Research ~ Missive 19

27 June 2010

Dear All

Hopefully you will find Missive 19 attached, and yes the Barbie dolls feature – briefly!!

Quite a long offering this time, so as we’re busy getting ready to go away in the caravan, I’ll say no more!! Except, yes I’m sending this during the England vs Germany match, but it’s on iPlayer LIVE! and I’m multitasking!

Love

Roger

rogerhiggs@hotmail.co.uk

Mes chers amis

Research ~ Missive 19

“Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.”
Edward de Bono

"By seeking and blundering we learn."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The theme idea is continuing, and again the title reflects the loose theme, but the more alert amongst you, or indeed those who have bothered to read previous missives, will notice a subtle change in the layout – clever words becoming just a couple or so quotes at the beginning and a completely new section, entitled “Ici devant nous,” the translation of which and indeed the explanation can be found below!! A section which, at least for the time being, is here to stay.

Whilst on the research theme, not sure if anyone else has seen it and I’m not sure I fully understand it, but it appears from an article on the BBC website earlier in June, and I quote verbatim: “Finding the Higgs is the primary aim of the £6bn ($10bn) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment near Geneva.” !! Strange, I know we’ve fled the country but we’re not that hard to find and certainly a ferry crossing from Portsmouth to Le Havre and petrol, tolls etc., would come in considerably cheaper! What maybe is even more surprising, is that a later article in the Guardian it says that the Higgs are “nicknamed the “God particle”, but before I get too egotistical and perhaps nearer to the truth we sound “a little bit like a bunch of coins spinning in a wine glass!” Confused? I certainly was and still am, however if you want to know more then follow this link to the “boson” of the Higgs family, mind you then you may be even more confused!!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson or indeed listen to us at: www.lhcsound.moonfruit.com/#/sounds-library/4540255106 or if still confused try a simplified cartoon form: www.pparc.ac.uk/ps/bbs/bbs_mass_hn.asp !!!!

Barbie Dolls and I should have said My Little Pony

This one is an old chestnut, to which I am only too pleased to vehemently return to, without apologies to anyone who has previously heard me vent my spleen over this, over the dinner table, having coffee at Mill’s Café, late at night at a Gastrell’s Ramblers Weekend or when simply passing the time of day!!

It all stems from an article I once read in the magazine of a Saturday paper about the obscene amounts of money that the producers of the “My Little Pony” toy spent researching what little girls like!! Amazingly, I’m sure any self respecting primary school teacher could have come up with the same list – ponies, combing hair and pastel colours, at considerably reduced cost. But, what made it all the more worrying to me, was that the vast R & D budget paled into insignificance when you viewed the profit projections that they were going to make over the first five years of production and that was without the new must have accessories – stable, four wheel drive and horse trailer, show jumping ring etc. – that were to conveniently come out just before Christmas each year!!! And, it got worst still as much of the profit was coming from the truly enormous mark up on the actually production cost, the items made with cheap eastern labour who probably didn’t even understand the concept of what they were making. Hence my ongoing aversion to all things in the toy department that are plastic, “silky” haired and overpriced!!!

I can’t help but feel that children would get equally as much play value and certainly considerably more in the way of life skills if they were playing outside, whatever the weather, and doing practical things like cooking. Better still combine the two and grow their own food and experience camping / camp cooking where possible, even if only in the back garden and I could even, at a pinch, go along with pastel coloured tents with nylon tassels!!

How gratifying then to be told by Dermot, our daughter Victoria’s partner, when expressing concern about what Tyler, his five year old son, would find to do when visiting us in France, that as long as he had a football and a stick he would be happy! We’ve a wood full of sticks, but just need to be careful about the football at the moment, and need to make sure it is not a replica of the current World Cup ball, something of a sore point in France at the moment!! Tempted as I was I resisted running an English flag up the flagpole the day England got through to the last 16 and the knockout stages of said tournament, shortly after France had been unceremoniously been dumped out of the World Cup, finishing a resounding last place in their group, with just a solitary point. Not to put too fine a point on it – un point!!!

And returning briefly to the Nature theme of the last missive, research has clearly shown that: Children and indeed many young adults up to the age of 35, are suffering from what has been called Nature Deficit Disorder NDD and subsequent physical and mental health problems such as obesity and depression, The key to this problem, at least in part, could be to send young children out into the world, be it back garden, park or on a wider scale National Park, to get their hands dirty and “begin to experience nature – from birdsong to the feel of the wind in their face.” They need close encounters often on a smaller scale than adults, and will derive pleasure from “looking into the eye of a primrose, lifting a stone to see what is underneath, or simply collecting objects – shells, stones, nuts and seeds.” All with real people and real animals, without a nylon hairstyle in sight! To find out more go to www.rewildingchildhood.com . With older children and teenagers it may be harder to engage them, but they will often rise to a challenge and enjoy discovering things for themselves and pushing themselves to their limits. It may also be with them, as Stephen Moss, broadcaster, writer and naturalist, points out, a case of restoring a balance between outside and TV and computer games.

