The Compleat Anglo in the Pays Basque

298. Long story short..

2026-01-13T15:58:00.131+01:00

29th Sept. It's clear ro me that "The Waiter Who Came In From The Cold" - some of you may know him as the current occupant of No 10 Downing Street - is moving crab-like towards some as yet undefined accommodation with the EU. Seven years ago, I posted the following thoughts about our relationship with the EU. It's worth refreshing yourself with the key argument for Brexit. I've not seen the nub of the argument expressed more clearly anywhere.

I came across this extract earlier from a very worthwhile article by Ben Knight, who worked as a civil servant at the Department for Exiting the European Union between 2017 and 2019. These two paragraphs neatly sums up my reasons for voting Leave. In my view, Brexit is not about immigration, the proposed EU army, the economy, the Euro or any of it - these elements all come under the heading of detail. The fundamental issue at stake is that the majority of the electorate wish to restore parliamentary sovereignty to the UK - because from that, everything else flows - and it's clearly stated below:

"Brexit means the end of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and of EU law, returning sovereignty to Britain. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that rulers should be chosen by the ruled; but no voter elects the Presidents of the European Parliament, Commission or Council, nor any one of the European Union’s 20 Vice Presidents. The only elected organ of the Union, the Parliament, has no powers to initiate legislation and only limited powers to scrutinise the Commission".

"The extension of Qualified Majority Voting means that Britain’s voice can be routinely overruled, and that the British people can be subject to laws for which not a single British individual has voted. This is plainly an aberration and an assault upon the core tenets of basic political rights. No: the only legitimate form of governance is one in which those with the power to make laws are directly accountable to every individual to whom those laws apply. The restoration of full parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom will mean that our 650 MPs, each of whom we directly elect, are solely responsible for deciding the laws of the land".

20th Sept. This is another piece by Chopin that my father would play when I was young - but at the time I had no idea what it was..

Last weekend saw the occasion of a long commemorative weekend that the association I'm involved with organises every year. I think it will go down in history as the one of the best weekends we've ever had for two main reasons: firstly, on Saturday afternoon, we had a méchoui (or sheep roast) under the oak trees (here) near the Pont du Diable just outside Larressore.

The weather was perfect and I was just delighted to see that the méchoui was allowed to go ahead - given all the woodland fires that have plagued France this summer.

The second reason was the closing lunch on Sunday (that finished around 6pm) that we held at Lezetako borda - a stone's throw inside Spain... good food, wine and singing - just what the doctor ordered!

4th September. This will blow the cobwebs away if you've just woken up.. Volume to max and apologise to the neighbours later! Brace yourself at 1:43 for when the turbo kicks in below:

The tune is "Highland Cathedral" and it's worth looking at the link to its entry on Wiki. It is apparently being considered as a replacement for "Flower of Scotland" - a dour and dreary piece harking back to a battle fought long ago (and I like the Corries). Here's "Highland Cathedral" played (too slowly?) by the massed pipe bands at Edinburgh.. (My personal preference would be for the "Black Bear" or "Scotland the Brave" - my vote).

3rd September. Typing today's date made me realise that 87 years have passed since the outbreak of WWII. We were truly fortunate indeed to have someone of Churchill's stature waiting in the political wings in Parliament and whose day would finally come on 10th May 1940. These were the darkest days that our nation had ever faced and yet Churchill would prove more than man enough for the job. He didn't start by recounting the previous governments' failures as is the case today - no, he simply threw himself into the challenge and gave it everything in his considerable power to succeed. This was his first radio broadcast as Prime Minister:

In doing so, he galvanised his people at home with his speeches - and these also resonated with those listening to him on their 'wirelesses' in the wider English-speaking world of the Commonwealth, the Dominions and the United States - and they still do so today. It must be said as well that the nation was determined to follow him come what may and that many today recognise that wartime generation as the "greatest generation". For me and many others, he was incomparably the greatest Briton of all time.

The Americans clearly thought so too because on 9th April 1963, the United States Congress passed an act (US Public Law 88-6) that authorised and directed the President to proclaim Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States of America. He was the first foreigner to be granted this signal and well-deserved honour.

