It is a question people constantly ask us – “What is the cost of living like in France?” and more and more my answer (as costs seem to rise in France and sink in Ireland)- “Much the same as Ireland”.

But of course there are things which are much cheaper out her, those things which grow easily here, mediterranean fruits and vegetables which are still luxuries back in Ireland (the obverse is also true- fish and potatoes for example are certainly cheaper, and often of better quality Ireland)

About 18 months ago a group of farmers got together and took over some sheds at the back of a garden centre and turned it into a six day a week farmers market- cutting out the middle man- which they called ; La Ferme Biteroisse.
We dont go there as often as we should but we did this morning and were again amazed with the quality and value.
A few examples :
Fresh Figs €3 a kilo
slightly less fresh figs (for jam) €1 a kilo
6 little Aubergines €1.44
Sweet (but very misshapen) tomatoes €1 a kilo
2 Spaghetti Squash €1.06

and best value of all, the duck legs (from which I make my signature confit) were on special offer and cost me €14.50 for 12 large free range beauties.

The shop, which was quiet for the first year, is now starting to be found by the canny housewives of Beziers so I have every hope that they will continue to prosper.

While we were heading off on our few days in Provence last week I started to go through the many boxes of books in the attic to get a couple of titles for holoday, relaxed perusal.

Among them I saw the above and tucked it into the bag, it looked like an Irish “Dick Francis ” and would so be fairly unchallenging.

To my surprise I find the flyleaf has a hand written dedication;

To Síle & Martin, le grá , Maurice O Scanaill. 25/ 11/93

First either of us had seen of this, but gratifying for all that.

A little light Googling cleared up the mystery.

Maurice Scannaill, the author, was a great friend, and best man to, my brother in law Padraic de Bhaldraithe. In the Seventies he had been working as a vet in Connemara and there Síle and I had met him a few times.
That he was an exceptional man of great charm is evident from his activities.
As well as running madly through the most difficult terrain in Ireland practicing vetinary medicine he used to find time to compile the weekly crossword for the RTE Guide- a man certainly after my own heart and I have fond memories of going through the entire songbook of the Fifties and Sixties one night in his company.

Here is his potted biography from his web page and it makes fascinating reading.

Dr Maurice O’Scanaill [aka Rory McCormac] lives with his wife, Alex, in Clifden, Connemara, Ireland. He has two grown sons, Rory and Cormac – hence his nom de plume – and an increasing number of grandchildren.

A very busy veterinarian, Maurice’s early professional ‘literary’ output was confined to compiling the weekly ‘Procrustes’ cryptic crossword for Ireland’s national Radio/TV Guide, and it wasn’t until much later that he found time to write full-length thrillers. In August 1994, he submitted his first, SNAPSHOT, and the first half of his second, OUTBREAK, to twelve London agents. Within two weeks, he’d received four offers to represent him and, by November, he’d secured a three-book deal with Random House. Hodder & Stoughton were the under-bidders. Returning home in 2002, he set about establishing a busy multi-vet practice in Connemara on Ireland’s rugged west coast and, now that that’s up and running, he has resumed his writing. He has just finished his latest thriller, WIDOW’S PIQUE (see synopsis). He still compiles deviously cryptic crosswords – again as Procrustes, for Ireland’s national satirical magazine, Phoenix, and, as Bogman, for his local newspaper, The Connemara View.

Among my boxed collection of books were several which we had inherited from Skerries , Sile’s family home, so obviously this book had lain there for the last 18 years while nobody remembered to send it to us.
Now I will have to read it of course and, if I enjoy it, I might even write and thank him !

When we were in Provence last week we went to see the Ochre Mines in Roussillon, these are still mined for the pigment as they have been for hundreds of years.
My chief intererest in the place, I confess, is that it was in Roussillon Village that Samuel Beckett stayed for most of duration the war, and it is said that he was influenced by their stark beauty to use a similar background for “Waiting for Godot”.

The scenery was I am sure right up there with most of the settings of the play that I have seen , but, not much fun on a scorching September afternoon.
It was dry, very dry, dusty and arid , I noticed that there were several cafes on the return trip that surprisingly offered beer en pression .
I , and many of the promenedeurs, partook.

But.

The moment which made my day was reading the translated leaflet which went with the promenade ” Le Colerado (for that was what they called it) is controlled by the “Friends of the Colerado ” who “worry about its upkeep.”
Bravo!

Cafe de France Isle Sur la Sorgue by Willy Romis in 1952.

And last week.

Apologies for the slight hiatus in the blogging we were here , in Provence, for a week in glorious sunshine spending most of our time reading by this bit of water (and even occasionally dipping the toes in same) . I’ll tell more as soon as I catch up..

