It’s 7 o’clock. I can’t see me having a late night. We’ve had a day of ‘raquettes’ – snow shoes. Gosh it’s exhausting. You strap great oval saucers of plastic, webbing, and toothed metal to your feet and spend some minutes feeling like an ungainly baby taking its first uncertain footsteps across the endless wastes of the living room carpet.
Booted and spurred
But equilibrium returns, and without these cumbersome contraptions, how else would you walk across the undulating white snowfields of the Plateau de Sault, with views of snow-sculpted hillsides nearby, jagged snow-crusted peaks beyond? How else could you enjoy the sound of the satisfying crunch and crack as feet break through the crisp crust of the surface snow. Thank goodness for that icy layer. We found our 5’ long batons, plunged deep below the surface, wouldn’t touch the frozen ground beneath.
And with a bright blue sky, a hot sun enabling us to walk wearing T shirts and summer hats, what better way to spend a February Sunday?
That’s the road we arrived on: signs half-buried.
We set forth.
High peaks of the Pyrenees in the distance
Ever onward…
The mountains glimpsed through the trees.
Lunch spot. Time for home made sausage, cakes ‘maison’ and wine.
Not getting out enough? Bored by those long winter evenings at home? Do like the French. Go out to a loto evening.
Loto – bingo or lotto to you – is the astonishingly popular pastime of seemingly half the local population. Last weekend we could have gone on Friday to a session at the next door village of Aigues-Vives, stayed in Laroque for more of the same on Saturday, and then gone to Lavelanet on Sunday afternoon for yet another action-packed few hours.
Somehow, we’d so far managed to avoid being roped in. Until last Saturday. Well, the Loto in Laroque was to fundraise for the Ecole de Musique, and the organ teacher Vanessa’s Organ fund.
So what’s an evening at the Loto actually like?
You’ll arrive to find ranks and ranks of tables set out. You’ll need to buy your Loto cards – and spend hours choosing your lucky set. First mistake: we just took the top few. If you know what you’re doing – we didn’t – you’ll have brought a bag of counters with you to cover the called-out numbers. Settle down with your friends and family, buy some crêpes or a slice or two of home-made cake to pass the time, and wait for the action.
And at 9 o’clock, it all begins. Nearly four hours of heads-down, as the loto numbers are called out. What you’re aiming for at different points in the evening is a full line (‘quine’) or a full card (‘carton plein’). And if you achieve one of these feats, the winnings are worth having. A microwave. An i-pad. A SatNav. A flat-screen TV. A food processor. Half a pig. Several ducks (To cook. Not to take home and rear in your back yard). A weekly-shop’s worth of vouchers to spend in a local shop. A free meal in a local restaurant. A hairdo. Local businesses are incredibly generous with their donations – more so when you consider how very often they must be asked. Yet our Asso. also invested about 800 euros in the judicious purchase over many months, of high-end prizes. Only decent makes need apply. No dubious bits of equipment from some unknown factory in China. To make good money on these evenings, the organisers have to spend, spend, spend.
Naturally, Malcolm and I won nothing, so time hung a bit heavy: we had to concentrate to be sure of filling our cards correctly (‘soixante quatorze: quatre vingt dix: soixante dix-neuf’. No ‘Clickety-click, 66, Two fat ladies 88’ to help us out here). Chatting the night away not an option – this is serious stuff. The friends we were with were no more enthusiastic than we were. We’d all come to support the cause.
At about 12.45, the very last numbers were called. Nobody, not elderly inhabitants, not young parents, nor their – often tiny – children, had pushed off early. But one lucky group of women trundled home with some difficulty: they’d won four major prizes. But they wouldn’t have got lost on the way home. One of their prizes was a SatNav.
Mariannne on a mission as we set things up.
Boxes of ‘cartons’ ready for sale
.. and a price list
A few of the prizes on display.
Crêpes and cakes for sale
Random number generator, National Lottery style. Well. Sort of.
I knew it would end in tears. I should have listened to Nigel.