Chilli Pasta ~ Somehow it just worked!

Those of you who know me well know my passion for food and not just the eating, but also the preparing for other people and the pleasure derived from seeing one’s friends enjoying your creations! I also like to experiment with new foods (sometimes trying them out before serving them to guests!), try recipes from other countries and produce food that “fits!” By this I mean; recipes utilising local in season produce, recipes around a particular request for someone’s favourite or simply, as often at present French country dishes to be served in the French countryside – so much the better if served outside in a shady spot surrounded by warm sunshine and a good supply of good friends!

Better still if it works when entertaining friends! I’m reminded of a quote from the forward of Depardieu’s book “Ma Cuisine:” “The art of cooking and preparing a meal to share with those you care about is also, for me, a means of communicating that love and friendship without necessarily having to utter a single word.”

So it is then that often at a quiet moment, the few selected cookery books that we have with us in France, will come off the shelf and I’ll look for something different, something I’ve not tried before, and so it was for this particular meal. We weren’t entertaining, just researching for a tasty meal for us, but also to add to the repertoire of earthy, tasty, country food fitting for rural France. At the end of the evening I had jotted down some notes that read: Pasta with chilli and coriander (from Rick Stein’s “Mediterranean Escapes and from Puglia in southern Italy) or as it’s called in the book “Orecchiette with cavalo nero” made with those shell like pasta that resemble little ears – well that is what orecchiette means in Italian! (This recipe caught my eye because of the unusual combination of chilli and pasta, although when we were in the Rishikesh district of India huge quantities of pasta, in lots of different colours, as well as a variety of shapes was on sale!) I had also noted some interesting pages with recipes for Bruscette from the same book and the same part of Italy, as well as continuing the Italian theme with some Crostini recipes noted from “Jamie’s Italy” by Jamie Oliver, and if you think bruschette and crostini are virtually the same, technically they’re not, the former being made with sourdough and the latter white bread!! You see research does pay off even if I’m prone to do my own thing loosely based on the recipes and what we have in the larder and fridge.

The next day, bearing this last point in mind, feeling creative and kept in by the weather, the evening “feast” started to take shape, “using” the recipes found the previous evening as well as some things we had in already. At this point I should make it clear that the creative juices meant we ended up with a far more elaborate meal than normal, but served the purpose of providing my “Tried, Tested and Approved” recipe list with several new recipes to try out on family and friends. So, should you happen to be visiting over the coming months, you might just have an inkling of what to expect!

The final meal consisted of: Toasted crostini rubbed with raw garlic (Careful if following the recipe – a little goes a long way!!), heaped with finely chopped and seasoned tomatoes, peppers and shallots. This was followed by pan fried lamb cutlets with marjoram on a bed of leaves (cabbage and leek tops) and penne pasta with chillies and coriander, served with grilled courgettes, grilled to dry them up as they had been in the freezer and tend to come out a little soggy – baking them in the oven works just as well. To finish we had some of our alcohol-soaked cherry plums, topped with whipped cream and a small quite fiery ginger biscuit that we had left over from Christmas. As we pushed back our chairs at the end of the meal, replete but not stuffed we both had to agree: “somehow it just worked!”

Carte Grise

We opened a bottle of bubbly this week and sent my Mum and Dad a text that simply said “Salut AV * 887 * NH” but I’m afraid it was too subtle for them and their friend, with whom they are currently caravanning with in France, and I got a reply that said “Have message appears 2 b from u. What does it mean. Dad.” (Yes, he might be 85 but he not only texts he also does it in the lingo! lol!!) I should add that they had just been with us and we were hoping to meet up with them in a week or so, caravan registration permitting, and that’s another clue!!

