Oysters and 'r's.

Here somes summer, and the oysters of Arcachon are off the menu again. I forget why...it will either be poisonous algae or poisonous effluent, but at least down there it won't be radioactivity.

Still, there are plenty of other alternatives, as long as you keep an eye on your map of leaky coastal nuclear power stations while you are making your choice. Pretty safe with Cancale and Belen, nice round traditional oysters from Brittany, and anything down the Vendee coast., though these are the craggy Portugese oyster......just keep clear of Normandy's offerings with the Cap la Hogue power station dribbling goodness knows what into the waters. I wonder if President Sarkozy will be offering President Obama Normandy oysters when they meet for the D Day commemoration, or whether the U.S. secret service will veto the suspect offerings?


I used to enjoy oysters when in the U.K., though the price of Colchester natives even then would make your hair curl if you bought them in Wheelers. I used to buy them from the oyster stall on Mersea Island in those far off days when a cheesecloth blouse on a young woman in summer would bring about a fit of absentmindedness on the part of the chap selling his wares when it came to counting the oysters he was handing over. These days I expect you could strip down to your Agent Provocateur knickers without any effect on the price or weight.


Initially, France put me off the oyster. It was the fault of the fruit de mer, that stomach turning plateau of cooked shellfish of uncertain age and origin combined with living things in shells awaiting their fate at the hat pin provided for each customer. Having noted that the incidence of food poisoning went up when the local supermarket reduced its intake of shellfish from twice to once a week, I went off shellfish in a big way.


My repugnance was not overcome by the French New Year thrash....the Sylvester. Oysters are obligatory at these events which are great in every other way and French hospitals cancel all staff leave in order to be ready for the rush of the 'oyster knife through the palm of the hand' injuries , resulting from opening oysters at speed while having drink taken. I wondered whether it was because the craggy Portugese oyster was more difficult to open than the horseshoe type, but I have come to the conclusion that is probably the amount of 'drink taken' that is the deciding factor.



Then the family came down for the summer and went to the seaside for the day, to a resort they used to go to when the children were young, returning with a basket of craggy oysters. We sat outside at the wooden table perched precariously on the slope under the trees and ate them with relish...they were plump, juicy and a far cry from the miserable specimens of the winter months. I was reconverted to oysters!

It made me think...at New Year the shops and stalls are awash with panniers of oysters, collected especially for the winter festivities...it is the major selling point of the year. How long have these oysters been sitting about in the viviers, or holding tanks, let alone in transport and stacked up in the loading bays of the supermarket delivery systems? An ex neighbour of mine, a retired Paris bus driver of a careful turn of mind, told me that when he buys oysters for the New Year he insists that the panniers are opened in front of him and that he tries the contents. He had been disappointed too often before starting this practice.

'They don't like it, but, damn it, it's my money I'm spending!'

I wonder, too, if, as well as the freshness factor, the feeding is better in the summer months. A friend goes down to the islands off the Atlantic coast in the summer and comes back laden with buckets of wild oysters which he distributes lavishly...they are a real treat, but even the shop bought oyster is now firmly back on my summer menu, whether it is clear, milky, or, in the case of the oysters from Marennes, green! And I don't have to wonder if there is an 'r' in the month. It doesn't matter!

Is it food to die for?

A friend is arriving shortly, and I am looking forward to the Red Cross parcel she will be bringing. The Marmite, cheddar cheese and fresh indian spices are keenly anticipated, as are the golden syrup and suet. The French may make rude remarks about English cuisine, but I've never known any of them refuse a second helping of treacle tart, while the home made Christmas puddings are now not just accepted, but requested!

The big problem will be finding somewhere to have lunch. These days, I have given up going out for pleasure as I have been disappointed so often, but friends and family have the kind instinct to take out their hosts as a relief from the cooking and washing up. Give me the washing up any day over the overpriced and sub standard offerings which are the norm in my locality!
First, you have to beware of the places that announce their menu by price not by what they propose to serve. One encounter with a cow intestine sausage was enough to ensure I never entered such a place again....if they are too idle to write out their menu it doesn't hold out too much hope for the cooking! Recommendations have to be treated with caution.....a full plate cares much more weight in local opinion than the quality of what is served on it and I don't fancy tired charcuterie and salad leaves washed in bleach solution all bought in from the local supermarket. I can grate vegetables and buy cold meat myself...I can cook a steak the way I like it rather than having it ruined by a chef with his own ideas on what the customer should want and I can have a decent bottle of wine rather than paying over the odds for rubbish and risk being breathalysed on the way home. A place has to be good to overcome all these obstacles and, at the moment, I know of only one.