Malcolm’s favourite cake in all the world is coffee and walnut cake. So why not indulge him for his birthday? I made one a while back, and it was just as it should have been – rich and indulgent, with a moist crumb, but not too sickly sweet. How could I have forgotten that it was Nigel who delivered, as he invariably does, the Tips That Matter? I turned to another book, a BBC book for heaven’s sake, which is normally pretty reliable. My instincts told me it was wrong. The size of tin relative to the mixture, the heat of the oven – everything. But I decided to go for it in every particular: you don’t argue with the Beeb.
And of course I shouldn’t have done. The two layers were too thin to rise into a satisying mound of comforting coffee-infused sponge, the quantity of icing advised would have filled and decorated enough cakes to fill the WI stall at the farmer’s market. I was unimpressed. Malcolm’s being too polite to say so, but he did venture to point out that Nigel is King in this house, and his recipes should always be first port of call.
Here’s his recipe. I’ve just this minute compared it with the one I made. And would you believe, the two are all but identical? Extraordinary. Jut reading a recipe by Nigel seems to make it succeed.
It’s rare for me to follow recipes to the letter. Like Nigel Slater, I tend to adapt, substitute, tinker. So what I’ve learnt from this is that instincts are there to be heeded. If a recipe seems wrong, it probably is. For you, anyway. On that particular day, at least.
The failed coffee cake. It can’t be all that bad. We’ll eat it.
There’s a blog I read. Its author is a writer, a teacher, a mother, probably not in that order. She loves people, words, conversations. She’s enthusiastic, encouraging, and loves life. She might be exhausting to live with: she’s exhausting to follow, because she’s constantly throwing out challenges. What, she mused recently, makes you joyful? Well, Renée Schulz-Jacobson, this is what.
It’s hanging out the washing. And bringing it in at the end of the day. How sad is that?
All hung out for the day
Every day, these simple acts raise my spirits. We dry our washing out on our roof terrace. From here, we can see the nearby peaks of the Pyrenees, covered in crystal white snow for half the year.
Zooming in on the cock over the water
Across the river just beyond our house, a neighbour keeps hens, and I enjoy watching them fossicking about for grubs and cabbage stalks. Sometimes the heron swoops along the river while I’m there, and lands near the weir to look for breakfast or supper. The morning air is cold, fresh and energising. Actually, at this time of year it can be ****** freezing, in which case I’ll run down and warm myself afterwards by the wood burning stove.
It’s the evening though, when the washing is dry, sweet-smelling and ready for folding and hanging (carefully done, so there’s no need for any ironing) that I’m happiest here. I’ll listen to the birds chattering and singing. I’ll check up on those hens again. But best of all, I’ll watch the sun setting.
A subtle sunset
The sky will turn from vivid blue, through rusted orange and citrus yellow, to navy blues and bruised purples. The snow on the mountains will change from sparkling white to ice-blue and then the subtlest shade of grey. Suddenly, the sun will drop from sight behind the trees, and for a few minutes longer the palette of colours becomes moodier before giving over to shadowy moleskin grey. Then the stars appear and later, the swooping, chirruping bats. I’ll be back indoors by then, my mood invariably lifted by the simple pleasure of watching as the sun puts on its daily and ever-changing show.
We walked a figure of 8 with Villeneuve at its centre. So it was often in view.
Winter vines
More Villelongue vines.
I was just putting my new camera through its paces here. These wind turbines are in the next département.
Even here, out in the sticks, you can sometimes find an abandoned car.
Another view of Villelongue, glimpsed throughg more vines
Marching rows of vines
An unknown berried tree in Villeleongue frames the landscape
Trompe l’œil cat in Villelongue.
Sainte Barbe’s chapel
A wall near the chapel.
Malcolm of the mudslick
Failing to push the car anywhere much.
The car’s safely moved. This is the aftermath.
A winter walk near Villelongue d’Aude. It’s vineyard country, and the vines are stark and bare just now, the countryside colours muted. I’ll only tell two stories about the day, because the photos can do the rest. One is about Sainte Barbe, whose chapel we visited at the end of the day. The other is about how she failed to protect us when we were in the precincts of her chapel.
