box elder

Well, I can't quite think what I was going to blog about today.  Medlars again perhaps, and other scrumping related tales, or perhaps about getting my hair cut today in a different shape.  What, the imminent collapse of the Eurozone and its repercussions, did you say, or the latest on Iran's nuclear capacity?  Nah, what do you think I am, a serious blogger with intelligent observations to make or something?

Anyway ( to use an over-used adverbial tag), whatever it was I meant to show-and-tell you about will have to wait, because Tom said there was a full moon tonight so let's go to the beach and look at the sea under it, so we did, taking back some fleecy shirts which were too small to Leclerc on the way as a sort of attempt to justify a totally gratuitous pleasure trip (only it turned out Leclerc wasn't really on the way at all so we drove much further than we probably would have done if we'd just made two trips).  We asked Leclerc if they had any sack cloth and ashes we could change the shirts for but they were fresh out of those so we just got some bigger shirts, grey check fleece chockful of winter warmth, for Tom really, as we worked out he's been wearing the same two fleece shirts for fourteen winters now, but I've sort of got my eye on them for a borrow.  There were red ones and purple and rust too but Tom's not a great one for colourful checks.

Then we went on to Morieux, to the cove at Béliard.  We'd checked the tide tables (always to hand here, even before there was the internet), and we know the tide would have turned at 6.40 and it was just a bit after 7.00, so the sea was a swirling misty grey void below us, but it was racing back quickly and already by the time we got to the bottom of the stairs down the cliff there was enough beach for us to walk all the way along to just below the chapel at St Maurice.  The moon hadn't shown up so far but it was light enough with just the torch to steer us round the rocks and Molly on her long lead.  And when we got back to the car I'd packed a thermos of mulled wine (some old Bordeaux that wasn't up to much before the addition of orange peel, cinnamon, cardamon and coriander seeds and sugar), and we leaned on the car bonnet  and looked out across the bay and finally the moon made an appearance from behind the clouds, and we drank from some little brown Japanese teacups without handles which spend most of their lives containing leftovers in the 'fridge but which have in fact been waiting all this time to have mulled wine in them by the seashore on a moonlit night in November.

Then we came home to slow-cooked ox tail and shallots and chestnut and white bean (mogettes de Vendée) and garlic purée and I lit a fire of offcuts and pine cones even though it wasn't really cold, and we finished it off with some After-Eight mints someone brought round a bit ago.  And it was a completely perfect evening and all's right with the world, which of course it isn't but what that means is, just for now and ignoring all else, all's right with me.

So I haven't got so much as a picture to post here, I'm afraid.  But there's always tomorrow