No Chateaux... no Culture...no Croissants - My France

Alone in the house, I had been able to rise early (midnight) to listen to the Test Match Special team commentate on the first day of the Test match against Pakistan in Dubai.
The dogs went out dutifully then returned to their beds, flicking the odd glance at me, huddled up in my old djellabah with a cup of tea and plate of Marmite toast alongside the computer.
Bliss.

And then England collapsed....wicket after wicket.....exciting stuff, but not the performance expected of the team rated first in Test cricket.

The light came up, and I went out onto the balcony for the part of the morning I like the best...when the sun rises over the mountain behind the house and hits Grifo Alto across the valley, making that great bluff a soft golden ball emerging from the shadowy woods below.

The solitude ended quickly. I had hardly done the watering and fed the chicks before the Man from ICE was at the door.
ICE - the electricity board - wanted to  reroute its lines along the road rather than crossing private property....fine with me....but needed my permission to cut back two branches of the huge higueron tree which stands guard over the water tank on my land.
Fine.
There was a consent form to sign, so he came in to the house and accepted a cool drink while we undertook the formalities....and I had to dig out my passport as I had forgotten my passport number.

English! He exclaimed.

I have learned by now not to complicate things by mentioning Scotland on first acquaintance so I agreed.

Big Ben! Houses of Parliament! Westminster Abbey! Trafalgar Square! Nelson!

The Man from ICE was a fan of London...big time. He wanted to go there, but...the money...

He departed and I decided to set up the lap top which I had bought in London.
I looked at it...it looked at me...and I decided to do something else.

The weeding was interrupted by American friends bringing their visitors over for a coffee....
The conversation came round to 'and how did you come to Costa Rica?' as it always does, but on hearing that I had previously lived in France, the jaws dropped, the eyes widened and out it all came!

Paris! The fashions! The croissants! Pavement cafes! Boules! Provence! The food! The wine! The culture!

Slapping down the temptation to say

All good reasons for leaving

Which would have been neither polite nor totally accurate I let them bubble on...but when the house was quiet again I started thinking about my own images of France.....if asked, what would mine be?

The true treasure was the time spent with friends...but that's universal. The sure knowledge that you'll be greeted with a smile is one of the best feelings in the world.

But as for France itself....

Driving back from the hospital in the late afternoons over the plains around Poitiers two sights would always lift me....

The first, lying back from the road, the tiny church of St.Martin at Noize, a place of worship long before St. Hilaire brought his brand of Christianity to the pagans of the area.

Closed for years because of its poor state of repair, locals got together to put it into some sort of order and it is now, once again, a place of worship.
It is a simple building dating back to the tenth and eleventh centuries, but has an atmosphere of stillness and peace sometimes lacking in more elaborate surroundings.

Then, soon after, the necropolis of Taize, the dolmens rising from the surrounding farmland....man has been here a long time which could be a comforting thought after hospital visiting.

And when feeling in the mood for a good time...nothing better than Le Trianon at Saumur...

with Monsieur Jacques in fine form...

and the fellow customers giving the only example I came across in France of the craic. Good times!

And the end of holiday river festival...le Rendez-vous de l'Erdre....the river running into the Loire at Nantes, lined with the mansions of of the merchants who had made their pile from the trade in tobacco and brandy.
This always gave a great day out....boats of all sizes and shapes, from rowing boats to a steam tug via gondolas and traditional working boats....jazz bands on the river and in every nook and cranny ashore...the muscadet flowing like the river and teenagers sniggering about 'voile et vapeur'.

Earlier in the year...and earlier in my years..I used to be invited to sail in what was then le Raid du Golfe...now much more elaborate and called  la Semaine du Golfe, up in the Morbihan....a video clip will give you a taste...

Although as far as boats are concerned, the thrill of my life was to be invited aboard a garbare at Nantes

although not La Montjeannaise shown above, and to sail down the estuary on a cold spring day which promised rain and squalls.....a promise duly fulfilled.
Hair plastered to my face, my jeans running dye over my shoes I was absolutely exhilarated as the squall filled that vast sail and a ton of wooden boat lifted her nose and planed!