Sainte Barbe lived round about the 8th century. Her father Dioscore, a local dignitary, seems to have been a somewhat strict and unbending man. He had a tower built to imprison his daughter, to protect her from the advances of handsome young suitors. Once, he went away, and she took advantage of his absence to make a third window in her prison tower, to commemorate the Holy Trinity. Well, that’s the story.
Her father returned, and in a fury, denounced her to the local prefect. Then he tortured her and decapitated her with his own hands. But as he returned home, he got his come-uppance. He was struck by lightning and carbonised.
Barbe was canonised and is ready to protect you, if you ask her, from flames and lightning strikes. Nowadays she’s a patron saint too – of fire-fighters, miners, and bomb disposal experts. And she has this chapel near Villelongue where we made our own pilgrimage.
Well, despite the fine weather the other day, the ground there is still waterlogged. As Anny discovered when she came to try to drive off as we left the chapel. Her wheels stuck. They spun dizzily round. They embedded themselves deeper and deeper into the mud. We all gathered vine clippings to give the mud-slathered wheels better purchase. We pushed. Malcolm got caught by a pulsing stream of mud ejected by the spinning wheels. We pushed some more, and eventually, had success. We grumbled a great deal at Sainte Barbe, because she didn’t help us at all. I think she was a little unfair. If we’d been stuck there much longer, I think we’d have called out the fire brigade, and then, surely, she’d have to have helped.
The banner headline on this morning’s regional paper, La Dépêche du Midi, told us what we already knew. There’s been twice as much rain this month as is usual. Of snow, we’ve seen hardly a flake.
Driving back from Foix yesterday, we saw meadows that have become mini- lakes. Even more fields glistened with water as the water table has risen to the very surface of the soil. It’s made the month a somewhat gloomy one, even though the days have been pretty mild. The mountain peaks are snow-capped, as expected, but the white stuff barely creeps down the mountainside and with all the low cloud and zilch visibility, it’s sometimes hard to know where the Pyrenees have disappeared off to.
Our regular yomps into the countryside have been a bit curtailed. Walk after walk has been rained off, and when we do go, we choose our routes with care. If we don’t, we’ll be lugging kilos and kilos of glutinous heavy clay with us as it clings to our boots and the bottom of our trousers.
Boots – with added mud
Roll on the 2nd of February, Chandeleur (Candlemas), the day when Winter decides whether to stick around or push off. Last year, it was icily cold, and Winter stayed and made his presence felt with several weeks of constant snow, ice and bitter cold. This year, he‘s looking much more half-hearted about it all. We blame ourselves. We invested in snow-tyres and snow chains for the car. We clothed our olive tree and a few other plants in white dresses of horticultural fleece.
Our olive tree all wrapped up for winter
So Winter laughed in our face. We daren’t change the tyres or undress the tree though. We all know what will happen if we do.
There’s snow on them there ‘ills: but not a lot. As seen from our roof terrace
Did you do French at school? Probably, if you’re English. You had all that stuff to learn about not usually pronouncing the final letter, that ‘choux’ (cabbages) is pronounced ‘shoe’. Perhaps you battled to remember when to use accents, and whether they should be grave (`) or acute (´) or circumflex (ˆ)? With any luck, you learnt some everyday phrases to use on everyday occasions.
And that was fine for the school trip to Paris and later, that nice holiday in Normandy.
Where you’ll come unstuck though, is down here, and across wide swathes of the southern parts of France.
You’ll be OK if you visit an attractive town some 25 miles from here, Limoux. It’s pronounced just as you’d expect, to rhyme with ‘choux’.
Limoux, Pont Neuf
But last week, we went walking near a little village a few miles north, Hounoux. It doesn’t rhyme with ‘choux’. No, you must pronounce every letter – sort of ‘Hoonoox’.
A snowy day near Hounoux: Thanks Anny, for this photo
Driving there, we passed very near another village, Roumengoux. It doesn’t rhyme with ‘choux’ and ‘Limoux’. It doesn’t rhyme with ‘Hounoux’ either. Instead, the locals call it ‘Roumengousse’.
