From Pyrenees to Pennines

World Book Day…. UK version

Today’s World Book Day. I couldn’t understand why there seemed to be no sight of it here in France. It turns out we Brits are out of step. Celebrations in the UK are over a month ahead of everyone else’s. April 23^rd may be World Book day for everyone else, but it’s also Saint George’s day, and he’s England’s patron saint. Apparently he does dragons, not books.

It was the Spanish who first decided to celebrate books and reading on April 23rd, as a way of honouring Miguel de Cervantes, who died on that day. UNESCO made the connection that Shakespeare, as well as other writers, died or were born on the same day as Cervantes, and a world-wide festival was born.

Children have the most fun on World Book Day, whenever it’s held. Here are my grandchildren off to school this morning. They had to turn up as a character in a book….. so please meet Harry Potter, and Mr. Willy Wonka.

Books are often centre-stage in school all day and there are free books to be had for most lucky children

So many of my best memories of the children’s childhood centre round the books they enjoyed. That first winter of my daughter Elinor’s life was one of those once-in-a decade toughies. We were marooned in our house up an icy and snow-covered steep slope on one of Sheffield’s seven hills (‘just like Rome’). It was unthinkable to set foot outside with an unwieldy pram and a tottering toddler. But unable to do the daily round, or see friends, my then two year old son Thomas, my new baby and I simply cuddled up on the sofa. I read with him, and breast fed my daughter for hours at a time. I’d never have chosen such a harsh winter with all its limitations, but it remains one of the golden periods of my life.

Then, as now, the books we favoured had the rhythms and cadences, the witty and lively illustrations of authors like Quentin Blake.

Blake’s Mr Magnolia remained a family friend from the day his story was published in 1980 through the pre-school years of all three of my children. Any of us will recite his story to you at the least provocation.

Meet Mr. Magnolia. See? He has only one boot.

‘Mr. Magnolia has only one boot.

He has an old trumpet that goes rooty-toot

And two lovely sisters who play on the flute,

But Mr. Magnolia has only one boot.

In his pond live a frog and a toad and a newt……’

Young children now are privileged to have world-class illustrators and fine writers available to them for the price of a paperback, or the use of a library ticket. I’ve just had a high old time remembering old favourites loved by the whole family– Shirley Hughes’ Alfie, Rosemary Wells’ Noisy Norah, Nita Sowter’s Maisie Middleton, Roald Dahl’s heroes (Charlie of Chocolate factory fame) and anti-heroes (The Enormous Crocodile and of course the Twits). Make friends with any of these characters by the time you’re three years old, and with any luck, you’re hooked on reading for life. That’s what World Book Day’s for.

Alfie, his friend Bernard and a good book

Snow Shoes II, The Sequel

We walkers of Laroque got our snowshoes out again today (well, in my case, I borrowed some), and went for a much more local sortie, just above Montferrier and en route for the local skiers’ playground, Mont d’Olmes.

How different from our last walk. Instead of wide open snowfields with distant views, we had woodland walking and bright sunlight casting blue shadows across our path.

Instead of gentle slopes rising and falling before us, we had an upward slog; unremitting, tough. Micheline and I, discouraged and tired, failed to reach the top, and missed the prize: a frozen lake with snow-clad views in every direction. Most of the party stayed with us and kept us company. Though our views were less exciting than those of the intrepid climbers, our picnic was the better one. We low-achievers had wine, home-made cakes and hot coffee with us to supplement our bread and cheese.

And the journey down was completed in record time. We arrived home as our gardens were gently baking in the last of the hot afternoon sun. More of the same is forecast for several days: there won’t be much snow left this time next week.

Sunlight through the trees

Walking through the forest

We liked pretending large doggy prints were marauding bears

The walk continues

Wide open spaces once more

Glistening snow.

Whose prints are these?

White snow, blue sky.

Tree shadow

More tracks.

Buried info. board. The snow’s really deep.

We should be looking up at this signpost, not down.

Lunch spot.

A bit of fun at journey’s end. A snow castle. Montségur. We didn’t make it though.

Data unprotected

Arrive home to find that you’ve missed a call on the phone from an unfamiliar number? No problem. Just turn to the Pages Blanches (phone book) on the net and tap the number into the Annuaire inversé. Your caller’s details will be revealed. Try the same thing in the UK, and you’re up against data protection legislation. Although that always seems odd to me. If you’d been in to take the call, you’d have known who it was ringing you. Which is clearly the view they take in France.

Because Data Protection is clearly not big news here.

Recently, Malcolm and I went for blood tests. A few days later I popped into our local surgery for a repeat prescription, and our doctor spotted me in the reception area.

