CODGERS

We meet at a hotel in the outskirts of London for a Christmas lunch each year.
We are old. And as we die off, our numbers naturally decline.
But we get resurrected as well. When, soon after the war, some of my fellow Codgers went to lodgings I had in London, they were told by the landlady that I had “gone”. As they knew I had contracted TB at the end of the war, it was presumed that I was dead – there being no cure for TB in those days.
It was not until much later that one of them saw my second BBC 2 Gardeners’ World programme. Word got around that I was alive. So I became a Codger.
The meeting is a reunion of RAF pilots – or rather, those of us who obtained our wings in Oklahoma at the end of the war.
I think that we had all done a little operational flying as part of our training to be pilots. Mine was 20 hours in Coastal Command, flying from Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall, out over the Bay of Biscay looking for baled-out aircrew. We flew Vickers-Armstrong Warwick aircraft, with a specially moulded, wooden lifeboat strapped beneath. These lifesaving boats would be released to descend to the briny, suspended beneath vast parachutes.
One of the great benefits to all who took part in the 1939-1945 war was that men and women from all walks of life were thrown together. Both Lords and paupers found out that our desires and aspirations were all much the same. So it is with Codgers.
None of us, I believe, took up permanent employment in the RAF. One became an airline pilot, one a country vicar, another a Bishop and so on. Many of us had left our schooling to fly. As we were released slowly into a peacetime world we had to decide on a career. It was easier for those with pre-war jobs to return to. For myself, I became a medical student at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.
Skip sixty or more years and there we were, or what’s left of us, eating turkey and Christmas pudding, and drinking wine in each others’ delightful company – Codgers all, with the exception of our seemingly younger and more sprightly wives.
I hear much the same stories each year, mainly about how I crashed an aircraft into small pieces right in front of many of our company, and how, in hospital after it, a drunken orderly amused himself by playing Russian Roulette, spinning the chamber of a revolver, while pointing the weapon at my head. It was an incident that I cannot recall (possibly because of concussion) and, anyhow, would rather not.
But there was something new this time. One of our number told me that I had probably saved his life.
It came about like this. When flying from an auxiliary grass field in wet and freezing conditions in Oklahoma, the controls of my aeroplane (PT 19, Cornell) started to stiffen up. I landed, found my instructor, with his feet up in a warm shed, and reported the matter. “Carry on if you feel like it,” he said.
In the constant quest to accumulate flying hours, I took off from a slushy field into the freezing air again, only, this time, to have the controls go completely solid – iced up. I was too low to jump out with my parachute, so did my best to crash back into the ground as advantageously as possible.
My fellow Codger told me that at the time of my crash he was experiencing exactly the same freezing-up trouble with his aeroplane.
After I had splattered bits of my aircraft about the place, flying was abandoned for the day.
So, unknown to me, I probably, and inadvertently, did save his life.
It was nice to hear, after so many years, that at least some good came from what we might then have called “a wizard prang”.

Dieppe Artists 2007

I often seem to be writing about Dieppe. It is simply because we go there three or four times a year for a break, a change, but mainly to re-stock out shelves with wine, which is so much cheaper than it is in England, where such items of civilised life are so highly taxed.
France, although near, is, to me, still a very foreign place. So all the differences between England and “abroad” are of great interest, be it food, manners, plumbing, the rituals of life, art connections, and all the rest. And to witness change (progress?) is also of great interest, for I have seen many changes since I first went there soon after the war – some 50 years ago.
Take the Pollet, for instance.
The Pollet is a small fishermen’s quarter that takes the form of almost an island between the main import dock (now virtually unused, but once a busy dock for imported tropical fruit) and the very active dock for trawlers.
In years gone by the Pollet was rough. It was appropriate that a cider factory there produced very rough cider. It has gone. But what made this small area such an interesting place were the many smoking chimneys, beneath which, fish, mainly herrings, were cured and smoked over smouldering wooden fish boxes. So the Pollet had its own smell, imparting character to the place.
Perhaps fishwive’s children are still fathered by artists there, as has happened in the past. The fishwives are still to be seen nearby, but selling from their stalls on the quayside near to the centrally placed Information Centre. The fish offered by them is so fresh that plaice may still be alive and flapping on the slab.
Artists of the past found much to portray on the Pollet “island”. From the days of sail and then to steam, the work by sailors and dock workers was hard and poorly paid. But for the artist it was real life – life in the raw. Portrayals by present-day artists seem to be more of picturesque cliffs and yachts, colourful and bland – seaside art.
There were several bars on the Pollet island where fishermen and dock hands could quench their thirst, though the bars with girls offered their services by the then railway station across the harbour. But the girls, I think, were more for the use of visiting sailors than artists and locals.
Some ten years ago there was a sudden change in the fortunes of the Pollet. A smart restaurant opened there, called Bistrot du Pollet. Right away it became crowded with discerning clientele, unknown to eat in the district theretofore.
The restaurant has changed hands, but Florence, the charming waitress has been serving satisfied clients for the last eight of those ten years.
Discerning artists, sculptors and musicians still frequent Dieppe, and the Bistrot in particular. If Sickert took a more physical approach to matters on the Pollet, then, nowadays, Anthony Stevens, singer and songwriter, with Caroline, and Graham Gould of The What, eat at the Bistrot (where you might hear in the background a recording of Anthony Stevens singing with Count Basie, for instance).
One eats well at the Bistrot, where the set lunch may introduce you to three courses of food you might not normally choose. So, without choice, there is an element of pleasant surprise at hand. And, being in the heart of the fishermen’s quarter in a fishing port, whatever aquatic delicacy features on the menu is as fresh as it comes, and sure to please.
The success of Bistrot du Pollet has encouraged the existing cafés around it to upgrade. And now another restaurant/café (o’DkLé) (sic) has opened on the quayside nearby, supplying good food that is at about the halfway mark between standard restaurant/café and Michelin mentioned cuisine.
All this is symptomatic of the rise in Dieppe’s status from a smoky fishing port to the present clean and smart marina town.
Dieppe has two hub centres, joined by the Grande Rue, a pedestrian-only street of smart shoe and fashion shops, interspersed with those selling charcuterie, cheese, bakery, and fruit and vegetables – the last (Royal Fruits) offering wonderful value and freshness. For the Saturday market, the street and those leading from it, are coated with stalls, run by both professionals and farmer amateurs (though no live rabbits, chickens or ducks may be sold any more).
At the “town” end of this street stands the Café des Tribunaux, a large and well-run establishment, catering for customers who like to drink, read and talk outside in warm weather, and indoors when the seaside air is cold and windy. It has always been the place for a drink, and the haunt of artists, locals, and tourists alike. Wilde and Beardsley are reputed to have been clients. In such an old established café it is right that, in France, waiters are employed – and stay. For instance, a waiter there, asked how my sons were doing. He had encountered them as children thirty years beforehand.
The other end of the Grande Rue (the port end) is the jumping-off place for restaurants and cafés. And one of these, the Café Suisse, right on the corner, opposite where once stood the circular fish market (now an almost flat fountain), has always been the favoured venue of painters. Albert Lebourg may have frequented it, and others certainly did, like Camille Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Eugéne Boudin, Frank Martin and Edward Burra.
I am indebted to the writers of an exhibition catalogue for paintings of Dieppe, held in Brighton’s Museum and Art Gallery in 1992, for the following information on artists of note who have drawn inspiration from Dieppe. Aubrey Beardsley, with his two black beauty spots, thought that Dieppe was “Really quite sweet”. Arthur Symons said of Dieppe that he had enjoyed a most amusing and irresponsible holiday there. Picasso remarked that “Dieppe seems to be most of France”. Bonnington loved the cliffs. Braque, who lived much of his life in Dieppe and Varengeville nearby, carved sculptures out of their chalk. Condor loved the place, saying: “The whole front of the sea is simply magnificent.” Daubigny painted the harbour. Delacroix could hardly bear to tear himself away from the “watery landscape”. John Duncan Fergusson painted a Dieppe firework display with S. J. Peploe in the foreground. Gaugin, who painted four pictures of Dieppe, may have met Whistler there. Harold Gilman painted a picture of Dieppe’s troglodytes, and miserable they looked, too. Charles Ginner depicted the quayside in bright sunlight. Spencer Gore was a friend of Sickert and painted much in Dieppe. Sylvia Gosse was Sickert’s pupil, and loved Dieppe as much as her master. Gerald Kelly painted several views of the port, as did Thérèse Lessore. Miro stayed at Verangeville next door, passing through Dieppe on his way. Ben Nicholson, William’s son, painted a picture of the now lost and lamented Sole Dieppoise Restaurant. William Nicholson spent summer holidays in Dieppe, painting streets and the harbour. Camille Pissarro, described as “sweet and patriarchal” toward the end of his life, liked painting the fish market, harbour and Pollet “in rain, sun and smoke”. His painting of a Dieppe Fair in the Place Nationale, depicts a scene almost identical to a market day now. Renoir favoured the region. Matthew Smith painted several works in Dieppe, favouring the harbour and ships. Turner sketched in the town, painting the magnificent Château d’Arques nearby in 1834. Félix Vollotton painted in Dieppe, and when Bonnard came to visit him in nearby Varengeville, he said he’d bring some paints “in case the contagion infects me”. Whistler stayed with Sickert in Dieppe and painted many pictures there, and lectured as well. Christopher Wood said that: “Dieppe was a complete happiness. I have not known it before”. The fact that these artists found such an affinity to Dieppe, shows how splendid and inspirational the place is, and will continue to be.
The Café Suisse has modernised considerably since the heyday of the previously mentioned painters. And at one time, with new owners, it had red plastic seats, so uncomfortable, that we declined to frequent the place. Now that the seating is better, it is a good venue for lunch (closed for food in the evening).
Dieppe is the great port for scallop (Coquille St Jacques) boats. So, when in season, it is the dish over which to linger and relish. And because this shellfish is so plentiful there, the amount served is on a very generous scale. In fact, after a few dishes of those tasty morsels (often served with potato in a Normandy cream sauce), we had had enough and found ourselves choosing other items from the menu.
The old ferries from Newhaven would sometimes opt out of crossing the Channel when the weather was rough. The two new ferries have efficient stabilisers fitted, and are more manoeuvrable. This means that the crossing (often, in the past, somewhat of a lottery) is now far more reliable – though our latest winter crossing back did rather shake and stir the insides.I often seem to be writing about Dieppe. It is simply because we go there three or four times a year for a break, a change, but mainly to re-stock out shelves with wine, which is so much cheaper than it is in England, where such items of civilised life are so highly taxed.
France, although near, is, to me, still a very foreign place. So all the differences between England and “abroad” are of great interest, be it food, manners, plumbing, the rituals of life, art connections, and all the rest. And to witness change (progress?) is also of great interest, for I have seen many changes since I first went there soon after the war – some 50 years ago.
Take the Pollet, for instance.
The Pollet is a small fishermen’s quarter that takes the form of almost an island between the main import dock (now virtually unused, but once a busy dock for imported tropical fruit) and the very active dock for trawlers.
In years gone by the Pollet was rough. It was appropriate that a cider factory there produced very rough cider. It has gone. But what made this small area such an interesting place were the many smoking chimneys, beneath which, fish, mainly herrings, were cured and smoked over smouldering wooden fish boxes. So the Pollet had its own smell, imparting character to the place.
Perhaps fishwives children are still fathered by artists there, as has happened in the past. The fishwives are still to be seen nearby, but selling from their stalls on the quayside near to the centrally placed Information Centre. The fish offered by them is so fresh that plaice may still be alive and flapping on the slab.
Artists of the past found much to portray on the Pollet “island”. From the days of sail and then to steam, the work by sailors and dock workers was hard and poorly paid. But for the artist it was real life – life in the raw. Portrayals by present-day artists seem to be more of picturesque cliffs and yachts, colourful and bland – seaside art.
There were several bars on the Pollet island where fishermen and dock hands could quench their thirst, though the bars with girls offered their services by the then railway station across the harbour. But the girls, I think, were more for the use of visiting sailors than artists and locals.
Some ten years ago there was a sudden change in the fortunes of the Pollet. A smart restaurant opened there, called Bistrot du Pollet. Right away it became crowded with discerning clientele, unknown to eat in the district theretofore.
The restaurant has changed hands, but Florence, the charming waitress has been serving satisfied clients for the last eight of those ten years.
Discerning artists, sculptors and musicians still frequent Dieppe, and the Bistrot in particular. If Sickert took a more physical approach to matters on the Pollet, then, nowadays, Anthony Stevens, singer and songwriter, with Caroline, and Graham Gould of The What, eat at the Bistrot (where you might hear in the background a recording of Anthony Stevens singing with Count Basie, for instance).
One eats well at the Bistrot, where the set lunch may introduce you to three courses of food you might not normally choose. So, without choice, there is an element of pleasant surprise at hand. And, being in the heart of the fishermen’s quarter in a fishing port, whatever aquatic delicacy features on the menu is as fresh as it comes, and sure to please.
The success of Bistrot du Pollet has encouraged the existing cafés around it to upgrade. And now another restaurant/café (o’DkLé) (sic) has opened on the quayside nearby, supplying good food that is at about the halfway mark between standard restaurant/café and Michelin mentioned cuisine.
All this is symptomatic of the rise in Dieppe’s status from a smoky fishing port to the present clean and smart marina town.
Dieppe has two hub centres, joined by the Grande Rue, a pedestrian-only street of smart shoe and fashion shops, interspersed with those selling charcuterie, cheese, bakery, and fruit and vegetables – the last (Royal Fruits) offering wonderful value and freshness. For the Saturday market, the street and those leading from it, are coated with stalls, run by both professionals and farmer amateurs (though no live rabbits, chickens or ducks may be sold any more).
At the “town” end of this street stands the Café des Tribunaux, a large and well-run establishment, catering for customers who like to drink, read and talk outside in warm weather, and indoors when the seaside air is cold and windy. It has always been the place for a drink, and the haunt of artists, locals, and tourists alike. Wilde and Beardsley are reputed to have been clients. In such an old established café it is right that, in France, waiters are employed – and stay. For instance, a waiter there, asked how my sons were doing. He had encountered them as children thirty years beforehand.
The other end of the Grande Rue (the port end) is the jumping-off place for restaurants and cafés. And one of these, the Café Suisse, right on the corner, opposite where once stood the circular fish market (now an almost flat fountain), has always been the favoured venue of painters. Albert Lebourg may have frequented it, and others certainly did, like Camille Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Eva Gonzalès (the lady Impressionist), Eugéne Boudin, Frank Martin and Edward Burra. Other artists have certainly enjoyed the pleasures and sights of Dieppe. Names such as Cotman, Turner, Delacroix, Renoir, Degas, Whistler and Matthew Smith are recorded as having stayed there.
The Café Suisse has modernised considerably since the heyday of the previously mentioned artists. And at one time, with new owners, it had red plastic seats, so uncomfortable that we declined to frequent the place. Now that the seating is more comfortable, it is a good venue for lunch (closed for food in the evening).
Dieppe is the great port for scallop (Coquille St Jacques) boats. So, when in season, it is the dish over which to linger and relish. And because this shellfish is so plentiful there, the amount served is on a very generous scale. In fact, after a few dishes of those tasty morsels (often served with potato in a Normandy cream sauce), we had had enough and found ourselves choosing other items from the menu.
The old ferries from Newhaven would sometimes opt out of crossing the Channel when the weather was rough. The two new ferries have efficient stabilisers fitted, and are more manoeuvrable. This means that the crossing (often, in the past, somewhat of a lottery) is now far more reliable – though our latest winter crossing back did rather shake and stir the insides.