Here, we spend our daily round with people who don’t talk standard French, as taught in all good GCSE textbooks. They’ll go to the baker’s tomorrow (demeng) morning (matteng), to buy their bread (peng). Then later they may work in their garden (jardeng). In the evening, perhaps the Music Centre will put on a concert, with one of the local ensembles (angsambles) centre stage. Très bien! (byeng).
There’s a sort of energy and vigour in the local speech patterns I find very attractive, as local people give full weight to every syllable in a word. So rather than Laroque, it’s Laroqu-e. I’m quite relieved it’s nothing more complicated than that, and that in any case, everyone round here is quite prepared to listen to standard French, or even Franglais.
You might have noticed we’ve been busy lately. Bathroom-building. Time-consuming lunch-time cooking doesn’t fit well with such industriousness. I’ll often have a pot of soup on the stove, but the other day, a lunchtime treat from our days in England suddenly popped into my head.
Painter’s toast.
I think I read this recipe back in the 70’s, in an early example of the genre where famous people were invited to submit a recipe for a book raising funds for a charity. I’ve just remembered what it was: ‘The Shelter Cookery Book’. Was it Roger McGough who suggested crisp sandwiches?
One of Elisabeth Ayrton’s best-known booksNovel by the painter
Anyway, Michael Ayrton said he and his wife were often too busy to make lunch. Unsurprising really. He was a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, broadcaster, novelist and stage and costume designer. Fascinated by the Minotaur and the maze-builder Daedalus, he created many works inspired by them. Elisabeth, his wife, was a writer and the author of several cookery books. So I suppose beans on toast just wouldn’t do.
Here’s what they came up with, as far as I can remember.
Mix grated strong cheese – cheddar is good – with a small amount of milk and softened butter. Add a bit of whatever you fancy to liven it up. Maybe mustard. Maybe a little chilli. Pile onto bread which you’ve toasted on one side only, and grill until bubbling and browned on top.
That’s it. This close cousin of Welsh Rarebit always goes down well with us on cheerless winter days. It may suit you too. And while you’re at it, you might enjoy looking at a few more of Michael Ayrton’s works.
Take a look here at Richard Hamilton’s iconic 1956 work whose title I’ve taken for this post. You’ll see it wasn’t our home he had in mind.
We love our house. No architect ever had a hand in its creation. Rather, it’s evolved as the needs of its various owners changed.
Colombages on the top floor still awaiting attention
Oddly, the top of the house shows clear evidence of being over 200 years old, with its ‘colombages’ (lath and plaster) construction, whereas other parts lower down are clearly more recent.
One of the guest bedrooms with original woodwork intact
Walls sometimes up to sixteen inches thick break drills and the will-power of anyone who tries to get through them. No wall is perpendicular, no door standard size, and when we once tried to draw a ground plan of the house, we realised we were creating a work of fiction.
On and off, we’ve been ‘doing’ the bathroom for months.
Persuading the bathroom walls to be vaguely vertical
The tiles were solidly concreted on maybe in the mid 20th century, and nearly reduced us to despair when we tried to remove them. But now we’re doing 21st century tiling. The walls aren’t straight in any direction. There’s no such thing as a right angle. Even erecting plaster board walls within the bathroom can’t compensate for the room’s wilful disregard for symmetry. Construct a wall that is truly vertical from top to bottom, and you loose several inches of space at floor level. Even measuring up, or drawing lines that are both horizontal AND parallel with the floor are almost impossible tasks.
…but we are getting there.
In a despairing moment last week, I found myself observing that never had buying a house on a lotissement seemed more appealing.
I don’t mean it. Not for one second.
Lotissements are the French answer to the housing estate. Areas of land, usually at the edges of villages or towns are divided into plots that are sold for development. You buy your plot. You choose a house off plan, and you get it built. Or you build it yourself. Or, as is more likely, you go for a mixture of the two. You’d be a fool not to. Deposits are lower on new build homes, as are legal costs. You plan your home according to your budget, and once it’s completed, there you are with your modern, low-maintenance home. There are thousands of them, all over France, and they all look much the same. Only the roof-pitch flattens out the further south you come.