‘Morning! Have you a few moments? I’ve got your blood test results here. Shall I go over them with you?’

‘No’ was not the right answer. So she went though the lot, right there in the public area. Unluckily for the captive audience waiting to see one or other of the doctors, my results were very dull – nothing gossip-worthy there at all.

‘And since you’re here’ she continued, ‘I might as well tell you your husband’s results’. And she did. Malcolm’s results were dull too. In fact I had the utmost difficulty in reporting back to him, because I forgot most of what she told me.

I’d barely recovered from the shock of that blatant disregard of data protection when I needed to visit the mairie, the town hall. Having done what I needed to do, I chatted idly to the official I’d gone to see. Who told me, apropos nothing at all, that someone living fairly nearby had been admitted to a psychiatric ward. I simply didn’t need to know. In fact the person concerned was completely unknown to me at that time. This time, I wasn’t so much shocked as scandalised. I don’t expect to go to the mairie every time I want a good gossip. I don’t expect to have to wonder whether our own lives are part of the common currency of official chit-chat.

Life in France? Or just small town life? I’ve done a bit of Googling, and data protection legislation certainly exists in France: just not so much down here, in the fin fond de l’Ariège.

The healer

Malcolm’s had a rotten week. Shingles. It sounds such a jolly complaint, doesn’t it? But it’s not. It began last Saturday with a sore area at the back of his neck. A couple of hours later, he retired to bed, his whole head a boiled orange-red and covered in flattish blisters. The caricature Englishman who fell asleep on the beach for several hours at Costa del Something never looked this bad. He ate nothing – not a morsel – for two whole days, and was prey to dismal and depressing thoughts and feelings whenever he wasn’t asleep.

On Monday I called the doctor. But as the news of his illness got out, the emails and phone calls started to tumble in. ’He must see a healer’, our French friends insisted. When ill themselves, some of these friends choose the kind of alternative therapies that make homeopathy seem mainstream, while other scurry down to the surgery demanding packs of pills at the first hint of a sneeze. Whatever their usual preference, they were united in believing that only a healer could help. And the doctor had admitted he could do little for Malcolm.

One friend came up with a specific suggestion. The mother of her childhood friend is a healer of shingles sufferers, and so successful that doctors often send their patients to her. Malcolm had nothing to lose, so he got in touch. Every evening for 3 days he’s been at her house at 6.00 for a short session. She’s rubbed hard at his troubled skin with one hand, while making sweeping movements with her other. Sessions last 10 minutes or less, but even after the first time, the improvement was noticeable and swift. Now, after the third, his skin is almost normal and he feels fine, but she’s expecting him to treat himself for a few days with poultices of olive oil, or olive oil, egg yolk and lemon juice.

Healers turn out to be very common indeed here. They have the gift of treating a single complaint, and they receive this gift of healing from another practitioner. They often work in very different ways . The mother of a friend worked in a way Malcolm wouldn’t have recognised. At sundown, she would briefly carry the sufferer on her back, back-to-back, whilst saying prayers in her Béarnaise dialect. She had received her gift when she herself was suffering from shingles, and having treated her, the healer passed on his skills.

What unites all these people – men, women, young, old, garage hands, housewives, teachers, highly educated or largely untaught – is their sincerity, and their real ability to effect change for the better in the sufferer. A true healer will not ask for payment, but most grateful sufferers offer a gift, which could well be money. It’s not necessary for the sufferer to have faith that the treatment will work, merely a willingness to be open-minded and give it a go.

We’ve both been astonished by the huge fan-base for healing in a country where patients routinely expect doctors to prescribe medication for any complaint, however trivial. At choir last night, discussing Malcolm’s experience with everyone there, they all nodded sagely and encouragingly. ‘Il n’y a rien que ça’. And it’s true. Doctors seem to have little joy treating shingles, which seems to persist for weeks in the unfortunate sufferer’s body despite antibiotics and other potions. Healers seem to deliver on their promise to have the thing sorted in under a week

Snow shoes at Scaramus

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.

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.

Sculpted snow glimpsed through the trees.

Ever onwards

Snow-sculpted hillsides.

The final stretch.

The loto evening

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.

Heads down

Malcolm & Michel, concentrating hard.

Not a winning set of cards.

Coffee and walnut cake – the failure

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. — The failed coffee cake. It can’t be all that bad. We’ll eat it.

A view from the washing line

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?

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.

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.

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.

Vines at Villelongue & the martyrs of the mudslick

Hills & vineyards round Villelongue

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 8^th 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.

Rain, rain…….

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 — Boots – with added mud

Roll on the 2^nd 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 — There’s snow on them there ‘ills: but not a lot. As seen from our roof terrace