A rather marvellous week for snail-mail, and reflections on thrift and ethical spending.

I love getting things through the post, as long as they're pleasant things of course, not bills or notifications of speeding points, though I did get one the other week telling me my licence was clear again after three years of keeping my nose clean, and that was quite nice (in fact the four points which had been squatting toadlike on it since 2011 were there for going through a red light, a particularly nasty hasty one with a sneaky automatic camera by the hospital in St Brieuc, where one often has a stark choice between stepping uncomfortable hard either on the brakes or the accelerator.  Since then I have been known to stop at it on green when I've observed it's been that way for unsettlingly long rather than take the chance of trying to make it).  But these days, there is often something ordered and looked forward to arriving in the factrice's little yellow van, or better still something free and quite unexpected.

It seems to me that with written communications having become, for all practical and necessary purposes, the preserve of the internet, things that come by actual, concrete, travelling mail, not least handwritten letters and cards, have taken on a new value, are all the more treasured. On the occasions when I send or receive a letter or parcel from family or friends, it's quite likely to contain pictures, cuttings, solid items in addition to its main purpose.  Even when it's part of a commercial transaction people sometimes add unexpected extras; with my rainbow wool for my Hitchhiker scarf, which was wrapped in richly coloured tissue, there were a tiny packet of love heart sweets and a little badge with her logo on it, though it must be said that seller really is something special.  

However the parcel that arrived from my lovely sister this week contained an item above and beyond the common run of exchanged gifts, trinkets and keepsakes. It shouldn't have been a complete surprise, but in fact it was, because I'd more or less forgotten about the thing it was made from, and even if I hadn't, I couldn't have imagined its being transformed into anything so beautiful.

About thirty years ago, when I was living in London, I had from a flea market or somewhere, I forget where, a raggedly made waistcoat from this fabric.  I spotted it as something rare and precious, and thought perhaps it might even have been Fortuny, whose silks and velvets I'd seen in an exhibition at the excellent Brighton museum art nouveau and deco galleries a few years before. I've no idea if it is, probably not as it's less formal than his designs, but it's a hand-painted silk velvet,old but not perished, the paint has nothing plasticcy or modern about it but is heavy and metallic, all of it shimmers in a very rich, non-synthetic way. Even my sister though, who knows her decorative arts and textiles, can't be sure of its age or provenance. It had been very roughly cut down into a sleeveless open vest shape, and I did wear it sometimes, then later I took it apart but couldn't really work out what to do with the awkwardly shaped pieces; it stayed in storage as a crumpled fragment till I thought to pass it on to my sister in case she could make anything of it.

She hung on to it for a while and I largely forgot about it, and she had different ideas about what to do with it before deciding on the bag (which got round the uneven shapes of the pieces) and though I could never really imagine using it for carrying anything around in, I'm really happy she used it for a proper, supple, living textile sort of purpose, rather than making it into something stiff or stretched or framed.

The fastening is a very small brass bell, and one of those embroidered button loops we all learned to sew as kids. She's backed and lined it with fabric from Toiles de Mayenne.

It's hanging on the end of the curtain pole above the telly, to which it provides a very satisfactory alternative for looking at. Tom is a bit iffy about things dangling decoratively and informally and gathering dust so it may not be able to stay there forever, but I'd like it to, it's the perfect space for it.

Then a couple of days later I had the most delightful letter from my Niece-who-makes-me-laugh-more-than-anyone.  The pleasure of this began with the envelope: 

She was writing to thank me for a scarf I'd sent her via her parents, and had, I think, mislaid my e-mail address, but also said she had made a positive decision to use the old-fashioned route having fallen rather out of love with electronic communication. Each page was on the back of a different picture:

a postcard of ancient carved stones from Arbroath, a photo she'd taken of sand ripples, a card she'd painted on watercolour paper, and a curious tiger face made from a lot of smaller tigers.

And of course in the appropriate space of the postcard she'd drawn a stamp, which I love because it's just one of those things that has to be done, and I think she has captured something of HM's essential demeanor rather well.  