A November Bumblebee

It was on an early November day that I looked out of the window to see a large bumblebee (female for sure) stumbling around on the pavement in a distressed condition. She was lethargic, resting for spells to regain strength, and unsure of direction.
So I went out to collect her in a small tumbler, and took her through the house to the garden behind.
Was she dying of old age? Had she been hit and stunned by a passing car? Or was she just winding down from her summer endeavours and looking for a warm spot where she could hibernate for the winter out of the cold and wet?
Bumblebees have always been my friends. I still love them, even having been stung by one as a youth. An uncle, high up in the church, told me that it was perfectly all right to pick up an angry bumblebee that was trying to escape through the window glass at his fine 18th century vicarage. The sting I got in the finger for my coming to its aid was a slight prick that drew just a little blood. Then, slowly, my hand and then arm suffered from a form of paralysis. Fortunately the condition stopped at my shoulder. I still loved bumblebees but it put me off religion for good.
Bumblebees of the size I had recovered are females. As I understand it, they emerge from hibernation in March each year to find a home (usually in a woodpile or mouse hole) to raise a family.
They do far more good at pollinating flowers than the same number of honeybees, as they will fly around in the rain when honeybees wont.
Inside Dutch greenhouses are little nest boxes for bumblebees. These insects are reliable pollinators and much treasured.
Because of my fondness for this delightful creature, I have built 4 potential winter homes for them, one being based on the Dutch design. I have had no luck to date and do not really expect to be successful as bumblebees have minds of their own and seldom do what we want them to do.
So I introduced my new found friend (I love the way they crawl on the hand) to each one of my boxes, putting her head into the holes provided, and giving her a gentle push from behind as encouragement. She did not like any of them.
So I introduced her to the rather inviting holes in the occhielloni (hypocaust design bricks). No luck.
I put her in a corner of the garden where there are dark crannies and dried leaves near to flowerpots. She walked out into the open.
I was pleased when she crawled (very slowly) beneath the shed/summer house. But by the following morning she was out once more. With her aimless sense of direction she might walk in circles and fall into cracks between the flagstones, often ending upside down. But she was able to right herself and climb out.
By now I had noticed deterioration in her condition – increasing slowness, more resting, and possibly diminished size.
So I told her that she could winter in our shed. I put her in a snug corner. She came out immediately and started to climb – anything. So, thinking that she might want to hibernate at altitude, I found a warm, wooden shelf for her, high up. She fell down right away, and made off in the general direction of the door.
I now took a large flowerpot and filled it with dried leaves and sticks – making it look and feel as near to a woodpile as I could. This I laid on its side, wedged between a bucket of soil and a brick wall.
I’m afraid that I rather pushed her into a cavity of my “woodpile” and added some dried leaves after her to block out the light.
She did not come out, nor did I see her anywhere the following day.
Is she well? Is she happy? Is she asleep for the winter? Or is she dead? I really don’t know. But I care – very much.

Chicken and Swede

Here is a cheap, simple and peasant-like dish, elevated to dinner party status by a spirited addition. This dish is almost invariably a huge success.

CHICKEN- CHICKEN ON SWEDE

You will need:
Swede (rutabaga)
Stock (optional)
Butter
Pepper and salt
Ouzo, Pernod or another aniseed spirit. Or star aniseed. Or other liqueur or spirit.
Boned chicken thighs (or legs)
Olive oil
Milled pepper

Pare away the outer skin of a swede or two, or more. Cut the flesh into smallish cubes Cover them with water or stock and boil for 20 to 30 minutes - or until soft. If you are using star aniseed instead of an aniseed spirit, add three stars to the water in which you are boiling the swede. Discard them when the swede has been boiled.
Pour off the cooking water for later-to-be-enjoyed soup.
Mash the swede with butter, pepper and salt.
Now stir in a measure (say, a dessertspoon) of Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard, or other aniseed spirit.
Cover the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the mashed swede.
Take chicken thighs (better than legs) from which you have extracted the single, central bone (if you have done this earlier, put the bones in with the swede when you are boiling it to obtain extra flavour). Keep the skin on the thigh pieces and roll them into bundles before arranging them (one large or two small per person) on top of the mashed swede. If boning chicken legs, also discard the sharp bone lying close to the leg bone and use kitchen scissors to trim away the little white ends of tendon. Wrap in their skin, as with thighs.
When they are in position, dribble or brush a little olive oil over each. Add salt, and give them a good milling of black pepper from the pepper mill.
If it is more convenient, the preparation can be done well before the dish is ready for the oven. Give it about an hour and a half at a medium setting (longer seems to make little difference, so it is an excellent dish might you be late or very late to eat). Anyhow, after the chicken skin has become crisp and golden, the dish will be ready for the table.
That's it. And it's a stunner. Serve on its own, or with baked or mashed potato, or beans, or a salad, or...
Perhaps you do not like the taste of aniseed. It is possible to use any spirit or liqueur for this excellent dish. Use your favourite, or any at hand. Grand Marnier, for instance, is excellent.
I have also made this dish with mashed potato instead of swede, and it was excellent. I flavoured the mash with pressed garlic and de-seeded red chillies finely chopped.

