Self-Catering with a Difference

I've already blogged on eating together with friends ('Table Talk', 22nd July) as a cure-all for society's ills; we're continuing to do our bit here in deepest Xaintrie with a splendid invention we call 'Entre Deux'.

Once a month, two names are drawn from a hat, out of a total of ten.  The names on the folded papers are all friends, all Xaintriecois.  The two 'winners' have to organise, design, prepare and serve (at a place of their choice) a meal for all ten of us.

The random nature of the choice of the catering duo, extremely variable culinary skills and international background of our group has proved to be a great formula for a jolly good time. Good friendships have become better and the unique recipes experienced and wines sampled have been such a delight that the latest meal (29th July) produced a resolve to record these dishes for posterity.  An 'Entre-Deux' cookbook was mooted along with other promises;  whether or not they'll be kept is open to question of course, but it's the thought that counts.

Anita and Marina (English and German with Belgian undertones) were the lucky pair this time.

After aperos in the garden on one of the hottest days of the summer, we sat down to the first entrée of a highly flavoured gazpacho soup, complete with centred ice-cube.  Couldn't have been a better start.

This was followed by a second entrée; an italian-style salad with mozarella, avocado, grape tomatoes poêlées (I think that's how it should be described, but I'm no cook - just an appreciative consumer), all in a balsamic-based dressing.

Main course was colin (hake?) steaks wrapped in prosciuto ham with a delicious marinated, baked cucumber with saffron.  Cheeses.  Dessert - Frozen orange juice with a chilled cream which had been pre-soaked in coffee beans in some magic way.

All accompanied by wines, choice of group members (no corkage to pay).

Roy and Elisabeth (English, Dutch) next month.  Can't wait.

Mapmaker

Being one's Age

Today is Mick Jagger's 65th birthday.  Yesterday was Marina's so we all went to the Moulin for lunch.  We sat on Jeff-the-Chef's new outside terrace alongside a French family (there's only room for 2 tables, 20 covers maximum).

The average age around our table was higher than Mr Jagger's total but that didn't stop us enjoying ourselves and making rather a lot of noise throughout the meal, in the usual melange of languages (French, German, Dutch and English).

Jeff excelled as usual with his inventive, skillfully crafted dishes; pan-fried foie-gras in a wild cherry sauce for example. Would you believe?

Our French family finished a little before us.  As they left, I turned to say a few words as I thought I ought to  apologise to them for making such a noise.  There were polite smiles in return as I explained, it was a birthday celebration.  The smile of the only man in the group looked genuine, along with the others as he replied, "Eighteenth?"

Touché.

Mapmaker

Extracting the digit

A short reflection on using numbers in French:

I love France.  I love living in France.  I'm retired now so absolute precision in numbers is not of absolute importance, but the French method of counting....?

Mapmakers do it with triangles and lots of numbers.  I trained and qualified as a Land Surveyor back in the pre-electronic days of hand-cranked mechanical calculators and even log-tables; batteries not required.  As such, the principal tenet rammed home during training and practice was to ensure that you always had at least two ways of calculating something from your observed angles and distances and errors in 'long numbers' had to be avoided at all costs.  Mistakes could be costly (especially when setting-out bridges, tunnels and the like).

This is why, even now, several years into 'retirement' with my brain running at a  gentler pace, I find the French way of  'speaking num

bers' extraordinary and, at least to me and countless others attempting to make headway with the language, prone to misinterpretation.

Apparently, in French long numbers are grouped in twos and/or threes but not as we would say in English.  Take for example the number 205379099.  In English we would most likely say  "two-oh-five (pause), three -seven-nine (pause), zero-nine-nine.   This would be correct even if we didn't actually pause.  In French?  Possibly "vingt, cinquante-trois, soixante-dix-neuf, zero-quatre-vingt-dix-neuf". Or, "deux-cents-cinq, trois-cents-soixante-dix-neuf,  zero, quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.

Depending on pauses discerned or otherwise by the listener, the former coud be a number as long and as erroneous as "2

0503601908019" or something, almost correct, like "20537908019.

In either case, the bridge would fall down.

The picture is of one of my survey stations in Oman, 1963

Mapmaker

Table Talk

Yesterday was one of those not infrequent occasions when a group of us met for lunch - for no particular reason other than friendship, food and talk.  We were three Dutch, three English two Germans and an American;  seven of us were xaintricois(es) with two visiting friends.

Liddy and Gerrit were hosts; we passed a pleasant four hours or so (a normal lunch interval) around a table in their garden with a view across to the peaks in the Parc des Volcans, thirty kilometres away in the Cantal.  The food was 'rice table', a dutch favourite originating from the Netherlands' colonial past; the conversation was varied and ranged from language, through accents and travel to the inevitable food and drink topics.  We passed house prices and royal families on the way.

I'm one of those people who are convinced that civilisations grew out eating together, with family and friends.  Share conversation (even if three or four languages may be needed), food and drink and avoid wars.