The other things were ordered and paid for, but pleasing even so.  A pair of sheepskin insoles, direct from China through e-bay. When 99% of everything comes from China and western retailers are doing everything they can to hide the fact from our uneasy consciences, it gives me a degree of perverse satisfaction to get parcels marked up with scruffy labels and Chinese characters at a fraction of the price. They really are very cosy.

The last thing was a small package containing three rubber teapot spout extenders.  We love our old yellow teapot, but a while ago the tip of the spout broke off.  It was carefully stuck back on again with superglue, which we never expected to work, but surprisingly, despite the constant flow of hot acidic liquid over it, it held well, and we repeated the operation several times.  Finally, though, it almost crumbled off, looking rather like a decayed tooth, and we conceded no further repair as possible.  We used it broken for a week or two, but it dribbled everywhere, and we knew we must make do something.  Then Tom remembered those rubber teapot spouts. I instigated an on-line search and found a three-for-two offer, also on e-bay, from one of those people who seem to sell small quantities of small items from home. Voila:

Yes, I know, it's somewhat obscene.  This review rather says it all. But it is very effective, has put off the sad moment of saying goodbye to the yellow teapot, and it still makes us laugh.

Afterthought:

Now I know I probably deserve castigation for choosing to buy Chinese products, and I've now learned I could have bought ethically produced British sheepskin insoles for not very much more, so I am rather sorry about that. Others would gripe about the matter of buying on-line at all, thereby causing real shops to go to the wall.  I do often choose to shop in proper shops even though I'm paying more for the sake of supporting them, but in the case of these two items, I don't think I could have found them anywhere locally anyway. Living as and where we do, so every trip to the shops involves outlay of time and petrol, sending for things often seems the better choice.  And I do think to some extent it's down to the retailers to find more constructive ways to work within the on-line world.  For example, I found according to Phildar's official website I could order wool from them and have it delivered to my local Phildar shop and collect it from there, saving somewhat on postage.  Good idea I thought, and went to the shop (whose range of stock was pretty dismal) to check. The woman manager/proprietor/franchisee could barely bring herself to answer me civilly.  No we don't do that, no Phildar shop does, if everyone bought from the internet there would be no shops, no we don't receive any commission at all from orders placed that way, the website is nothing to do with the shops.  I e-mailed Phildar who replied in a terse and uninformative way that only some Phildar shops did it, even though the one I went to in Lamballe was listed... I gave up and resolved to buy nothing more from Phildar anyway.  Plenty of better places to get wool, including enterprising and original small business people on line like Old Maiden Aunt where I got the hitchhiker wool.

In the end one has to balance personal thrift, which often involves not buying anything new or buying only the means to repair and renovate old things like teapots and winter boots, and spending money virtuously or otherwise.  Thrift isn't good in economic terms anyway, in a system that depends on continual waste and over-consumption.

But I do very much like these things that came in the post this week.

Peaches

OK, it's another food post, but just a quick one.  Essentially a large tin of peaches, with the stones in to boot.  But what a difference a jar makes, so that they become golden, luminous globes of voluptuous loveliness.  I  bought them for their beauty as they were reduced after Christmas; I'm not even sure I like tinned peaches all that much, though when we were kids we thought them a sublime treat, so maybe they'll bring about a Proustian moment.  They don't have to be eaten till 2016 anyway.  

Half a dozen somethings for the weekend

Accident spot

On the barrier where the road bends round
the edge of the hill, over the long sloping field,
someone has changed the artificial flowers.
Their polyester red and white and yellow
is loud once more, shouting, vulgar
with the intrusive bad taste of a fresh grief,
among the tired, turning season's speckled
weeds and seeds: the rusted spikes of dock,
hawksbit and knapweed, ragwort,  mallow,
ladies' bedstraw, Queen Anne's lace,
and here and there still the pale scarlet
bloodsplash of a poppy.

~~~

Anyone going into Tartapain bakery in Yffiniac, and possibly other bakers here, with a large baby or small toddler will be offered 'a piece of bread for the baby?'.  This comes from a prepared stock of handy-sized chunks of baguette behind the counter.  Tom says that the London bakers of his childhood also used to give away ' a bit of bread and buppy for the baby.'  Here though, the bread is unbuttered, and probably chewier than that was.  Presumably a child weaned and teethed on baguettes would never have to be cajoled or fibbed to about curling hair to be persuaded to eat its crusts.  Indeed, with much French bread, refusal to eat the crust could mean going rather hungry...

