I’m so chuffed to be in England for the blackberry season. Ariègeois blackberries baked in the hot sun are sweet, characterless and make a rather dull jam. But then who goes to southern France to go blackberrying?
So yesterday I went out, meandered down a few nearby lanes, and came back with a bowl filled with large glossy, juicy, sweet and yet tart berries, a stained T shirt and fingers stuffed with tiny spines and tingling from nettle stings. I was very happy.
I set my berries to simmer down with the early apples from Jonet and Richard’s tree, and then…. only then, remembered I had neither a jelly bag nor a cache of jam jars ready waiting for the next stage. Oddly, I do have a preserving pan.
So it’s been the moment for a little ingenuity. An old clean T shirt ripped up made a jelly bag, and this morning we’ve been piling our toast with a week’s ration of marmalade, decanting apricot jam into a bowl, and scraping clean an almost-finished jar of honey. So far so good. But what happens when I need to make the next lot?
Returning from England to France, there’s generally a bag or two of various kinds of flour in the luggage. ‘What?’ I hear you grumble. ‘That woman who’s always banging on about buying local? The one who’s got no time for the English abroad who can’t exist without their mug of builder’s tea and a custard cream?’ Yes. That’s me. Guilty as charged.
Melting Moments
But the thing is, when in France, I sometimes have a happy hour or two baking English goodies – Melting Moments, Gingernuts, Marmalade Loaf Cake, that sort of thing – with or for French friends. And as I discovered the other week, French flour is simply not right for the job. Not better, not worse, just different.
I’d run out of my own supplies, so I nipped out and got a bag of good quality baking flour (because even more than in England, it’s important to buy the right type of flour for the job). And my tried and trusted favourites turned out all wrong. Ginger biscuits, instead of being satisfyingly chewy, with a solid crunch between the teeth, were sandy and brittle. Marmalade loaf cake, though light, was close-textured and almost crumbly. It was so disappointing. The answer, it seems, lies in the gluten content. The average French flour is ‘softer’, and has a lower gluten content than the average English flour.
French baguette
So is it surprising that superior French bakers in England, such as Dumouchel, where my daughter used to work on Saturdays, send over to Normandy for supplies of authentic French flour? Or that the average French stick, bought from the average English baker, in no way resembles its chewy French antecedent, the baguette.
English wholemeal loaves, fresh out of the oven
On this visit to England, I’m appreciating the softer crust and slightly moister qualities of a well-made wholemeal loaf, just as over in France, I enjoy the the crustiness of crisply baked French bread. Best to accept, I think, that both countries produce fine bakers and cake makers. But neither could do a fine job using the flour preferred by the other.
If you want an introduction to some of the many flours on offer to the keen baker, Dan Lepard’s site is a good place to start
That’s the verse from the Psalms, inscribed above the town hall in Ripon, where we’re spending the next few weeks to avoid the cold and rain of the south of France (no, really, they’ve got the heating on over there). It reminds us that every evening – EVERY evening – for well over a thousand years, the Ripon Wakeman has sounded his horn to the 4 corners of the city to announce that all is well.
I had to go and check it out yesterday evening.
George Pickles, Wakeman, on duty
Promptly at 9, a smartly dressed individual in buff coloured hunting coat, tricorn hat and white gloves took his place before the obelisk on the Market Square and sounded his horn 4 times, once at each corner of the obelisk – one long mournful note each time.
Then he grinned at us, a small crowd of 20. ”Want to hear a bit of history?’ Well, of course we did. He made us introduce ourselves, and we found we too came from, well, about 3 corners of the world: Catalonia, Italy, Australia, even South Shields and Merton. And here’s some of what he told us:
In 886, Alfred the Great, 37 year-old warrior king, was travelling his kingdom to defeat the Vikings, and to drum up support . Arriving at the small settlement of Ripon, he liked what he saw and granted a Royal Charter. He lacked the wherewithal to produce an appropriate document, and so gave a horn which is still safely locked in the town hall.
‘You need to be more vigilant, there are Vikings about’. Alfred warned. So the people appointed a wakeman to guard the settlement through hours of darkness, and he put that horn to use by sounding it at the 4 corners of the Market Cross to announce that all was well as he began his watch. The town’s now on its 4th horn.
If you want to know more, our current Wakeman, George Pickles, has written the whole tale for the BBC website. It’s a good yarn. Read it when you have a moment
This is the obelisk the Wakeman visits each evening. It was erected by the then MP, William Aislabie in the 19th century, to commemorate his ….60 years as an MP
This daft ditty came into my head as a sudden shower threatened to stop our concreting efforts in the yard – we’re nearly ready to show you the final result – watch this space. And I thought – ‘If you, dear English reader of my blog, had been here with us, whether you know that verse or not, you’d probably have come up with some doggerel of your own – a nursery rhyme perhaps’:
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain.
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle,
And never went there again.
And then I realised that if instead you’d been with me, dear French reader, I wouldn’t have been talking about ‘just and unjust fellahs’ at all: lost in translation doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m finding that more and more, I’m missing that shared cultural experience. By culture, I don’t mean the literature, the art and so on. To an extent you can mug up your Molière, get up to date with Gavalda.
