Síle and Colm in the church in Frontignan yesterday.

An early statue of my patron who looks a little like he is searching for a toilet and the dog…. looks guiltily like he ate the bread instead of proffering it to him.

One of the real luxuries of being momentarily without guests is that one can wander around first thing with a coffee in the dressing-gown and snap things.

From the terrace this morning Canagou is showing his first light dusting of snow

So many of the French now look for teas for breakfast, mainly Herbal Tissanes (which I call Horrible Teas) that we have to keep a large selection
of Teapots on the go- mind you we do persuade some of them to have a decent cup of Barry’s.

And there, at the end of the line of tea-pots a veritable Franco-Hibernian Nature Morte. Two pomegranates foraged here, and a slíothar foraged
in our back garden in Waterford which backed on to the local GAA pitch.

With the help of the beau-frere ; Colm, I made about 30 pots of Crab-Apple and Pomegranate Jelly, wonderful flavour, colour and balance.

Now it has been squeezed onto my jam shelves ; a hedge against the oncoming winter.

Fly Agaric- which we found in the woods on Wednesday- looks the archi-typical poisonous Toadstool. In fact par boiling will rid it of its deadly venoms but not its hallucinogenic properties.

I let it lie.

Two fairly busy days of filming with Mary Kennedy and the Nationwide team, who stayed with us. It is a bit of an eye-opener how much work has to go into what will end up being about 10 minutes long. It is planned that it will be broadcast in March around the time of the French Irish rugby match in Dublin.

Mary Kennedy plus a production team arriving next week to do a Nationwide piece on us for transmission in March.

I’m Ready for my Close up now Mister De Mille.

Our apartment was the top floor and the attic with its terrace of the building on the left with the red shutters.

While we were in Bayonne last week our apartment, in an old Seventeenth Century building in the centre of town, was right next to an Antique shop. Now note well this was not a Pouces, or a Brocantes but a true Antiquites.
We had, of course to go in for a look.
The shop was manned by an elderly French man who welcomed us and then went back to his computer where he was playing Bridge on line and let us browse.
Right in the middle of the shop was a large circular table, very French and ornate, but what immediately captured our attention was that it was topped with that same stone with which my kitchen is furnished ; black limestone, otherwise known as Kilkenny Marble. This is basically the same stone out of which our pavements are made but when polished it has a lovely deep black lustre. Curious to see if it was the same type of stone as ours I crawled underneath to see if the unpolished bottom was a matt grey like our table. It was. By this stage we had intrigued the Antiquaire who left his bridge game to find out what I was at. When we asked him what the table top was made of he shrugged (as they do) and was delighted when we told him that it was surely made from Limestone. As we further told him that we had large amounts of a similar stone in our kitchen he then questioned us closely as to its care, we were of course delighted to inform him about the dangers of lemon juice and vinegar and the necessity of occasionally oiling the stone to maintain its lustre.
We were of course now firm friends, he was it turned out a fan of Ireland and all things Irish.
There was a sign on the wall indicating that there were Brocantes available upstairs, he would be, it turned out, delighted to close up the shop and escort us up there.
Upstairs was a treasure trove of beautiful Indian rattan furniture. Monsieur as he showed us round explained that he had worked in India for many years and while there had shipped home lots of Indian furniture with the intention of selling it on his retirement. It was beautiful stuff but too dear for us. Then Sile spotted a nice brass lamp on a table in the room with a price of ten Euros, as she admired it Monsieur said “I think that is one of a pair” and produced another. “As you are such sympa people” he said “you can have both for the ten Euro and I will throw in some matching shades as well” Then, when we had paid him, he amazed us by asking would we like to come and see his house upstairs above the shop-(yes we would) – and brought us to a lift outside the Brocante section which brought us up to his sumptuously furnished apartment on the top floor.
This was amazing; it was furnished with Seventeenth century tables, wonderful fifteenth century church art and some stunning early French Tapestries- a little like a museum but still a comfortable home.
But the piece de resistance was yet to come.
“You must see my pottery” he said as he led us into another large room overlooking the river. Now this was certainly like a museum. All the walls were lined with plates, the vast presses filled with tureens and bowls and jugs and all sorts of wonderful pottery.
“It is all from the Potteries of Samadet” he told us. “The collection was started by my Father and I continued it”. Samadet Pottery was, it turned out, made in the town of that name in the Landes Region some 50 kilometres from where we were. It was founded in 1732 and continued until 1880.
Monsieur proudly showed us the very first piece of pottery made in Samadet which he had managed to acquire. It was dated 1732 and dedicated to, and had been presented to Louis XV by the pottery. This collection, Monsieur told us, was the largest collection of Samadet pottery in existence.
He then graciously escorted us back to the lift and we collected our brass lamps and headed home.

Since getting back to home in Thezan I have Googled Samadet pottery I have realised what an amazing collection we were privileged to see. The value of any one individual piece of the hundreds which Monsieur possessed is quite staggering. This was not an encounter to forget easily.