Jacques Brel

(This was my very first translation.)

La Chanson des vieux amants

Bien sûr, nous eûmes des orages
Vingt ans d’amour, c’est l’amour fol

Mille fois tu pris ton bagage
Mille fois je pris mon envol

Et chaque meuble se souvient
Dans cette chambre sans berceau
Des éclats des vieilles tempêtes

Plus rien ne ressemblait à rien
Tu avais perdu le goût de l’eau
Et moi celui de la conquête

Mais mon amour
Mon doux mon tendre mon merveilleux amour
De l’aube claire jusqu’à la fin du jour
Je t’aime encore tu sais je t’aime

The Song Of Old Lovers

Of course we’ve lived through stormy weather
With foolish love for twenty years

We’ve packed to go yet stayed together
And battled on through all the tears

Yet all the trappings of our past
That lie within our childless room
Bear scars of wars long finished

The winner now is often last
And simple things don’t lift our gloom
But if we lose we’re not diminished

And Oh My Love
My soft and tender sweet amazing love
From break of day until stars shine above
I love you still, you know I love you

Last night we were out to dinner with some friends during which we were served a lemon sorbet (with vodka, totally delicious) and to eat it (essential to spoon out all the delicious lemony iced vodka in the bottom of the glass ) we were given long spoons.

Having that sort of nerdy mind I immediately said; ” I must be supping with the Devil ” it turns out that most of the table didn’t know what I was talking about.
As far as I was concerned I was just remembering an old proverb ; “He who supps with the devil should use a long spoon “
A warning , I take it , to be cautious if sharing close contact with an enemy.

I have told you all about my present daily perusal of the complete works of Shakespeare, I won’t elaborate.

The play I opened at random was The Comedy of Errors and the lines I read were :

Dromio of Syracuse: Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat;
or bespeak a long spoon.

Antiophilus of Syracuse: Why, Dromio?

Dromio of Syracuse: Marry, he must have a long spoon
that must eat with the devil.

Just a little coincidence ?

I thought I saw an eagle
Though it might have been a vulture
I never could decide

Leonard Cohen

We were in much the same prediciment in the Haut Languedoc on Monday when a pair of magnificent birds swooped about over our heads as we picniced.
One of them had a distinct tab on one of his wings.

Eagles or Vultures ?
You decide.

Brother-in Law Colm birdwatching by the Orb this morning

I have been getting a certain amount of requests that I might do some cookery classes here in the Languedoc in conjunction with the Chambre d’Hote.

I have been thinking about these this winter and remembering how much I do in fact enjoy teaching, and what a pleasure it would be to teach out here with a ready supply of superb Mediterranean ingredients.

I kinda decided that I might run two short courses , maybe in May and then again in October, when it wouldn’t be too hot to be spending the day in the kitchen but still warm enough to give pale Irish skins a taste of some Mediterranean sun.

It was then that I came up with an idea for another short course which would give visitors a real flavour of the area without adding any extra labour on my shoulders.

Síle’s brother Colm is a commited naturalist , taking a walk with Colm is like a combined botany , zoology , and entomology tutorial but he has a gift for making these subjects, as you come across them in the field, really fascinating, even to a traditional townie like myself.

So I approached Colm and suggested this , Colm was as enthusiastic as myself about the project and so he came out to the Languedoc to us last Sunday and we are spending the week putting together a natrualists holiday in the Languedoc.
Briefly our plans are for four days of leisurely and relaxed strolls which a group would take with Colm in which he would introduce them to the distinct flora and fauna of the Languedoc region.
One day would take in the Mediterranean coast and the distinctive plants of the land beside the sea , one the Garrigues of the Haute Languedoc Mountains with their wonderful wild herbs , one investigating the waterways in the area , having a look at the birds and plants of the Orb valley and maybe taking a stroll by the beautiful tree lined Canal de Midi.
The fourth day might be appropriate to visit one of the formal gardens in the area like the Mediterranian Garden above Roquebrun.

Each day would of course finish with an evening in Le Presbytere with the visitors enjoying the fine wines from the Languedoc and delicious Mediterranean food produced by yours truly.

We would see ourselves running one of these in May and another in October with the latter having more emphasis on Autumn fruits and Mushrooms.

Now all I have to do is decide what form my cooking sessions will take.

Just read in yesterdays Evening Herault that the local bus company here in Herault, seeing that they were not doing as well as they should, decided to dramatically reduce their fares to encourage more people to use their services.

In a similar move two years ago the French government, seeing that restaurants were suffering from tightened purses, permitted them to reduce their VAT contributions from 19% to 5%.

Different countries, different solutions.

In his essay called By the Book in Julian Barnes; The Pedant in the Kitchen he lists which he says are his essential cook books , those which he would never cull from his shelves.
He then goes on to list 27 of certainly the best cook books of our generation.
he lists all the classics, the Elizabeth Davids, the Jane Grigsons, Alan Davidsons Oxford Companion to Food he even includes Delia’s course book, but buried in these giants is our own Master Chef ; Myrtle Allen.