Back on dry land I have good memories of the troglodyte village at Tourtenay....not least because when taking my mother on a tour of the landing sites where a Lysander would drop off and pick up British agents during the Occupation we heard an elderly man in the group comment to his mate
'She doesn't have bad legs for her age!'...

The current village stands on a limestone bluff which, since the third century has been used as a place of refuge. Part of it has been sold off as a 'police' training area, but in the part still accessible is a wonderful underground pigonnier...

I love the revolving ladder for checking the nests...and I miss the grandad in the cardigan who owned the vines on the land above.

But my most abiding memory is one which I have no photograph to illustrate....and it comes back to friendship.

Sitting under the cherry tree in Madeleine's garden with the others she'd invited to lunch, the tranny playing in the branches to deter the birds and a glass of Suze with ice cubes in hand - all talking politics!

The cure for all ills

Image via Wikipedia

I was talking to mother on the 'phone and she was telling me that one of her friends was having dreadful pain in her hands.

'Do you remember what it was that I took for that all those years ago?' She asked. 'I'd like to be able to help Dolly, but I don't want to get the wrong name.'

At that time in question I was a teenager but I remembered the remedy without any problem.

Our G.P. at the time was a German chap who believed in self help and natural remedies.I have absolutely no idea how he came to be practicing medicine in England, at a time when the EU was only a gleam in the eye of the European Iron and Steel Community, but there he was. Practicing.

Scrimshankers got short shrift in his waiting room.

He would cross the garden from his house to the annexe where he held surgery, hurl open the door and shout

'Malingerers, go home! This surgery is for people who are sick!'

And on that rousing note the surgery began.
Occasionally a malingerer stood his or her ground - probably not realising that they fell into the 'strang verboten' category - and the noise from behind the surgery door would rise in volume until the unfortunate victim would pop out as if blown from a cannon.
It was all most enjoyable and certainly beat 'collapse of stout party' cartoons in Punch when it came to waiting one's turn.

He used to mix his own medicines and, unlike the chemist, refused to wrap the bottles in paper...
'People will think you are drinking...'
These being the days when grocers wrapped your bottle of sherry in paper to preserve your reputation, with the result that anyone seen carrying a bottle wrapped in paper was automatically suspected of secret drinking behind the curtains.

Mother was having terrible pain in her hands....the joints seemed to be seized up...so she risked going to the surgery, with me in attendance.
Herr doctor looked, manipulated and announced
'I have just the thing!'
Now, since he had recently given me an arsenic tonic as he felt I was outgrowing my strength I waited with keen anticipation to see what mother would receive...strychnine, perhaps? Could I be so lucky?
No, I could not.
'You are to take a glass of white burgundy once a day and come back to see me in three months.'
Then, fixing mother with a commanding eye
'Nothing else will do. No substitutes. White burgundy will have the correct dose of minerals to correct the problem with your joints. Take your daughter to buy it...she has a brain.'
And on this happy note we were ejected to make room for the next patient.

So where on earth were we to buy white burgundy? This was an era where there were wine merchants...posh and expensive....and off licences...dubious and not cheap.

Father had the answer.
'I'll get old Blodge to put me up for the Wine Society.'
A wonderful British institution run by the members for the members to provide good quality drinking.

Old Blodge obliged, father was accepted as a member and the white burgundy made its appearance.
Mother's joints ceased to pain her...or she was anaesthetised....and we all got a taste for the stuff.

So I knew what to recommend to Dolly...sincerely hoping that she had a pension in the stratosphere to allow her to buy white burgundy at today's prices.

By coincidence, just before ringing mother I had received an e mail from a French friend entitled
'Alcohol before 1900'
replete with images of beer drinking mothers whose babies were bursting with health, toddlers proving their manly qualities by attacking father's bottle of absinthe, the merits of a Cointreau 'for the road' being vaunted while train drivers swore by Ricard's true Marseilles pastis and a most engaging list of ailments and their vinous remedies.

You will be delighted to know that for problems with the menopause you have only to take four glasses of St..Emilion a day for your troubles to be forgotten....while for nervous depression it is four glasses of Medoc.
For fever you have to drink a bottle of dry champagne a day,  for high blood pressure four glasses of either Alsace or Sancerre, for high cholesterol four glasses of Muscadet, while for obesity, that modern obsession, four glasses of red burgundy are prescribed.