I noted here previously that in the last couple of years car makers are supplying their vehicles in a range of colours that would be more suited to the vehicles of the infamous Stasi of the former Democratic Republic of East Germany. Dull greens, beiges and flat greys abound in an almost apologetic expression by people who, although they drive expensive new cars - are keen to show by the ugly colours they choose that they feel no pride of ownership. I saw the epitome of this mindset this morning - a new-looking Morgan Plus 4 that was 'resplendent' in a glossy mid grey colour. Clearly, the Morgan factory at Malvern will supply their cars painted as the customer requests.. but I'm sure eyebrows were raised there when the car was revealed - looking as ugly as sin - to the new customer.

28th August. I've featured the music of Tuba Skinny before here - where Shaye Cohn, one of the band's founders, is normally to be found, trumpet in hand, "giving it large"! Here she is giving a number of pianos a good work-out:

As school starts next week, many tourist families have already headed for home - and tomorrow will see the last stampede north. September is almost upon us and hopefully we should see the arrival of more settled weather and the absence of the blistering heat (high 30s => low 40s) that we endured in June and July. This is also the month for silver tourists.. (here I'm referring to the predominant hair colour!)

20th August. "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday" was and still is a charming homage to the France of the post-war years when life slowly returned to normal after the dark days of the Occupation. It was filmed at Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, not far from Saint-Nazaire. While the images remind us of the simplicity of life in the '50s, the humour has not aged so well..

18th August. I replaced the bougainvillea that hadn't survived last winter with another one and it's off to a fine start climbing up the front wall. I'll have to remember to cover it up next winter if frost is forecast.

12th August. Here's a late night song for you:

Here's her studio version with much better sound.

How did the solar eclipse materialise down here in Bayonne I hear you ask? It was as though someone had a dimmer switch and wound down the evening sunlight to the equivalent of a 25w bulb before winding it up again. The sun disappeared behind our neighbour's house at the crucial moment and that was it. The full explanation is here.

You can see how the eclipse appeared at Bidart just down the coast.. (Health Warning: turn off the volume to avoid having to listen to some dire music)

11th August. In case you were wondering, there will be a partial solar eclipse visible tomorrow in Bayonne beginning at 19h31, reaching a 99.4% maximum coverage at 20h26, before it ends around 21h19 near sunset.

Here's the 1963 fifth grade class at the Emerson School in Maywood, Illinois showing one method of viewing the solar eclipse without damaging your vision:

PS If you want to try this technique at home, it would be a good idea to warn the neighbours first.

PPS It could also be the low self-esteem class practising for their first school disco.

Here's an interesting video to look at - but perhaps not to listen to.. It appears to have been dubbed by an AI tool - and certain parts have been translated word for word and the result is sometimes gibberish:

10th August. Something reminded me the other day to check the expiry date on my British passport and sure enough, it only had just over 3 months left to run. I had a quick squint at the internet and I have to say that the process for applying for a UK passport from abroad has been made completely foolproof.

The only preparation I had to make was to go to a photography shop in town and ask for a set of passport photographs with a code for the UK. 5 minutes and 9 euros later, I was in possession of the photos and, crucially, a string of numbers and letters to type into the online application process. The only other document I needed was my old passport. There was a credit card payment to be made but after only 10 minutes or so, I was all done. All that remained was for me to post my old passport to the address specified. The new one should arrive in 10 days or so.

In contrast, Madame can only replace her French passport when it expires via a personal appearance at an office in town.

About the time of the Brexit referendum I remember people getting agitated about the fact that their beloved navy blue British passports had been replaced by burgundy coloured ones, compatible with the EU. I honestly couldn't give a fig about its colour - just as long as it gets me through immigration. One question did flummox me though near the end of the process. I was asked if I was a British national or a British citizen - there was no guidance as to how this question should have been answered. To be honest, I thought the distinction between them was just semantics. I think I answered British national - which may have been the wrong answer. (I thought we were subjects - not citizens - not that it makes any difference to the price of fish) I saw when my new one arrived that its cover was no longer navy blue but something bewteen navy blue and black.