Lille. October 2007

My only contact with Lille had been en route to Paris via Eurostar. The train stops momentarily in a concrete structure that bodes ill.
But sitting next to a civil servant at Lord’s cricket ground, and discussing holidays, he recommended L’Hermitage Gantois hotel in that city as his favourite holiday destination. So, wanting a short break in France, we aimed for it, getting a good deal through “the net” at a very expensive place.
The hotel had been a religious institution and centre of hospitality since the 15th century. It had been turned into a luxury establishment by joining up buildings of religious accommodation around four courtyard gardens. The main, central courtyard, had been glazed over to form a light and airy atrium. In this stood a central bar, surrounded by comfortable pale blue leather armchairs and sofas. To the side of this courtyard was a fully furnished church. So it could be an ideal hotel for those of a religious inclination.
Our spacious room was decorated in new oak panelling in the Louis XV style, with an equally grand Carrara green marble tiled bathroom. But there were strange omissions in design. There were no drawers, and minimal hanging space for clothes. The electrics worked magically by placing the room “key” in a slot just inside the door. But there was only one bedside light, and to turn off the two bright overhead lights, it was necessary to get out of bed and switch them off in the corners of the room. There was no bidet (are they really so out of fashion? How sad.). I often think that in a “no-expense-spared” hotel room that there should be a small pissoir for men near to the lavatory. Men, by their nature and structure are inclined to dribble and splash. So for hygiene’s sake one would be an advantage. And it would save men from having to always raise and lower the lavatory seat. There was no lavatory brush. To turn on the bath water was a job for a contortionist – and a contortionist who would get soaked by the shower in the process. So I eventually had to fill the bath through the spout and shower. The grey marble basin was a pleasure to use and charm to the eye. It took the form of a small cascade rather than the normal bowl. The towels were great, many and thick, with creams and shampooy things exemplary.
Hanging on the oak panelling of the room were some pleasant reproductions of 18th century prints. The one above my side of the comfortable bed was of a mother spanking her naughty child with a bunch of flowers. It was titled: “Punishment of Love”.
We had arrived in time for lunch after an uneventful journey by rail. So, in our usual way, we sought advice on where we might eat. Recommended places were either too grand for lunch, or closed. But in the rue de Pas stood Les 400 Coups. It was full, the waiters busy and efficient, and the menu offering mostly grilled meat. We were fitted in, and noticed that this was a place for trenchermen, and with the food served on trenchers. With a view to possibly returning, I picked a sample dish of all the grilled meats on offer (ribs, lamb, beef, chicken and gammon). Margreet chose two meats. With whole roast potatoes and salad, the helpings were huge and excellent, washed down with Bel Pils beer and equally excellent carafe red wine. We had made a great choice for our first meal in Lille.
As is our wont, we are inclined to overdo our eating on the first day in France. And this was no exception.
After shopping unsuccessfully in Galeries Lafayette and Printemps we took our aperitifs in a café on the large central square (Place G. de Gaulle) – a square rather too large, not particularly interesting architecturally, and with too small a central feature to hold it all together.
As we had noticed already in the shops, the dress for both sexes was drab – blacks browns and greys. To see someone, even wearing a coloured sweater, was cause for joy. And there were a surprising number of the halt and maim.
We decided to eat in our hotel’s red painted and golden vaulted dining room. One dish (the hors d’oeuvre) was exceptional. It was a fricassée of snails, garlic, butter, parsley, cep mushrooms and duck liver – one item having a distinctly smoky flavour. With bread and wine it could have made a splendid meal on its own.
A visit to the Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille was instructive. Its vast halls had so much wall space it was as if they had to purchase the largest works of classical art as possible to hang on them. But there were jewels to be found there. The best was a Brueghel of a snow scene that held interest in the details of what was going on at the time and, if standing back, the entire composition. There was a Bosch and two large Goyas to make the visit memorable.
On leaving those halls of art it was time for a quiet lunch at the Bistrot de Pierrot nearby. Next to us at first was a furniture manufacturer who gave us good advice on what to eat there, choosing from the blackboard menu.
Then in came six large men of our country’s Rugby fraternity, en route to Paris for the World Cup semi-final between England and France. They were in festive mood, of considerable importance in life, and discerning of food, wine, and accommodation. In no time we were on intimate terms, soon to be joined by a French couple whose nephew is the one who smuggles in a live cockerel to England/France matches at Twickenham.
So with much banter and in fine spirits, we conversed, laughed, drank and ate. So our “quiet” meal turned out to be a rather noisy one.
The “crunch” match was to be played in Paris that evening. So we shopped in Lille for an evening’s television picnic of bagette, bressaola and Morbier cheese. For the wine, we chose one that we knew well - Lidl’s excellent South African Pinotage (at under £2).
After drinks in the hotel’s covered atrium, we settled in for a night of picnic and sport.
The television build-up coverage was considerable. Interviews, replays, expectant hosts, the favourites… on it went. And the more it continued in that vein, the more we were conscious of the huge expectation that the French nation had placed on the shoulders of their team. Could the Latin temperament take it?
Then it was “off”. The match was nail-bitingly close. The final whistle was blown, with the underdogs, the English, victorious.
The shouts from our room of “on a gagné” were so loud that we must have rattled the bones of those hermits and nuns who had once resided in the surrounding hospice cells in silence.
The television programme then turned to interviewing the sad, defeated players – ones who had so hugely let their country down. There was only one brief shot of the victorious English. The French were suffering – and made to suffer more in their defeat. They were still the hosts for the Rugby World Cup, but now only as onlooking hosts, no longer participants. One really felt quite sorry for them.
So Sunday came, and our plan was to investigate “Old Lille”. The buildings were ornate with deep carvings and glowing colours – more Dutch/Belgian then French. In fact, the entire old town and its way of life felt more Belgian than French. Margreet pronounced the women’s fashion shops there to be excellent.
In the rue de Monnaie, at the Place du Concert, was a quite splendid and very crushed market, where locals were doing their Sunday and week’s shopping. Cheese, fruit, vegetables, flowers, roasting meats and much more, were there for those willing to force their way around the many stalls.
We drank beer at a roadside pavement café table to watch the drably coloured but well dressed people go about their business.
With many restaurants closed on the Sabbath, where were we to lunch? I asked a flower shop assistant about to display his wares on the pavement. Where did he like to eat in the district? The restaurant recommended was Chez la Vieille, in the rue de Gand. It was closed, but a sign in the window told that their sister restaurant, Au Vieux de la Vieille, in the Place aux Onions nearby, was open on Sundays. So, in this simple and unsophisticated café/restaurant we ate excellently and cheaply. Typical of Flemish food were dishes cooked with Maroilles. What were Maroilles? I thought that they sounded like mushrooms. It turned out to be a cheese, with a very pungent smell of a farmyard and taste to match. I had it in a white sauce surrounding chicken – yes, distinctive.
So, wanting only a token meal that evening, we returned to Au Vieux de la Vieille, where they like to serve food on wooden planks. So we started with two small, hard sausages, served on its plank, to be cut with a sharp knife. Then we shared a dish of a mixed plank, consisting of two cheeses, two thick slices from terrines, salad and chips. It was quite enough, and accompanied by a jug of wine – from the simple list choice of red, white or rosé.
Back at the hotel we watched a television programme of the other Rugby semi-final, with South Africa beating Argentina.
For our last lunch we ate up-market, and very well, on scallops and roe deer chops. But the uniqueness of the restaurant, La Part des Anges, in rue de la Monnaie, was that the wine, chosen from an extensive blackboard list, was only available “by the glass”. We thought this to be an excellent idea.
So our short break in Lille was almost over. Our feelings were that we liked Lille very much in almost every respect. We never had a meal that was less than excellent – and all much to our taste. The shops, especially the fashion boutiques, were top class. But with no “heart” in the form of movement from the activities of river, canals or port, we might go somewhere else next time. But I doubt if we’ll eat as well.

The Asymmetrical Bridge

My son, Pete, is the owner of a 1954, 4’ x 2’ painting, by me, of an asymmetrical bridge over the Basingstoke Canal in Hampshire.
When I was painting landscape in those days I stayed in lodgings and scoured the country to find congenial subjects. Canals had always appealed to me. I can not recall what drew me to this particular bridge. But I set up my easel on the bank of the disused Basingstoke Canal on a day so cold that there was snow on the ground and ice on puddles where once had been deep water for barges – canal boats, incidentally, that were considerably wider than those in the rest of the country.
Pete had for a long time wanted to see the actual bridge. So I looked up its position on the old maps I had used at the time, and then new, only to discover that in the meantime the M3 motorway passed by, either very close to it or even over it. So it was with more hope than expectation that Pete, Margreet and I, with a photograph of the ’54 painting in hand, set out to find our bridge in October 2007.
Leave at junction 5, I told them, cross over the motorway, turn left, pass through a village called Nately Scures and take the first left.
That first left was a narrow country lane, leading to Up Nately.
We crossed over the motorway on a modern bridge and, looking down from it, could see no sign of canal workings. And then, there before us, was a narrowing of the lane with a hump back. We passed over it and looked down on to the canal – still unused and mostly dry, damp, or of stagnant water.
Parking the car in a space near to a red telephone box, we made our way back to the bridge and down to the old towpath via a very slippery set of crumbling steps.
And there it was in front of us – the red brick, asymmetrical bridge.
We walked beneath it to find the actual place where I had set up my easel in 1954, crossing the moist canal on foot and getting rather muddy in the process.
Practically nothing had changed. The tree in the left foreground had spread its branches and increased its girth. The canal was as dry, but now with puddles covered in duckweed instead of ice. And a sort of low sluice, installed presumably to hold back water to form a pond, had gone, manifesting itself as scattered, green lichen encrusted bricks.
I wanted to inspect the brickwork of the bridge. And the more I saw, the crazier the design became apparent.
The insides of the single arch were not straight, but deliberately bowed in shape. The brickwork where the bridge’s construction met the ground, splayed outwards. The apex of the arch on one side of the road was about 4’ to the side from the apex of the other. The parapets on either side of the roadway varied in height, so that at one place it was possible to lean on the brickwork and on another to trip over it. The coping bricks on the parapets were sometimes flat, sometimes rounded. The bricks were of differing colour and not always laid evenly. Because of the shape of the canal cutting, one side of the bridge was made with far more brickwork than the other. In fact, practically nothing about this bridge was as expected. It was asymmetrical and original in almost every aspect. The whole construction was a brilliant flight of fancy. And it was made during the construction of the canal between 1789 and 1794.
Who designed it? Who made it? Why had this part of the canal not been re-opened for recreational purposes like many of the others in the country?
There was a small house nearby, perched high above the cutting and shrouded in greenery. I took our photograph of the painting to show the occupants, who seemed unaware of this delightful construction almost beneath their doorstep. They kindly directed us to a pub a few miles down the road.
At the Fox and Goose, in very pretty Greywell village, we lunched off well-prepared country food and drank excellent beer. I asked the landlady if she knew much about the canal. She produced a short account of its history, written by a local.
Of the design or construction of the bridge there was no information. I like to think of a crowd of navvies who specialised in knocking up bridges out of their heads to suit the local conditions as they went along with their comrades digging out the canal.
The reason why the canal thereabouts has remained for so long untouched and part of nature’s blend in and around it, is that some of it passes through a tunnel 1230 yards long, called the Greywell Tunnel. And in this tunnel are bats – lots of them. It is thought that 10,000 might be wintering there. And bats must be looked after and protected.
What might the future hold for this charming and quite unspoilt small corner of late 18th century rural England? The bridge has stood the test of time, aided by iron ties and repaired brickwork (the original bricks came from a brickworks at Nately Scures a short distance away). A rent in the parapet on one side was disturbing. But as long as the bats continue to favour the Greywell Tunnel, then there is hope – for no change. Should the bridge ever be torn down (God forbid), at least, the image will remain for as long as that 1954 picture lasts.