Now Myrtle only produced the one cook book but it is a true classic.
In The Ballymaloe are as many classic dishes, beautifully and informally explained, as Julia Child managed in her much larger (and hugely valuable ) book on Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Myrtle sets a tone of her huge concern of the quality and provinance of her ingredients right from the start.
I quote from her introduction;

“The butter your sister is sending us is very good”, I said to a neighbour one day. ” Yes ” he said ” that field always made good butter “

A small exchange which I think could be a motto for the whole modern food movement and one written now forty years ago.

Not only does Myrtle have the skills , as is evident from the success of Ballymaloe , but she delivers this skill lightly in a book peppered with personal asides and anecdotes .
If you havn’t got it already buy it , read it and cook from it.
You will be richly rewarded.

It was my privilage to present Myrtle with an award from Euro-Toques in 2001 to acknowledge her contribution to Irish Food.

Today,accompanied by Síle’s brother Colm, whom we had just picked up in Carcassonne, we decieded to take a small meander through the Minerve.

On the way home we spotted a Brocante in Rieux Minervois.

There I spotted ( and bought ) both of these;

The first I immediatly fell in love with.
Anyone who loves a glass sufficiently to mend it (especially with a doorknob turned to fit) is without doubt my friend (how could you not buy something which was so loved)

This au contraire is a total mystery to me (and to the man in the shop who begged me to return and tell him if I ever found out what it was ).

All suggestions welcomed.

Strange extremes of weather here in the Languedoc.
The mornings are cold, the stove is encouraged to blaze but then by midday it is all change.

The sun which has been valiantly shining all morning hits its apex and really starts to warm us up.
I sat in the terrace this afternoon reading a book and eventually had to creep further and further back into the shade , it was just too hot .
I checked the thermometer, it was just touching 20C, the day was very warm, and stayed warm until the sun started to sink at about 5 pm.
Then it very suddenly felt like someone had turned off the central heating and within an hour the dial dropped from 20 down to 10 which , after the balminess of the day, felt very cold indeed.

So during the evenings we are glad of our wood burner.

But the wonderful sunny heat of the afternoon stays with you, promising warmer nights also, soon.

So while proceeding through my diurnal perusal of the plays of Shakespeare I have started to open the tome at random and see what I can find.

Todays’ happy chance brought me to King Henry V Act 4, Scene 4 where my eye was caught by some French text.
The scene takes place (I think ) on the battlefield at Agincourt where Pistol [who was a bit of a reprobate in Henry IV (part 1) ] meets a French soldier who pleads with Pistol for his life.

Pistol . Yield cur !

French Soldier. Je pense que vous etes le gentilhomme de bonne qualité.

Pistol. Qualtitie ! Calen o custure me ! Art thou a gentleman ? What is thy name ? Discuss

And there it is ! The Waterford connection. !

Pistol, like a lot of people when confronted with a language they do not understand decides to talk some foreign mumbo jumbo at the stranger.
(In Cork, in my youth we used to say Pic de Jer (a park in Ballinlough ) or Bon Secours (a hospital on College Road ) in similar circumstances.)

Calen o custure me was the name of a song popular in the English court in pre- Shakespearean times, most commentators of Shakespeare had assumed that it was somehow derived from the Italian.
It was Professor Brian Boydell who discovered that it in fact came from a folk song , popular indeed in the English Court , but which came originally from the Sunny South East of Ireland.
What Pistol was saying was in fact

Cailín óg cois tSuire mé which translates as ;
I am a young girl from the side of the Suir .
(The Suir being the river which flows through Waterford )

The Consort of St. Sepulchre , a marvellous group who played music from the time of Shakespeare and one of who’s members was Barra Boydell (son of the Prof.) used to perform this song and it is from the sleeve notes of one of their LP’s that I originally got this information.

Lately Síle and I have taken to spending a lot of time on the computer each morning- being comparatively guestless at this time gives us a bit of leisure in the mornings to catch up on mail and read the papers on line.

To stop the rows over who gets the PC I have taken out the laptop from the cupboard , little used by us except on holiday, so we can each plug away on our own.

On Monday morning when I switched on the laptop it started telling me that I had a virus .
This thing called Spyguard Protection filled the screen telling me I had all sorts of nasty sounding viruses , Trojan was one and there were several worms, who were taking control of my computer and that they had access to all my private files, my bank numbers, my credit card details etc.

If I followed their eradication commands I soon arrived at a moment when I had to subscribe to Spyguard Protection to proceed and then, of course, they wanted money and my credit card details etc.

I have recently re-installed Mc Afee virus protection so I then- suspecting I was being conned-ran a full anti virus scan on the laptop . After about an hour of meticulously checking all my files and stuff Mc Afee declared that I was, in fact clean as a whistle.

Then I began to check out Spyguard Protection on line on my other PC.
It turns out it is in fact a most aggravating scam.
Their methods of getting rid of this nuisance were far to technical for me so Benjamin of my local internet cafe called today and he took the laptop away.
Apparently he will have to take out the hard drive and launder it in a computer which as protection from Spyguard.
Hopefully it’ll be back, good as new in a few days.

Apparently this Spyguard is very clever and can sneak in the back door with something else legit you are downloading.

You have been warned.