7th Aug. This next subject is something that's long been bothering me - and that is - how to sign off an email or a letter in French. French native speakers know instinctively which sign off to use and to whom. I don't.. so I asked the question of ChatGPT and this is the answer I received:

French email and message sign-offs can definitely feel like a minefield because they encode relationship, warmth, hierarchy, and distance in a way that English often does not. The same person might use several different closings depending on whether they are writing to a colleague, a friend, a family member, or someone they are emotionally close to.

Here is a table I made from Chat GPT's guide for you to print off and stick on your wall! Plus - a few useful rules of thumb:

1. If you are unsure, use Cordialement.. It is almost impossible to offend with it. A French person will not think it cold; it is the normal professional choice.

2. Amicalement is warmer than many English speakers expect. An English speaker might use "Best wishes" with almost anyone. In French, Amicalement suggests: "We have a friendly relationship." It is not quite intimate, but it is personal.

Good examples:

A former colleague you like: ✅ Amicalement

A neighbour you chat with: ✅ Amicalement

A supplier you have exchanged two emails with: ❌ probably Cordialement

3. Amitiés is not "for everyone you like". It implies a friendship bond.

A French person might write:

Merci encore pour ton aide.

Amitiés,

Marie

to a friend or a long-standing acquaintance.

4. Bises / Bisous

These are where many English speakers hesitate — understandably.

A rough scale:

Formal → intimate

Cordialement

↓

Bien cordialement

↓

Amicalement

↓

Amitiés

↓

Bises

↓

Bisous

↓

Grosses bises / Je t’embrasse

A useful distinction:

Bises = friendly affection ("x" at the end of a message)

Bisous = more affectionate ("kisses")

Grosses bises = very warm ("big hugs and kisses")

A woman might write:

À demain ! Bises

to a female friend or close colleague she has known for years.

A teenager might write:

Bonne nuit ❤️ Bisous

to a parent or close friend.

A professional contact should almost never receive either.

5. Watch the “tu/vous” relationship

This is a good indicator:

Vous + Cordialement → normal professional relationship

Tu + Amicalement/Amitiés → friendly relationship

Tu + Bisous → close relationship

There are exceptions, of course: French workplaces can be very informal, and some teams use bises casually. But if you are unsure, start more neutral and let the other person set the level of warmth.

For an English speaker, a good “safe ladder” is:

New professional contact → Cordialement

Regular colleague → Bien cordialement

Friendly colleague/familiar acquaintance → Amicalement

Friend → Amitiés or Bises

Close friend/family → Bisous, Grosses bises, Je t’embrasse

Chat GPT told me that my instinct to use Amitiés and Amicalement was actually quite good — those are the ones many non-native speakers either avoid completely or use too freely. They sit in that important middle ground between "business" and "family".

So I'll close with a big wet one!😂

================

This piece popped up in my YouTube feed - it's another of my father's favourite pieces that he would play. It reminds me greatly of him:

I remember when we first came to this house for the first time, there were two pianos here - one downstairs and one upstairs. I shudder to think how the removals men managed to get the upstairs piano down without demolishing something.

31st July. Just returned from a trip to Grande Frais* - the fresh food supermarket 2 mins from Biarritz airport - and later, when stuck in the traffic, I noticed a restaurant that I hadn't seen before. It's called Côté Sushi - Peruvian style - whatever the heck that is.. (Don't believe me? Looky here)

* As Madame said today as we left - "It makes shopping a pleasure..".

27th July. After a stiflingly hot month, we woke up to welcome rain this morning. The news recently has been dominated by the forest fires raging out of control around the northern edge of the Arcachon basin and heading towards Bordeaux.

According to one firefighter interviewed, the flame front through the tinder-dry forests was advancing at 5 kilometres/hour (3mph). We watched news coverage showing flames reaching 30 metres (100ft) in height. Madame's sister-in-law lives at Andernos-les-Bains and she and the rest of her village were evacuated on Saturday, adding to the other 260,000 people who have already have been evacuated. Let's hope that the rain might dampen down the fires. The French military is now actively involved in the fire-fighting mission with the introduction of the massive A400M transport aircraft converted for spreading fire retardant.

