Frost

 Now it really feels like winter.

Here in the Lot et Garonne, it's getting down to minus six degrees at night and not getting much above five or six during the day.

A freezing fog blankets everything and the sun struggles to break through.

But break through it did ... today.

A pale-blue sky made a perfect backdrop to the ice covered leaf-tips of pines, frosted as if with icing sugar.

Particles of ice fell like snow from the branches, coating the ground in patches of white, not yielding to the weak sun, not melting.

Inside, it's time to use home-grown potatoes and leeks ... to make a warming, winter soup.

With the wood-burner going at full tilt, we are happy to stay indoors. 

NYE gourmet marathon

 

We were invited to the town of Jouy-en-Josas, near Versailles, to experience a typical French New Year's Eve party.

It was held in a large, well-equipped room at the friends of our friends.

We were told to prepare ourselves for a gourmet marathon.

But nothing we did, including an afternoon nap, could prepare us for what was in store.

Françis, Micheline, Cliona and I took the Rapid Antigen Test an hour before we departed. A negative result was a condition of attending the party.

We didn't arrive til 9.30pm.

Aperos, hors d'ouevres and lively conversation followed ... until midnight.

Then it was à table!

Out came the seafood ... oysters (Pacific and native), prawns, langoustines, huge crab claws and sea snails.

Then came foie gras, steak and potatoes, salad, cheese and dessert.

All this was washed down with copious quantities of excellent French wine.

And there was dancing and karioke. 

We got home at 7am ... exhausted.

I'd never been up this late in my entire life ... neither had Cliona. But wait! There was more! We fronted up the next day to continue this Bacchalian extravagance.

After seafood and snails, we were treated to a gorgeous cassoulet, over which the President of the Ile de France Rugby Association had slaved for four hours.

I complemented Arnaud on his delicious dish and tried to enveigle him into giving me first dibs at tickets to the upcoming World Cup. But alas, the wily old codger was having none of it!

Uncle Frank's Pipe

 

The other day I received a present in the mail from my sister Susan.

She had forewarned me of its arrival, saying it was an unusual gift.

It arrived about a week after my birthday and I opened it with much anticipation.

As I removed the wrapping, I saw that it was a pipe, an old-fashioned tobacco pipe.

Before I read my sister's card that accompanied the gift, I guessed who it must have belonged to.

Her card confirmed that it belonged to Uncle Frank, after whose house in Chinchilla, Queensland, I had named this house in France.

My sister recently travelled to Chinchilla and took these photos. The house itself is much changed from how I remembered it and is under different ownership since Frank's death in 1982. 

The nameplate, Ellesmere, is now in the Chinchilla museum.

I was thrilled to get this marvellous memento of a man I much admired.

I examined it thoroughly, turning it over in my hands and fingering its curved stem. 

I smelled the bowl. 

Could I detect the lingering odour of pipe-tobacco, after all these years? 

Or was it my imagination? 

After all, it would have been 40 years since Frank took his last smoke of this pipe.

I had no idea how my sister had come into possession of Frank's pipe, but seeing it triggered many memories.

Like that of Frank sitting at a table on the verandah of Aunty Viv's place in Eumundi, Queensland. 

A land surveyor by profession, he'd be pouring over one of his detailed maps, pipe in mouth.

I can see him tapping the dregs of the bowl into an ashtray.

And then he'd reload his pipe with long, gnarly fingers, extracting a quantity of tobacco from a pouch and pushing it down into the bowl with his forefinger.

There'd be the whoosh of a lighting match, which he held over the bowl. Then he'd draw on the mouthpiece, with long puffs, and extinguish the match with a flick of the wrist.

Absorbed in his work, a look of calm concentration would came over Frank's face. His eyes squinted slightly with the up-drifting smoke. 

The odour of aromatic tobacco would make its way into my nostrils. 

Oh how I loved that smell!

Frank's pipe was a calabash style, not dissimilar to the one smoked by Sherlock Holmes.

I am absolutely thrilled now to own this rare treasure, it evokes such wonderful memories. 

It takes me back to my boyhood and brings the image of Uncle Frank before my mind's eye. 

I found an attractive, cross-sliced piece of timber, framed by segmented bark. I sanded, oiled and polished it to form a mounting for the pipe.

It is positioned beside the fireplace. A fitting location.

Frank's old pipe now takes pride of place in Ellesmere. I feel like it has returned home.

Mornings and Evenings

In the winter, we often see the morning mist, low in the valley.

It heralds a fine day and soon disappears before the rising sun.

Then, in the early evening ... a full moon ascends, majestically, a milk-white disc against an indigo sky.

I take a shot through the spikey branches of the Lebanese Cedar.

Paris

 We were strolling along the street in the fifth arrondissement when we saw a building that said ...

the poet Verlaine died here and Earnest Hemmingway lived here

I was quite surprised and delighted by this discovery, because one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs ... You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go ... contains these lines:

situations have ended sad, relationships have all been bad, mine have been like Verlaine and Rimbaud's ... 

We went shopping in Galeries Lafayette. Carolynn and Cliona went into one of the stores and Hedley and I went into the basement of another.

If the love of food is a religion, then this was the Heaven that awaits all good gourmands.

Later, hungry, we went looking for a good but inexpensive restaurant and discovered Casa Cosa.

Compared with les grandes brasseries, it was an unprepossessing eatery, but we entered on a hunch.

It was a good hunch.

The place was warm., the staff inviting and the food excellent.

It was a great find and one we will remember whenever we return to Paris.

Later that night, we joined the throng in the Montmartre version of that Parisian iconic eatery Boullion Chartier.

 

It was heaving ... and we were prescient to get there early.  As we were leaving, a large crowd had spilled onto the street in a long queue.

It'd been more than three years since our last trip to Paris.

I certainly hope it won't be three years before our next one. 

Five Years

Today, it is exactly five years since we arrived in France.

It was the start of our new life.

To quote Goethe, "Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid".

We were bold and France did the rest.

There are no regrets .... just reassurance.

On that day, five years ago, we set off on a great adventure.

We left our children and grand-children behind in Adelaide ... but they wished us well.

Since then we have experienced France in all its moods, shades and nuances.

Like all newcomers, we encountered frustrating, bureaucratic complexity,  but got through it all .... and learnt patience.

We have always been assisted by acts of  generosity and selfless friendship, from the French and fellow expatriates.

We found a magnificent property at an affordable price and it is our continuing joy to live here.

We are happy ... 

Tomorrow we head off to Paris to meet our good friends and share the excitement and pleasures of this great city.

France has been everything I'd ever hoped for.

It has its faults, of course, but these pale against the joie de vivre we encounter everywhere.

Autumnal Colours

 

The regular morning mist lifts and the sun, revealed, moves on its low trajectory across the southern sky.

There is much less heat, but there is a brightness and a soft clarity of light which illuminates the garden.

Many flowers and shrubs have preformed their annual disappearing act, or have been pruned.

But some are refusing to yield to the austerity of winter.

Walking around the garden, diminished in its scope and vibrancy, I find joy in these hardy blooms, these last flowers of the year.

The colours of autumn, from top to bottom ... salvia, wild cyclamen, maple, rose and heather.