Yes, we have done it – the caravan is now registered in France!! Hallelujah! We have finally beaten the French bureaucracy and stuck up the proverbial Agincourt salute once more!! But it wasn’t without further incident, after my last report in Missive 14, back in January. Well, the New Year had come and gone and it took me some time to finally sit down and wade through just what it was that the DRIRE (Vehicle licensing) Office (which in the time that the whole process was taking had become the DREAL Office), had seemingly on a whim asked for now, bearing in mind as I told you before, we had a Certificate of EEC Conformity in French that stated that the caravan meets all EEC regulations!! But although a member state of the EEC, France seems to make up its own rules and what is worse, as we found out during our research – somewhat more intense that a Master’s Module!! – was that each region interprets the rules differently, as they see fit! We had decided it was a case of anti-British and simply rampant jingoism to make people buy French, and just one word of warning, don’t think buying in another mainland European country will make it any easier, we have friends who whilst living in the UK before permanently moving to France bought a left-hand drive German made campervan in Belgium and have quite simply given up trying to register it in France having been told it is “not possible!!” So much for a common market!

It became apparent that the list of “evidence” missing from my increasingly weighty dossier, all centred on the German built and EEC conforming AL-KO Kober chassis, which is incidentally fitted to over 80% of caravans, and the suitability of the coupling and braking system. So having tried to find the required information on the internet and dismally failed, in desperation I phoned up AL-KO and explained my predicament, naively thinking that they might be as efficient and generous as Bailey had been all those months ago, and provide me with the necessary piece of paper free of charge and by return of post. But, how wrong I was, although they were extremely helpful and understanding, having experienced this problem many times before and even saying “rather you than me!!!” when we discussed registering a caravan in France, the catch was that said certificate could be supplied for the princely sum of £85-00 plus VAT!!! Furthermore, in their experience there was absolutely no way around it, you had to have the certificate or you couldn’t register the caravan!! So, the order was placed the money paid and indeed very efficiently the certificate was quickly delivered, in a very large and weighty padded envelope!! The one page document I had been expecting was actually 150 pages long, containing everything that you could possibly require to know about the chassis in English, German and thankfully French, so with copying costs and postage and packaging it wasn’t such a bad deal after all, and in the end I decided this was a case of the Germans making a proverbial finger gesture all of their own!! But, we had it, the covering letter was ready, the remainder of the dossier sorted once more (The neat folder of punched pockets had been returned to me in total disarray, as they obviously shuffled it up to make it look as though they had searched through it in order to tick the relevant boxes!!) and ready in an envelope to post to the DREAL Office in nearby La Roche sur Yon.

Firstly, it wouldn’t fit in the envelope and secondly it was becoming so heavy it was in danger of needing a La Poste van all to itself to avoid serious damage to the suspension, so we decided to have a day out in Nantes and drop off the “dossier to put most dossiers in the shade” in person on the way, being careful not to put our backs out and therefore spoiling the day!! So at ten o’clock on a Wednesday 26th May, I returned to the car breathing a sigh of relieve, largely as it was quite a weight off my shoulders – quite literally, and wondered how long it would be before we got a reply and what new form of evidence we would be required to locate and submit!! Imagine then our surprise when at ten o’clock on Thursday 27th May, yes as the alert amongst you will have noticed that’s 24 hrs, we received a letter with an appointment, for a week’s time, to take the caravan for its technical test (yes, the one to ensure that the caravan conforms to European Standards and that the dossier matches the serial number on the chassis!!) and please remember to take a cheque for 85 euros!! Now, don’t get me wrong Le Technicien Supérieur, who sent us the appointment may be a superior reader, but as the letter had been delegated to a mere Technicien, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a “tick in the box” job!

But it was a step in the right direction, and we got the caravan ready, sorted out insurance (only just – another case of chicken and egg French bureaucracy!!) using the car registration number initially and set off with the proof of rendez-vous (appointment), should we be unlucky enough to be stopped by an eagle-eyed gendarme, who wanted to know why the car and caravan had the same registration number! After an uneventful journey, although on one of the roundabouts there was a police check-point pulling in drivers to check their documents, but fortunately it was for drivers going the other way!, we arrived in good time in the street where Goggle Earth had told us the testing station was. Although, after driving up and down it a couple of times there was no sign of the address we were looking for. With the time of the rendez-vous looming, in desperation I went into an unmarked unit to ask the whereabouts of the test station, to be told to go to the roundabout, turn left and it was the “vert” (green) building on the left. Well, the left turn off the roundabout headed down a narrow country land with only a sign to the local tip and seemingly nowhere to turn if it was wrong and the only building on the left was a bronze glass building! So, I went back the way I had come and was flagged down by the mechanic who had seen us pass by and was waiting for us. It was then that I realised that the instructions I had been given at the office around the corner were actually “on the left before the roundabout and the “verre” (glass) building!!