One potato, two potato, three potato, four….
I mean the shared heritage we all grow up with from childhood. In France I don’t know the equivalent of that whole children’s choosing routine that involves ‘one potato, two potato, three potato, four…..’, or ‘ip dip dip, my little ship, sailing on the water, like a cup and saucer…..’
I don’t know how to criticise someone’s persistently down-beat attitude other than by telling them not to be such a Tony Hancock. Or a Grumpy Old Man.
Anyone in the UK, I guess, would immediately understand ‘I speak English. I learn it from a book’. That’s Manuel in Fawlty Towers. Astonishingly, a French woman actually said that to me last week. How could I have explained, if I’d given in to the almost uncontainable urge to burst out laughing?
Then there are all those people we feel we almost know, but who are probably unknown abroad. Anne Widdecombe and other politicians like her have gone from Scourge of The Left to National Treasure in the blink of an eye. In France, who cares? People like me rely on the likes of Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson to come up with new ideas for Thursday’s meal. Who does the job in France?
I’ve not heard programmes like ‘The News Quiz’ on French radio. It would be lost on me if I had. But then I can read ‘Private Eye’ with some enjoyment and comprehension. ‘Le Canard Enchainé’? Not a chance
Mine is the popular culture of an already bygone age. I know cream’s ‘naughty but nice’, and that ‘life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’ (it isn’t), but in the right company, I understand and am understood. Of course I’m not really complaining that I can’t go round France talking in clichés. What I do mind is that here, I don’t recognise the allusions that I do hear, and I certainly can’t make them myself. It’ll simply have to remain a closed book (or switched off TV).
Well, a month in Yorkshire really. It must have been one of the best Mays on record: blossom, flowers, lush greenness everywhere. Here are some pictures to convince anyone who doesn’t yet know, that Yorkshire really is ‘God’s own county’.
About 15 years ago, we moved from Leeds (pop. 716, 000)……. to Harrogate ( pop.72,000). How charming and manageable in size it seemed!Now we’ve moved to Ripon (pop. 16,000). Its cathedral gives it city status, though it’s so much smaller than Harrogate.And of course, we also live in Laroque d’Olmes (pop. 2, 600)Where next? A farmstead on a remote hillside?
After that outburst last week, we had a think. And then we thought some more. And some more. And we realised that we really need a base here. For us, and for our daughter. Home-hunting was as depressing as it always is. Until we had an idea.
Our new flat's near here
Would Ripon, a mere 10 miles from Harrogate, but too far for regular commuters to Leeds, Bradford and York provide a more affordable answer? It did, in the very first flat we looked at to rent. It’s small, but the complex has been thoughtfully developed on the site of the old College of Ripon and York St. John. Its trees and parkland have been preserved. By car, it’s out of town. On foot, it’s a ginnel or two away from the town centre.
And we love Ripon. It’s so near to Harrogate that we can easily maintain our relationships there, but it has a different centre of gravity, with the open spaces of North Yorkshire so near to explore, and Fountains Abbey as a near neighbour.
Market Square
For over a 1000 years, it’s been a market town. Its Thursday market is still busy and lively and there are plenty of independent shops in the ancient streets clustered round the market square. It has a Cathedral, and a lively cultural life. I’ve just discovered it’s twinned with Foix, departmental capital of the Ariège. I think we’re going to be happy here as we divide our time between France and England.
I’m not a big fan of Prince Philip. But he was right on the money when he declared to Marc Levy, author of ‘«Elizabeth II, la dernière reine» that ‘You French are frankly funny. You adore the monarchies of the rest of us, but got rid of your own.’
William-and-Kate-mania can’t be escaped by simply fleeing across the channel this week
Last week for example I noticed a French magazine headline that suggested some 14 million French will be glued to their sets to watch That Wedding. The Prince and his bride-to-be have already had a big chunk of TV air time, and just look at this week’s schedules:
M6 kicks off on Thursday evening with a three and a half hour marathon, but Friday the 29th is the day those 14 million French take the phone of the hook, kick off their shoes and hole up on the sofa. Here’s their schedule:
TFI: 9.30 – 14.45
France 2: 9.15 – 13.45
M6: 9.00 – 17.35 ( that’s 5 programmes all about the couple, one after the other)
W9: 20.40 – 1.50.
Actually, I would have been quite interested to watch for a bit, to see how French and British coverages compare, but we’ve chosen that day to arrive in England, confident that the usually busy roads will be traffic-free. We’ll be glad too to escape the constant questions. Being British does not make us Royal Experts, but our neighbours are remarkably slow to catch on.
The phone rang. ‘Hi! This is Holly speaking. Your furniture, all the stuff we were going to deliver to you from England on Thursday….could the lads come now, they’re ahead of schedule?’ A quick summit meeting, and we decided that no, they really couldn’t. We simply weren’t organized enough yet. But we’d settle for Wednesday morning.