Should, however, you suffer 'important obesity', you will be obliged to take a daily bottle of rose de Provence.

Sounds a lot better than the products of Bayer and GlaxoSmithKlein to me....
'

The forbidden fruit

Image via Wikipedia

Picking grapes is still fun after all these years, even though the plots are smaller and the company less. As of last time I am now regarded as a senior citizen thus qualifying for a place on the wheelarch of the tractor, hanging on for dear life as we lurch and trundle down the tracks from the house to the plot of vines far off beyond the lake. It was safer to plod behind, or be bundled into the van with the colleys and the buckets, but age has its' privileges and the wheelarch it is.
The routine never varies...the housework done, the ladies arrive at the house, the vehicles and equipment are already waiting and off we go....three rows and a glass of wine. The year before last, Ziya kicked up at the poor quality of the refreshments, causing a row which spread to the exact nature of the relationship between Guy - long term widower - and the lady who comes to 'do' for him, her alleged hopes for the future, the price and quality of the sheep which Ziya and friends buy from her....and for some time I wondered if the picking team would break up, so violent was the dispute, but all was settled in time for the next vendange. Ziya now supervises the provision of wine, which involves him in several tasting sessions at Guy's before the whole ritual starts up for the year.
Guy sold off most of his holdings years ago, as age crept up on him, so what is left is his last plot of vines giving ample wine for himself, friends and family but the first time I picked there he was rather watchful. I had been brought along by Ziya, who usually has a few foreign waifs and strays at his disposal and it appeared that I was the replacement for the previous year's abject disaster...a gentleman who was very good at raising the elbow, but not so sharp on picking the grapes, so I was an unknown quantity. However, I was experienced, thanks to the years with Papy, and after a bit Guy relaxed and we started to chat at the next break.
I had noticed that not all the vines were the same...the bunches had different shapes, the size of the grapes differed too, and there were some leaf differences...so I asked him what he was growing.
'Oh, there's a bit of everything these days...a bit of Merlot, some 154, those rows down there are Castel and up at the end is Oberlin. We'll pick that separately.'
Well, I'd been in the area some time and the only one of those that I had heard of was Merlot....round here the main white is Chenin, with Chardonnay and Sauvignon getting more frequent thanks to fashion, and the Cabernet Franc and Grolleau Gris providing the other reds...though with global warming the Cabernet Sauvignon is now worth planting as well.
There was no time to ask any more questions, as Guy was off with the next trailer load of grapes, but when we finished for the day and were bouncing back in the van, I asked Ziya, self appointed expert on anything and Lord High Everything Else, what he knew about these types of vine.
'They're forbidden.'
'Why are they forbidden?'
'They make you go potty.'
Apparently it was forbidden to plant them and forbidden to sell the wine...it was only for personal consumption, as not only was there the question of alcoholic strength - these could weigh in at 18 degrees as opposed to 12 degrees for a Cabernet Franc - but they were also reputed to have a hallucinatory effect. Well, I might have missed out on the Swinging Sixties in London, but I was well placed to make up for it on the liquid LSD of rural France.
Guy was starting up the press when we arrived at the house to clean up and it was apparent that things were not going well as there was a lot of muttering then cries of
'Merde, merde, putain de merde'
as he lifted the cover off the pit into which the grape juice should flow. It was not flowing, even though the press was operating correctly. Grabbing a stick, he inserted it into the exit pipe from the press and withdrew it with a large dead rat balanced on the end. The juice began to flow and he announced that those who wanted it to make pineau should take it at once as it was so warm that fermentation would start very soon. I departed with my share in a large plastic jerrycan which had, years ago, served to contain engine oil. Guy threw nothing away. Rural folk were always well ahead of environmentalists when it came to recycling.
I made my pineau, the other great aperitif of the area, by mixing the grape juice with eau de vie and put it away for a few months. I prefer epine, but 'the ladies' are reputed to prefer the softer pineau, so it is as well to have plenty in the cellar.

