We had lunch today in a friends house in the village, just myself and Síle with Simone and her daughter- both French speakers.
Síle’s French is really excellent but whereas mine improves, I do still make mistakes which sometimes can cause embarrassment or (mostly) laughter.
As we sat down to eat Simone told us that she was giving us a lunch A l’Indienne, and asked would I be happy with the spices.
I replied- quite quickly I thought- “Mais Oui Simone, moi, je suis comme le pois” I then waited the beat while they all wondered what awful insult I was going to put on the French language “Je mange tout” I finished to a chorus of relieved laughter.
My first French pun.
Those of my friends who know me well, and acknowledge my propensity to puns in English can now groan- I’ve gone bi-lingual.

Gites de France contacted us and requested “Une Belle Image de la maison” for their website.
Now as the front of our house faces due north it is very hard to get a shot of it in full sun- except during the middle months of the summer and then only very early in the morning.

At 7 am yesterday I started my vigil.

Slowly (agonisingly slowly) the sun crept down the building, at 8.15 it lit the front door (the upper windows were already out of sun) and so I got my shot.
Patience rewarded.

Adam Gopnik in last weeks New Yorker writes a phillipic against Euro-Sceptics which they should all be made learn off :

This anti-European bias is producing an indecent-seeming amount of schadenfreude—on the right but also on the left—about the prospect of the dissolution of the European Union. The potential Franco-German split, Germany’s own ambivalences, the Greek crisis, the fall of the Dutch government, the backslide of the British economy—the tone about all this is oddly punitive here, as though the E.U. had been the product of some Brussels bureaucrat’s utopian folly rather than a miracle of coexistence wrought by a handful of quiet visionaries after more than fifty years of catastrophe. In thinking about Europe and its union, the number that one needs to keep in mind is not the rate of the euro exchange or the measure of the Greek deficit but a simpler one, of sixty million.

That is the approximate (and probably understated) number of Europeans killed in the thirty years between 1914 and 1945, victims of wars of competing nationalisms on a tragically divided continent. The truth needs re-stating: social democracy in Europe, embodied by its union, has been one of the greatest successes in history.

Olivia FItzpatrick, on Colm’s Spring Walk, enjoys the sea at Vendres Plage while your host adopts a recumbant position.

Another very successful week for Colm and us all.

Dans le cadre de la journée de l’Europe : Le presbytère de Martin et Sile Dwyer

A l’ancien presbytère situé au 14 rue René-Lenthéric à proximité de l’église Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul réside un couple d’Irlandais, charmant et accueillant, Martin et Sile Dwyer. Ils ont fait l’acquisition de cette maison il y a environ six ans. Elle appartenait autrefois à la paroisse, à la suite d’un don provenant d’une famille thézanaise. Pendant de nombreuses années, ce logement a été occupé par des prêtres et quelques temps avant la vente de l’immeuble, par deux religieuses, Marie et Marie-Claire aujourd’hui décédées.

C’est en venant en vacances une fois à Marseillan-plage que Martin et Sile sont tombés sous le charme de la région et plus particulièrement de l’Hérault et de cette maison pour y faire des chambres et tables d’hôtes lorsque la retraite aura sonnée. Après de nombreux travaux réalisés par des entreprises locales, leur projet a vu le jour en 2010 et l’ont baptisé Le presbytère. Du rez-de-chaussée à l’étage tout a été repensé. Des chambres au rez-de-chaussée tout a été agréablement aménagé pour accueillir leur activité. Une grande salle-à-manger cuisine donne sur une terrasse à la vue imprenable sur la plaine et les Pyrénées et sur le jardin du curé. Un havre de paix, verdoyant et fleuri où les clients aiment aller se reposer.

Ils viennent de différents pays : Irlandais, Anglais, Allemands…mais aussi des Français. « Dernièrement nous avons accueilli un Chinois », précise Martin qui, en tant que membre de l’association Euro-Toques créée par le grand chef de cuisine Paul Bocuse, il a l’intention dans les jours qui viennent de donner des cours de cuisine à ses hôtes. A Waterford en Irlande, il était chef de cuisine dans un grand restaurant. « Je leur apprendrai la cuisine française avec un style irlandais », exprime en riant Martin, très heureux d’annoncer de concert avec son épouse l’obtention, depuis quelques jours, du label gîte de France qui garantit des normes de confort, des prestations de qualité. « C’est pour nous un moyen supplémentaire pour nous faire connaître ».

We laid this this afternoon with Bro-in-Law Colm’s help. It is made of pre-grown Gazons (Grass sods.)
Now all we have to do is water and pray.

In preparation for the season (and to celebrate the end of a long and bitter spring) we have been giving our facade a bit of a face lift.
We got the painters in to paint up the cartouches of the windows and repaint the shutters and the windows themselves. More controversially, we decided to repaint the wood effect panel at the bottom- this was terrible until we decided to age it a bit by sanding it down.
Síle has been tending the window boxes which have responded gratefully to her green fingers.

Just this morning a local man installed these wrought iron window guards (required as a safety feature by Gites de France) which he made so perfectly A L’epoque that they look like they were there forever.

Síle’s choir are involved in a most fascinating project at the moment.
Antoine, the son of their sometime conductor Flavien Miannay, has put
The Declaration of Human Rights to music and arranged this for choir and orchestra.

They are putting this on in four different venues in Languedoc between now and the end of June.

Concert Human Rights à Port la Nouvelle
Le 05/05/2012 de 20h30 à 22 h 00
Théâtre de Port-la-Nouvelle

Concert Human Rights au Chateau Abbaye de Cassan
Le 06/05/2012 de 16h30 à 18 h 00
Château Abbaye de Cassan

Concert Human Rights à Béziers
Le 12/05/2012 de 20h00 à 22 h 00
Théatre des Franciscains à Béziers

Concert Human Rights à Bédarieux
Le 23/06/2012 de 21h00 á 22h30
Salle de la Tuilerie

Just got a phone call from Gites de France to tell us that YES ! we have been accepted as members and will be in the next guide.

We may be forced to have a drink tonight to celebrate.

Shucks.