29th June. We've had a thunderstorm or two in the last few days along with some dimly-remembered wet stuff (aka rain). What a relief to breathe the sweet morning air..!

24th June: This is the kind of weather that brings this song to mind..😎

23rd June. Needless to say, we're frying here.. It's been up in the high thirties.. and we'll be glad when whoever's responsible decides to revert to normal service. I was out yesterday and it felt like I was in an Air Fryer..

15th June. I was reminded earlier of Cesária Évora - aka the Cape Verde islands' finest export. 'Angola' is probably my favourite song of hers with its compelling syncopated rhythms that owe much to the morna, a genre of music from Cape Verde, in her native Cape Verdean Creole. (Try clapping along to it! Not easy..)

Here's another one of hers - "Sodade"..

11th June. For our return to the Basque coast, we decided to abandon the autoroute and drive via the less-frequented routes to see a bit more of France. The Dordogne has long been known as the favoured location for a whole generation of people from across the English Channel - and so, heading more or less south, we passed through Eymet* (but didn't stop there) on our way to Issegeac for a quick bite. Here we found that we had unwittingly blundered upon yet another branch of 'Expat Central'. Let's just say that it wasn't for us and we made haste in the general direction of away via Marmande, Mont de Marsan, Dax and home.

* The headline in the link says it all for me. I'm sorry but this sound springs to mind when I read the phrase "The Most English of French Towns".

6th June. We headed up north earlyish this morning for a few days away in the Dordogne at Badefols-sur-Dordogne. We'd found a small hotel overlooking the river that looked just the job and we were aiming to arrive there before 2pm - as they closed then until 6pm. After about 2 hours of driving on the autoroute we were both ready for a coffee - so we stopped at the last service station before Bordeaux and when we entered the coffee shop we both had to do a double take..! What was going on?

We appeared to have stumbled upon a pensioners' convention.. It was wall-to-wall pensioners with no other demographic in sight. Just as there are nouns to describe groups of similar species - a flock of birds, a murder of crows, a parliament of owls - I asked myself what word would I use to describe a massed gathering of pensioners? A confusion of pensioners? A shuffle? I had to remind myself that they were once the beautiful people of the 1960s.. (and what's worse - they were all thinking the same thing about me 😕).

When we arrived at the hotel in time to unload the car, we were delighted to find that it was in an idyllic setting with little or no passing traffic - and sitting outside watching the mighty Dordogne slide slowly by was just what we needed.

I made the panoramic photo (below) of the river Dordogne from a number of images - it was so relaxing.. watching the slowly swirling currents - and the perambulations of the dozen or so geese that had set up camp on the banks.

2nd June. I'm sure it will come as no surprise at all to you, dear reader, if I reveal that this blog is generated entirely by your increasingly wizened correspondent without any outside assistance from AI..

28th May. In case you were wondering, the hills are still alive to the sound of roadworks. There's a massive 8 wheeled lorry outside the house digging deep into the road making a huge amount of noise.. It's now a month since the work started.

27th May. Just back from taking Nutty for his evening stroll - I managed to find a route round the houses that kept him in the shade as much as possible as it was still 36°C (in the shade) at 8pm.. The indoor temp was 25°.

A chronograph watch was a necessary thing for me to have in my job years ago - and I was fortunate that my employer provided me with one. On retirement, I needed a satisfactory replacement and I rejected those that had battery-powered quartz movements as, in my experience, the batteries would fail at the most inopportune moments (usually on a Sunday) - and there are few things more useless than a watch that can't tell the time.