Suffering from insomnia (I quite like it really, great feelings of energy in the middle of the night) I decided to entertain myself by trawling the blog to find out what I was doing this time five years ago.
There I found this entry referring to a time in the previous month not without its significance to the future of the Dwyer Family:

The Languedoc House search continued…
Being the eighth part and climax of the holiday saga

Before we left St Gaudens we had a little cycle into
the town where we found a stall selling what must
be the most beautiful strawberries in the world;
Mara des Bois.
They are little balls of flavour, half ways between
a Fraise de Bois and a regular strawberry, if you
ever see any buy them.

But now the time had come to the meat and potatoes
of the holiday.
Our next stop was the Languedoc where we intended
to spend the next two weeks doing some serious house
hunting.

We had decided to centre ourselves around Carcassonne,
this being the only airport which had a direct flight to
Ireland in the area.
We had got on to the Laroque agency who organised us
to meet some agents in the general area, our instructions
had been to show us houses within 100klms of Carcassonne.

We were very fortunate to squeeze into a campsite in
Trebes, just 6 klms outside Carcassonne, not only did
we get the only emplacement remaining in the site but
it was directly by the River Aude which gurgled pleasently
within a few feet of our tent for the next two weeks.

Our first appointments were in Carcassonne itself where
Pierette was our appointed agent. We all got on extremely
from the start but before the end of the day we were firm
friends.
And thereby hangs a tale.

This was the first house we saw with Pierette.
It was a great house, originally a farmhouse but unfortunately
the creeping suburbs had crept up on it leaving it now
surrounded by modern villas.

Sile and I had to go poking around the outhouses in the back,
where it was evident man hadn’t stepped for some time.

We were in the car on the way to our next house when I
tried to flick off what I assumed were some burrs on my
trousers.
To my shock they all hopped back after I had dusted them
off.
A quick check on the others revealed that we were all covered
by small black fleas.
Pierette immediately stopped the car and there followed a
frantic ten minutes while we all, in various states of undress,
slapped ourselves and each other by the side of the road,
in an attempt to rid ourselves of our followers.
We were observed with total astonishment by the passing motorists.

After this bonding experience we were firm friends!

And the next house we saw with her was a serious contender.
In the middle of the village of Azille.
it ticked most of our buttons.

It was large enough for our needs and had a courtyard in
the back large enough for our dream of having a swimming pool.

The village had a very pretty church with a font made of
the marvellous red gray and orange marble of Caunes-
just down the road.
Caunes marble is most famous, or infamous depending
on your view, for being used extensively by Marie Antoinette
in her decoration of the Petit Trianon in Verseille.

And so followed a week of intense house hunting.

An agent who were anticipating to be interesting was
called Freddy Rueda and he was centered in the area
above the town of Beziers.
This was about 100klms from Carcassonne so within
our cachement area.

This particular agency carries out its business in a most
unusual way.
Instaed of using an office all clients are met in the small
cafe of St Genies where, over coffee or whatever, ones
plans for the day are made.

Our agent was called Charles, dressed entirelly casually he
made a refreshing change from the other agents we had met.
He spoke impeccible and indeed upper class English.
(He had, we discovered, studied music at the Guildhall in London)

He confidently told us that he had just the house for us.

He had.

The next few days were ones of intense discussion between
Sile and myself,and ,as they were the long week end of the
feast of the Assumption, we had plenty of time for both discussion
and some necessary sight seeing.

It even gave me a chance to drop into a way side Brocante and buy
this stunning Czech jug for a mere two Euros.

And we had a good chance to explore Carcassonne

And admire Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s bizarre conical towers.

And watch the jousting in the Lices

We had a picnic by the Canal de Midi where
a cock on one of the moored barges came to
pick our scraps.

In the Abbey in Lagrasse we found that Sile na Gigs
were not just an Irish invention.

Lagrasse also had a beautiful Roman bridge
(thats me in the middle)

But probably the most ineresting sight was in our
own village of Trebes. It appears that in 1998, on
the night before a wedding. the ceiling of this 12th
century chirch had collapsed. Then, to the amazement
of all they had found that the oak beams of the original
structure had been decorated with what can only
been described as cartoons of about 300 people.
This covered all races and types, from jews to blacks.

Here are two of these cartoons.
They wern’t always flattering.

During this long weekend of decision we went to one
more castle, this was the castle of Saissac.

There this fairly ruined castle had restored two of their
arched rooms for future functions.

I discovered that the configuration of these rooms was
such that the echos were something that Enya would
have died for.
I proceeded to sing most of the latin mass that I could remember.
Sile sang a folk song.
We sounded magnificent-even me!
The strange thing is that Sile took a shot of me mid Sanctus
and all these amazing motes surround me.
Could it be the notes reverbrating!

Eventually Wednesday came and we went back to the presbytery.

It still looked great.

We had found our French house.

Woke up this morning to a wonderful feeling of freedom .
For the first time in six weeks we have the house completely to ourselves, no-one for breakfast, no-one for dinner, no-one to talk to (we’re happy on the shelf. )

I love having company (and a lot of that time it has been friends and family staying ) but nothing expands the house like emptiness.