Later in the year, still curious about these vines, I dropped in on Guy, who now had time for explanations.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French vineyards were all but wiped out by phyolloxera...a grub which attacked the roots, only vines on a few offshore islands surviving untouched. The problem was not just that the vines died, any vines planted to replace them died as well. What to do? The american vine, which was not the vitis vinifera but, if my memory serves me better than usual, vitis labrusca, was immune to attack by the grub, but the wine was said to have an unpleasant taste - 'foxy' is the word used.
Two solutions were tried, the first, grafting French varieties onto American rootstock, is the one which has won out, but the other method, hybridisation, was what had resulted in the vines Guy was using. He gave me several names....Bacot, Noah, Othello....Roi des Negres, though whether that was the same as a Tete du Negre that Didier later served up, which was the best wine I ever found to go with that notoriously difficult food to match, the globe artichoke, I don't know.
'So why are they forbiden? Is it true they can drive you potty as Ziya says?'
'Anything would drive Ziya potty. No, they're just strong, that's all...you have to watch it.'
'Then why can't you sell them?'
'Because they're easy to propagate...they just touch the ground and root...no need to buy those expensive grafted vines. No one makes a profit.'
Madeleine once told me that the answer to every question as to why something is done as it is in France is money...and once again, she was proved right. There's nothing wrong with these wines, no reason why they can't be bought and sold...except that it would wreck the trade in certified rootstocks.
Guy had been pouring a twelve year old Oberlin for me to try, and it was super.....but at 18 degrees I was glad that I had arrived on foot.

Fruit of the vine

http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MV-Pov6JTQ

Image by ...-Wink-... via Flickr

I have been picking grapes with friends or neighbours ever since I came to France, with only a couple of gaps due to illness. I have no experience whatsoever of picking on the industrial scale, so cannot comment, but the small scale job gives me a lot of pleasure. For one thing, it is usually only one day, or one and a half and then perhaps another couple of days later, so it is hardly demanding in terms of time, the weather is usually good and the company is always worth having.

Papy's middle son Jean asked me if I would help the first year....Mamie usually helped, but she was getting past it and needed to rest and another pair of hands would be welcome. Now, this was the unscientific age of winemaking, wild yeast on the grapes, no idea of temperature control and the desired result a pink wine a bit on the sweet side to keep the family going through the year. Accordingly, it was not necessary to stumble out in the dark before the dawn to take advantage of the coolest part of the day...we ventured forth in the afternoon, when the housework and the farmwork had been dealt with and the sun was approaching its' zenith. It promised to be warm work, and it was.

Jean organised us. Each person had a wide bucket and a pair of secateurs - so small that I found them difficult to handle and in future brought my own big gardening ones which were more suited to my paws. I was put with Jean's wife, to see that I knew what to do, we were assigned our rows of vines, and off we went. The object was to pick the triangular bunches of ripe grapes and, at all costs, not to include the round balls of immature ones, the secondary growths that an all too casual pruning had allowed to develop. If they went in, the wine would be too acidic. Most people squatted or crouched, but I found my best method was to shuffle along on my knees hoping not to encounter too many thistles or nettles...it must be a height question, or a lack of attendance at yoga classes on my part. Supple I have never been. The technique was to place the bucket under the bunches you were picking so that they dropped neatly within, and the challenge was to miss no bunch, while being aware that another pair of secateurs was at work on the other side of the plant and your fingers were in imminent peril.

We moved along and I was pleased that I could keep up with the others and not miss anything...Papy inspected each row, with crows of triumph if he found a bunch still hanging on the vine. Conversation was brisk, the gosssip was hair raising and I was quite surprised to find how quickly the buckets were filled and taken to the trailer sitting behind Papy's tractor at the edge of the field. The women were grumbling that there should be someone in charge of the buckets to save them from having to get up and down and then stretch up to the trailer, so Papy was given additional duties which put a swift end to his inspection and crowings....he was too busy coming and going, keeping his pickers busy.