~~~

I allow myself momentarily to succumb to the lure of the Vitrine Magique catalogue.  Though almost tempted by the 36 tiny stick-on wooden ladybirds, the hand-weeding tool with the specially angled metal blade (both at a euro), and a rather sleek little olive stoner (2 euros, and I have one on the garlic crusher anyway), I do not give in, emerge triumphant and throw the catalogue in the recyclables bin.

~~~

A most excellent Archers omnibus.  I've not listened to 'The Archers' much of late, but it's a well-known truism that this doesn't matter a scrap, since like riding a bike, once one has ever learned to listen to it, it is possible to pick it up again after an interval of weeks, months, years or even decades with very little difficulty.  From Jim's sublime lachrymae rerum chat with  Kathy ( "it can be hard to be not quite in the inner circle of mourners...") which had me shedding tears into the breakfast things, to the deliciously ridiculous Aldridge/Carter clash of the snobberies - Jennifer's posh landed airs and graces against Susan's rural working class aspirations - over their children's wedding party, happily resolved in shared excitement at the prospect of a multi-coloured cupcake tower wedding cake, which had me giggling into my Sunday midday sherry, altogether a hugely satisfying listen.

Who knows this knows.

~~~

Rock, shadow, water, root.  From the old railtrack, found on the Cheapcam.

~~~

And finally a bit of Rilke:

Praise the world to the Angel, not what's unsayable.

You can't impress him with lofty emotions; in the cosmos

where he feels more feelingly, you're a mere novice.  Therefore show him

some simple thing, formed by generation after generation

until it's truly our own, living in our hands and in our eyes.

Tell him things.  He'll stand more amazed; as you stood

beside the ropemaker in Rome or the potter by the Nile.

Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours,

how even lamenting grief decides finally on form,

serves as a thing or dies into a thing...

(9th Duino Elegy, trans. Snow)

He might well be right. 

Thursday 22 July

~  By the old railtrack, where we sometimes walk, is a yard, once perhaps a siding for the railway, now a place of light industry.  There is a  a scruffy concrete and corrugated workshop full of tools and machinery, which I rather like, at one end, and a little garden at the other, bright and flowery and well-tended, terraced up the slope.  Two elderly women, both in print skirts, striped and floral, t-shirts and cardigans in greys and pinks, stand talking animatedly, beyond my hearing over a courgette plant, two large fruits of which one is carrying under her arm.  They gesticulate and wag fingers, then suddenly bob towards each other and kiss on both cheeks symmetrically, whether in belated greeting or premature goodbye is not clear, as they go on talking afterwards  without apparently any intention of parting.

~  I park right up by the church, which is shady and quiet, though a heavy haul back up afterwards with a full basket.     The smells of the market drift up the hill, paella and cheese and roasting chicken and charcuterie and frying pancakes.  I buy Cornish pasties (yes really, I know I know, but they're a charming anglo-French couple who sell them and the pasties really are good ones, please don't tell the I'm-more-French-than-the-French-and-what-did-you-want-to-come-to France-for-anyway brigade...) for lunch for us today,  olives and red onions and feta cheese and fresh figs for friends for dinner tomorrow, and, from a beguilingly louche and gaudily cheap stall I've not seen here before, gold nail varnish for my toenails for who knows when.

~  

Mineral, filtered, clear.  

Light coming into the kitchen.  Nothing arranged, or I might not have chosen a plastic water bottle - fizzy, another moral compromise; I don't buy the still stuff but use the filter jug behind.  I liked its refractions anyway.

Friday 2 July