Part of a lotissement in a nearby village
Whereas we who buy old houses tend to buy problems: the roof that leaks, the wallpaper that shrieks ‘France, 1960!’ at you, the impractical kitchen (so-called American kitchens have arrived late in France), and the bathroom which, like ours, requires re-modelling.
Why on earth do we do it? Perhaps because we like being part of the town community. Perhaps because the house, for all its disadvantages, has charmed its way into our hearts. We recognise the character it’s acquired over the years, and enjoy the stories we hear from other who knew the house once-upon-a-time.
We look askance at the concrete boxes surrounded by grass and chain-link fencing. We resent it that when land is sold off for housing, we lose open countryside, farmland and much-loved landscapes in exchange for sprawling village ‘suburbs’ with no community features: no shop, school, church or bar. But in every village and town centre there are increasing numbers of empty and hard-to-sell houses, many with long years of useful service left in them. We wonder why it’s made so easy and cost-effective for those who choose to buy new, and made so difficult for those of us who decide to renovate, restore and give new life to old houses.
Anyway, I can’t sit here moaning. There’s grouting to be done, then the painting, and then…. and then…..
…and then it’s payback time in the summer, when we get to relax in our wonderfully hidden back yard.
Charity shops. Staple of the British High Street, and a really important source of revenue for many charities. Some parts of English towns seem to have few other shops these days, and on my visits back to Harrogate and Ripon, that’s where you’ll find me, stocking up on piles of second-hand books at bargain-basement prices. And not just books. I have a classic lovat green Loden coat, much admired by whoever sees it, current selling price anything up to £500, which I found in St. Michael’ Hospice Shop in Harrogate for £10.
So here in France, I miss charity shops. Emmaüs, the international charity focussing on poverty and homelessness concentrates in its large, warehouse-like shops on quantities of furniture and household goods, and a bit of everything else too, but they’re often away from the town centre. Our local one in Lavelanet is daunting in size, shabby and a little unappetising.
Secours Populaire here in Laroque, as in many towns, provides a lifeline for families in difficulty. It sells donated clothes and other goods, but it doesn’t advertise itself, and is mainly appreciated by those whom it sets out directly to help. The branch here is in an upstairs room, and is staffed for one afternoon a week only by a cheery team of volunteers who see no need to market the service they provide to a wider constituency, or to go in for careful artistic displays of the goods on offer. It’s clearly not a shop in the ordinary everyday sense.
It was a bit of a shock then to realise a few months ago that the shop that was being refurbished up near the cross roads was going to be a Red Cross Charity Shop, ‘Vestiboutique’. It opened with a ceremony reported in the local press, and has been trading on 4 afternoons a week.
It’s a great place. As in England, there’s a mixture of donated goods, and ends-of-line donated by clothing manufacturers. As in England, the shop window and the stock within have been displayed with taste and care. In the backroom, donations are mended, cleaned and pressed if necessary, before being put on sale. Everything second-hand is either one or two euros, the ends-of-line goods very little more. The day I first went, I found some cheerful trousers, an elegant high-quality pair of ankle boots probably worn only once by their first owner, and a new fleecy hat for winter walks: I parted with 7 euros.
The two members of staff were happy to talk. They’re not volunteers, though they’re not paid much. They were excited to be part of this new development. This shop is the only one in the region, and was sited in Laroque to provide a service in an area of economic difficulty. Trade was brisk they said, and already the shop was much appreciated locally. I told them about the huge variety of English charity shops, from international charities like theirs, to shops for charities seeking to combat disease or support animals, to hospice shops. They were astonished, and couldn’t really imagine the picture I was trying to paint in their minds. Though there are parts of France – Paris for instance – where you’ll find more shops like this, there are no streets like say, Commercial Street in Harrogate, where about a third of the shops now seem to be charity shops. Vestiboutique, for the time being, is unique in the Pays d’Olmes.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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