It's Valentine's Day .....time to get married....

Image by Vintage Lulu via Flickr

A French friend's grand daughter is getting married in May and we are invited to the wedding.

Unless some miracle happens and the house is sold tomorrow so that we could combine the wedding with the sale I doubt that we shall be going...the journey is not particularly expensive if you choose your flights carefully but it is long and tiring, especially with all the absurd, useless 'security' nonsense the modern passenger has to undergo.
Our governments have erected 'the war against terror' into a shibboleth  which enables half witted 'jobsworths'  to ransack our luggage, ask damned impertinent questions and treat us like prisoners by depriving us of our shoes and belts.
Query the justification for the shibboleth and it's off to Guantanamo Bay in an orange jumpsuit.
I find it amazing that we, ordinary people, are subjected to all this while war criminals and despots stalk the world at ease.......
Can you see a jobsworth rooting round in Robert Mugabe's suitcases....?
Or making Tony Blair take off his shoes and stand on a dirty floor in his socks?

While we're all busy keeping our fingers crossed for a democratic outcome for Egypt, perhaps we might spare the time to take a hard look at our own societies, where real freedom has become a mockery.

Still it's a pity that we shan't be going, as I like weddings in themselves, as well as for presenting the chance to meet up with a lot of friends and have been to a fair number of them in France in my time.
Sending a present just isn't the same.

When I was first in France I saw the wedding parties in my village walking from the square down to the mairie for the civil ceremony and then back up the hill to the church for the religious one.
At that time there were still a few greatgrannies in long black skirts and the characteristic 'coiffe' of that part of the world, which resembled a tall starched nurse's cap with large wings - very severe, unlike some of the other coiffes I have seen, as in Brittany with those towers of starched lace, or the coloured wings of the ladies of Alsace.
Just a few kilometres away the 'coiffe' was much prettier, resembling a ribbon trimmed mob cap with lace streamers behind, rather like an upmarket Edwardian parlourmaid's cap.
Much more flattering....
There's a link to a video here which shows the 'coiffe' of la Rosiere at la Mothe Saint Heray in the Deux Sevres, which will give you some idea of these long gone headdresses.

By the time I had progressed to being invited to weddings, the new generation of grannies were disporting themselves in heels, shiny tight skirts and a decollete that had the old boys all of a lather...change had been rapid and radical.

As is illustrated by the timing of this wedding.

Previous generations had a very limited calendar when fixing an appropriate date.
First there was the absolute ban on marrying in church during Advent or Lent.....then the practical ban on marrying during the harvest or the vendange, when it was all hands to the family pump and no time for frivolity.
And as for May! This was the month dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the spotless Mother of God and woe betide anyone rash enough to approach the priest with a view to arranging a marriage, with all its carnal overtones, in that virginal month of the year!
You might as well proclaim your pre-marital pregnancy to all and sundry as that could be the only reason for marrying in May!


Madeleine had told me about country weddings in her youth....we were taking a walk after Sunday lunch at my house, in order to be in condition for eating the leftovers at supper and had taken the shady walk up past the little chateau and through the woods, passing under the firework bursts of the sweet chestnut flowers to the quiet lanes beyond.
She paused as we were about to pass a house set back from the road....it had been bought recently by English and was being done up...and took a good look.
It had, she explained, once belonged to someone in her mother's family and she hadn't seen it for years.
It had certainly gone down in the world from the time when it was the centre of a busy farm....roofs needed attention, the barn wall sported a mighty crack from top to bottom and the scaffolding was up on the front of the house to replace the cracked, leaking rendering.

A woman emerged from the house and, coming half way towards us, asked in  English
'Can I help you?'
In that particularly English way which indicates clearly that the 'help' that one has in mind is to 'help' you to go away before you 'help' yourself to something which doesn't belong to you.
I explained that Madeleine was interested to see the house again after so long and about the family connection but far from asking us in for a tea and a natter she simply said
'But it's sold now...' and turned back to her door.

As we strolled on, Madeleine described to me how she had been very friendly with the daughter of the house when they were both girls and had been invited to her wedding.
In those pre-war days, not many people had cars...Madeleine's father, who operated an oil pressing business being an exception....so when the family gathered for celebrations, it was the custom to put everyone up. However, beds and bedrooms were soon full of the grannies and the aunties and the less robust so the overflow and the young people found themselves sleeping on clean straw in the barns - the sexes strictly segregated at night and watched over by one of the dads or uncles.
Madeleine had gone over a few days previously to help out with the preparations, including the preparations of the bride herself.
Water was left out in pails in the sun to give her fair hair rinse after rinse of chamomile....and more water was heated in a galvanised bath so that she could have a proper bath the night before the wedding, a rare privilege when the usual approach to cleanliness was a sponge and bowl - bringing to mind grandmother's dictum..
'Wash up as far as possible and down as far as possible and leave poor possible alone...'

