and a client of his father’s garage who had a restaurant in Waterford but had sold up and headed to the wilds of France to make his fortune fairly late in his life. “He had the best restaurant in Waterford” the driver lamented “and there is nothing like it since”.
Mr. Johnson was intrigued and asked the driver the name of this prodigy.
“Martin Dwyer” he was told.
So when they got back to the west Mr. Johnson determined to find out more of this man , googled him, found him, and on their next trip down south in France (this one) determined to stay with us.
At this stage I interrupted him and asked him was the garage owner able to get a new gear box for the van.
“I rang him a few days after we got back” he told me, “and asked him just that.”
“Ah the van is all fixed” he said, “it just needed a fill of oil- they have a cut out mechanism when the oil gets low that’s why it was stuck.”
“Well”, I said,”It was just as well you were so misdiagnosed in France and had to travel back to Ireland”
“Why” said Mr Johnson
“Otherwise you would never have found your way here”
Five Years Ago , in September 2009
September 5, 2014
16:38 PM
Last night saw our first real guests my old college friend (even though I had managed to misplace her for forty years) Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly from Oxford and her husband Ekkehard Henschke from Berlin.
A European opening.
The Terrace at Twilight
September 3, 2014
12:34 PM
The intrepid Trevor Stafford again.
The Key of the Church
September 3, 2014
09:54 AM
Some guests wanted to see our church last week so they went and collected the key from the Gardienne in the village, it is truly a magnificent object about 12 inches long and must have been a direct twin of the original key of the Presbytere because it fitted into our long redundant lock like a hand inro a glove but, unfortunately, would not turn it.
Trevor’s Pictures
August 31, 2014
13:54 PM
One Trevor Stafford who is staying with us at the moment is truly a dab hand with the Iphone camera and seems to have an ap for every occasion. He just sent me the shots he took after breakfast this morning- the panoramas are particularly impressive as they give a true pan of the spaces which I am never able to get with the camera. Thanks Trevor!
(Piles) More about St. Fiacre
August 31, 2014
07:48 AM
My new old friend, St Fiacre, is as said the patron saint of gardening, and while trying to find a little more about him I came across this little quote in Geranium World website-” Our highly regarded medical consultant, William C. Dwyer [sic] MD, mentioned that St. Fiacre is the patron saint of gardening. The garden connection to Geranium is obvious, but somewhat distant.Then Dr. Dwyer added, incidentally and curiously,”St. Fiacre is also the patron saint of hemorrhoids.” – the connection being that the saint used wild geraniums to cure the said affliction.
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