I found the Citizen range of watches.. and by all accounts they performed well. On narrowing down my choices, I found a model that seemed right for me - a Citizen Eco-Drive* quartz chronograph. It probably has the most uncluttered face of any chronograph - some of which could be mistaken for gas meters. And it was made of titanium to keep the weight down. I've owned mine now for at least 10 years and it keeps time remarkably well. At the beginning of this month, I synchronised it exactly to the time shown on my PC and it's lost only 4 seconds since then. And that for a watch that cost in the region of £150.. Needless to say, I have no connection whatsoever with Citizen watches other than as a satisfied customer. Unfortunately, Citizen watches were for many years damned by the same faint praise that was usually accorded to Skoda cars. I think both brands have improved markedly since those bad old days.

* This means it's powered by light from any source, from sunlight to a desk lamp. A single full charge is enough to keep an Eco-Drive watch running for 6 months, even in total darkness. And best of all, it never needs a new battery.

26th May. Our garden thermometer was showing 36° in the shade at 6pm..

25th May. This spell of hot weather is still with us - temps forecast to be 35° here today. We usually get these spikes of hot weather at this time of the year as we transition into summer - but they are normally short-lived. We've switched to our summer routine - up early, with all the windows open to allow fresh air to circulate and take advantage of the early morning 'coolth' to work in the garden.🌞

21st May. If you've ever fantasised about climbing the Matterhorn, (height 4,478 m (14,692 ft)) then this next video is for you:

If, however, you'd prefer to see it climbed from a sedentary position, this video will be just about perfect..

Update on the roadworks.. They're hard at it already this morning (they kick off at 7.30am each morning) - in a well-practised continuous operation, the excavators dig a deep and wide trench, then the old drains are cut out and replaced with new, before back-filling and moving on. They reached the top of the avenue yesterday - and I think Phase 2 is about to start.. re-laying the road surface. But I could well be wrong. They have an admirable work ethic - they start early, stop at midday on the dot, re-start at 1pm and work through to 5.30pm.. even through spells of torrential rain (with no breaks for tea..).

It looks like we're in for a surge of warm weather for the next few days.. with temps forecast to be in the range 28°-33°C.. At last.😎 Off to Saint-Jean-de-Luz today to enjoy some grilled sardines..

17th May. The final match of the womens' Six Nations rugby tournament finished earlier this evening.. it was between France and England and it was played just up the road at Bordeaux - and it was televised live on French TV. I must admit that I had to smile at some of the comments from the presenters.. Whenever France play England, it's evident that the commentators on French TV have a few key words that they have to squeeze into their commentary early on.. regardless of the on-field action. It can be guaranteed that before any encounter between France & England is 15 minutes old that the England side will have been described as "flegmatique", "pragmatique" or "réaliste". When the English girls put together a passage of play this evening that involved many passes and some powerful support running that resulted in an excellent try, their rugby was described as "ultra réaliste".. (whatever that means) Here are the highlights in English - and here's what we saw in France!

We've had unsettled weather here for the last few days.. so yesterday we decided we'd visit the Dordogne early next month for a short stay. It's many years since we were last there but I doubt that it's changed much, if at all. Just back from walking the dog around Bayonne's two bridges and it struck me that our trip to the Dordogne will take us into "Here be dragons" country (ie, north of Dax!)

Here's the perfect piece for a Sunday morning.. it's Daniel Barenboim with the 2nd movement of Beethoven's Sonata No. 8 in C minor Op. 13 "Pathetique":

2nd May. Last year, in a fit of gardening enthusiasm, I planted a bougainvillea against the wall of the house - and it shot up up a height of 8-9 feet. Then winter came - and I think for a couple of days we had temps below freezing. The next time I looked at it, all the leaves were brown and shrivelled. About a month ago, I cut it all back to about a foot - and lo and behold, green shoots have appeared.. I've been watering it lightly with some fertiliser and it looks like it might recover.

28th April. Usually, the peace and tranquillity of our avenue is only disturbed by the comings and goings of lawyers' cars as the Palais de Justice (Court) is nearby. However, the last two weeks have seen an operation unfold with controlled precision as an ambitious programme to provide separate drainage systems for both grey water and rainwater is implemented. (I believe this has been initiated by ecological issues) The avenue was closed to all traffic prior to the big machines moving in. This is clearly a well-practised operation as holes were quickly excavated down to depths of 2-3 metres to expose old pipework - accompanied by the constant roar and clatter of diggers, fork lift trucks and 8 wheeled tippers that has continued ever since. I think they'll be here for another month. The pavement outside the house has been marked with mysterious spray-painted hieroglyphics so it looks like we're a candidate for a major hole outside too.