~ At the Carrefour supermarket, a new, smart weigh-it-yourself system for the fruit and veg.  I look for the code to put in, but there isn't one; instead, the machine itself, unbidden, suggests options.  My apricots might be apricots, or they might be carrots or nectarines.  How does it guess?  I try a pale purple striped aubergine, it suggests aubergine or red pepper.  Intrigued, I conjecture that it is scanning the colour, but when I try a yellow courgette, it doesn't offer, as I imagine it might, bananas in addition to the correct option, but only yellow peppers.  I lurk around and watch other people's offerings, potatoes, it seems might be themselves or they might be pears.  With oranges, all citrus fruit are suggested, including limes and lemons.  I feel I need to observe this further to establish more idea about how on earth it is functioning, before I venture to ask anyone.  I hope this very rudimentary form of artificial intelligence has not put anyone out of work, but the usual faces seem to be occupied elsewhere, stacking shelves, and it really is very intriguing.

~  Today is my father's birthday.  He would have been 103 years old, he died in 1988.  He was a Somerset Masters, and there is a cider apple which bears his name, the Harry Masters red, though I think it is no relation.  This is him with me as a baby (I've posted this before.)

Here are his two eldest boys

~  my two eldest brothers, along with my dog, enjoying a walk in the woods at Pontmain.

Something tasty for the weekend - Saturday market, Chartres.

Staying as we were in chambres d'hôte (on which more later) we were not able to avail ourselves of much of the produce available on the wonderful Saturday morning market in Chartres. So, I had to enjoy most of it by only visually.

However, if we had been, a fine dinner could have been made.

First though, one would had to make sure you had chairs.

This man specialised in reseating them, in maize straw, or cane. (I am so not a street photographer. My attempts lack something, and the most potentially interesting, a shot of a shrewd-looking nun buying groceries from a shrewd-looking market trader, turned out with both their faces being obscured by the price labels of the goods...)

Then you would need to get dressed up.

These girls were helping to promote Macedonia week in Chartres. An even smaller girl gave me a booklet about Macedonia with some lovely pictures.

Then what would you like for a starter? Artichokes?

The ones on sale here were enormous, far bigger than any I have seen in Brittany, said to be the artichoke heartland of the world. I was assured by Breton friends that this was probably because all the biggest and best Breton artichokes are sent towards Paris, and some may have found their way here.

Or perhaps crudités, some radishes,


or a tomato salad?


Then perhaps the fish course,

Which would go nicely with some spinach.

Whatever you have as a main course, make sure to cook it with plenty of garlic,

some little earthy red onions (Roscoff pinks were also available...)

and some spring carrots, or celeriac, or Swiss chard,

and some more garlic.

And then there's the cheese.

If you're feeling a little liverish after that, what about some pruneaux d'Agen?

When I consider how the English brutalised prunes in school dinners and similar, I almost think we deserve the contempt in which our culinary reputation is held in the rest of Europe, which normally I rail against with persons of any nationality who come my way. Real prunes are the most unbelievably luscious, sumptuous things, almost more like a sweetmeat than a fruit. I did buy some of these.

Or, if none of that grabs you, you could go alpine, and have a fondue.

But don't forget to rub the pot with plenty of garlic.

Blame it on Nablopomo...

Now I know there are people who come here for lofty meditations and skiey verse, or I like to think there might be, but owing to the absurd exigencies of Nablopomo, and submitting to an odd and largely pointless bet that you can't post every day, I find I am descending from the sublime to the ridiculous and blogging for a whole weekend on the subjects of Lidl supermarkets and stock cubes. The scary thing is I seem to be getting quite a bit of response...