There is such a place in a tourist town some forty minutes' drive away and it is a great place to take visitors. On a riverside street there is a shabby courtyard surrounded by green painted railings where a brown door alongside leads you to a corridor with a toilet at the far end, a sink against the wall and another door into the bar itself. Here you have an authentic workman's caff of the 1920s, with its huge bar and mirrored display of bottles, while tables and bentwood chairs line the walls and battered iron tables lurk outside under faded umbrellas in the summer. The proprietor is now in his late seventies, a rotund, white haired gentleman in white overall, slippers and, in winter, woolly hat, who shuffles round to take the orders of his customers. The regulars are local workman and some surprisingly colourful ladies, but tourists get the same courteous attention, even if regulars on a limited lunch hour get the fastest service. He offers an unchanging menu...crudites to start, beetroot, potato salad, tomatoes and high class charcuterie - yes, I know what I said about being able to buy it myself - steak and chips, either bloody or just cooked - and I know what I said about cooks with their own ideas on steak - and the unchanging bottle of house red. Yes, I know I have just contradicted myself, but this place has one of the nicest atmospheres I know, and the chips are the best I have tasted outside Belgium. He was kind enough to tell me which brand of oil he uses and the chips on the home front have undergone a distinct improvement following his advice. The waitresses vary from visit to visit.....either delightful young things in exiguous clothing or a woman of a certain age with views on how her customers should behave. The house dog insinuates himself alongside your chair, the regulars help themselves to a drink from the bar as they chat over their newspapers and this is the only place in which, while waiting for a table, I have ever been given a drink on the house, or, come to that, discussed the merits of DAF cars.

There is only one problem....will he still be alive?

I have had far frostier receptions in my time. There is one hotel with restaurant where you are either welcomed with open arms or receive the cold shoulder depending on four elements...if you have been able to reserve in person AND have been lucky enough to meet the chef's dogs while so doing AND like dogs AND the dogs like you, then it is the arms. If not all of the above then it is the shoulder. At least, thinking it over, I can find nothing else to account for the difference. If I am invited by a dog approved person, all goes swimmingly from the moment that Madame - wife of chef - beams as you open the door to the moment that her husband emerges from his kitchen flanked by the dogs to accept the gratitude of his customers for what has been a superb meal. If invited by those not vetted by the dogs then either it is impossible to reserve a table, or if you have slipped through the net by getting the trainee receptionist who believes in encouraging trade then while the food is still superb Madame wants to rush you through your meal, sulks if you resist and the evening is enlivened by the slam of plates hitting the table. As it is a long way off, the necessity of making two trips, one to book and one to eat, ensures that I only go if invited by someone on the dogs' list who lives nearby.

The last expedition to a local restaurant was a disaster...you sympathise with the Russians fighting on seventeen fronts when you've had this sort of experience. The site was pleasant, on decking over a lake, and the menu did not look too large to be authentic.....when it offers everything under the sun you know that the freezer and the microwave take the majority place in the kitchen. We ordered oysters. Word came from the kitchen that oysters were off. Monsieur et Mesdames did not realise that oysters had to be fresh, so they were not available, we were told, by a snooty young waitress who refused to respond to our French and insisted on using English. Since we had just seen them on sale in the local supermarket, we could only imagine that the staff were too idle to nip down and buy them. We ordered something else as a starter and ordered filet of salmon, fish gratin and steak as our main courses. The salmon was approaching raw, and the steak was an amalgam of gristle and fat, undercooked to the point of having just been defrosted in the microwave. Madame could not eat it, and asked for a doggy bag. The waitress decided at this point that she did not understand in either English or French, and the steak was whipped away. The pud was fine, in fact, good....an assortment of desserts....but the coffee was rank. The waitress was no longer in attendance, being busy patronising another table of English customers, but we finally obtained the bill and were set to leave. Where was the doggy bag? Our waitress had gone incommunicado, so Madame invaded the kitchen, where the steak was lying on the table.....had it been forgotten or was there some hope among the staff that they could palm it off on some other customer? She demanded a bag, scooped up the steak, and we were away. That afternoon, the fish gratin made itself felt with a bout of food poisoning for Monsieur. We cooked the steak before giving it to the dog. He was all right.ri

A breathless hush

Rural France has been very quiet since Thusday, April 30th. The predominant sounds are the click of the computer mouse and the cry of enraged triumph when the quarry is pinned down.

