What you Will

Shakespeare used the alternative title "What You Will" to his play Twelth Night. Apparently he had some problems dreaming-up titles for some of his works, a common malaise even to this day. Back at the beginning of June this year this same dilemma descended on five friends here in deepest France when we decided to form a rock group - as you do, and had to call ourselves something.

First ideas were crass. As our average age is (subject to verification) 61.8 years, we've currently settled on "Fossilised Rock". Opinions are divided still, principally along the line which separates us, the 'boys', from our spouses. We think it suits us as we don't want to take ourselves too seriously.

Our wives, who know only too well how appallingly rough we sound at present, have expressed dismay at the self-deprecating tone in this name; a bit of a pleasant surprise I suppose as normal reaction to wrinkly men playing young men's games has tended to be rather more disparaging.

Ah well, it should keep us out of mischief.

For the interested (or intrigued, incredulous), we're attempting stuff up to 50 years old - Elvis, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, The Shadows. Also some 'newer' stuff by Dylan, The Eagles. Next stop: some bluesey Clapton perhaps, but not until we can get through our initial repertoire (9 numbers would you believe) without too many hitches.

Don't laugh, it's rude. One day I'll maybe put an audio file on this blog - but that's not a promise...

Mapmaker

Dordogne and Ducks

Twenty-first of May was ascension day- a holiday in France, not to mention our wedding anniversary, so we went for drive into the outer edges of Dordogneshire.
True, we live in the upper Dordogne valley but we consider ourselves, literally, a cut above the immigrant Brits who inhabit the lower Dordogne, from Souillac, through Bergerac, westwards to the Gironde. All nonsense of course, but we do feel slightly smug about it. We have more room here; we're more thinly spread, our terrain is more rufty-tufty, we know how to tough- out our more severe winter cold snaps, our summers are more, well, clement- and so on. As a softy-Brit Southerner (raised in the Bournemouth area- never seen a decent blizzard), I'm ashamed to say I've come across this before of course but in reverse, in our former life in the UK, from our friends in the north whom we used to think crass for using these arguments to somehow prove their superiority. Ah well, human nature and all that.....
We visited Sarlat and Domme- wonderful towns in inimmitable surroundings. Sarlat is a truly medieaval survivor, built from soft Dordogne limestone. The town has a unique charm and intimacy, despite the crowds there on that feast-day having a jolly time in the streets under warm, spring sunshine. We had a coffee outside the Town Hall in a lively street in the town's centre, entertained by a wandering sort-of-trad-jazz band who blasted their repertoire over the heads of the throng against the background commentary of the day's master-of-ceremonies - a man somewhere nearby with a microphone linked to the speaker system in the streets. He spent the whole time we were there talking about ducks; how to feed them in preparation for the subsequent culinary delight of killing them, plucking them, 'emptying' them (literal English translation for the French for 'disembowel'), cutting them up and then the recipes. Finally he came to the famous foie-gras explanations and our favourite potato dish, Pommes Sarladaise, named after the town (potatoes cooked in duck-fat).

Domme is not far away. Stick to this link to find out about this village - as some of you, I'm almost sure, would know that the word has another meaning... (click here if your curiosity compels you).

I've been pretty slow on the blog-front in the last couple of months, I know. Summer's here and the warm, dry weather has brought other attractions and time-fillers. We've had our euro-election too, since the last blog and we voted for the first time in France. Fascinating. Favoured candidate paper flyer is sealed in a plain brown envelope and dropped into a totally transparent ballot box, manned by a smiling man who operates the shutter on the posting slot. He was pretty quick - get your fingers out of the way,- smartish. My man didn't do too well, but hey, vive l' europe!

Mapmaker

Going Dutch

I've just spent two weeks in Holland, my first visit to the country. This is my excuse for my inactivity, blogwise; the last blog was over a month ago. I did keep some notes though so that the red-hot observations could be regurgitated here for my faithful readers, if they exist (or existed). I wrote them rapidly, convinced that I would be able to recall in vivid detail and full technicolour the on-the-spot sensations and emotions. It hasn't worked as well as I'd hoped, (this is trying to tell me something: I'm not cut out to be a writer) so you'll get the notes themselves, mostly. Besides, this is supposed to be the 'Xaintrie Blog' - news and views from this corner of south-west France, so I won't ramble-on too much about the trip...

Xaintrie and Holland couldn't be more different. However, contrasts are always interesting and often generate waves of reaction or similar responses.