The women were busy baking and cooking....meat pates, vegetable pates, hams, cakes and tarts, mighty stews, elderly hens cooked in stock with rice, cockerels cooked down in wine....using the farm oven and the ovens of the neighbours...while the men set up the tables that had been hired from the council  and dedicated themselves to choosing the wine.
On the day of the wedding, Madeleine's father drove the bride and her parents to the mairie while the grannies, aunties and disabled were borne to the village on benches set up in the farm waggons, which in that period were drawn by oxen - horses came late to that area. The rest walked.
Civil ceremony over, the whole horde repaired to the salle des fetes for the vin d'honneur, where all and sundry were welcome to have a drink...or six...congratulate the bridegroom...and fortify themselves for the next step, the wedding in church.
Church wedding over, back to the car and the waggons, traffic now increased by the presence of the bridegroom's family and friends and once all were seated in the courtyard the celebrations really started.

But low key compared to today's weddings.
There was no one to remove the cork of a champagne bottle with a sabre....the local sparkling wine was uncorked by hand with due ceremony....
There was no croquembouche, that tower of profiteroles held together by dabs of caramel....the ovens couldn't make something so delicate....
There was no throwing of garters.....the aunties and the grannies would have been scandalised...

But there was dancing.
The old boys with fiddles could play for everything requested...
Traditional dances, to start with.....lines, chains, singing verses and responses.....
Then modern stuff...two step, walzes, and...for the really daring and possibly drunk...the tango!

The tango was still going strong in my day of attending weddings...and at every other event from the PTA couscous evening to the bacchanalia that was the Fire Brigade Ball.
It only made its appearance when everyone was well lubricated - easier on the elderly joints, I suppose - and the sight of a room full of people advancing, retreating, swooping and sliding having drink taken is one of the uncelebrated pleasures of the French rural scene.

From the days of the great grannies in coiffes to their modern counterparts, a wedding is a great excuse to get dressed up, discard the wellies for a pair of heels and go shopping for something new.....but I noticed one big difference between wedding garb in the U.K. and in rural France.
In the U.K., a wedding outfit always included a hat.....not so in rural France where, having had the hairdresser newly shingle your hair and colour it red there was no way you would want to hide the results.

As the British arrived and became part of things, you could tell their women at weddings...they wore hats. Everything from Queen Mum at Ascot via tulle covered flower pots to fascinators....

I remember one English woman who removed her fascinator during the dancing and left it on the table where it was the subject of awed interest on the part of a number of elderly gentlemen.
One finally delivered the jury's verdict.....

'You'd think you'd keep something like that to yourself, wouldn't you.....not go parading it in public!'

Food is in the air for St.Valentine's Day

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There are a number of ways in which Costa Rica falls short of being an earthly paradise, and availability of wine is one of them.
Hideously expensive if imported, thanks to tariffs and taxes...a situation not likely to be amended even under the new free trade treaty with the European Union because, as remarked solemnly by a national daily paper, the reduction of tariffs on wine imports from the EU is a good thing as it will allow shops to make a bigger profit on selling it....
If produced in Costa Rica, then it is one of those tastes I have no wish whatsoever to acquire.
If I want warm, sickly stuff that fizzes then I'll just leave the Coca Cola out of the fridge.

So seeing a new brand of wine in the box on sale at Pali...Walmart's supposedly low price outlet...at about a euro cheaper than the usual brand.... I thought I'd try it, but it was an experiment doomed from the start.

Firstly, I managed to drop it on the floor and, clearly being made from low price cardboard, it burst.
I then had to balance the remains between my feet while driving home down gravel roads which would give the Big Dipper a run for its money in the thrills stakes...luckily the car is an automatic.
After all that I stuck it in the fridge to give it a chance to show what it could do...and it did.
It took the enamel off my teeth.
Examination of the box showed that it was a red wine from Spain...which claimed to be a world best seller.
As paint stripper, they might be right.