Incidentally, the royal family topic popped out of Liddy's table napkins;  paper ones but obviously of superior quality as they were purchasedd at a Dutch 'royal' venue (a palace of some sort?) which boasts a shop with such items, the wrappings no doubt embellished with the Netherlands' royal coat-of-arms.  We were very careful what we did with them after the meal.

Mapmaker

Stuff Happens

The title of this blog is Donald Rumsfeld's 'blurt' after the looting in Baghdad in April 2003.  It has since appealed to me as one of the most useful (and shortest) quotes of the 21st century so far.

Here's a little of my stuff from yesterday:

A message on the 'phone in the morning , in French, from a woman interested in one of my paintings in the local summer exhibition here in Argentat.  I'm getting better at French numbers, rattled-off with their usual sprinkling of 'quatre-vingt-somethings' but I still need one or two extra plays of the recording to be sure I've got it right.  Final proof came when she answered my return call and we agreed to meet at the gallery at 11am.

A forty-something woman was sitting on the steps outside the gallery when I arrived, smoking a splendid English-looking briar pipe.  This turned out to be my interested (interesting) buyer.  We concluded the deal whereby I would change the frame for a smaller, and deliver the goods at 7pm to her house in town.

I spent the afternoon working on a painting in neighbour Jim's 'studio' which he lets me use.  The picture shows the view from the studio doorway.  Paradise.  

A great-tit flew into the room as I worked.  It was not afraid of my presence and spent some time hopping around, pecking at my feet, hands and even tasted the acrylic paints, spread on paper plates on the table alongside where I worked.  It seemed to prefer red.  Jim's mother feeds birds from her balcony nearby so I suppose it was just after a free lunch.  I didn't really imagine it had any artistic tendencies.

Since the last blog:   There's been some feedback, which is satisfying.

Marina thinks I should have put quotes around the word "foreign" at the end of the last entry. She has a point; I was imagining an unknown English person reading it in some remote spot like Hartlepool or Hull, who wouldn't need quotes around this word but to Marina, who is Bavarian, it looks a tad condescending and almost rude.  Interesting.

Among further comments, not all recorded, were ones from Simon in Italy who thought it was too long, and Simon in Australia who seemed to enjoy it (he lived here with his family for a year and his comments are attached to the last blog) although the process of reading it appears to have been a dangerous one.

The interesting woman took delivery of the reframed painting with grace and the right sort of appreciative noises (for me) later, as planned and wrote out the cheque.

Stuff happened.

Mapmaker. 

Bastille Day

Well, my first blog entry wasn't much of a first effort, but I'm still finding out how to run this blog thingy...

As I was saying, Xaintrie is actually a place.  I was about to say, "look it up on Wikipedia," but I now find there is no entry there - yet.  Something, perhaps, for one of us Xaintrie inhabitants (I think we're known as "xaintriecois") to rectify?  This website might help, if you read French.  There's a map, even if you don't.

Yesterday, Monday 14th July, was of course, a national holiday here.  As well as being Roz's birthday.  The weather was perfect for a firework display so we installed ourselves early on the Quai Lestorgie in front of Roger's Ice-cream bar/art gallery (Les Quatre Rivières).  This is where we expected to get a good view of the pyrotechnics, scheduled to be launched at around 10.30 pm from the Jeanne d'Arc schoolgrounds at the end of the quay.  The picture here shows the view we had while we waited (click on it to see it in greater detail).  The river is the Dordogne.

We didn't need to settle onto Roger's steel-pseudo-rattan chairs quit so early; we were there before 7pm.  He thought (hoped) there would be quite a crowd and would not be able to 'hold' them for us until much after that but like everything else associated with traditional tourism this year, visitor numbers are well down.  The quay didn't fill to capacity until 3 hours later.

The fireworks were great as usual.  The occasion was appreciated by all, perhaps a thousand or more, sitting at the Quatre Rivières, the Gabariers restaurant next door, the Créperie along the quay and the throng just standing around with their families.

Something to note (particularly for any blog readers here familiar with the current UK scene):  Not one incidence of drunkenness, throwing up, shouting or fighting despite copious amounts of wine and beer being consumed.  No police in evidence.  The Security Team comprised three pretty teenage girls wearing bright yellow hi-viz vests with the word "Security" on the back.  Their job was to politely keep the public away from the firework end of the quay, behind some portable (easily negotiated if you wanted to be awkward) barriers.  The public politely obliged.

A final word on this 'public' in evidence there yesterday.  We tried to guess how many might be French, how many non-French.  I think it was around 50/50 with a bias on the French with their families.  Everyone had a good evening and there was no trouble.  It was a national occasion but it had no hint of nationalism or jingoism.  This goes a little way towards explaining why this is reason 23 (or is it 24?) why we live here, in this foreign land.

More next time,

Mapmaker

First entry to "The Xaintrie Blog"

I've just created this with a view to getting into the blogosphere.  It's my personal blog, on anything that comes to mind.

Let's start on "Xaintrie" itself.  Why "Xaintrie"?  What does it mean?

Well, it's a place.  In France, where I live.