Before we headed off to a Vide Grenier in Bessan (another luxury of solitude) I decided to lock all windows against a forcast thunder storm.
As I did , moving from one room to another, I realised that at heart I still cannot believe that it is true, that we own and live in this huge beautiful house in the South of France , any minute now I just may wake up.

We have a very good sculptor in the village called Elke Montreal and she runs courses in sculpting from time to time.
Last week we had a German Engineer stay with us for a week while he produced the above Recumbant Nude.
I think it is rather fine for a first attempt.
Should you be interested in a course her website is here

We – had to go to Montpellier to Ikea last week and, as there isn’t really an alternative on back roads, we went by motorway on the Langueducienne.

Now as I have said before this is a bit of an thoroughfare connecting the Iberian Peninsula with the Northern part of Europe so it is a hell of a good route for spotting number plates . In our time we have seen the following on this road;
A AND B BG CZ D DK E FL FR GB GBZ HR I IRL L LT MC N NL P PL RO SK SLO LT UA

This adds up to 27, last week we counted a mere 12 , but then the holiday season is fairly well over.

Now – without lookung them up how many of those initials could you put countries to ? I reckon anything over 15 is pretty good and you can check out the others on any number of websites.

As moving out to France has been a staggered business over the last five years and the priority always was to get the business up and running there are a whole lot of unfinished jobs which are only now , and that very slowly, being tackled.
As we are planning to escape to Provence for a few days next week I decided that this was the moment that I should make a start of the 15 large cardboard boxes of books which are in the attic with an eye to getting together a bundle of long ago read (and now forgotten) books for the holiday- which we have promised ourselves will be a very lazy one.

I managed to go through three of the boxes and from got about a half dozen of suitable books for next week.
Among them was Tristram Shandy author Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy which he wrote in 1768- nearly 250 years ago.
This I thought would certainly show some of the changes that these years had brought about in these countries. It was a book which I had no idea I possessed and had no idea where it came from.
I opened up the flyleaf and was immediately struck by the name written there ;
R. Whitaker , Oxford 1933.

The flyleaf also has a very competent pencil sketch of a cabriole leg from a table and a medallion topped with a swag , was the talented Ruth Whitaker also an artist ?

Suddenly whole pockets of forgotten information came flooding back to my mind. This was a book belonging to Ruth Simcox (nee Whitaker) which was part of a bookcase of books which my family had bought in the fifties , and thereby hangs a tale.

The Simcoxes were a family, much like our own , of prosperous Cork Merchants.
They had a large bakery on Patrick Street which employed a lot of the people of Cork.
That they were Protestant seems to have made very little reason for separation, even matrimonial separation, from the Catholic middle class of Cork. Ruth’s brother Sammy was married to my mother’s sister Rosemary (their child was raised a catholic) and her sister Gladys was married to Tom Crosbie, also a Catholic and proprietor of The (then) Cork Examiner .
The Crosbie family lived next door to us- in that our gardens touched and a simple scramble over the wall made visiting possible between the children.
The Crosbies however lived in a much grander style than us in a rather fine Country House called Woodlands which had a marvellous ballroom with huge windows looking down the Lee to Cobh.

The Simcoxes themselves lived in an also rather grand house in nearby Montenotte which was (I think) called, for obvious reasons, Lee View.

Now I have absolutely no idea of what happened but at some stage in the early fifties the Simcox bakery went bust, totally bust and the family ended up without a penny.
It was at this stage that they auctioned off the house in Montenotte, and the contents, and that my family acquired the little book by Sterne.
That this did not solve their financial problems was evident by the next development.
It was decided that Ruth would attempt to earn a living for the family by giving ballroom dancing lessons in the ballroom of her sister’s house in Woodlands.

I remember Ruth Symcox well at these classes. Even though I was considered too young to learn dancing my older brother and sisters were strongly encouraged to attend so I was often permitted to sit at the edge of the ballroom and watch the proceedings.
Mrs Simcox was a tall elegant and beautiful woman who wore for the classes a magnificent black silk dress with ( I now realise) all the trappings of Dior’s “New Look ” :- layers of petticoats making the skirt stick out like a short, but mid calf length, crinoline.
The dancing thought was not of course the sort of stuff seen nowadays in “Come Dancing ”
The dances taught by the elegant Mrs Simcox were the Waltz, the Quickstep and maybe the Foxtrot, dances that the youth attending were likely to have to perform at Christmas Parties and Birthday Soirees.

After a year or so it was realised that despite the attendance of the whole of the Jeunesse Dore of Middle Class Cork at these classes that this was not sufficient to keep the wolf from the Simcox door and then and astonishing decision was made. The Simcoxes decided to leave Cork and applied for and obtained employment as butler and housekeeper to a titled family in England .
And there , as far as I know, they lived out their years.

I also remember my mother telling me when I enquired about them that Ruth declared herself entirely happy with her new life.

Somewhere along the line I had obviously purloined the little book which of course also poses another question .
Was the beautiful , elegant and talented Ruth Simcox also a graduate of Oxford ?
If so then her final career was even more unexpected.