I put the phone down, and something at the back of my fuddled brain told me I really ought to tell them at the Mairie (Town Hall) that we were having a removal van the next day. So I did. Thank goodness. Not telling them would have been little short of criminal, it turned out.
For more than half an hour, they filled in documents for publication outside the Mairie itself and our house, and sent copies to the Fire Brigade, the Police and Technical Services, among others, for their information. The mayor came out of a meeting to sign the documents. Staff told me we needed to take responsibility for placing the barricades they would arrange to have delivered, so that nobody could park in our part of the street between 8.00a.m. and 2.00 p.m. We would also need to talk to all relevant neighbours and ask them not to park in the street between those hours.
I came home (we live 2 doors away from the Town Hall) and as I fished around for my door keys, I saw a council delivery lorry already putting 5 barriers at the end of the road for us to erect later. Malcolm commented that this was a tale worthy of that unmissable 1970’s children’s programme ‘Trumpton’, with its vignettes of a way of life none of us could quite believe had ever existed.
This road train's on its last trip ever. Back in the UK, it's going for scrap
It turned out the fuss was worthwhile. When our removal van came, it was a ‘road train’, 2 waggons long, and mopped up every bit of space in our little parking area. It had left the UK nine days earlier, and spent all that time roving all over France: Alps, the coast – anywhere the English settle over here – delivering from the UK to some, and collecting for transporting to the UK for others. Paul and James, in the manner of removal men everywhere, tossed sofas, chests of drawers, huge boxes of books over their shoulders and trudged up and down our narrow stars for two hours till the wagon was almost empty. Almost, but not quite. Next stop Perpignan, before they head back at last, to be home just in time for a weekend in England.
Now all we've got to do is sort out, move round, organise......
Ooh, and by the way. They told us that removal vans sent to Europe are almost always unmarked, as ours was, because they can attract the interest of the Mafia in Italy, and even in parts of France. Paul had a close encounter himself not so long ago, and had to shift himself quick, never mind that his tachograph said he’d done his hours that day. Luckily for them, we had no such excitement here. Just a pile of paperwork for the municipal records.
Returning to France on Wednesday was a bit of a shock to the system. Six weeks speaking English every time we opened our mouths, and then…..French again. It was there somewhere, deep inside the recesses of our skulls. But it was hidden right away at the back, covered in fluff, layers of dust and paint splashes, and scarcely fit for purpose.
Opening our mouths to make simple comments to the receptionist at our overnight hotel stop in Blois that first night back seemed strange. Standard phrases escaped our lips, sounding odd, like some once familiar lesson learned at school, since long-forgotten.
Two days on, things are returning to normal: the language machine has been oiled and serviced, and is creaking back to business as usual, as we resume our daily round.
But in those 6 weeks in England, we scarcely engaged our brains at all. We painted the house ready to be put in the hands of a letting agent. We packed. We discarded years of family life. We sorted out bags and bags of stuff for the local charity shop: we called there so often that we fully expected them to open a new branch named after us, and were convinced that the one day we didn’t go, disgorging huge plastic bags of donations from the car, they’d put out a Missing Persons enquiry. Things that neither family members nor the charity shop wanted got advertised on Freecycle, and we had fun helping those who responded to cram large bookcases or cumbersome chairs into rather small cars. ‘Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them. Our goal is to keep usable items out of landfills’.
Furniture and books – 9 cubic metres – were collected by a removal firm who’ll deliver it all to us here in about 10 days, after they’ve collected and delivered other consignments all over England and France.
What would we have done without all the friends who fed and entertained us in the evenings after our 10 hour-long-days labouring in the house? They made it possible for us to pack up virtually every cooking pot and plate days before the end of our stay.
And what would we have done without our friends in LETS? Some of you have asked what LETS (SEL in France) is:
LETS – Local Exchange Trading Systems or Schemes – are local community-based mutual aid networks in which people exchange all kinds of goods and services with one another, without the need for money.
Nidderdale LETS is the group in the Harrogate area. With about 50 members, many of us have worked and socialised together over the years, helping each other revitalise overgrown gardens or have a big spring clean. People offer massages, Alexander technique, translation services, animal care, teaching and practical skills: all sorts of things. This time, LETS members turned out in force to help us paint and clean the house from top to bottom. We couldn’t have done without them, and working together was fun and gave us all a feeling of real achievement as we shared lunch and conversation after a hard morning’s work.
After all that, though, our bodies were exhausted, and our brains non-existent. No wonder speaking French again seemed a bit of a challenge.
So yesterday I went out, meandered down a few nearby lanes, and came back with a bowl filled with large glossy, juicy, sweet and yet tart berries, a stained T shirt and fingers stuffed with tiny spines and tingling from nettle stings. I was very happy.
So it’s been the moment for a little ingenuity. An old clean T shirt ripped up made a jelly bag, and this morning we’ve been piling our toast with a week’s ration of marmalade, decanting apricot jam into a bowl, and scraping clean an almost-finished jar of honey. So far so good. But what happens when I need to make the next lot?
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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