No Trouble Kneaded Bread

Since writing a recipe for No Need to Knead Bread I have been experimenting with making real, kneaded bread, with the least possible work or trouble. I do not believe that the following recipe could be simpler. And out of it you will obtain three loaves for well below the price of a bought one, and without the cost of a bread-making machine and the electricity needed to make it work. The resultant bread will have a slight feel of cake about it.

NO TROUBLE KNEADED BREAD

You will need:
1 ½ kilo packet of strong white bread flour.
Salt
Turmeric (optional for colour)
Honey
Dried yeast
3 non-stick bread tins.

In a large bowl put the flour with a little salt and a pinch or two of turmeric (for a pleasant colour in the finished bread).
Now, in a half pint measuring beaker, put hot water in which to dissolve a scant teaspoon of honey. Then add a heaped teaspoon of dried yeast. Stir it all together.
Top up the beaker with hot water and place it on top of the flour in the bowl. Scoop up some of the flour to cover the liquid in the beaker.
Place the bowl and beaker in a warm place. An under-floor-heated surface is ideal.
When the flour surface in the beaker is bubbling, and with the yeasty liquid overflowing, stir the entire contents of the beaker into the flour.
You will now have to add two beakers full of hot water, being very careful as you get to the end of the final one, as having stirred in the liquid so far and obtained a slightly dry-to-sticky mass of a ball, it is easy to overdo the liquid and form a gooey mass (which is quite unsuitable).
Now take the ball of dough out of the bowl with your hands, and scrape the bowl with a spatula to add any bits clinging to the sides. Now knead the ball on a flat, dry, clean, unfloured surface. Too firm a dough will result in poor rising and rather solid bread. Too plastic a mixture may overflow the tins when rising. Aim for pleasing elasticity.
The kneading process is done with the balls of your hands pushing into the dough and away from you. As you do it, the dough will become sausage shaped. Fold in the ends to form a rough ball again, and repeat the process. Continue kneading until the ball (which will become drier as you work on it) looks well blended. I do it for about three to four minutes. It takes a little muscle power, but is a most satisfactory process to be involved in.
Form the kneaded dough into a round ball and, with the point of a sharp knife, mark it into three equal sections. Now cut the sections apart and place each in a non-stick bread tin.
Stretch out the rather elastic dough to cover the base of the tin. And then, with the said sharp knife, score across the surface of the dough a few times. Return the tins to the selected warm place.
When the dough has risen to the state when it looks as if it might overflow the three tins, put them into an oven that you have previously heated to its maximum.
Give them half an hour at full heat and another half an hour at medium to low heat.
Tip out the loaves onto a wire mesh rack and allow them to cool.
Eat right away, or freeze them in sealed plastic bags until wanted.

P.S. At the time of stirring in warm water to make the dough, I have been adding olive oil. I think that the loaves have been even better.

Leeks Vinaigrette

It was in Paris, in the Marais district, and chose leeks as the hors d’oeuvre. They were so tender that they melted in the mouth. How was it done? I made a guess, and have since altered my ideas. Here is a pretty good way to serve them.

LEEKS VINAIGRETTE

You will need:
Leeks
Vinaigrette (olive oil, vinegar, dry mustard, salt, pepper and icing sugar)

Buy clean white leeks – ones that will not need a wash to extract soil or dirt – the younger and smaller the better.
Top and tail them and cook them in water in a pressure cooker for 35 minutes – or much longer if using a saucepan. Or you can steam them for 45 minutes.
Retaining the cooking water for soup, lift them out and place them between two plates or serving dishes of the same design and squeeze them until nearly all of the moisture has gone from them. The drained water may also be used for part of a soup.
Place the flattened leeks on serving plates and coat them with a strong vinaigrette.
Decorate with milled pepper, a sprinkling of paprika or a mint or sage leaf or two.
Another possibility is to cut up the leeks after they have been pressed. Put the bits in a serving dish and cover with vinaigrette. Decorate as you please.

Dieppe Retro Rally. France 2007

It had been a seven hour slog of a drive from windy and warm La Rochelle in the south to windy and cooler Dieppe in the north. But by mid-afternoon we were in our pleasant but now tiring hotel, the Aguado, and in a room that was not our usual one on the town side, but one facing the 20 acre green sward with the sea beyond.
On driving into this seaside town we had noticed several old motor cars parked or on the move. And from our room we could see more vintage cars beneath us. It was the weekend of the hundredth anniversary of the Dieppe Retro Rally. Cars made in the very early 1900s to around 1937 were to give a static display, driven around some of Normandy, and then take part in a concours d’élégance – right outside our window.
About 100 cars were taking part. One looked rather like a bedstead with engine bolted on to the front and, immediately fronting the driver amidships, an enormous radiator. There were the grand and powerful-looking racing Bentleys, the elegance of 1920s saloons, and on to baby Austins. Most were noticeable for the excessive noise emanating from a few large cylinders and the rattle of well-worn machinery. Drivers and passengers sat high and exposed.
The male drivers were inclined to be ruddy faced, well-heeled (obviously), well fed, and flat or Sherlock Holmes capped. Their ladies were well wrapped up, and had an excuse to wear long skirts and fancy hats tied down under the chin. The women sat upright and, being ladylike, and appendages of lesser importance than cars to the men, displayed an air of slight reluctance to be there at all.
We were able to inspect the cars, talk to the owners, admire the engines, the just-polished brasswork, and generally be amazed at how far motoring had progressed in such a short time.
After market day, when the Grand Rue had been crammed with vendors of most edible commodities, the street had been turned over to the old crocks. There we could compare makes and see the changing fashions of carriagework over the initial years of motoring. An enormous Avians Voisin saloon limousine, black and chrome, polished and with squared-off roofwork, epitomised an age where the few car owners could be very grand indeed.
Having once owned one of the original MGs, it was of especial interest to me to see if my actual car was there, but it wasn’t. Nor was there one that quite matched it. And our family car of earlier days, a bull nose Morris, was not there either. This car of ours had a dickey seat, and passengers would have to get out on to the road and add pushing power to get the car up steep hills.
It looked fun to dress as an Edwardian dandy or a Le Mans Bentley racing driver, but I well recall having to leave girl friends in the passenger seat while I had to adjust the engine of my MG, and get covered in oil in the process. And outside our hotel room, the crew of a motorised Edwardian barouche, dressed in their finery, had to disembark while seats were lifted out on to the road as the menfolk found the box of tools and attempted to get the thing going. Starting handles were in use, and more than one car driver needed the help of passers by for a push.
When all the rally contestants had lined up their cars on the pedestrian Grand Rue of yellow bricks on edge, a large white mat was placed under each car to catch any dripping oil. And nearly every one had left their oily mark behind when they had moved off.
Then came the concours d’élégance when all cars, drivers and passengers formed up on the grass to be judged as they passed a temporarily-erected stage on which a very vociferous Frenchman explained about, and commented on, the cars and their owners. After two and a half hours of it, many of the considerable throng of spectators had wandered off.
It had been a great occasion for owners, passengers and drivers. And many a spectator must have felt like having an old car and taking part. But old cars are a constant trouble, not to mention expense. And they leak oil.
We ate well in our favourite restaurants, bought garlic in the Saturday market, stacked up the car with wine from three sources, looked for and found an excellent Normandy cider in 1 ½ litre plastic bottles, and came home after a varied and most enjoyable holiday in our ten year old, small, Toyota 4x4, a car of the modern age that has never lost a beat and shows no sign of ever doing so. And it has never, ever, leaked a drop of oil.