21st April. We're being treated to a continuous Son et Lumiere show this evening courtesy of Mother Nature as the western night sky rumbles and flashes with pale yellow sheet ĺightning along at least a 150° sector. We don't often experience this but it had been unseasonably warm today.

17th April. A new version of "The dog ate my homework" is being played out in the halls of Westminster as we speak. With every day that passes, the Prime Minister's room to manoeuvre is shrinking. The Permanent Secretary (civil servant) at the Foreign Office has just been sacked. Story here. Not for the first time, Peter Mandelson (aka 'The gift that keeps on giving") is leaving a trail of destruction behind him. Quelle surprise..

OK, pull on your freshly-dubbined lederhosen - and now for something completely different:

Watch the complete film - "The Third Man" - here.. (thanks to the Internet Archive)

6th April. With the dog down at the beach this morning under a cloudless blue sky - the sea was playing its part as well - a blue sea with dazzlingly white rollers crashing against a backdrop of the northern coast of Spain outlined in misty blue on the horizon. I forgot to look at the air temperature in the car on the way there but it felt like in the mid 20s. I see that the forecast for this afternoon is 30°C..

There were quite a few bozos out and about in their cars today - and while I give most of them a wide berth, there were one or two candidates who merited pump-action treatment.. (only joking!)

5th April. Happy Easter to all of you 'out there'. I came back a few minutes ago after a flying visit to Bayonne to pick up a cake for Easter from Moko Fin.. On the return, I stopped to salivate over a gathering of classic cars by the Soupapes et Pistons association - some old, some new - and my eye was taken by a beautiful MG TD.. very similar to this one. I know, (start the tape) it's completely impractical, there's no room for the dog, or space for taking garden rubbish to the tip. I won't mention either the absolute impossibility of me attempting to gain access to the driver's seat or the likelihood of me being able to exit the vehicle without executing an inadvertent triple Salko with half pike and twist.. but despite these not unreasonable objections, I still find this little MG to be highly desirable.

I arrived home just in time to hear the last few minutes of Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture 'Romeo and Juliet' on our internet radio. The video should start in near enough the right place! (You'll have to listen to it here on YouTube I'm afraid)

18th Mar. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea if we let it be known to any potential suicide bombers who are 'out there' contemplating a one-way mission that yes, while they might well be rewarded in heaven by 72 virgins, any potential terrorist should read the small print first - as there's a note to the effect that the 72 virgins will be accompanied by 72 mothers-in-law. Just saying!

16th Mar. For years, I've been on the look-out for a destination plaque of the type that used to hang from the side of the coaches that made up the legendary Orient Express. I managed to take a trip on it 'as it was' before its relaunch as a luxury venture. I joined the train at midnight one sultry evening at the Gare de Lyon in Paris in the mid-1960s - and as this was my first time in Paris it was already a great experience for me. My destination was not Istanbul but Athens (but my final destination was Rhodes in the Dodecanese islands). I couldn't afford a sleeping berth though and so for the next 4 days and 3 nights I travelled 'hard' via an upright seat - yes, ouch!

Just reading the names on the example shown above is enough to trigger multiple memories of that trip. From Beograd (Belgrade), the train wound its way through Yugoslavia stopping at Sarajevo (I think), Skopje and elsewhere before stopping briefly at Thessalonika where all passengers for Athens changed trains for the last leg while the main part of the train continued on to Istanbul. This service was finally withdrawn in 1977.

There must be one of those plaques gathering dust in a basement somewhere, on top of a wardrobe or on a paint-spattered shelf in a garage. In the unlikely event that you have one and you'd like to make my day, drop me a line - please!