Amsterdam is a magnificent showcase of architecture and environment, stuffed full of contradictions; seventeenth century houses overlooked by twenty-first century tower cranes undertaking the city's never-ending renewal.

The construction-site picture here shows an example of the first images of central Amsterdam when arriving by train. There's an awful lot of this, particularly around the central station area.

Yet, across the road from the modern you will see the ancient in all its charm.

We stayed with friends in a new-town, 30 kilometres east of Amsterdam. First impressions here were that nothing seemed to be more than thirty years old and this turned out to be true. The town of Almere was seabed in the 1960s and in fact, the first house there was finished as late as 1976.

Spacious and green and very flat, it was, for me, a fascinating place - not least because of its modernity. For example, most of the domestic housing was heated by cooling water from power stations some 20 kilometres away, and future developments at Almere Poort will benefit from the world's third largest solar energy installation.

One of our first excursions was to a country park which houses the Kröller-Müller museum and art gallery. Follow the link for full info, but it is a wonderful place, reached by optionally leaving your car at the park gates then riding a bicycle for a couple of kilometres to the actual gallery and sculpture park.

The gallery contains over 200 Van Gogh and other impressionist paintings, in a calm, rural setting which seemed to us far preferable to the scramble back in Amsterdam to get into the Van Gogh museum there. We didn't manage that anyway due to waiting times and booking restrictions.

By the end of the first week we'd seen more of the countryside and set off for three nights on the isle of Texel, stopping to see the cheese market at the old town of Alkmaar on the way. The famous cheese market at Alkmaar seems to be a rather stage-managed affair but thousands of tourists turn up and it makes for a lively few hours in a pretty town with a picturesque if a bit scary trip on a boat around the canal system, where you have to literally get down on your knees to pass under the bridges.

Texel is a fascinating 25 kilometre-long island, a populated large sand-bank in the North Sea with quaint villages, lush green, flat(!) meadows, sand-dunes and home to the world renowned Texel sheep. We spent 3 nights there, one evening entertained by a famous Jazz trio (Borstlap, Bennink and Glerum) at the Klif 12 Music Club, in the village of Den Hoorn. Good jazz - click on their websites, a revelation...

It's still true about the windmills - there are thousands of them, but now these new ones are turbines, producing energy rather than pumping water to form the polders as in former times.

We were in Amsterdam again on the Queen's birthday, 'Queensday', 30th April. This is a unique experience where up to 1 million visitors cram into the streets and on the canals in all sorts of floating craft and go crazy. Here's someone else's blog on this. Well behaved fun in the sunshine, no problems. We didn't even see a policeman until we got back to the Central Station to find our train at the end of the afternoon where we came across a couple of mounted cops, chatting amiably with the some of the crowd.

Time to get back to Xaintrie..

This blog is long enough - more soon.

Mapmaker

Back from Blighty

I must be getting old. The word 'Blighty' came to mind immediately as I considered a title for this post. Click on it to read Wiki's explanation of its derivation..

In fact we arrived back here last week. I tapped out the gist of this blog on my new Ipod-touch while we were there - I've been longing to get my hands on one for some time and the current exchange rate between the pound and the euro finally tipped the balance. Apple, in their wisdom, have not changed the euro price of them since there were 1.5 euros to the pound and now the two are practically at parity giving a 50 euro saving. Not a great excuse I suppose - I ought to be able to justify it in some other way and I think I can (to myself). Suffice to say here that it's a lot, lot better than sliced bread.

Cultural difference noted on the return journey: Notice in gents toilet at Portsmouth ferry terminal: "Please note. These toilets may be cleaned by male or female cleaners". Equivalent in France - female mopping around your feet while you pee.

'Bt openzone' was active at the motorway service station - free, thanks to 'Roadchef' as a 'special' for their customers. Great! I can blog a bit while drinking my coffee. Not to be - supposed to be free after registering name and email address etc. but I couldn't log in, even after using my father's UK address. It didn't like something. Possibly French email Address?

Sailed from Portsmouth dead on time at 2:30. Perfect April day. Fluffy cumulus stretching out eastwards, gathering into a jumbling roll over the South Downs. At first the Isle of Wight sheltered the ship from the south-westerly swell. After a couple of hours the swell rapidly settled into an almost flat calm. Learned to play Canasta with Liz. Good game, deserves more exposure.

8:30 pm-sunset with an almost full moon over the french coast and a short stub of a rainbow rising out of the razor-edge horizon, somewhere near LeHavre. One hour to go, then the 'Hotel de la Phare' at Ouistreham. We're back on what is now our home soil.

Mapmaker