Ten days in France, now back home again

Illats, SW France

Not so long ago, I reported that I had finally finished ‘My Hemingway bollocks’, officially ‘The Hemingway enigma’, and that at present not having anything to get on with and thus be able to stick to what had become my routine of writing for four or five hours every afternoon, I would do a little writing about whatever occurred to me every day, just to keep my hand in.

Well, one of the cliches with which we are all acquainted is ‘the road to Hell is paved with good intentions’, and so I’ve discovered: I’ve got fuck-all writing done as in ‘fuck-all keeping my had in’.

I did start what was to be an entry for this blog – where all the other ‘daily writing’ was to be placed – but after about 30 minutes of totally inconsequential scribbling (that is, tapping away on my laptop keyboard) I realised just how tediously dull what I had so far written was and that I was thoroughly bored with it.

As it is a universal truth that ‘if the writer is bored with what she or he has written, you can bet the reader was doubly bored and had long given up’, I junked what I had.

By the way, have any of you read – or, better, attempted to read – ‘a classic’ and become so utterly uninterested that you would to anything else just for a good excuse to stop reading? Yet all the time there lurks in the back of 

your mind the admonition ‘don’t be such a hopeless, dumb and simple sod – this is “a classic” and although you think it is as dull as ditchwater, that is your fault, sonny. Get on with it’.

You do, however, throw in the towel, and such a spineless capitulation is inevitably followed by hours and often days of guilt when you castigate yourself for being that hopeless, dumb and simple sod who doesn’t even have the wherewithal to ‘read a classic’.

Along those lines, though, I have to add that there are some classics which have I haver read (or am reading) and which do repay that effort. One such is George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I’d already over the years read several of her, shorter, novels and I like her slightly ironic take on most things.

‘Oh’, write all the bods ‘passionate about literature’, ‘but you must, must, must read Middlemarch! It’s probably the best English novel ever written!’ And they thereby confirm that shameless hyperbole is not restricted to ads for Hollywood films and weekend book section reviews. In the latter my favourite piece of bollocks is when a novel is described as ‘an important new work from . . .’.

To cut a long story a short, I have written fuck all of anything since I completed My Hemingway bollocks, not even a shopping list (although I have not doubt at all it would have been a rattling good shopping list). Well, at least now I am.

. . .

I am on my way back to rainy, cold and miserable North Cornwall from rainy, not quite as cold but just as miserable, south-west France where I have been keeping my aunt company. She turned 93 a few weeks ago and her husband died several years ago and lives on her own in a rather large, in part a little decrepit house where the wiring is the very definition of ‘death trap’.

She is now quite infirm, although she can very slowly get about with a zimmer frame, but does so only when necessary.

Our routine has been very simple: I appear downstairs at 10am where she has just finished her breakfast and I drink a bowl or two of milky coffee. In recent years she has taken to eating ready-made meals from the supermarket, so for the past ten days I have cooked her lunch, partly because I enjoy cooking and get no chance to do so at home. What I cooked has included roast chicken (though this time not as successful as the last time, because I didn’t roast it enough – time was getting on and my aunt likes to eat by 1.30pm and it was by then already gone 2pm), pan-fried salmon, home-made burgers (a lot nicer than any ready-made burgers I have ever eaten), mushroom omelette (simple, but a nice one is very tasty).

Our lunches are always last for at least two hours, what with crudite – which my aunt insists should be eaten ‘for health reasons’ –, terrine, main course, cheese and coffee, and also because there really is no rush. Although my aunt is Irish, although born in Bodmin, she married a Corsican Frenchman – not contradiction there, I trust – and spent the past 65 years living in French culture, including Algeria before the war there.

Her wine cellar (established by her husband who, though, had to give up alcohol in the last 15 years of his life, had continued buying wine) is large, and we had wine at lunch for every meal, I followed that with a glass or three of calvados, then poire William when the calvados was finished with my coffee.

Sadly, drinking at lunchtime these days knocks me semi-sideways, so while my aunt had her nap I settled down aimlessly to surf the net and catch up on YouTube what that moron Trump is up to. Does anyone think he won’t go to jail? I’m curious.

It is jaw-dropping that anyone in the US is able to take him and his silly claims seriously. But some – rather too many – do, although those I’ve seen interviewed do not seem to be the brightest by a long chalk.

On this visit as well as my last visit I have skipped supper at 8pm, to the consternation of my aunt, but I really prefer having an empty stomach to be filled at lunch the following day rather than eat because ‘it is what one does’. My aunt is perpetually baffled that I don’t eat breakfast or supper, which, she says, is unhealthy.

. . .

In 40 minutes as I write – though this entry will probably not be posted until I am in Merignac airport – a taxi is arriving to take me to Bordeaux’s airport. So far I have always simply taken a taxi to Cerons station, about six kilometres away, but for some very odd reason all the local taxi companies are on strike (and I have no idea why *).

Finally, we managed to scare up a firm on the net – I don’t know where they are based or why they are not on strike, perhaps the strike is purely local – which could have taken me to Cerons but as the cab is coming all the way from somewhere, he suggested taking me straight to the airport. Pricey, but fuck it, I was just glad to find a cab.

Now I must stop and can carry on once I am safely in the cafeteria at Merignac’s Billi terminal, having passed through security (which is always such colossal fun).

Later, Merignac Airport, Bordeaux

Two hours later and €105 down I am now sitting with a cappuccino at the airport thinking of ways to kill the next three hours. Finishing this blog entry will soak up some of that time but there is not a great deal to do at an airport and there is only a certain number of coffees you can drink.

My aunt and I only went for one meal out this time, but it was a great meal, in Sauternes. Sadly, my aunt is now in the age where ‘everything has come down a bit’ or its soulmate ‘nothing is quite as it was’.

So the restaurant itself (which I have previously visited many years ago but was then not paying, either) had been shut for a year or two, renovated then reopened, but sadly, according to my aunt it wasn’t what it had been. Well, to my, admittedly untutored Anglo-Saxon, eyes it was find. We began, as we always do, with foie gras and a glass of Sauternes and this, too, was not quite has good was it might have been, and – well, you are way ahead of me, no doubt – to my, admittedly untutored Anglo-Saxon taste – was more than fine.

Then I had chicken breast, which might not sound very special but it as. I’ve managed to track down the menu for the restaurant, Le Cercle Guirard (Le Saprien before it closed for renovation) and I had Volaille fermière étuvée au vin jaune, champignons sauvages, sauce suprême perlée à l’huile de piment fumé. One for the French speakers who cannot count me in their number. I was very nice indeed. Oh, and with it I had a second glass of Sauternes which the restaurant patron assured me was traditional.

I hope to visit my aunt again in the new year at some point, but that will depend on her health. It is not the best.

* Taxi strike: my driver who was on strike a little earlier today but wasn’t now – I’m sure he explained why, but I didn’t quite cotton on – told me it was a result of new rules laid down by the insurance companies.

I can only repeat what he told me, but it seems one of the income streams for taxis is to take bods to hospital for appointments. The insurance companies are now insisting that unless unless a taxi conveys more than one passenger, it will only pay 50% of any claim.

They say it is in the interests of ecologie (being more green) but he and his fellow drivers are certain they just want to make more moolah by saving themselves a little. I suspect he’s right, too. When companies explain an innovation – which invariably costs the punters more – is in favour of ‘saving the planet’, scepticism is not just warranted by wholly advisable.