La Rochelle. France 2007

Thanks to a newspaper article and Michelin’s Red Guide, we had an idea in advance of where we might stay in La Rochelle.
The drive north-west to the coast was uneventful. When we reached the outskirts of La Rochelle it was a depressing scene that met our eyes. But, as we entered the district of the old port, the signs that La Rochelle was a most civilised place became quite apparent.
One-way narrow streets and lack of street-side parking places made our search for the Hotel Saint Jean d’Acre a difficult one. But we not only found the hotel, but managed to obtain a room with a spectacular view over the two great medieval towers that once guarded the port’s entrance.
The towers were constructed between 1382 and 1390 and, as part of their defensive armoury, a chain was drawn across the narrow strip of water between them.
One tower flew the French flag, the other a white flag on which was a cross, outlined in blue and, in two of its quarters, in red, a man of war in full sail and a pile of cannonballs. Both flags were flying almost horizontally in the strong breeze – as they continued to do throughout our stay, it being the windy Atlantic (Bay of Biscay) coast.
Beneath our window was the Bistro des Pecheurs restaurant, where we ate superb fruits de mer at a modest price. On the spacious pavé between our hotel and the water wandered crowds of people in the sunshine. “Wander” was the operative word, for everyone, all over town, wandered - at a slow and gentle pace.
On the water in the port and between the two towers, boats of every description went busily about their business. There were tour boats that docked nearby and plied their trade between the inner, old, port to just outside the towers, to an enormous marina of large yachts, and to the islands off the coast, including the fashionable Isle de Ré. There were small fishing boats (though no commercial ones), yachts of every size, with some under sail, speedboats, dinghies, rubber boats, gin palaces and all. The skies were blue, the sun hot, and the strong wind balmy. We found that La Rochelle was a very pleasant place to be in.
Around the crenellated battlements of the towers, tourists held their cameras out at arm’s length to photograph those beneath. The background noise was a hum of conversation and the occasional ship’s hooter. Children climbed around an enormous iron anchor on the cobbled paving to which cyclists locked their machines. The young swung on an old chain, strung between low pillars. It could have been the original chain that was once stretched across to repel invaders as, at low tide, there was no sign of one on the seabed between the towers. The scene was one of holiday pleasure.
Well into and on the quayside of the old port stood a lighthouse, striped in reddy brown. Its bright white light flashed every three seconds (except at dusk when it stopped for a period). And inland still, stood a much taller lighthouse, a green one, the light on which flashed every second. These lighthouses looked quite out of place inland – but not from the sea, where they became guide lights for ships navigating the deep channel.
Very near to our hotel was a most excellent restaurant, called L’aunis. Here we ate very well and in pleasant surroundings, drinking the new season’s red Chinon wine from the Loire, red from the Vendée to the north of us, and Chardonnay from the Isle de Ré just nearby. It is a pleasure in France to try wines that seldom reach England.
Street entertainments abounded. There was the large, gaudily-painted, two-storied carousel (small children high on the upper, inner layer) near to the ornate and rather grand Café de la Paix in the Place Verdun. A pavement artist worked on too large a scale and not very well. A Balkan group, dressed in peasant clothes sang tuneful peasant songs (a male passer by danced a jig to their music, much to the disgust of his family who walked on, pretending to disown him). There were performing dogs, animals that looked bored and unhappy with their lot. A hurdy-gurdy man had a gypsy-looking woman singer with him. A juggler/part conjurer kept a selection of transparent balls in the air, but dropped some. A Mexican-looking trio sang to accordion music in front of those eating at tables outside restaurants. A silver-painted, military-looking human statue broke off his pose to talk to and be photographed with children. The act we liked was a potter who spun the wheel with his foot, turning out candlesticks, cups and saucers, jugs and much else, all to great applause from those who had stopped to watch. He then knocked down his creations to form the original lump of clay from which they had been made. From our room we could hear the applause for his skills continue well into the night. As we turned in around 11 o’clock the scene outside was as animated as it had been all day. But when I looked out at three in the morning there was not a soul to be seen. The pavé was spotless, chairs and tables had been stacked away, awnings and sun umbrellas had been furled, and all the empty bottles from restaurants had been put into large green crates for collection – presumably for recycling. By 8 am there was still no activity or anyone about outside, and there was little movement by 10 am. Activity stopped late in the evening and started late in the morning
Although French menus are fairly predictable, there are always parts that surprise. We ate at the fashionable Chez Fred to eat mixed fish that had been cooked dry and on a very hot surface. The result was delicately cooked fish with crisp, almost burnt edges where the fillets had curled and touched the hotplate.
But Nouvelle Cuisine has spread its net far and wide. A simple and excellent item of food might be surrounded by a sea of sweet sauce, or be displayed on the plate with a few slices of colourful raw vegetable. Often there will be a cold ratatouille mix, placed artistically somewhere on the plate. A sauce of a completely different taste might be dragged around for decoration. Then the entire plate might have some coloured powder sprinkled all over it. One item in Margreet’s mixed salad was offered as duck’s liver. It turned out to be gizzards – and was tender and good to eat. With Margreet not particularly liking offal, I told her later about what she had been eating. Snails that we ate in a restaurant had been cooked in the usual way, with butter, garlic and parsley. But these were better than most. A little acidity had been added – either lemon juice or vinegar.
Beyond a medieval lighthouse, that looked more like a cathedral from an ancient illuminated manuscript, we watched children being taught to sail. They were towed out into the harbour in their little single sail boats to learn the art of seamanship. When beaching their craft back at the sailing school’s hard, they were wet and cold, but very happy about it. No wonder the French are so keen on sailing and excel at ocean racing.
La Rochelle had turned out to be a handsome town, with arcaded pavements where shopkeepers plied their, mostly fashionable, trade. It was a town that had the feel of Paris about it, with its fine shopping, excellent market, grand and mature buildings, and fine restaurants. And more than Paris, there was the port with all the activity that went with it. We liked it so much that we extended our stay before leaving to drive north, in a day, to our home-town in France, Dieppe.

A Saint Emilion Wedding. France 2007

Map reading in France has its problems. Why, when we were quite clearly on a map-numbered road, should it have another number on its road signs?
It was explained to me that French roads have an EU number, a French national number and a local number. So that explained why I was having difficulty in guiding us around the country and countryside.
Early on a late August morning we left our Trôo cave behind and made our way south to the Bordeaux region.
From our host’s verbal description, we found the Skipwith farmhouse Gite south of Saint-Emilion in Entre-Deux-Mers (Le Cros, route de Sallebruneau, 33760, Frontenac) as, at long last, the weather was beginning to clear.
To be with a half English and half French family with bride-to-be and relations from both sides present was, in its grand scale simplicity, much like a relaxed week end party in England.
We admired the regimented rows of hedge-trimmed vines all around us and as far as the eye could see. We gathered pink greengages for a lunchtime tarte (delicious) and jam making. We drank cool local white wine and ate a light lunch beneath a tent-like sunshade.
After lunch we followed our host’s car through lanes along an impossibly circuitous route to where we were to stay – this time in a large pigsty, beautifully converted and without a trace of its former occupants. It had a shower outside and a separate lavatory that worked by pressing an electric button, whereupon the bowl filled with water, and then, with a downward spinning motion, sucked the contents to its destination with a mighty roar – not unlike those employed in ships.
The owners of our accommodation were a wine merchant, and his wife who was an elegant artist/carpenter, designing and making anything from fencing to wardrobes – mostly from seasoned oak. Her workshops took up a large part of their grand country farmhouse, a building that glowed in the southern sunshine with its yellow stone walls and pink tiled roof.
A generously-filled well supplied water for a swimming pool, set among trees and lawns. The overall theme was rustic/modern in a vineyard setting, and in such silence that one could hear only a morning cockerel, daytime woodpecker and distant chainsaw….and the lavatory. A friendly, mottled housedog patrolled his territory with much barking should anyone pass by who was unknown to him.
After exploring the nearest town, Sauveterre, with its medieval fortifications and gateways, we ate our only indifferent meal in France. We were partly accompanied during this meal by a band, whose members set up their equipment close to the tables before starting songs, but never finishing them.
And so we came to the wedding day – the very reason for our trip to France.
Our hostess at the farmhouse where we lodged, near Mauriac, gave us breakfast of coffee, a loaf straight from the oven, a slab of butter, and home-made jams. Then we changed into our finery and set off to explore Saint-Emilion (too full of tourists), some 50 kilometres away.
Beyond, in Montagne Saint-Emilion, we located the wedding church after enquiring directions from a lovely old peasant – a character straight out of some French Art film. We then found the very grand Château Fombrauge where the reception was to be held. Having noticed a pleasant-looking restaurant next to the church, we ate an excellent lunch there. Our red wine was the astoundingly good Château Maison Neuve 2004.
The service, in the mellow, brick-vaulted church, was pretty well inaudible because we were on seats at the rear among several fractious children.
Then pushing two guests into the back of our car – rather like pressing them down in a jack-in-a-box, we reached the Château, to be given Ayala Champagne, sipped to the music of a Spanish guitarist, and overlooking the panorama of the Château’s vineyards.
Then, after the speeches, punctuated by thunder overhead and a few large raindrops, some 150 of us retired to the marquee attached to the Château for a fine meal of lobster, quail and sweets - all accompanied by Château Tour Grand Faurie 1998 red wine, a white, and a sweet 2003 Château Tillac, Monbazillac.
Inside the Château, and seen through a glass door, rested row upon row of new wood casks in which wine was maturing. The floor of this almost unreal sight was unstained by a drop of the precious liquid.
Being my turn to drive, I was only able to taste the delicious and well-chosen wines. With father of the bride, Charlie Skipwith, a South West France specialist wine merchant, it was expected and confirmed that we should drink the best.
Throughout, the very pretty bride, Georgina, and handsome groom, Simon, made a glowing focus to all events.
A three piece band of jolly fellows provided pleasant evening music, and when, at my request, they played one of their own compositions (“My Heart has a Mind of its Own”), the guests stood to cheer them.
After fireworks, seen from the terrace and launched from the vines (I trust the spent gunpowder did not settle on the grapes still hanging heavy on the vines), we drove back to our lodgings in complete darkness, getting somewhat lost in unmarked lanes around the Saint-Emilion vineyards. It was a 50 km test of eyesight, nerve and endurance as we conducted the car through the circuitous roads of Entre-Deux-Mers. It must have been the Monbazillac on Margreet’s breath that scented the night air so pleasantly as we drove through the foreign night.
Guests returned the following day to Château Fombrauge for cold collation and what remained of the fine wine, which, no longer being the driver, I was able to enjoy to the full,
The wine merchant owner of our lodgings came to drink an aperitif with us as we sat outside our room that evening. We shared wines. His preference was for Château Ducla as his daily wine and Premius (available at Auchan, though we couldn’t find it in Dieppe) as his other preference. As the distributor of Yvon Mau wines in France, he should know a thing or two about what to choose.
Then, after enjoying the whole occasion of the English/French wedding so much, we were on our way to La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast to the north.