The first third of the vines had been cleared when Jean called a break. Papy, the man of the moment, was prepared. He had the mustard glasses ready....the ones that you buy which contain mustard and then can use for drinking ever afterwards...and the bottles were brought from the bucket which had been hanging in the well....that cool, soft pink wine went down very well the first time - and the second! Papy went off with the tractor and trailor down to the press but for us it was back to work on the rest of the vines and the afternoon began to turn into evening by the time we had taken our second break and were on the last stretch. Papy had taken another load, and this was the last, so we all trailed after him, down to the house to wash our buckets and secateurs under the tap in the yard, stacking them to dry, and then washing our sticky and stained hands. The modern - well, reasonably so - press was full and in action, a long cylinder which acted a bit like a syringe...the plate at the end pushing inexorably forward, but gently enough not to start breaking the pips, which would add a bitterness which was not desired, squeezing the juice out through the pipe at the far end into an underground concrete tank where fermentation would take place. The last of the harvest had to go in the old press, a round wooden structure with a central screw as pictured above where the levels were adjusted with wooden blocks, a long metal pole turned the screw and the juice poured between the slats onto the platform of the press, thence to buckets placed underneath.

The friends and neighbours were heading for home, and so was I when Mamie appeared from the doorway of the house.

'Don't forget....we're all eating down at Jean's tonight.....I always used to do it, but I'm just getting too old.'

It appeared that I was invited to supper, and, checking with Jean's wife, who seemed remarkably cool for someone about to entertain the multitudes, that was indeed the case.

'Should I bring anything?'

'Oh....well, one of your salads would be nice. Jean likes that.'

I hared home, scrubbed my hands with bleach and tried to wash and change while racking my brains to remember what it was I had served when Papy's family had come to supper, and, worse, wondering if I had the ingredients in the house. It occurred to me that it would probably have been my standby.....tinned chickpeas, red beans and flageolet beans, combined with diced onion, black olives and parsley with a good slosh of green and tasty olive oil. Store cupboard stuff. I put it together and included the batch of pork pies I had made the day before for good measure, and was ready when Papy honked to take me down to the village in his old Renault van. He and Mamy sat in the front and the rest of us crouched in the back with our various offerings, swaying in unison on the corners and combining to keep Papy's dog from pushing his nose into the dishes.

The tables had been set in the courtyard of Jean's house, lit by those bamboo outside lights that flare and cast shadows at their own sweet will, and the women were already setting out the dishes they had provided. The whole thing was a glorious buffet, home made pate, rillettes, rillons, ham and charcuterie, salads, bread and cheese, and, of course, wine.

We ate, we talked, we drank, and, eventually, we sang.

My best memory of that long day is the quiet courtyard with the tenor voice of Pierre soaring into the shadows, and the warm full response of the chorus as we sang

'A la claire fontaine.'

Ah, yes, I remember it well

Image by Truus, Bob & Jan too! via Flickr

I know I am old because I can now remember what my cousin Hugh said to make me so upset when I was three. The memory of the upset had lingered, and I knew it involved frilly knickers and a pond, but only now has the full, unexpurgated version returned. So I must be old.
Memories of the France I moved to are clear and always have been, so I'm not sure whether they will stay clear or whether they will be assimilated to the recent period and disappear as I get older and concentrate on the events of childhood as yet unrevealed to me. I hope not, as it was a happy time.
People smoked, drank and drove cars that fell apart if they went over thirty kilometres an hour. Naked women jumped from windows and fled through the vines as their husbands returned unexpectedly early from market. Gendarmes had a bar in their barracks and were much better tempered in consequence. Papy up the road cooked in a cauldron and had a pornography collection which was the envy of several communes around. The man with the three wheeled tractor had not been driven from the roads. Jules slaughtered his own sheep and I could buy the meat. The old people got together in the winter evenings to play cards, knit and tell stories. Andre was soaking blackcurrant branches in his wine to make it taste better. Lawyers went on strike and defendants were left to make up their own stories. Monsieur Untel was cleaning his drains with eau de vie. There were eight bars in the commune and a cafe which was cheap and good. There wasn't a Parisian, an artist or an antique dealer in the area.
As that great collaborator used to sing
'Ah, yes, I remember it well.'