Whatever it was sold for, it certainly shouldn't be for drinking, so, flying in the face of all the advice that a lousy wine will make a lousy sauce, I made a beef stew with it...and the stew was brilliant!

Food was in the air that day.....The Return of the Native had been blogging about a curry competition at her local....then a friend told me about a chilli cook-off at a gringo cafe the other side of the Central Valley...so after all this I felt like going out to eat that evening.

But there was nowhere to go.

To be more accurate, there was nowhere that I would have wanted to go to closer than the capital, forty five minutes away, where there is a great choice of good places to eat, and I didn't feel like driving that far only to be obliged to go without wine because of the new drink driving laws.
That's why we go to restaurants at lunchtime...and travel on the bus.

Still, even though I had to settle for a home made stew that evening, it was not one of the things which count against Costa Rica as an earthly paradise.....there was nowhere to eat out in the evenings when we lived in rural France either...and there we didn't have the option of getting a bus!

I've always thought the French reputation for gastronomy over rated.....there were a few good places and a lot more for which 'pedestrian' would have been a compliment (here) and because I've usually lived out in the sticks it had to be good to get me to drive there and back.

Mark you, I was visiting my dear friend the Old Biddie, when last in France and she has a restaurant nearby which would have had me driving down there once a week...even if it took me all day to get there and all night to get back!
Food beautifully cooked and presented, a sensible wine list and good service. A real pleasure to go there.
I believe it is run by foreigners....
Why couldn 't they have taken over while I still lived in France!

Twice I've lived near enough to a village to walk down to the cafe in the square....the first time when I'd just moved to France and it was a steak frites sort of place, friendly and good value: the second time many years later in another village, another steak frites type of place, whose doorway I never darkened.

I had met the proprietor before in his previous establishment where he dished out the pork chop and frites that his wife cooked and then, having secured his prey, started moaning on about his hard life and times.
The story was not gripping and the pork chop was not fresh.

However, he clearly gripped someone.

A Dutch couple had been spending their holidays at the campsite at that village for years. The husband's hobby was star photography and apparently there was no loom of lights in that area to spoil his exposure...or whatever it was.
They must have been unusual for Dutch in that they did not bring all their provisions with them to France, but used to go to the pork chop dispenser for their evening meals and became quite friendly with him.
When an order was served on him to retile his kitchen and bring everything up to the norms for establishments serving food they offered to finance him, but then, on getting the estimates, decided it would be better to buy a cafe elsewhere and set him up in business, paying them a small rent.

Thus he arrived in my village.

He must have had a talent for making foreign friends, for an English couple living down the road from me were also friendly with him, and not only recommended him but also took their friends there. Frequently.
They must have been especially fond of pork chops.

French villages being what they are, events are kept local....so he was in line for everything from the old age pensioners lunch to the chasseurs' banquet. Captive trade as it were.
The OAP event passed off pretty well.. Delays in service don't worry the OAPs  as long as there is wine on the table and the room is warm.
The chasseurs' banquet was not a success, however. They supplied the venison and he forgot to marinade it.
Those with false teeth found it hard going. The offer of pork chops instead did not meet with the appreciation he had expected..

Still, heartened by his experiences, he decided to offer a St. Valentine's Day evening...if you see what I mean.
The set menu went up in the window, and he even put an advertisement in the local rag.
Such was the response that he had to open up the second dining room....and by seven o'clock on  the fourteenth of February the joint was jumping.
In honour of the occasion he had drafted in supplementary waiting staff and the aperitifs circulated rapidly...no delays this time!

His customers were seated and the first course was served...all was still going well.....it was by then eight o'clock and there was a happy buzz throughout the two rooms as people awaited their main course.

Let it just be said that the buzz became less happy as by nine o'clock only a fraction of the clients had been served.....and my English neighbour said that their party had finally been served at eleven o'clock, by which time the wine had been looked on when it was red and things were getting decidedly noisy.

Guy had not attended the St. Valentine's Day  event...he always considered that the man must be allergic to dust and that the slow service was accounted for by his fear of raising any by some swift movement....but he did have all the gossip.

So what went wrong? He'd taken on extra staff after all.

Ah! In the dining room, yes, but not in the kitchen. He had over one hundred people there for his set menu.

Yes, but with a set menu it must have been arranged to be easy for the kitchen, surely?

You would think so, wouldn't you. So what possessed the cretin to make steak with bearnaise sauce the main course.....when the only cook was his wife and the only source of heat a two burner gas stove?

Just surprised it wasn't pork chops.