Happy New Year 2013! ......

Ok, I know it’s a wee bit late, but the truth of the matter is that as I hardly seem to have been missed I’ve been smarting!!  Actually, truth be known I’ve taken something of a sabbatical, as we seem to have been incredibly busy in the first three months of 2013 and thus incredibly tired, which really accounts for why quarter of a year has passed without you hearing from me – quite incredible when you put it like that.  But, I’m back as the weather finally seems to be thinking about spring and beyond, we had a picnic lunch yesterday on the way back from a couple of days away in the caravan (yes, amazingly and not without a considerable effort, including once when the lever slipped quite literally falling arse over apex, the caravan has risen from its resting place, deep in the garden and we have been away in it for the first time in just over two years!!  At the moment it hasn’t dropped back into the garden as we are away again shortly and will also need to reassess where it is going to live, to avoid future hernias and arching backs, knees – in fact everywheres!!!).  We could also today have put out the garden furniture and eaten lunch on the terrace, whoops, sorry, I forgot that much of England remains in the grip of winter!!

But here as with you, it’s been a funny old spring, a number of shortish very cold snaps, lots of rain with some milder weather, not least thankfully on a somewhat wet but warm New Year’s Eve to which, if only for the bare faced cheek of it, I am returning here!

We had a good Christmas, with Daniel and Lisa visiting for a week and some good friends joining us for Christmas dinner.  We also this year successfully, as a severe storm rather curtailed last year’s attempt, had our Carols under the Lamp, for a number of English and French friends and neighbours, utilising our part garage / part summer kitchen for a fun evening of songs in English, French and some mixed verse and verse about, with mulled wine, home-brewed English beer and nibbles including the local speciality – mogettes, with which many of our visitors will be familiar.  These are partly dried white beans, not dissimilar to haricot beans, cooked slowly for three hours with plenty of herbs, garlic and in my recipe some onion and carrot.  As with all traditional dishes in France, every household has their own “correct” recipe, to which I have added my own take on the dish.  Served on pieces of French bread toasted on the barbecue and rubbed with raw garlic, the fact that the very large pan was nigh on emptied, must mean the recipe worked even if the older visitors would I’m sure have agreed, it was the not the recipe ancien!!

All too soon the festivities were over and perhaps no bad thing the eating and drinking moderated, and we were left thinking about what to do on New Year’s Eve, not a night that is celebrated so publically in France, with families often staying in and dining French style from one year to the next!  We were invited to our friends who had come for Christmas Day, but had decided that as we were not visiting England (as we had a trip planned early in the year, to once more help with the running of Linda’s sister’s pet shop in York, of which I’m sure there will be more later – I may not have been blogging, but I’ve made copious notes for future blogposts!), we wanted to do something different.  Finally, we decided that we would see the New Year in on the local beach, walking hand in hand bathed in the warm glow of moonlight, but as beaches usually mean sea, I decided that swimming from one year into the next would indeed be very different indeed; Linda meanwhile offered to hold the towel!  One thing led to another and inspired by two things, an advert for money transfers, from the UK to France that had been regularly placed in a magazine we buy about France and features a considerably older couple than ourselves, jumping completely naked off the end of a short pier into a crystal clear warm azure sea, bathed in hot sunshine, with a caption along the lines of – live life to the full whilst we take care of your money!  (Sadly, the advert seems no longer to be running and I can’t track down the company to put in a claim for catching a chill!)  The second inspiration came from a poem by one of my favourite poets, Michael Rosen, called “Walking into Wales with our trousers down!” where he and a school friend do just that, walk into Wales with .......!  So, if you’re not there yet the swimming became skinny dipping, although in my search for the above advert, I found a rather fine poster, featuring a similarly mature and just as naked couple jumping into the sea with the caption: “We don’t skinny dip, we chunky dunk!” which in the circumstances is I fear more apt in my case!!  Linda meanwhile now offered to hold the towel, the clothes and the camera!!

