How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my two and sixtieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near.

or

Thank you Mr Milton but I do not intend to grow up quite yet.

The door of Le Palais des Papes

A Gargoyle inside the palais

Fuinneog Ór

Lunch on the Place

Sur le Pont d’Avignon
detail on a railing spotted and photographed by Síle

Good try mate, but I can still see you.

Ruadhán teases a smile from his grandfather

Spring seems later this year than others , the locals tells us it has been a very harsh winter – for Languedoc. Walking around the village last week there was however some comfort. This huge Olivier plainly survived the cold.

Almond blossom everywhere – and so many different shades of pink and white.
Are they wild ? Escaped from cultivation ? Deliberate planted once among the vines and now left to their own devices ?
No-one seems to ever pick the nuts.

Les Vielles Vignes , so old and thick they can stand on their own without support, do a witches line dance after pruning.

Bathos , we spot the longest worm ever on the road,
Síle took pity and carried him/her (its all the one with worms) on a stick back into the grass.

Having exorcised the song successfully I must relate a little known fact about the people who gave the song its title.
When we worked in Kent in the early Seventies in The Wife of Bath Restaurant every couple of weeks we would notice in the car park a series of sleek sports cars carring a family for dinner.
These were , in the eccentric British way , all number plated with the family initials as in MCA 1, MCA 2 etc. which is apparently amazingly cool because you have to spend enormous money to buy them especially.

The clan was led by a Sir Robert Mc Alpine (I think) and they were perfectly well behaved and never tried to exploit Síle or I – who would have been the only Irish people working there.
It took a little while before I connected the people up to the song and I was never quite sure whether they were to be loved or despised for having employed the Irish Navvies during the hungry fifties and sixties.

It is a bit tenuous I know but I always thought we could claim , in our own way, to have been McAlpine’s Fusiliers too.

I’m having another night of being haunted by a line from a song which keeps playing in my ear.

This one , like the last , Porter’s spirited evocation of the Empress Josephine, was not a song that had a particular resonance for me.
It was a song that crept into my subconscious by being frequently played on Radio Éireann in the sixties , Mc Alpine’s Fusiliers as sung by the Dubliners.

The recalcitrant line is :

Oh Mother Dear I’m over here
I’m never coming back.
What keeps me here’s
The rakes of beer
The Ladies, and the craic.

I have decided to update this to make it relevant for a rather older retiree in the Languedoc :

Oh Children Dear I’m over here
I’m never coming back
What keeps me here’s
The sky’s so clear
And chilled Picpoul- en vrac*.

*En Vrac (in bulk ), is how the careful tippler buys his Vins de Pays here.

If you bring your own container (one, five or up to fifty litre ) the vigneron will let you fill this from a petrol pump like dispenser in his Cave .
You will pay a fraction of the cost for exactly the same stuff as in in the bottle.
Normally about a euro per litre.

And so the country is no longer under the rule of the Fianna Fáil party.
This would have been a result I would have been ecstatic about a few years ago but now , somehow , it was all so expected that my reaction is to say- “So What ?”

Is there a difference between the Fine and the Fianna anyway ?

Listening th RTE yesterday I managed to get a small moment of joy from a remark made by Olivia O Leary.
On the subject of the surprising transfer of votes between FF and FG she declared that this indicated the end to Civil War politics in Ireland.
Now wouldn’t that be a marvellous thing.

Like a lot of people in Ireland (and Scotland , England and Wales ) I think that one of the essentials of any well stocked breakfast table has got to be a good Orange Marmalade made from Seville Oranges.
These beauties are bitter and highly aromatic and really leave the ordinary sweet orange in the ha’apenny place for intense orange flavour.

I made various enquiries about the prospects of buying some out her to make my years supply (they are only available for about six weeks about January and February ) and was greeted by blank faces.
A search of the internet told me that they had been intensely cultivated here in the Languedoc , and had been used to make a Bitter Orange Liqueur, the vestiges of which had been refined into Cointreau which still uses the Bigarade (which is the French word for the Seville Orange. )

This was not a lot of use to me now , and I knew I had to have my Marmalade fix so I managed to persuade my friend Clive Nunn – who is coming to see me in March- to track down and buy, and then freeze (they freeze excellently) some of these beauties in Kilkenny, (and thereby hangs a tale which Clive tells here )

Two weeks ago we were going to Minerve , one of the most dramatic of the Cathar battle sites , when the word Bigarade on a roadside poster caught my eye.
It turned out that in the village of La Caunette they would on the 26th and 27th of February have a Fete de Bigarade.
Surely, I thought, they will have some Seville Oranges there.
We attended it this morning , and I did manage to get a few Seville beauties (It is OK Clive, I still need yours , these will be for freezing for a Sauce Bigarade to eat with Duck Confit and to suspend over alcohol to make a superlative Bigarade Liqueur) (Eat your heart out M. Cointreau.)

But

Most importantly of all.

I was able to insure that I will no longer suffer from a dearth of my favourite orange.

I bought myself a Seville Orange Tree.