But, I had little time to chide myself on such a silly mistake, as the mechanic opened the workshop door and as the vehicle already inside left through the far side, he beckoned me to drive in over the chasm of an inspection pit that gaped in front of me! It was made for buses and lorries and was simple a deep hole in the concrete with sheer sides and no kerb to stop a stray wheel for plunging in. Having faith in the mechanic who continued to beckon me in and whose hand signals didn’t quicken or change direction indicating a degree of panic, I somewhat gingerly edged forward until the car and the front of the caravan were over the pit, then got out and realised just how little leeway there was either side of the hole and greeted the somewhat uncommunicative mechanic, who threw his copy of my dossier onto a nearby bench, retrieved his page of tick boxes and proceeded to look for the serial number. After a number of abortive searches, he indicated that I needed to move the car and caravan forward for closer inspection, and whilst he ticked off the other items Linda and I looked up, in the book, where the serial number should be! Erroneously, I had assumed it was clearly on the side of the chassis where serial numbers are always found, but in this case seemingly not!! The inspection finished save the checking of the serial number, and it becoming increasingly likely that we would have to go away, identify the serial number, return, with another drive over the abyss, having to pay another inspection fee ......... But with one last ditch attempt, I told the mechanic where the book had said it was and on closer inspection he found it, albeit a little faint, but certainly clear enough to read. We were then summoned to his office where he spent some time sorting through the muddled up dossier, asked for a couple of other origin documents that I had in my copy of the dossier and said he was finished, it appearing that everything had passed muster and even the niggly feeling that I had, that they might question that the reflectors on the side of the caravan were not lights proved not to be a problem!! After just remembering in time to ask for the cheque, seeing me carefully and slowly from over the inspection pit, the more frantic gestures this time indicating the closeness of one of the front wheels to the abyss below, and even responding with a wry smile to my rather theatrical sigh and mopping of my brow, informed us that the Sous Prefecture’s Office in Fontenay le Comte would telephone when the Carte Grise was ready to collect. This, our research had told us, would be between five to fourteen days, depending how busy the offices were and in this case how quickly the mechanic was able to get the dossier into some semblance of order.

So we waited, not wanting to get too excited until the new number plate was firmly in place on the back of the caravan, and waited and waited, worrying that there was actually a problem that would need sorting before the registration could go ahead! Eventually, just over two weeks later we got John, a friend of my parents who was staying with us and conveniently speaks the lingo like a native, to phone up the DREAL Office and enquire. He was told that all the necessary paperwork had been sent to the Sous Prefecture in Fontenay shortly after the test, and we needed to phone them to enquire, as they never phoned out to tell people their documents are ready! John’s phone call confirmed that the documents had all been received at the office and on production of my passport and a utility bill the Carte Grise (Registration Document) would be mine!! This was Tuesday, and we were going to wait until Friday to get the Carte Grise, but thankfully decided to go the following day, which was in the end just as well as on the Friday our hot water system had packed up and we had to stay in all morning, the only time the Sous Prefecture was open for Carte Grise issuing!

Arriving at the Sous Prefecture we found it very busy and had to take a ticket from a machine similar to those found on the deli counter of certain supermarkets, the number on which indicated that there were rather a lot of other people ahead of us in the queue! But by watching the comings and goings of French bureaucracy the time went quite quickly and we were soon explaining, in French, that we had come to pick up the Carte Grise for our caravan, which was initially met with a blank stare as though we were talking double Dutch and it wasn’t anything to do with our limited French!! The lights however, quickly came on and the receptionist went to a filling cabinet the other side of the room, removed a file and returned to the counter, asked us a few questions, ticked a few boxes and gave us another form to fill in, on which she indicated only a few sections that we needed to fill in, indicated a desk to the side of the counter and told us to come back once we were ready and not queue again! Duly completed we were handed some of our dossier back, but not the 150 pages about the chassis, that I had hoped would provide me with bedtime reading for several weeks, as I tried to fathom out all the technical bits – well I was hoping to get my monies worth from the documents!!, and a piece of paper to pay the next bit – the bill – at the cash desk next door.

Paper and money handed over and in what, after all this time was something of an anticlimax, we received our temporary Carte Grise, were able to get the number plate made up at the local supermarket, before going home, fitting the number plate and toasting the success. Then three days later we received the official Carte Grise and are now ready to roll to Saumur, on the banks of Le Loire, next week to meet up with my mum and dad for the next part of their holiday. Mission accomplished or Mission accomplie as they say in this neck of the woods!

“Ici devant nous!”