Troglodytes. France 2007

I have been caving once before. It was in Bulgaria. The cave was the size of a cathedral, with its climbing, descending, and crawling tracks slippery and dangerous.
The only pleasure that I found from this minor expedition was getting out of the cave in one piece to breathe real fresh air.
I suppose that there is pleasure to be gained from mucking about in caves, but it is not my idea of fun.
So why were Margreet and I about to spend two nights in a cave, with me being such an anti-troglodyte?
One reason was recommendation, the other that it was in the Loire, in France, and about half way between Dieppe and Frontenac, in Entre Deux Mers where our hosts lived, and Saint-Emilion where wedding celebrations were about to take place.
Up at 3.10 am to pack the car, we were away from the port of New Haven on England’s south coast by 5.15 am.
In the lea of chalk cliffs the sea was fairly calm as we set forth across the Channel toward Dieppe.
Out at sea we encountered large, white-topped rollers, coming from the direction of the North Sea. So the ship rose on the crests and sank into the troughs, corkscrewing just across them as we went. There was a crash and a shudder as we hit the wake of merchantmen crossing our bow.
In a cabin we were able to lie down and be rocked by the motion of the ship over waves. And, without the incessant Tannoy messages delivered to the public areas, we were able to enjoy the isolated and comparatively silent experience in spasmodic sleep.
It was wet in France as we slogged away, mostly on motorways, southwards to Rouen (where we got a bit lost), and then past Alençon and Le Mans.
Then, what looked on the map as a nice cross country drive through Loire countryside, turned out to be a landscape of rather ordinary forests and farmland.
To find our cave when we reached Trôo (pronounced Trow) was a matter of several askings and misunderstandings. But after conducting our car up a narrow cliffside track, which started with a No Entry sign, and past cliffside houses and steps to caves, we were greeted at the roadside by the owners of our Gite.
Our cave, with access steps cut into the sandstone cliff face, had its own front door, window and small balcony. The inside was impressive, with its multi-vaulted ceiling and undulating walls apparently hewn by ancients with deer antlers.
The cave however, had been re-modelled and modernised with stove, fireplace, crucifixed alcove, microwave, bath, shower and WC.
I could quite understand cave-dwelling, had I been dressed in bearskin, cudgel in hand, and dragging Margreet inside, safe from a dinosaur who might then peer through the entrance to see what was worth eating. But why go to so much trouble and expense, in a more comfortable age, to live inside a rather damp and dark cave? (Disney might see a theme park in it.)
Friends, from New Delhi, who had rented a nearby cave with reinforced concrete roof, had more comfort, and even television. So we drank together there before walking down the cliffside track to eat a meal off square plates (square plates now seem to go with Nouvelle, or Nouvellish Cuisine). The local Vin Gris had charm and the Loire’s red Chinon even more so.
As “trogs” do, Margreet and I climbed steps and goat tracks to see the cavities of others and the fine and simple Norman-arched church and fortifications at the summit above. In the church were proper wooden seats for the worthies and tiny protuberances on which the choristers could rest their bottoms.
At a rather charming restaurant hard by the church we drank local cider, and decided to return for lunch. The blackboards of dishes on offer looked inviting.
We were the first to arrive at the restaurant. No one appeared to greet us or offer a menu, but there were noises coming from the kitchen behind. Madame was there, cooking what appeared to be the only main dish available – the plat du jour of guineafowl.
She had only cooked four portions and a table for three had been booked in the restaurant.
We soon realised that we were not only the guests but the waiters as well, as Madame was rather large and too lame to do more than cook and hobble. The guineafowl was delicious. The other three had to share what remained in the pot. A chocolate cake, made by the Patronne, was quite superb. Lame and alone, she made up for the deficiencies by being a great cook. Because what she had prepared had now been ordered, people were turned away. We learned later that those who ate there in he evening had to stack away the chairs and tables when they had finished their meal. The experience was one of charm, gastronomic excellence, and friendly eccentricity.
Beside the rather damp atmosphere of our cave, there were particular smells attached to it. There was the pleasant one of wood smoke from past fires, the other was something more obscure and not very nice.
It was not until we were sitting outside on our cliff-shelf balcony that the origin of the other smell was revealed. In its own little cave, accessible only from our balcony, lived a black rabbit. Kept in by a metal grille, dark in its cave and of dark fur, the creature was visible only by its blinking eyes. Perhaps caves of the long past were as smelly as this rabbit’s.
In the evening our kind host and hostess came with local Vin Gris and bites, which we enjoyed, squeezed together on the balcony. After they had left we ate our picnic half way between the rabbit’s den and an alcove for its food, where mosquitoes lurked.
I must be in a minority with my views of modern trogloditism, for the visitors’ book was full of enthusiastic praise for the uniqueness of the experience – and unique it was.
A friendly dog, who liked to roam our accommodation and bit its fur with venom, scratching mightily, may, or may not, have been the provider of fleas that then befriended us.
We were now off to take part in the objective of our journey, a lovely wedding in Montagne Saint-Emilion.

Self-portrait James Page-Roberts

A Self-Portrait

My art sale records show that in 1955 I sold a self-portrait to my cousin (who later became a Knight/Professor) for £15.
His son inherited the painting and, because of his rather smart collection of smaller pieces of importance, kept it, unseen, in his basement.
After my considerable success at Christie’s Salerooms, when a same-year painting of Chelsea Football ground sold astronomically well, my relation wanted to show the painting to me and, should it be marketable, to a Christie’s representative.
So the two of us appeared on my cousin’s doorstep, to be offered coffee and a tour of his art works – of which several paintings and drawings were of great interest to both of us.
We were then invited to descend to the basement. And there, outside its frame and leaning on a wall behind a bedstead, was a very large painting, done by me, of me, in my studio in the Fulham Road during the years 1954-1955.
I depicted myself standing at an easel, scruffily dressed, palette in hand, and peering at, presumably, a large mirror with, behind me, a mural of Rubens’s Peace and War (an exercise that was suggested to me by Dick Lee, a teacher at the Camberwell School of Art).
The Rubens I can recall painting clearly, but I still have no recollection whatsoever of having executed the self-portrait.
The Christie’s 20th century painting expert thought that now collectors were at my door again, it should be sold by me directly, and not through a saleroom. A sum of £2,000 was mooted.
My cousin then suggested that he give me the painting as a present – a most generous offer that was immediately and most gratefully accepted.
A minor problem appeared almost immediately. How was I to get it home? And yet another problem emerged. Where might I hang it in a small house with every bit of wall space covered with an eclectic collection of art works – 45 in the stairwell alone?
Christie’s man returned to his work. I was taken to lunch.
On my return to where the self-portrait stood waiting in a hallway, I hailed a taxi. Well, the painting only just got through the door of the cab, but not the frame, which I then had to recover after reaching home by immediately hiring a minicab with a roof rack on it.
The painting was now back with its original owner, and framed, but only just, as the board on which it had been painted had shrunk slightly during the 31 years of its existence. And in the lower left corner of it, a hole, the size of a human bite, had been the meal of a mouse.
There was really only one position in which to hang the self-portrait, and that was where a huge, glazed oil-on-paper painting of an Icknield Way landscape of pine trees on a ridge at sunset, held sway.
So what should I do with the old (only 31 years) picture to make way for the new acquisition (53 years old)?
At home we eat and entertain friends at a close-by Thai restaurant (The 101) that has almost become our second dining room – and it had wall space.
So I went to see the boss with a photograph of my proposed loan. He seemed to like the idea.
So my son, Pete, and I carried the very heavy painting around to the restaurant (with several stops for rest on the way) and hung it. The already eastern-looking subject looked just right for its new temporary home.
I backed the mouse hole and a slight break in the board with buckram and glue. Now, with hole filled and corner reinforced, it was just a matter of applying paint once more – the very same paint that I had ground myself, the same kind of medium, and using the very same brushes that had been used 53 years before.
I didn’t think too kindly of that long-dead mouse, but at least, in a mouse’s way, it had enjoyed my self-depiction.

A double dish with chick peas

This double dish is best simplified by using chicken stock made from a cube. However, for those of us who like to use a whole chicken by having a large one halved by the butcher and using half for roasting and the other half for curries, stews and stock, the stew part of this recipe would have had chicken meat added and the dish made with real chicken stock. I would not be without a pressure cooker for such preliminaries, although it is not necessary, but economical and less strain on your economy and the country’s resources. But forget all that. Let’s make it simple.

BEEF - CHICK PEA AND MEAT BALL STEW (plus a prawn dish)

You will need:
Dried chick peas (canned will do)
Meatballs (see below)
Carrots
Onions
Stock
Pepper and salt

Prawns and garlic for the following dish

Soak dried chick peas overnight, or overnight and much of the day.
Make meatballs by mixing together minced beef, flour, beaten egg, breadcrumbs, pepper, salt and the seasoning of one dried herb, then forming this into balls and frying them for a while until brown all over. Keep handy. (You might make more than wanted for this dish, freezing some for spaghetti and meatballs at a later date.)
Cook the soaked chickpeas in chicken stock (to just cover) in the pressure cooker for 35 minutes, or for much longer in the ordinary way. Keep some of the cooked chickpeas aside for a dish on the following day, extracting them from the liquid and coating them in olive oil to prevent them from drying out. (Treat the canned chickpeas for the extra dish with oil in the same way.)
To the cooked chick peas add chopped onion (best fried first), chopped carrot and the meat balls. Add stock to form a thicker or thinner stew as desired. Cook this slowly for about half an hour.
Test for seasoning and serve, possibly garnishing it with chopped coriander or parsley.

For the following dish put the oil-coated chick peas in a frying pan with more olive oil, pressed garlic, pepper, salt, and prawns. If these prawns have been frozen, first allow them to thaw out and discard the liquid that they will have given off.
Fry the contents of the pan until the prawns have been well heated through.
Test again for seasoning, possibly garnish with chopped coriander or parsley, and serve.
Note: The advantage of using dried chick peas is that they are so cheap to buy and easy to store (buy from an Indian shop). But they must be soaked overnight or more. The longer that they have been stored in their dry state (like all dried bens), the longer they will need to be soaked.

*****

Note: I have found that some frozen peas added shortly before the completion of my delicious and simple CHICKEN AND LEMON RICE recipe improves the look and probably taste.