On the markets

Image via Wikipedia

The migration season has begun. Wending southward across the English Channel, the weary travellers push on determinedly to their destination....the friends or relatives living in France. The routine is well known to all parties. The car arrives, its contents are disgorged, all the bathrooms are occupied and the party foregather on the terrace where bottles and glasses await them. I often think that for some of them an intravenous drip would be more appropriate, like a blood transfusion.....but in red, white and pink.
'Nurse, another wine box and adjust the feed...the patient is recovering consciousness.'

The first few days are the recovery period, catching up with how awful things are at their end and trying to persuade them that things are not too hot at this end either, but, inevitably, at this point they want to go to a market. I could understand it when the U.K. had nearly lost all its interesting ones, but now, I thought, they had Farmers' Markets and suchlike.

'Well, yes, if you want some stuck up trout trying to flog you meat at three times its normal price because the animal had the privilege of eating her grass while it was alive and looking down her nose at you because you don't wear an appropriately aged Barbour jacket when you go shopping.'

O.K. We'll go to the market. In our local town, it's in the week and is on the small side...a few vegetable stalls, a fish stall, someone selling honey and clothing stalls that make you open your eyes and wonder about the undergarments of your fellow man and woman. Great alarm has been caused recently by an English couple setting up a stall and selling what were described as 'exotic products'. Bearing in mind that when I was first in France Worcester sauce and picallili were to be found on the 'exotic products' shelf together with Vietnamese fish sauce and bean sprouts in tins I was not as impressed as my neighbour thought that I should have been by this news and asked what specifically they were selling.

'Well, I didn't get too close, but I didn't recognise anything.'

This left the field wide open, from live termite grubs - here, for various reasons, the area could develop an export trade - to Viagra, but actually turned out to be energy drinks and new age paraphenalia. I cannot hold out much hope for their enterprise in the land of the thirty five hour week...not much energy gets depleted in that time. Come to think of it, for a nation which eats snails I cannot imagine how a category for 'exotic products' can exist - I suppose it just means anything not produced in France.

There are actually three vegetable stalls on that market. One is run by a retired schoolteacher who regards himself as an expert on all things rural, one by a local supplier and the last by a satellite of a large fruit and veg wholesaler who knocks out their surpluses in the markets in the area. I have had a close look at all three, in terms of the quality and price of their goods and the approach of the stallholder and I go for the wholesaler every time. The retired teacher's produce comes from his smallholding and is nothing out of the ordinary, on a par with the local supplier. They both charge top dollar for the privilege of buying their goods. The wholesaler is much cheaper and the quality as good. If it is at all dubious, signs announce
'Make jam!'
''Cooking grade'
'Eat now!'
and for apricots for jam, tomatoes to cook down for the winter it can't be beaten.

The clientele varies markedly. The would be intellectuals patronise the retired teacher - corner of high thinking high mindedness at high prices - the local supplier has the respectable ladies who have duly donned a suit and high heels to be seen in public...a great contrast to the bedroom slippers and dressing gowns in which they normally pass the morning. The wholesaler gathers the rest. Elderly gentleman are led through their wives' shopping lists, cafe owners pick up supplies and ordinary people on ordinary incomes do their ordinary shopping. The staff are raucous, occasionally outrageous and I wouldn't shop anywhere else.

The visitors are happy..someone has managed to buy twice the amount of aubergines anyone could want to eat..... fired by the presence of the travelling black pudding maker someone else has bought a pile dripping and hot from the cauldron and we are going home to lunch.

'Nurse! The wine box....'

We're out of wine.

When I was a timid newcomer to the French rural scene, the cry of

'We're out of wine!'

would mean a trip to the supermarket. That was where I was accustomed to buying wine when I was a tourist, so that was where I went. It also meant that I could just grab the bottles and pay without having to stretch my French beyond "Bonjour' - and why is it never 'Bonjour, Madame" when you greet the cashier and always 'Bonjour, Madame" when she greets you? It's not just me, it's French too, just listen next time you shop.

In the matter of choice, the local supermarkets could not beat the wine stores of the U.K. where the world's wine was displayed for my delectation...in France, at that point, only French wine was available. What else would the French consumer buy? Well, Algerian and Tunisian, but they counted as French thanks to colonial history and all the old boys who did their national service in North Africa wanted pink North African wine to go with their spit roasted lamb - the 'mechoui', while they gathered together to recall the horrors of the colonial wars....

