Vide Grenier in Serignan today and I managed to find the two smaller Crickets to add to my large one (they are in fact all ash-trays, you lift the wings to show the butts). I knew there was no way to display them but on a back shutter like a flight of wild geese.

Good Friday driving through Dunmore East many years ago we got a notion for a perverse pint (it is one of only 2 days in the year when pubs are obliged to shut) we dropped into the Strand (where we had worked some years before) knocked three times and went into a full bar. But, as the two pints were put in front of us in came the guards, notebooks at the ready.
Very slowly Sile and I dissolved towards the gents where we knew there was a stairs which led to a back door and freedom (which we realised).

The Great Escape Indeed.

Yesterday in the Arena in Arles.

The charming Conteuse, VeroniqueLe Roide, left the following comment for us on Facebook.
Merci Veronique, c’est gentille.

“Bonsoir chers amis irlandais de thezan. Je n’ai pas eu la présence d’esprit d’écrire dans votre livre d’or tout le bien que je pense de votre maison de votre accueil de votre gentillesse. Mon séjour au presbytère fut un moment de vraie chaleur humaine, de dégustations amoureusement préparées par Martin ! Tout dans ces murs rénovés avec soin, et goût, respire l’amour de la vie, de la France, des rencontres à la découverte de ceux qui passent votre seuil. Merci à tous deux. A bientôt de vous revoir lors d’un prochain spectacle à Lignan !
All the best !
Véronique. ”

Had two superb reviews on Tripadvisor today, one from USofA and one from a boat somewhere on the Mediterranean. I blush too much to read them out. Check ’em out below.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1842307-d1841931-Reviews-Le_Presbytere-Thezan_Les_Beziers_Herault_Languedoc_Roussillon.html

Sue picked these on the pech last week and today they have flowered beautifully.

The highlight of my acting career, and my virtual swan song was in a Becket play, “ Act without Words”.
A young producer in UCC, acknowledging my previous dancing experience, decided to produce this one act solo mime piece by Becket.
It is a fairly depressing piece about a man, on his uppers, having even the consolation of suicide taken from him.
There is a moment where a bottle of water, labelled “Water” is lowered from the flies only to be whisked away just as my fingers closed on it.
The play was a success and received good notices and that would have been that had not the Universities Drama Festival of Irish Language Plays been hosted that year in Cork.
Discovering that we were technically eligible to enter, our single word in English being the “Water” label, we changed the label to “Uisce” ,changed the title to Gniomh gan Focail, and entered.

My “Oscars” moment was at the adjucation of the festival when the adjucator , the actor Donal Farmer, announced that the award for best actor –An tAisteoir is fearr- went to, Mairtin O Duibhir agus Gniomh Gan Focail.
This was definitely a moment of adrenalin intoxication.

Where as I did a few more bits and pieces on the stage after that, nothing lived up to that moment and I soon abandoned my notions of stardom.
Mind you there are a few traces of the old Ham still in my make up.
Pat Murray, a well known set designer and a one time member of the Arts Council took one look around my restaurant when in for dinner and said;
“My God Martin, this place is so like a theatre set!”

My daughter Dee, God love her, seems to have inherited the theatrical gene but unlike her father, her interest is not so much in the limelight, but in the design and production side.
She went also to UCC where she did a degree in Theatre and English.
The head of the drama department was an old friend of mine and I kept saying to Dee “Did you tell him who you were?”
“Dad”, she used to say “I will do this on my own”
Her spirit finally weakened when the same lecturer told the story in class one day about Becket, and how Act without Words became Gniomh Gan Focail.
At that stage she felt she had no choice but to tell him that he was talking about her father!

Whenever the weather changes my lips acknowledge the change by cracking. As this only happens twice a year (cold>hot and hot>cold) I inevitably lose my lip salve and so pinch a dab of Síle’s out of her handbag. This change (it’s the cold>hot upon us) I found a little pot called Burt’s Bees in The Hand Bag and it worked a pure treat. Eventually, when I confessed, she informed me that it was far from lip salve I was using. She had decanted some industrial hand cream into the handy Burt’s pot when it got emptied.
I hastily bought some proper stuff before my lips started to grow fingernails. As I did a little memory bulb ignited above my head.
My father, in his old age, suffered from Psoriasis on the back of his hands and also his sight wasn’t great. He had a cortisone cream which he used to control the condition which he kept in the bathroom. One morning he arrived down to breakfast with bright pink cream spread all over the back of his hands. When we remarked on this he looked down at his hands in some surprise. “Goodness, I must have put toothpaste (Pink Euthymol) on in mistake for the cream “- but then, a few days later, he noticed a marked improvement in his skin condition and ergo continued to spread Euthymol on his hands from that time on.
It is a moment of sadness and happiness to see that, in my old age, I am turning into my father !

Waiting in the car in Murviel for Síle this morning I watched two elderly people struggling home with their Baguettes, both lived near a Boulangerie.
He bought his in the shop near her house while she made the same journey, in reverse, to buy in the Boulangerie next to his.

The French will go to great lengths to satisfy their culinary needs.

Veronique de Roide , a Kamishibai storyteller has been staying with us , she is doing a series of performances around the area. She tells her stories with a large wooden frame in which puts pictures to illustrate the tales. She gave an impromptu performance to our enthralled guests at dinner last night. Brilliant. I want to do it too!