My glass half full or half empty! - Missive 13

31st December 2009

Dear All


Hopefully you will find Missive 13 attached, which really says it all! One of my shorter covering letters!


Love

Roger


Mes chers amis

My glass half full or half empty!

It’s usually the same old story when thinking about who is an optimist / positive person and who isn’t based on the saying above, or is it? If you see your glass as half empty, going down, you’re seen as being more negative than someone who sees their glass as half full – going up!! But, let me throw something else into the equation, after our own thinker, Victoria, started thinking or was that drinking!! It is really all dependant on whether the glass is being filled up or drunk!! – Think on!! Maybe, or maybe not this will set the scene of this the last missive for 2009! But, be it positive or negative, one thing is for sure if this is going to wing its way through cyberspace before Big Ben brings the first decade of the millennium to a close (amazing the bacon sandwiches and champagne on Rodborough Common, quite literally surrounded by the biggest and longest firework display I have ever experienced, was ten years ago!!), it’s going to be fairly short!! Also, due to constraints of time and energy – Christmas can be very sapping!, “More bureaucracy!” will have to wait until next time.

Wild Gourmet

When we first announced our intention to move to France for the “good life” and how we would have to grow our own food to survive it was something of a joke, now we’re not so sure!! But, going along with this, for my last birthday Daniel and Lisa gave me a wonderful book called “The Wild Gourmet” based on a previous Channel 4 documentary where Guy Grieve and Tommi Miers hunted and foraged their way across the UK for a year. Then for Father’s Day Victoria and Dermot gave me a National Trust book called Wild Food!

Then, as the garden blossomed and home grown fruit and vegetables became plentiful, so nature’s bounty also became plentiful and what better than to reach for the two books mentioned above and suddenly the glut of initially hedgerow cherries, elderflowers, plums and wild strawberries, followed by hedgerow elderberries, pears and apples, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, crab-apples blackberries, mint, chives and more started to develop into tasty morsels, with the possibility of more to come – sloe gin, hawthorn leaf salad, nettle soup and as I write this a bowl of strange looking medlars are picked and being naturally “bletted” or rotted ready to make into some delicacy!!

This has led on to “one of my projects” as Linda is prone to call them. I am now on the way to producing a personal “Wild Food Map,” highlighting the best hedgerows, verges, trees or woodland around La Loge, so as to be ready for each season as they arrive next year, so visitors for 2010 beware, who knows what special flavouring may be part of your meals! But, rest assured despite an overwhelming number of the most diverse fungi, a French identification guide and the possibility of taking samples into the local pharmacy to be told if they are edible or deadly poisonous, and in some cases it’s a thin dividing line!, we haven’t been brave enough!! So any fungi we serve up have been bought from the market or the supermarket.

But, who knows in time I might become like the bizarre sight I saw recently, when going for a walk in the nearby woods! A battered white van, so beloved of rural Frenchmen, pulled up and out got two fairly bulky Frenchmen, the youngest with a shaven head and both looking as though they would be more at home gracing the rugby fields of Perpignan or Stade de France. They then went around the back of the van opened the door and each took out a small wicker basket and walked off together into the woods! I’m sure in England their fungus foray would have caused a good degree of ribbing from their friends in the pub that night, but as the season continued this became a common sight as all Frenchmen, and it’s always the men, seem to have the knowledge fuelled by the passion for tasty food to identify at least a few “safe eats!”

Indeed, on one rather damp autumnal day, full of drizzle and mist, we finally managed our daily walk and met Michel the farmer, who asked if we were going to look for “champignons,” to which we replied that we were simply taking the air, but hoping that he might prove to be a mushroom expert, able to reliably identify the bountiful crop growing all around. We told him we were not confident enough to risk collecting the mushrooms and asked if he was an expert, to which he replied a definite “non” and said he only knew about four that could safely be eaten, but was obviously not confident enough to pass on this wisdom!

And now, in the height of the French hunting season, let’s hope that one day we return to the house and find a couple of partridges (not sure if they come in braces!) or better still a haunch of venison propped up outside the door – that really would be the “icing on the cake” as it were or should that be the food on the plate!

Toi Moi

Graffiti is uncommon, at least in rural France, but in one of our local towns on the side of a house that sticks out in front of you as you drive through is simply written, in large red letters, the two words “Toi Moi!” (You, Me) I can’t help but feel that this is altogether more refined and romantic than “Wayne 4 Stacy!” Also, this graffiti has possibly considerably longer shelf life as if allegiance changes and Wayne swops Stacy for Emma, it doesn’t require a repainting job!!

Keith Floyd and Eddie Izzard

A surprising and contrasting combination perhaps, but both made the front page of a national newspaper on a recent visit we made to England for my Mum and Dad’s 60th Wedding Anniversary. But, despite being very different they both made the news for incredible achievements, one in their chosen field, the other for a something far removed from what they are normally do. Sadly, in the case of Keith Floyd the headline was brought about by his somewhat untimely death, shortly after he had enjoyed a fine dining experience with a close friend and having just announced that he hadn’t felt this good for a long time. Rather a wry irony that shortly afterwards he were to die, but it did cause a huge outpouring of tributes from people across the culinary world, showing what a massive contribution this oft much maligned TV chef had actually made.