'Do you remember, Georges, courgettes every day for lunch....."


M. Untel changed my wine buying habits. He was an ex gendarme who was ex because he had managed to go too far even for a gendarme in breathalysing the local doctor when he, M. Untel, having drink taken, was having to hold on to the gendarmerie van for support while proffering the balloon. The doctor was not amused...he was out on an emergency. Consequently M. Untel had the choice of a posting to Devil's Island or retirement on full pension. He was the rep for a co operative selling vegetable seeds when I met him...a bit like


Avon calling!


but preceded by a strong smell of drink and accompanied by the clanking of the bottles he had brought with him to while away the time it took to take my seed order. Thinking about it, his technique could revolutionise door to door cosmetic sales or Tupperware parties. I see it now...... M. Untel, brick red in colour from exposure to the sun and the long term effects of alcohol, surrounded by palpitating ladies, producing the company's latest plastic must-have item........a long plastic spike with a round base upon which to impale empty bottles to make sure of gathering the last reluctant drops of wine. They would be so overcome by the fumes that they would buy anything.



On this occasion, while I was dithering between the Triomphe de Farcy and the latest amazing stringless -ready -for -the- freezer green bean, he asked me what I intended to do with the heap of empty bottles at the side of the house. They had been there when I bought it, they were not in my way, so I had left them alone...there were higher priorities than shifting hundreds of old bottles. The snort told me that I had got my priorities wrong. Those bottles were for filling. With wine. With local wine. From local vignerons. He took me to look at the contents of the boot of his car. It was packed to the gills with bottles of wine, all corked, but not one of them with a tax capsule. This was what the heap was intended for. He closed the boot. I asked him if he wasn't worried about being stopped by his former colleagues. He was not.

'It's for them.'



He would introduce me to a suitable vigneron and then, once I knew what the form was, I was on my own. First, however, I had to wash all the bottles and buy plastic containers. He would lend me a hedgehog. This was becoming surreal. Thoughts of Alice in Wonderland and the flamingos were going through my mind.



I started on the bottles, soaking them in the granite trough by the barn, brushing them out, holding them to the light and then repeating the process until what could be cleaned was clean as a whistle. It was a horrible job...those bottles had been there a damn long time and had become home to sundry living creatures, or creatures that had once lived. M. Untel arrived with his hedgehog, which turned out to be a contrivance about three foot high with circular rows of spikes upon which the washed bottles could be upturned and dried.

The next day he turned up with plastic containers...like the ones I used to use for water when camping, with little taps at the bottom, except that these held 20 litres apiece. I could use these,which he called 'cubis'. He also produced a bottling machine...a thing with a hole into which one fed a cork, put the full bottle on the stand underneath and swung down with all one's might on a lever, thus forcing the cork into the bottle. He gave me sage advice.

'Soak the corks in warm water first or you'll do yourself a mischief'.

We were off to see his neighbour to buy wine. He would show me how it was done.
We arrived at a farm, and a small man in cap and overalls greeted M. Untel with pleasure and regarded me dubiously.
Was I a security risk? Goodness only knows how these foreigners gossip giving rise to problems with taxmen. He was reassured by M. Untel that I didn't have enough French to get anyone into trouble, and the ceremony commenced.

We were led into his barn, where huge concrete vats covered the walls, and, in honour of the presence of a lady, the tasting glasses...well, tumblers...were wiped out with a cloth. We started with the dry white chenin , we proceeded to a dry pink then a sweeter pink , we returned to a sweeter white, then switched to a red merlot, then a red cabernet franc and finished on a dessert wine. At no point was a spittoon provided.

What would I like to buy? I had two cubis, so I could have two choices. I took the dessert wine and the dry white, and they were duly filled from the vats. I paid, in cash, of course, and the cubis went into the boot.

At home, I filled the bottles with a funnel, soaked the corks, and M. Untel helped me with the bottling process...I was grateful as I was not at all sure that I had the strength or the technique required for that part of the operation. Satisfied with his day's work of cultural integration he gathered up his cubis, his bottling machine and his hedgehog and headed for home with a final injunction.

'Mind now, no more buying in supermarkets!'