The great night arrived and we had a pleasant meal, sans alcool as we were driving and the bottle of bubbly, as well as the flask of coffee, were already packed in the car, and we were having to drive for quite some way to find the sea!  We then twiddled our thumbs a little as we had a bit of a wait, not wanting to arrive too early and have to hang around watching what promised to be a somewhat black, cold and uninviting sea, which this year would certainly not be bathed in bright moonlight, as it so happened to coincide with the period of the lunar cycle called the “dark moon” when basically you can’t see it!!  At just after ten o’clock with a certain amount of trepidation we set off, into a howling wind, which caused the relatively light drizzle to be thrown at the car like a torrential downpour, more I suppose like the weather you would expect in the poem above rather than the advert, however on the bright side, if that’s possible on such  a dark and miserable night, the outside temperature reading on the car remained pleasingly towards 10˚C, positive rather than minus, which might have been more likely at this time of the year!

France was deserted, we hardly passed a single car on the whole journey, although quite strangely in the middle of nowhere, we were taking one of my infamous short cuts, we passed a service bus on its way, completely empty to the local town, arriving in time for the multitude of non-existent passengers to join the non-existent throng of people in the square at midnight welcoming in the New Year and saying good-bye to the old. Indeed every village and small town we passed through seemed deserted as once the shutters are closed on French houses, little light escapes and there is little to tell passersby if anyone is at home!

Arriving about an hour and a quarter later at the beach, the large car park which in summer is often full to overflowing was deserted, we were one of only three cars, the occupants of the other two possibly part of the all too evident partying throng in the large and rather expensive restaurant overlooking the beach!  This restaurant, full of diners and with one end turned into a dance floor with a disco and flashing lights, cast a strange glow over the wet sand outside its windows, and was so evident as it was the only place open and indeed the only place that showed any visible sign of life.  If it hadn’t have been for this noisy oasis, we could have been in a ghost town and imagined not the end of the year, but the end of the world.

We had a quick and fairly soggy trip around the deserted streets to kill time and to keep warm, before heading back to the car to prepare to chunky dunk from one year until the next!  Before we knew it we were heading out over the wet sand, Linda holding the towel, the bag for my clothes and the camera and me as I prepared to bare all, not only my soul!  The sound of the waves came to us from the darkness and dark it was as not only was there no moon, but as in all small French towns and villages most of the street lights are extinguished at about eleven o’clock and come back on in time for the morning rush hour during the winter.  And we walked towards the waves, crashing fairly gently onto the gently sloping sand, whipped up by the strong wind blowing down the coast, surprisingly warm for the time of year and momentarily the heavy drizzle had abated.     And, we walked and walked and walked until we were so far out that the coloured lights from the restaurant barely reached us and still the crashing waves were but a sound in the distance.  So, in the end the skinny, or should that be chunky happened, without the dip or the dunk as the sea seemed to have disappeared, as the church clock chimed the hour and a cheer went up in the distant restaurant, the clientele oblivious to the flashing, of a camera far out on the sands, and yes Linda took the photos to prove it, the clothes nearly being dropped on the wet sand in her haste to get the shots, but before you ask – no you can’t, you’ll just have to take our word for it!  Well, maybe in time a distance rear view if only to underline the chunky as opposed to the skinny!  Returning to the car, we celebrated with a small glass of wine, some hot coffee and some Maltesers, with the less fattening centre so as next time it might be skinny dipping!, whilst watching a quite paltry selection of fireworks from some of the surrounding houses and villages, in some cases the display seemed to consist of just one or two rockets!  Maybe, there were some Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels and the like that we couldn’t see!  It was then home through the deserted streets for a wee dram of something stronger to bring in the New Year and warm the cockles ..... of the heart of course!!!

It had been however unexpectedly warm, despite the dampness and surprisingly liberating, very in line with the motto of our adopted county – Liberté, égalité, fraternité, so whereas before I would say that if ever I went missing I’d be on and olive grove in the south of France, now it might be that you find me at the local campsite Le Colombier, it’s listed in the book as a naturist campsite, and although in the depth of the countryside, it’s not the surrounding nature that it refers to!!

So, did anyone else do anything interesting or different for the New Year!?!

   

and ...... an interesting if not prosperous year for you all!!! I’ll certainly do my bit to try and help!!!