This is going to become a regular section, at least for the time being, largely due to Linda, my biggest critic’s comments that the missive should be about what we have been doing, have seen or plan to do! So you see, largely ignoring this advice so far in this missive, I have decided to put in a regular section that could just as easily have been entitled: “Nature Notes ~ Note la nature” (done by someone else before me!!), Nature at La Loge ~ Nature à La Loge” (too obvious!!) or La Loge Looking ~ La Loge la recherché” (subtle and nearly there!!). So why “Ici devant nous?” This goes back to a meal outside our house one sunny evening when my brother and family were visiting. Our “friendly” neighbourhood hornet, quite five centimetres long and fearsome looking, put it its nightly appearance, buzzed the dinner table and after a few seconds panic, from the diners not the hornet you understand, left us and went about its business from its home somewhere in the wall above the door to our Cave de Chauffage (Boiler Room). Our visitors were all for swatting it, but restraining them I uttered the title ~ “Ici devant nous!” ~ “Here before us!” and it sort of rang very true. I was reminded of the Dinner Ladies (sorry Midday Supervisory Assistants, or should that now be Pupil Supervisors!) at one of the schools I taught at. When the large field was dry the children had a wide open space to play on, but the gange mower was not able to get to the very edges along the fence and healthy banks of nettles started to spring up. It was suggested that as the children might sting themselves and so the nettles should be removed, my response – They’ll only get stung once and then be more careful!!

Well you’ve had nature sections before, but this one hopes to go a little further than simply a description of what we saw, when and where. It is more in the line of great explorers and naturalists from past eras, who seemed to have to recorded measurements, sightings, locations and meticulously catalogued everything they encountered. So it is in this vain that I reply to Linda, when having to know the answer: “How many seeds are there in a Cupressus cone, as found on a fine couple of specimens in the chateau garden, and how many seeds are produced annually by a cowslip plant?” Both these questions formulated when out and about observing the countryside, the first when having collected some of these fascinating cones, put them in my pocket and found my pocket filling up with small brown seeds, so I just had to know! The second, when collecting some of the cowslips seeds for my emerging “seed bank” and being amazed by the sheer quantity I was getting from one flower head.

Now to details and figures: Clustering in the cracks and crevices of the globe like Cupressus cone, which itself was only about 3 centimetres in diameter were 95 seeds in all, each an slightly flattened irregular shape about 2 - 3 millimetre long. The cowslip however, not to be outdone, from each flowerlet produces a small pea like seed container with a small opening surrounded attractively with the dried up petals and containing at least 35 tiny black seeds, clustered around a central core. So with each flower head containing something like 15 flowerlets, so that’s an impressive 525 plus seeds for each. Therefore if the plant had say only 4 flower heads, it annually produces in excess of 2000 seeds, which as the seed pod dries out and splits, fall out and take their chance. As the last missive talked about, nature is a wonderful thing, but it’s also a tough old world out there and only the strongest survive!

Linda does tend to ask why, in the sense of why bother and does it matter what it’s called, and rather than give the stock answer to the question asked of mountaineers –Why climb it?, and say “Because it’s there!”, I think the following quote from Richard Mabey’s “Nature Cure” is much nearer the mark: “It seems to me that naming a plant and for that matter any living thing, is a gesture of respect towards its individuality, its distinction from the generalised green blur. ......... The kind of name – scientific, fantastical, pet – scarcely matters provided someone can communicate it.” The only thing missing from the name list is, as I see it, French!!

My original “thought!”

Many of the corners of our house are home to large and seemingly inactive harvester spiders, not I hasten to add through lack of cleaning, they just seem to see the feather duster coming towards them, move slowly out of the way and lethargically return once the danger has passed!! In fact, really their presence has more to do with living in the deepest countryside in a three hundred year old stone built house.

Well, the corners of the loo are particular favourites, for the spiders you understand!, and as I have already mentioned these particular specimens seem to do very little just hang around on their webs waiting for an unsuspecting prey to happen by. However, should you disturb them; they have an amazing defence mechanism which comes as rather a surprise considering their normal inactivity. They drop slightly but very quickly and twist frantically round and round on their web at dizzying speed, until such time as they think the imminent danger has passed them by.

But having tormented one one day, to see once more the feverish display, I got to thinking; eight legs, two joints on each not counting the “hips,” that makes sixteen knees – and I got to thinking “Do spiders suffer from knee problems!!” Temps sur mon mains! ~ I’ll leave you to translate this one!

Kind regards, Best Wishes and Love,

Roger and Linda

And maybe to come next time? “What we have been doing, have seen or plan to do!!” or something like that!