This beats any all action computer game hands down for excitement and emotion, and it is thanks to the European Union which has decided that, in the interests of transparency, all beneficiaries of the Common Agricultural Policy should be named.

Germany has failed to obey....it's not that long after the disruption of absorbing the old German Democratic Republic, after all....a row about which fat cats have their paws in the cream which is mostly paid for by the German public is not regarded as conducive to solidarity and fellow feeling in hard times.

One has a feeling that all the Greek, Roumanian and Bulgarian beneficiaries are related, probably to their agriculture ministers, but perhaps that is just how their names look to northern European eyes.

One knows, too, that the Queen has had her paws well buttered, but all of this pales in comparison with the emotion felt by a Frenchman able to confirm long held suspicions about his neighbour's finances.

By consulting the website

www1.telepac.agriculture.gouv.fr/telepac/tbp/feader/afficherResultats.action

...which has just gone down, what a surprise!...

the French taxpayer, consumer and, vitally, neighbour can discover just who has had his or her snout in the trough and to what extent.

It is fascinating to learn that a chap up the road who has to my certain knowledge thirty milking goats and a shed full of ducks has raked in seventeen thousand euros in the last accounting year while steadfastly refusing to pay his wife a wage...nomatter what it says on the books...and leaving his house in the state it was in the 1930s where sanitation is concerned. It does account for his smart cars and vans, however.

Then there is the guy across the river. He has a few cattle, mostly to be found in my garden when the river is low enough for them to wade across, and a pig unit which seems to be subject to electrical faults every three years in which animals inevitably die and he inevitably collects insurance. He has received one hundred and four thousand euros. It accounts for his cars too.

The man who steals my ducks as an extension of his declared activity as a cattle farmer has trousered thirty four thousand euros. It accounts for his son's cars.

The French farmer is an unpopular figure abroad, seen as grasping, greedy, environmentally unfriendly and living high on the hog on the backs of European taxpayers and consumers. It may come as a surprise to learn that he is regarded like this in France, as well, except for European taxpayers, substitute French ones....they have no time to worry about the emotions of other European taxpayers. The figures pubished more or less discreetly in the newspapers have unleashed howls of fury in the comment columns and a great deal of earnest discussion at the level of the local bar.

According to my non farming neighbours, there are two aspects to the farmer's unpopularity ...his farming activites and his privileged position when it comes to taxation.

The farming activities are but all too well known. Pollution of wells and water courses by the over use of fertilizers, which now has to be cleaned up at the expense of the general taxpayer. Over use of insecticides which are rendering the countryside sterile....hardly a buzz in my blossoming fruit trees which once were alive with pollinators....and two fingers put up to beekeepers who have seen their hives and their livelihoods destroyed. Paid to sow inappropriate crops which demand irrigation to an extent that domestic water sources are threatened. Spreading his manure on the fields and not turning it in so that the stench overpowers the neighbourhood - I swear the guy with the ducks has a copy of my diary as it seems like every time I have friends to lunch in the summer he spreads his manure the day before and drives us off the terrace. The ability to blight the countryside with chicken concentration camps, silos and sheds, while the ordinary guy has to jump through the hoops of French planning regulations to change the colour of his shutters. There is a lovely village nearby, where the main streeet is all mellow golden limestone. At the end of the street, visible from the moment you drive into the village, is a silo of vast proportions painted a livid forest green. Just try painting your shutters that colour!

Never dare let your field to a farmer...with his nine year renewable leases and his right to first refusal should you wish to sell he is a blight on your property...let alone what he gets up to while he is renting.

It is the underpart of the iceberg that rouses most resentment, however. Thanks to taxation policy, farmers manage to keep the bulk of their money inviolate, while declaring miniscule sums. This enables them to maintain their vehicle fleets at minimal cost, while entitling their children to grants meant theoretically for the children of the poor. Natural disasters have no meaning for them....they are compensated on the grand scale, which in its turn provides permanent support for the car sales industry. You have no idea how much the average guy who has to economise to keep his car on the road resents the fleets of white vans and smart cars issuing from farm gateways. You have no idea how much the general shopkeeper or tradesman resents the handouts for hard times while he faces going bust and being obliged to keep on paying workmen for whom he has no work.

Still, as my elderly neighbours say
'Nous sommes pour rien'......we don't count.