He was the first celebrity chef to take his kitchen outside into the open and to travel the world making succulent dishes inspired by the people and places he met along the way. The list of current celebrity chefs who said how much they owed Keith Floyd, be it directly or having worked with him is really impressive. Let them speak for themselves: Anthony Worral Thompson said of him: "I think all of us modern TV chefs owe a living to him. He kind of spawned us all." Marco Pierre White, told BBC radio Floyd "inspired a nation". Pierre White also said, "The thing which is very sad is a little piece of Britain today died which will never be replaced. He was a beautiful man, his ability to inspire people to cook just with his words and the way he did things was extraordinary. If you look at TV chefs today they don't have his magic. It's a very, very, very sad day for my industry and secondly for a nation." And, there were many more where these came from.

But what about Eddie Izzard, 47, best known as a stand up comedian, but also an accomplished actor? He has also learnt French to be able to take his comedy routine to France, and be successful at it – who said the French don’t have a sense of humour! Well on the day after that “a little piece of Britain died,” and reported on the same front page of the newspaper, Eddie Izzard, a transvestite comedian “prone to put on weight and never having run more than five miles before,” must have inspired and humbled the whole of the nation, as he completed a seven week “marathon” in aid of Sport Aid, running 43 marathons in 51 days, (at least 27 miles daily and a total of 1,166 miles). Of his achievement he said; “I don’t think what I did was amazing. Anyone can do it.” That, I think is both an understatement and debatable!! His epic achievement earned him a Special Award in this year’s Sport’s Personality of the Year.

Love or hate the work of these two great men, it’s impossible to belittle the achievements that they have both made, one leaving a lasting legacy the other with new and greater heights to scale. It’s the likes of Izzard and Floyd, and their eccentricities, which make the world a better and more interesting and fun place in which to live.

Tupperware

You escape to France leaving behind things like Fish and Chips, litter and cupboards full of Tupperware only to find at the local Foire de Marrons, Chestnut Fayre, amongst all the local produce, traditional crafts and brocante, that there’s a Tupperware lady with a table bulging with all the usual range of utensils and containers in this year’s must have colours and shapes – so that’s why people, including Linda, have cupboards full of unused Tupperware, unused and so last year!!!

We’ve also discovered an enterprising English family, who discovered a niche for a mobile fish and chip van – “The Vendée Chippie” – which for a few days each week travels around some local bars who have agreed to provide the tables and the bar! We have tried it once, in the cause of research!, and how civilised, fish and chips in paper sitting in the sun lit garden of a local bar drinking Guinness and they were the best fish and chips we have had for many a year – perhaps there are some English things that we miss, not only the beer!!

We had hoped to surprise the family on Family Weekend, when tradition dictates that on the Friday evening we all arrive and then send someone out for Fish and Chips! We were going to wait for everyone to arrive and pop down the road for something traditional, the hope being that our visitors would be waiting for something traditionally French and then surprise them with English Fish and Chips!! The plan was almost set when the frier remembered that he wasn’t going to be there on said evening, as he was holidaying in England, no doubt checking up on the opposition!!

“Clever Words”

• Many of you will know about my opinion of Delia Smith, and may remember my quip about her recent MBE, was it awarded for being patriotic or patronising!! Well, for Christmas my Mum and Dad bought me a book by Michael Booth, called “Doing without Delia, Tales of Triumph and Disaster in a French Kitchen” in which he says “But for me a good French market is Disneyland, the Louvre, a Caribbean beach and a bungee jump all wrapped up in one: pleasure, art, relaxation and stimulation.” But, please don’t tell Ms Smith otherwise she might do a “Delia’s French Fancies” special – Mon Dieu ~ non, non, non!!!

• “There are two types of teacher: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.” Robert Frost 1874 – 1963
• “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” Dalai Lama
• “When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let it go.” Carol Burnett

Today’s heartfelt thought:

“Happy New Year to All My Readers . May the New Year bring you Peace, Health and Happiness!”

or

Bonne Année à tous mes lecteurs. Que la nouvelle année vous apporte Paix, Santé, et Bonheur!

Kind regards, Best Wishes and Love,

Roger, Linda and Max

(Roger’s writing this from the frozen wastes of England, with temperatures hovering around zero all day and plummeting at night and frozen snow on the bare pads is no fun!! Particularly as I’m told back home the temperature is a pleasant 15° and there are tractors waiting to be chased!!)

And maybe to come next time?

“Black dots on a world map!”
“Cattle herding” and
“There’s an orgy in our bedroom!”

That last one will keep you guessing and waiting with baited breath for Missive 14!!