The above are, as is somewhat bleeding obvious, Bovril cubes, the top layer of a year's supply thereof. I do not actually use these much for cooking, as they have all the subtlety of a charge from the hitherto placid Bull no 4019. However, a cube a day every day, wherever we may be, is required for Tom's elevenses. I think perhaps in a past life he may have been some crusty old colonial type who travelled the oceans Port Out Starboard Home, sipping at beef tea mid-morning and playing deck quoits, and he still carries the vestiges of this existence in a taste for Bovril, and occasional crustiness, no sign of an urge to play deck quoits. Maybe I'll win a Nablopomo prize for blogging every day which will be a free session of Past Life Regression Therapy which I could offer to him to get to the bottom of it.

We used to ask people coming and going to bring us the odd packet of Bovril, and kept going quite well like that, but then one dark night it happened, and we were nearly out of it with ne'ry a cross channel tripper in sight, so I did something I've never resorted to before and looked up a business that fulfilled the gastronomic longings of pining British expatriates, and ordered a large quantity.

While on stock cubes, Plutarch very graciously ate a helping of humble pie in the comments to the last post and admitted that he had given in to their siren call since questioning my use of them in the making of cock-a-leekie soup. The link to that post, as Zephyr asked for it, is here.


I sometimes wonder if I oughtn't to have a tag on this blog for Lidl, I seem to mention it so often, but that would just seem a step too sad. But the eminent Europhile and globe trotter Barrett Bonden has remarked on my lack of inhibition in admitting that I shop there.

So I feel bound now, (and because I can't be bothered to post about anything serious), to launch into an ode to the joy of this pan-European phenomenon. Now I know their standard issue architecture, an unlovely combo of big-shed and Fisher-Price, which is presumably manufactured and sent out on lorries all over this continent and its fringes from the outskirts of somewhere like Wuppertal (apologies to any Wuppertalian readers...), is something of an eyesore in and around our towns, and I know that they keep everything cheap by employing a maximum of two staff per store, so that going through the checkout there is like some bad dream or ghastly game show where you're having to dive to catch the products as they are fired through at great speed before they hit the floor, and I know that 'after-sales service' is not a concept that occurrs in their mission statement, but withal, I am very fond of Lidl.

I never actually set foot in one when I lived in the UK, and not for a long time after I came here, but once I had, I saw the point. I don't know how much there stuff varies from country to country - another thing that amuses me about them is they never seem quite sure what language they should put on the packaging.

Here are a few things you can find there:

Free range French Label Rouge chickens, a good two or three euros cheaper than anywhere else. (Free range stuff has always been easy to find here, forget animal welfare, think taste, this is France...)

Reasonable Basmati and Thai Jasmine rice.

Consistently good aubergines, and mushrooms.

Lubeck marzipan, chocolate covered.

Japanese rice crackers.

Fruit and nut chocolate quite as good as Cadbury's. (I was going to scan that too, as well as the stock cubes, but thought I'd better stop somewhere. I regretted not having any of their jamjar lids about, which are printed all over with big bold colourful designs of the fruit. Scanner art nouvelle vague, Marja-Leena eat your heart out!)

And occasionally:

Guest ranges of 'exotics', such as bagels, English mustard, unsalted cashews and pecans, Spanish big white beans in jars, oyster sauce...

Fleecy sweaters, thick socks, big packs of delicious coloured paper and card complete with cutting board and scalpel with spare blade, the wool for my pompom shawl.

The wine range may not quite be what you'd serve if you had Plutarch coming for lunch, though the Alsace Gewurztraminer isn't bad, but they do a white port which is an acceptable alternative to sherry (unobtainable) of a Sunday lunchtime, a whisky cream liqueur that is pretty well indistinguishable from Bailey's and half the price, and vodka and gin which are very useful for the making of sloe gin, schnapps and other infusions.