Farmers count. These subsidies keep the French agro alimentary industry turning, and keep the farming vote turning out for the right in French national politics, and, thanks to the European Union, we all pay for their privileges.

Time for an aperitif

The blackthorn, the sloe, does not look appealing at first sight, from a comestible point of view. Its froth of flowers on the bleak hedgerows indicates only that you are behind with the pre spring gardening and had better get on with clearing the flower beds, but after that it tends to fade from sight in the battle against weeds and the harvesting and preserving of gluts. It only achieved prominence for me in the autumn when some unwary child had to be inveigled into shoving a ladder into the thorny bushes to climb up to pick the fruit for making sloe gin. Difficult these days to inveigle the same child twice...they seem to have a horror of pricking themselves, tearing their clothes or getting dirty. No wonder the world is going to the dogs. Where is the child of yesteryear, returning from a day out in the country with a jar of newts and looking like an unkempt midden?



However, in rural France, the blackthorn has a great deal of importance. Its' shoots provide the essential ingredient of the ubiquitous aperitif, 'l'epine'...the thorn....which will ease your way into the French language in any house to which you are invited for aperitifs.

I had tasted it in my neighbours' houses, but it was not until I went out on the commune's May 1st walk that I discovered how it was made. French organised walks are a law to themselves....if it is a rambling group, everything goes at a cracking pace, the object seeming to be to get to the house providing the aperitifs at the end of the walk as quickly as possible. If it is the July 14th ramble through the vines then the group keeps pretty close order, anxious not to miss out on the wine distributed by the commune's van at regular waypoints on the route. The May Day walk is something else...the wine and picnic will be delivered to one designated spot and the cask will not be broached until at least the majority of people have arrived, so there is a good deal of dawdling and flower picking...flowers which will be thrown aside before the pickers reach home. There seems to be something dead in the French soul...flowers are free, so you pick them and then jettison them rather than enjoying them where they stand.
On this particular day, I noticed a group congregating around one hedgerow, picking furiously, but I saw no flowers. Monsieur Martin, retired vigneron, enlightened me. They were picking the new pink shoots to make epine. He gave me the recipe...after all, it included wine, I would have to buy some, so it was all good for trade! None of this closely guarded family secret stuff here.

I had some blackthorn in my hedge.....whoever it was who had lived there long ago had had their priorities right....plums for eau de vie and sloes for epine....so, with my own supply of illicit eau de vie I was equipped to start. The basic recipe is as follows....
to one kilo of sugar, you put four litres of red wine, one litre of eau de vie and a handful of blackthorn shoots, let it all sit for about a month, stirring the sugar to make sure it dissolves, then strain and bottle. It will keep for years....if you don't invite the ramblers. You can make it with other shoots too...the plum shoots are good, and Didier makes it with wild cherry shoots, just don't mix them. You can also make it with white wine if you happen to have a supply of something so thin that cat's pee would be a compliment to its quality.

I had a supply of wine, a Merlot, which a local upmarket vigneron had sold me, telling me that I could lay it down for at least five years. I suppose he hoped that I would have returned to the U.K. by that time, leaving this treasure behind without tasting it. I had fallen victim to the prevalent idea in French commerce that no foreigner could last the course in France, so it was not worth giving good value to keep his or her custom as they would not be there to become a valued client. The French are a logical nation. I wasn't going to drink the stuff, fearing for the enamel on my teeth, but it was ideal for making epine. I made it on the grand scale....not one bottle of Merlot survived....and was delighted with the results. I could now entertain my neighbours in proper style.

I did so. They were kind enough to approve of my efforts and to encourage me...since I already had the eau de vie.....to try the other staple of the home made aperitif cupboard, the pineau...but for that I would have to wait until the autumn, for the vendange.

Life has its rythms in the country and there is no rushing the aperitif.

Fat in France

Replete after Sunday lunch, I read of a survey which has found that French women are the thinnest in Europe and worry most about their weight. This seems to bear out the findings of a book proclaiming that French women have the secret of staying thin, though the author of the book admits that her findings only relate to upper middle class women and above in the towns.

Boy, she can say that again! Moving to rural France was an empowering experience for me...I actually looked slim if I stood alongside my female neighbours! I did not and do not mix in what passes for high society locally but I did begin to notice at concerts, etc., that the well dressed women accompanied by men in suits were thin in comparison to the rest of us, and as I watched French TV I noticed that all the female newscasters and presentors were cast in the same mould. This must be another manifestation of the two Frances.....one, the France of ordinary people, the other, the France in control of the ordinary people.