*****

Rock Music

Rock Music

My youngest son, Peter Page-Roberts, is a musician. He is a guitarist and composer. His oeuvre consists of beautiful instrumental music and cutting-edge songs that comment on life and society. But for a while now his musical interests have been directed to Rock music.
Being a musician with free-ranging musical interests does not go far to help him pay the rent. So his day job starts very early in the morning, and ends in time for him to devote the remaining hours of the day and evening to playing his several stringed instruments and composing. This, with modern technology, means that he can play everything that a band plays, sing, and put it all together as if many musicians (with his own mind) were involved. Thus, he chooses to be a postman/musician.
In bands, Pete is the bass player.
The latest group that he is part of is called NEON DIAMOND, and they play mainly in the peripheral districts of London. So, although we would like to see them perform, Margreet and I find ourselves unable to cope with the late nights and difficult travel arrangements, especially to and from the often rougher parts of the capital.
But an 8.30 pm, one evening in July 2007, a Neon Diamond gig came up at the PURPLE TURTLE on a direct bus route from where we live. So off we went (with me making fatuous remarks about needing ear plugs) to the venue at Mornington Crescent, near Camden in north/north east London.
We had arrived early on purpose to be able to eat in that part of town – choosing a very busy pub with food on offer.
The beer was good, the red wine indifferent, and the food, after a ¾ of an hour wait, so bad that it bordered on disgusting. It was the kind of English grub that I was under the impression had disappeared from the scene some 20 to 30 years ago.
Outside the venue we could just hear that the first of three bands were in action.
Once through the first of two glass doors I paid the very modest entry fee, with a pound knocked off because of our presenting a promotion flyer. But already, because of the noise, I was unable to hear all of the entry transaction. So that most of it was conducted in sign language.
Inside the second door we were hit by the full blast from drummer, guitarists and singer at full belt and maximum volume. It was deafening, but exciting.
The stage, floor, bar, sound and light control cabin, and anti-chamber with pin ball machine, was a dark and cosy delight, lit by coloured spotlights, and conducive to music, drink and friendship.
We were already enjoying ourselves as we ordered drinks with shouting and sign language, and by offering a handful of money from which the barmaid extracted the correct amount.
The band concluded their performance to applause that sounded as nothing in comparison with the noise that they had just been producing.
The musicians disconnected their instruments from the electronics, packed away their kit slowly, and were either on their way or staying to become audience.
Rock is clearly sideline music. These were top groups. But their audience was made up mainly of their devoted followers and other Rock musicians. Most of the coming and going audience seemed to either know each other or were aware of each other’s musical reputation. Relationships were friendly ones. There was considerable camaraderie evident.
The audience and players were made up of real characters – each worth more than a glance.
The older, middle-aged ones were men with portly bellies, wearing short trousers, and with long hair, beards and pale faces – old rockers. They looked a bit as though they had just dismounted from their Harley-Davidsons before coming in to lap up the music.
Girls tended to be striking, slim and dressed as Goths, clad in black, and sometimes with the adornment of jangly, flashing and studded bits.
Two of the girls were notable. One, a tiny waif of stick-thin femininity with red top and torn jeans, stood throughout on the centre of the floor, motionless, with a pint of beer in her hands, transfixed by the bands and their music.
The other, with long blonde hair, and dressed in what remained of a pair of jeans, and wearing a jacket with copious additions that caught and reflected the coloured lights, which flashed as she moved, seemed to act quite normally between the spates of music. But as the bands blared forth, she was overtaken by some internal dervish, throwing herself into convulsions, twisting and tossing her head and hair in abandonment, and prancing about the floor (later in a diaphanous pink top), high kicking like some Austrian performing horse.
There was a gap in time before the Neon Diamond group was to perform. So the members of the band went about their pre-music chores, plugging in and tuning up – all to the loud, recorded music, controlled by the man in the black control booth.
The players positioned a supply of liquid refreshment where it could be reached easily between “songs”. Then they formed up and were off.
Mark Thorn, the lead vocalist and front man, with or without guitar in hand, belted out voice and music, accompanied by much jumping and stamping. He was impressive.
The lead guitarist, Lenny Stella, from Italy, played in his own self-contained, enveloping cocoon at the side of the stage, sometimes shirted and sometimes shirtless, and occasionally playing the guitar with his teeth. He was an act in itself, and always worth watching – and probably listened to as well, if I could only have separated the sounds one from the other.
The drummer, another Mark, wore a hat throughout (real hair underneath) as he crashed away enough to wake the dead.
And bass guitarist, Big Pete, tall, willowy, elegant and much tattooed (the only member with shortish hair) stood almost still in comparison with the others as he played his guitar, legs akimbo - the cool one.
So they performed their numbers at maximum volume and velocity, to the highest number of spectators, until the conclusion, with clapping, cheers and whistles (Margreet having the loudest one). (She was later to be dubbed “The Rock and Roll Mum.)
Then the band disconnected their instruments to make way for the next group. Margreet and I were then able to meet with the Neon Diamond crew for a drink – though I only wish I could have heard what they had to say above the general din. What was uncanny was that they seemed to all be able to understand what each was saying, when, to me, the voices were completely lost.
We left, partly deafened, to say goodbye to those inside, and others, dragging on their cigarettes, outside on the pavement.
Except for hearing my voice bouncing around inside my eardrums throughout the following day, I could easily become hooked on Rock music – a sort of musical violence in a friendly atmosphere.
Perhaps I should grow my hair long, study with a dervish, wear a pink diaphanous blouse, and take dancing lessons from a prancing horse in Austria.

Sweet Tooth

This recipe is an alternative to the usual choice for those with a sweet tooth

TO FILL A SWEET TOOTH

You will need certain items from the following:
Whole rolled oats, porridge will just do (raw and uncooked)
Sultanas
Malted milk powder, like Horlicks
Cocoa powder
Honey
Marmalade or jam
Liquid in the form of milk, cream, yoghurt or fruit juice
Chocolate shot or chocolate chips

Some of us like to finish a meal with some sweet food. And sugary sweetness means fattening. And fattening is meant to be a bad thing.
So perhaps end a meal with fruit (sugar) or cheese (fat). All right, fruit is good for you, as is cheese.
Chocolate, or chocolates, fit the bill for that sweet tooth. Chocolate is meant to be good for you, but it is usually combined with sugar, milk, and that sweet gooey stuff in the middle of Belgian chocolates. So chocolates, although just a possibility, are fattening and expensive. Chocolate shot or chips are just passable.
But there is a real alternative – one that I enjoy if something sweet is not readily available. And it is relatively healthy.
The basis of this concoction is rolled oats – whole rolled oats. These, we are often told, are wonderful for your health and wellbeing. Good.
Put some in a bowl.
Now add sultanas. These will provide sweetness and fruit. They are, after all, just dried seedless grapes. And they are convenient to handle, and terrific value.
The next step is to add some Horlicks, or other malted milk powder. One has the feeling that this is a wholesome product, as it is meant to nourish the body and aid sleep. It will help the final mixture to coalesce. If adding cocoa powder, use only a very little. It will dry up the mixture.
You could now add some crushed nuts if you feel like it and if they do not prevent your body from functioning properly. I tend to skip them. Peanut butter is very fattening.
You might like to add another texture to the mix – like crumbled digestive biscuits or Scottish oatcakes. I don’t.
Stir the mix together.
Whatever you have chosen to add – and up to now it has been pretty healthy stuff – the mixture will need moisture.
A little runny honey won’t supply much liquid but will add health and sweetness. Don’t over do it. Much the same can be said for marmalade, which adds sugar and orange. Jam will also add sugar and fruit.
Yoghurt is an ideal semi-liquid, offsetting the sweetness of the sultanas. Stir it in to form a sort of paste.
Fruit juices, concentrated or otherwise, are other liquid possibilities. Milk is another.
Cream may well be the tastiest addition – though only for those unconcerned with their weight.
The result of all this will be a bowl of sweetish goodness, preferably in a sticky form that lends itself to consumption by spoon.
Now your sweet tooth will have been satisfied, leaving your health-consciousness happy or, at least, reasonably at ease.
There is scope here for your imagination. But start with just raw oats, Horlicks, sultanas, and yoghurt or cream.

Robins and Bumblebees

It took quite a bit of time to train our lady robin to come into our garden shed to eat morsels of Cheddar cheese from my knee. It became her habit to do so – so much so that when we put cheese on Margreet’s knee she declined it. But she did sometimes just sit on Margreet’s knee for a few minutes, so that they could look at each other in friendship.
When her mate re-appeared at the breeding season, having spent the latter part of the summer and the whole of the winter away, they built a nest in the camouflaged robin box that is screwed to the back of our house in London.
When the young had hatched out and were hungry, he would join her in taking cheese from my knee and crumbled oatcake from the floor beneath. With a bit of gout or something in one leg she would sometimes need a rest, and perch somewhere in the shed next to us, on some books or the back of a chair.
We never, ever, get tired of seeing or feeling these charming little creatures taking our presence for granted.
Two days ago we either saw a new robin appear or one of our old friends acting very strangely. It was the former.
This new robin looked and acted quite differently from the others, He was leaner, faster, stood more upright, stretched and moved his head around quicker.
He had clearly watched the resident pair of birds come into the shed for food. So why not him? Why be slowly trained like the others? Grab the opportunity. Grab the food.
He flew to the doorway and hovered there, like a hummingbird. Then he retreated, and came again to hover. After several attempts he dashed in from his hovering approach and grabbed cheese. This he took away, presumably to feed young. We rather took to him.
Unlike our regulars, who had learned to eat from my knee, the new one would take cheese from Margreet’s knee just as readily – after the hovering and deciding.
Today our Mr. Robin re-appeared, and the newcomer was chased away in no uncertain terms, though they never came to blows.
But even having been chased away, the interloper is back – dashing in after his hovering trick to smash and grab.
What will happen next?
What did happen next took us quite by surprise. And it took us a little time to realise what was happening. Hoverbird, though still chased off on occasion, started to take cheese bits from us in the shed to feed them to the second brood of robin chicks in our nest box. So our new young were being fed by both parents - and hoverbird.


I was writing in the garden shed when a very big bumblebee flew in, making that lovely loud noise that large bumblebees do in flight.
I wondered if I shouldn’t chase him out, so that he could find real bumblebee food outside among nectar-producing flowers. But I didn’t.
This fellow (or plump lady) stayed for a few minutes, buzzing around beneath the two chairs and around a trug of garden twine and labels, etc. Eventually he left. And all was silent once more.
Then he came back again. What could he possibly find to eat in a dry old garden shed?
So I moved, and bent down to watch. And he was running around – running, and quickly.
Who ever heard of a running bumblebee? Usually we see them gathering nectar from flowers, such as the trumpets of foxgloves (where they fall out backwards like drunken sailors). What he was after was anyone’s guess – but running?
Whatever next? Running bumblebee races?