~~~

Now I'm hoping to receive a Lidl gift voucher for this piece of fawning publicity. I heard about someone the other day who got a thank you e-mail from Appletise for mentioning them in a blog post, so it's not impossible...

~~~

Apologies for not getting around much today. I did put my nose outside the door, but also was rather involved selecting photos for what seems a very interesting offer from Vistaprint for make-your-own calendars. I haven't checked exactly what the terms are, and I don't yet know what the software's like, but it seems worth a look.

This seems to have turned into a consumer blog...

Relief # 2

Hooray hooray! My internet connection is back!

The thunder roared, the lightning flashed and I thought it must have burned out something in the box. So we drove all the way to Gigaherz where the Platonic ideal of a Nice Helpful Young Man Doubtless Called Erwann tested it and said, no, must be the server. So rather than waste the trip, petrol prices etc, we bought mountains of rockwool, plastic plumbing pipes and timber and bumped our way home again, where, when all was plugged back in again, everything returned. I can talk to you all again! Phew!

More joy in heaven...

Hidden treasure

Having confessed to my weakness for Lidl, I might as well come clean altogether. What's good about living in France? The wine, OK; the cheese, mm, though we miss harder cheeses ( Cantal and the other Auvergne cheeses are a good replacement); the cuisine, well, not as good as they think it is; the healthcare, so far so good, though for how long?; the people, probably no better or worse than anywhere, generally found to be welcoming, civic-minded, civilised, we've been lucky, can be chauvinistic (in the true sense, he was a soldier of Napoleon...), especially about the cuisine, reactionary, horror stories of corruption and closing of ranks have been heard...

But no. A really great thing about living in France is...

...you won't find that in Peter Mayle. Noz is a discount, end-of-line type store found in big ugly sheds on the edge of most towns of any size throughout la belle France. It is the place where one can indulge in delightful, serendipitous retail therapy and barely feel it. You have to have the right mentality, of course. Tom who, like many though not all men, prefers to go to a shop for something in particular, find it, buy it and come away again, can't be doing with it, though he enjoys what I bring back. The first time you walk in, you look about and think ' How awful! What am I doing here?'. On subsequent visits you think, hmm, not much here today, I won't be here long, but then the spell of Noz begins to work, and you start looking properly, and Finding Things. I don't think I have ever left empty-handed.

There is little logic to how things are displayed, indeed, display is really not an appropriate usage here. You are quite likely to find bits of tawdry tarty underwear in amongst the pickled gerkins, Swiss chocolate amongst the loo brushes, plastic plants in with the hosiery...
And you don't need to be to dainty and fastidious about your shopping environment, the floor is concrete, the bins chipboard and plastic, and the light is mostly provided by a few suspended neon tubes and some bits of clear corrugated plastic set into the roof.

Here is today's haul,

Clockwise from top left:

-Three clip frames of rather odd proportions. Not sure what I'll do with these but I often crop my pictures into odd proportions so they may have a destiny.

-One chunky blue candle. Tom can entertain himself for hours poking burning candles with dead matches and only burns himself occasionally, so this should keep him out of my hair for a bit.

-One 625 gr jar of redcurrant jelly, no kitchen cupboard should be without.

-One small aluminium saucepan, non-stick with a design of strawberries not only on its sides but in the little circle in the centre of its bottom. I simply couldn't resist that. There were ones with oranges and lemons and flowers too, but the strawberries won easily.

-Pack of three (label, not that I give a stuff about labels unless I get them really cheap from Noz)cotton socks for Tom - bless them.

-Rhubarb and yoghurt filled German chocolates. This is only the packet as we scoffed the lot as soon as I came home. They were delicious and really did taste of rhubarb and yoghurt.

-Packet of assorted sunflower seeds, the multi-headed multicoloured ones for cutting.

-Pack of ten sheets photo paper. Not quite as cheap as Carrefour's everyday photo paper I use for making cards etc, but this might be better quality. Worth experimenting.

-2008 calendar with pictures of angels from Old Masters. I bought it for the pictures, we've already got several calendars for this year: a dreadful one someone gave us of pictures of the Peloponnese from the air, weirdly Photoshopped and mostly in Greek, so we'd probably end up inadvertantly celebrating Easter a month late; another I bought last year with mediocre photos of Brittany with a view to copying the date pages and making my own (didn't get round to), both of which are rather too small, and finally a Harry Potter one which I capitulated and let Tom have, in fact it's rather well designed, though I'm not looking forward to June when there's a scary picture of Voldemort sticking his tongue out. I actually prefer calendars with paintings on, as we put them in the loo and consequently spend quite a lot of time looking at them. If they're photos and not much good I'm iritated by them, if they are good I'm disheartened and jealous. Story of my life.

-Two gel pens and two fineliners.

-Two pairs quite girly socks with slightly frilly tops for me.

The total came to 20. 70 euros ( I've got a euro sign here somewhere but don't know how to work it...). That's a bit more in pounds than it used to be, but still not very much, no idea how much in dollars. I daresay quite abit of it came from China and I should rightly feel guilty about it, but not all of it, and most of it's fairly useful and not totally wanton and wasteful consumption...

My cup runneth over. Quality of life comes in many guises.