What strikes me is that all demonstrations of status depend on societal forces. In the middle ages, sumptuary laws reserved cloth of gold and jewels for the royal family and the aristocracy, so that you could see who was who at a glance. Later, when access to these luxuries spread down the social scale, access to adequate food became the marker... from Rubens' fat women to the opulent beauties of the pre First World War era. Look at the ladies of Marie Antoinette's court compared with the fishwives marching to destroy them....the shortage of bread tells its' own story.

In the inter war period, access to the freedoms previously only enjoyed by men...such as working outside the home...shifts the aspect again. Women with any access to liberation become boyish in figure, cut their hair and lift their skirts. Their servants are dumpy...access to adequate food...but no liberation.

These days, it appears that to have status, you have to appear as if you do not even need to eat and have the time it takes to present yourself as a perfectly turned out doll, so what is this telling us about society? It's telling us that women who achieved liberation a generation ago pulled up the drawbridge behind themselves and let their fellow women return to achieving status only by attaching themselves to a man.

Food now is so plentiful that status is gained by despising it. Mothers can tell their daughters to stop eating while they are still hungry in the interests of training them for the marriage...or concubinage...market. A far cry from the days of shortages during the second World War when in the U.K. a well thought out system of rationing produced a generation of healthy children with their own teeth..who knew it was wrong not to clear your plate because merchant service sailors were dying to bring food to Britain. A far cry from the food shortages in occupied France, when the townspeople sallied out into the countryside to buy black market meat and dairy products, dodging the gendarmerie and fearful of being denounced.

Out here, in the one horse dorps of rural France, people still celebrate with food. They know that they have no power, thus the frequently heard phrase when discussing what is wrong with modern politics,

Nous sommes pour rien.

We count for nothing.

However, the pleasure in preparing your own special recipe for guests who know it and look forward to it with relish is a pleasure that, as yet, the State cannot mar.

Sarkozy's aeroplane

The President of the French Republic is buying a 'plane. He would like to have bought a new one, but, given the current atmosphere in France, even he does not dare to make such a gesture of conspicuous consumption, so he's getting a second hand one from Air Carraibes. It will, of course, be getting a makeover including a bath for Carla Bruni.

Aparently he feels humiliated by the size, age and performance of his existing equipment when compared with that of other world leaders, who may be more stupid than him...step forward the Prime Minister of Spain.....or who need more guidance than him....step forward the German Chancellor...but who manage to arrive at gatherings well briefed and relaxed thanks to having modern planes in which to travel.

Personally, I don't think the President should make the old plane in which he is forced to bum around the world the excuse for his infelicities of language.

Did he fly from the Elysee Palace to the Paris Agricultural Show on the other side of town where he met the man who refused to shake his hand, resulting in the lapid pronouncement

'Sauve -toi, pauvre con!' ?

A reasonable translation of which might be

'Go away, oh illegitimate one.'

Perhaps his car needs a makeover as well. And a bath for Carla Bruni.

Which brings me to another point. The President can address his fellow citizens in this fashion, but woe betide them if they attempt to use the same liberty of address with him. Presidents are protected from insult.....like prefects and gendarmes and goodness only knows how many other state apparatchiks.

Recently, a French citizen hoisted a placard as Sarkozy's motorcade passed him. It read

'Sauve-toi, pauvre con'.

The said citizen has just been awarded a fine of 1,000 Euros for 'outrage'.

The President has been under attack for his general sloppiness of language and for his scornful disdain for a classic of french literature, 'La Princesse de Cleves', a seventeenth century romance written in the high style, which seemed to be necessary reading for those studying to become apparatchiks. His predecessor, Jaques Chirac, was never held in his time to be a master of the language...a touch bucolic, ideal for patting cows' bottoms at the Agricultural Show or elsewhere, and certainly not up to the standards of the Academie Francaise, whose ex president, the novelist Maurice Druon, has just died, more noted for his attempts to prevent lady ministers from being called Madame la Ministre than for his lurid accounts of the lives of the medieval French kings. President Mitterand, nomatter how unlovely his history and activities, could express himself perfectly in classic French, but things have gone decidely downhill since his time.

Still, citizens can take heart. The President's wife is not protected by the idea of 'outrage', so I can say that Carla Bruni needs a bath without fear of the gendarmes beating down my door at three o'clock in the morning. That is not to say that I don't have to fear a bailiff arriving at 10 o'clock with a civil writ for defamation, but that's another matter.

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!'