A new Matthew Smith

It has always been my opinion that the artist Matthew Smith was our greatest 20th century colourist. He was also well known as a painter and enjoyer of luscious nude ladies.
Not long after the war I bought a delightful little painting of his from Freddy Mayor, of the Mayor Gallery. It cost me just over £100 – a large sum in those days. I treasured it.
At a dinner party, given by Anna de Goguel, I found myself to be a fellow guest with the great artist – surprisingly for his female subjects and virile reputation, a frail, bony, pale man. I told him about my painting. He wanted to see it.
So I made my excuses to my hostess and rushed back to my two small council rooms to unhook my treasure from the wall and carry it back to the party.
Matthew Smith was delighted to see it again. He told me that in the 1930s he had painted it in the South of France as a study for a much larger painting. This he did, but no longer knew where it was, or even if it existed.
He told me that he got into some kind of bother (I later heard that it was to do with the Customs) and that the Consul in Nice, one William Ashcroft (the brother of Peggy Ashcroft, the actress), had helped him resolve the matter. In gratitude he had given Ashcroft my painting as a token of thanks.
The painting always had pride of place in my houses, and hung sometimes in the lavatory.
When living in Tangley in the 1980s I very foolishly had the painting valued. And its value was so high that I enquired of my insurers if I might insure it. The answer was that of course they would cover it – for a price and the understanding that I would have to add a burglar alarm to my house, with all the extra precautions of locks everywhere.
It was my habit to keep an open house, with it unlocked and open to friends at all times, except at night time. So I decided not to insure it.
Now, when I was working or relaxing in the garden well away from the house, I started to feel uneasy about the safety of my little painting. So I took it back to the Mayor Gallery for safekeeping.
About that time my marriage came to an end and I parted with the painting as part of the division of jointly held artefacts. I believe it was sold right away, and for a considerable sum.
I have somehow missed that painting more than any other with which I have had to part, and that includes a Rodin, several Burras, a large Paul Nash, a Wadsworth and many others – all going in my bachelor years when the bank manager demanded it.
So when a little Matthew Smith pastel came up for sale at Christie’s, with a reserve at under a thousand pounds, Margreet and I put in a bid for it. The small work on torn paper went for four thousand.
I was rather upset by this, as we had rather set our hearts on getting it. So, to assuage my longing, I bought some pastels (for the first time in my life) and did four little pieces as homage to the great artist. Although I did them in my own way, I used the still life ingredients used by Matthew Smith. To be sure that there would never be confusion, I wrote on them boldly: “Homage to Matthew Smith” and stamped them with my studio stamp. One of them I hung on the wall. I had my pastiche. I was happy.
In a Christie’s catalogue of a sale, when one of my own paintings was on offer, there was a very interesting illustration of a Matthew Smith for sale. We went to see it and were both very impressed. Margreet wanted to buy it so that we could both enjoy its surprisingly light colouring and very Matthew Smith lines. Its title was “Flowers in a Vase”. She took advice from James Gould, the expert there on British 20th century art, and placed a bid.
We went to the auction, knowing how high was her offer, and it was knocked down to her at a much lower price than she had expected. She paid, it was wrapped, and hanging on our wall no more than an hour after the auction.
The artist left the bulk of his unsold work to Mary Keane, who donated the collection to the City of London, with a permanent exhibition at the Barbican Centre. We met her daughter, Alice Keane, at the gallery where Matthew Smith exhibited, then called Rowland, Browse and Delbanco. We already had the Alice Keane excellent biography of the artist. I asked if she would like to see the three drawings in my possession, which she would, but never came.
It occurred to me that in looking at the three books I had on the artist’s life and work, that there might be a clue as to when our pastel was done and where. And there, in Alice’s biography, were three illustrations that absolutely matched our pastel. So not only did we now have the new acquisition, but we also knew that John Russell (the great art critic of the day) and Vera Barry (who he later married) had taken Matthew Smith with them to a house that, in 1956, they had rented in Villeneuve les Avignons, in the South of France. Matthew Smith was nearing the end of his life and not well, so was disinclined to create as much as his host and hostess had wished. But he did produce some work from a room with a balcony overlooking a landscape with water. We had acquired one of those pastels.
When I told the Christie’s man what I had discovered, he told me that had this information been known before the sale, the work would have sold for another two thousand pounds.

Paris May 2007

The riots outside our hotel at the Gare du Nord had just been quelled by a ferocious police force. So all was quiet when we arrived for a short stay in Paris with nothing in mind to do except try two restaurants that I had not visited for some 30 years or more.
Even had there been a riot it would have been far below us as we looked from our hotel room across to the splendid Victorian/classical façade of the station, down to newly-formed springtime leaves on plane trees and, not too far away in the distance, the monstrous and unmissable structure of Sacré Coeur atop its hill.
We ate well at the 1925 below and, after a rest, surveyed Paris as it should be – a spectacular view, warm spring sunshine flowing into our room, and with a bellyful of good food and wine.
The district that we were in could hardly be called salubrious. Cosmopolitan would be nearer the mark. So we sat at a local bar for our evening aperitif – watching the passing scene. In a count of about 100 people to pass by, about two thirds were white, one visibly Muslim woman (the men around us were drinking only coffee), one dog and, surprisingly, one cat (on its master’s shoulder and taken for a walk).
Café-sitting in France is an absolute delight – to those of us who like to look at people, their characters, shapes, clothes and manner.
Our café had a palm tree in a pot between its customers and the passers-by. Its fronds encroached on the pavement space. So people either had to duck down as they walked by, or were brushed in the face as they went. A blind man, who walked with a long white stick, and at considerable speed, crashed into a hoarding on the pavement. He made no fuss of it whatsoever and continued as if nothing untoward had occurred.
After our count of people, the dog and one cat, a gang of scruffs passed by, each with a strong dog on a lead. Begging brought them nothing, as people, presumably, thought that if they were able to keep dogs in good condition they must be quite capable of looking after themselves.
Our new addition of the Michelin Red Guide told of two good places to eat quite nearby. So we aimed for one of them – Chez Casimir (the other, Chez Michel, was almost next door). We ate well there, with me choosing the kind of peasant food that we can only cook at home, and usually needing half a pig’s head to do so. An interesting cookery idea for me was that my pig’s cheek came to the table with pearl barley in a sauce as the surrounding vegetable. It made a very nice change from the usual Puy lentils.
We concluded that the food was of a higher standard than our favourite 1925 beneath the hotel – close by, and cheaper.
We expect nocturnal noise where we stay, but our first night was more disturbed than usual. A man, in a most resonant part of the Gare’s concourse beneath us, shouted at the top of his considerable voice non-stop from around midnight until 2 in the morning, when, presumably he either went to sleep or was bonked on the head. One would think it impossible to shout without using a semblance of words. But he did.
Then poor Margreet had to put up with me rising every half an hour of the night to visit the lavatory. As the bathroom door was a squeaky one, I was able to oil the hinges from a small oilcan that I carry to France for just that purpose.
After recovery and coffee the next morning, we set out for the Flea Market at Porte Clignancourt. But despite arriving at 10.30, there were few stalls open for business. So we headed for the Grands Boulevards Metro Station to wander around the adjoining quartier of small eating places, hotels and the Follies Bergères.
The real reason for aiming at this particular district was that in it is my personal favourite restaurant in Paris – Chartier. Its enormous eating hall, left over from La Belle Epoque, its character waiters, its unchanged menu, the proximity of diners (usually sharing a table), and the whole system of delivering the food from kitchen to customer via a concierge who records every item, is, to me just magic. And it is also one of the cheapest places in which we eat.
Then, exhausted after our disturbed night, it was back to our hotel for Margreet to read her holiday collection of women’s magazines, that focus on celebrities, sex lives, fashion, make-up, and how to deal with men. Did you know that to flush the lavatory without the lid down may spread germs?
With our bodies now quite unable to consume more food, we were sitting outside a café for an aperitif (with no meal in mind) when a large spot of rain fell on to the pavement. We had only just reached our hotel entrance when the heavens opened. Which all made for a splendid spectacle from the dry part of our room’s balcony. I had hoped to see lightning strike Sacré Coeur, but the storm was made up of more noise than flash.
A picnic of bread and fresh goat cheese in our room was as much food as we could manage. Unless one’s stomach is in practise to cope with a lot of food, it can not cope (in our case) with two good meals a day. So we find that a hearty French lunch is about as much as we can manage.
Many years ago I ate at Allard with a rather sophisticated girl friend. The wine we ordered was slightly piqué. She sent it back, which rather upset the staff, who said that if we didn’t like it they would drink the wine themselves. I never returned to eat there. Well, this time we went back. And I was sure that after some 30 years they would not recognise me. The house Burgundy was excellent, the food delicious, and the waiting most professional in that old-fashioned way at which the French excel. Naturally, I was not recognised.
It was an afternoon for seeing parts of Paris new to us. We took the No. 2 Metro line from end to end, stopping off at the Parc Monceau, where, on the 5th of May, the foxgloves were in full and glorious bloom.
Around the park stand some of the most select houses and apartments in Paris. So when we went to a café for liquid sustenance, the decoration, staff and clientele were exactly right for the quartier – smart and expensive. We had noticed already that people waiting at Metro stations were surprisingly representative of their area.
The termini of the line were both rather too dull in which to spend time. But we had passed the Saint Martin Canal, so that is where we alighted on our return to its nearest Metro stop. I had heard that the shops, restaurants and accommodation beside the canal were becoming fashionable. But at Jaurès this was not so, it being rather dull thereabouts. But as we walked around investigating, we passed a crowd of clochards sheltering from the elements beneath a secluded colonnade, where a white woman was in bed with a black man and with their companions around them happily imbibing or smoking whatever was available. We had already been surprised (as one probably always is) by the number of vagrants sleeping rough in the streets of Paris. Beneath the colonnade it was touts comforts.
After a light dinner of an omelette we retired to our own bed, having eaten or drunk in seven different venues during the day.
Our tastes in Paris are diverse and flexible, as is illustrated by our final day’s activities. We ate Sunday lunch
at the Brasserie Lipp (the other place where I had not eaten for years). This was eating at the top of the scale, illustrated by our four neighbours, who were discussing the world’s music industry, and how they might change it to make a profit. Then, as we waited for the time of our departure by Eurostar from the Gare du Nord, we drank rather tasteless Turkish beer on the pavement seats of a kebab shop. Here, a man, eating alone and next to us, was asked for a cigarette by a passer-by. The scrounger was offered a bag, from which he took tobacco and a cigarette paper and rolled his own on the spot. It was as if both taker and giver expected it. And having rolled the cigarette, of course he needed a light.
On our return to Waterloo Station we took a taxi home. The cab of this vehicle was even more untidy than the colonnaded quarters we had seen in Paris (no room for a bed). And the driver was as scruffy as any clochard – and probably less civil.