15th Mar. What will be remembered as one of the greatest 6 Nations matches of all time between France and England took place last night in Paris.. I tried to watch on TV but the sound of French TV commentators with their trousers on fire was too much for me so after 15 minutes I took to my bed. I couldn't resist switching my tablet on though for the final few minutes - just in time to see England take the lead with about 2 minutes remaining. Watch the video of this amazing match..😄 (French version here)

8th March. Yesterday I was privileged to watch what will go down as one of the great rugby matches of all time. France played Scotland in the 6 Nations tournament and were widely expected by the rugby cognescenti to record a routine win in Edinburgh that would keep them on course for a Grand Slam if (= when) they beat England next Saturday. However, it appeared that no-one had shown this script to the Scots - because what followed was a turnover of biblical proportions. Many media pundits had drawn their conclusions far too early in this astonishing tournament - for example, read the Guardian's Robert Kitson with his premature 'analysis', conclusions and predictions that he reached after the first weekend's set of matches - this will dog him forever more.

Sit back and enjoy this well-deserved Scottish triumph of rugby at its best - running rugby and no aerial ping pong - just pure 100% Scottish heart. How Bill McLaren would have savoured this. Unfair to single out individuals for a 'Man of the Match' - they were all heroes:

Elsewhere, Italy beat England deservedly for the first time in the 6N - and, unlike dull England (who couldn't empty a welly full of water even if the instructions were on the sole), are clearly in the ascendant. This result has been coming! Well done the squadra azzurra:

12th February. We received a warning via a text message yesterday that this area would be subject to very strong winds last night. I had to go downstairs in the wee small hours (around 2am) to let the dog out - at a time when 70 knot winds were howling around the house and garden and the all-weather covering on our terrace table was ballooning like a spinnaker. I saw this morning that all the fasteners that secured the cover to the table legs had snapped under the strain. Fortunately, we have a spare cast iron metal base (manhole cover size) that we use to keep our parasol upright - and it was ideal for plonking on top of the table to keep the cover from flying away.

I've not been following the Winter Olympics but I've just had a squint at the Olympics medal table and, imagine my surprise, not a single medal of any colour for my home country. I seem to remember that the British TV 'weather girls' were always prattling on about Arctic conditions when there was an inch of snow on the ground.. so the lack of a proper winter climate can hardly be used as an excuse. I might write a note to the Olympic organising committee suggesting the they consider holding an Autumn Olympics - to be held under grey skies, wind and drizzle in? - where else but here. We might stand a chance then! (New events could include the 200m dash through a rain-swept crowded supermarket carpark pushing a loaded shopping trolley with a wonky wheel..)

11th February. We went to the so-called Chambre d'Amour, Anglet this morning for a walk along the sea front there. Predictably, we ended up in a restaurant with a good view overlooking a grey and misty seascape. In recent years, this quarter has seen a steady improvement in the facilities provided for the summer visitor - plenty of parking spaces, room for families to spread out, beach volleyball courts, and a variety of restaurants, snack bars and coffee shops to suit all budgets.

8th February. I was down at the beach this morning with Nutty, our cocker spaniel - and there was a strong onshore westerly wind gusting out of the Bay of Biscay. It buffeted us as we made our way to the coastal footpath - and the dog's ears flew out horizontally.. It was close to high tide and the wind was driving the crashing waves to explode in masses of foam high up the beach. A degree or two cooler, and it would have been cold. As it was, I felt as though I was breathing 100% oxygen. As a way of starting the day, it would be hard to improve on it.

(with apologies to the good folk of Skegness..!)

7th February. A bright sunny morning today - and as I left the house with the dog at about 9.30am, a sudden movement caught my eye. To my surprise, a lizard (about 6-7" long) had been sunning himself on a narrow stone ledge that runs along the front of the house, and he started moving in the general direction of away - but not at their usual lightning pace, he was still moving a bit sluggishly. I don't think I've ever seen one out and about as early in the year as this. (People say the same about me!)

4th February. This song - an old favourite of mine dating back to 1968 - just popped up on the radio. See what you think!

Bringing you slightly more up to date (I'm doing my best!) here's Edwyn Collins with his 1994 hit "A Girl Like You"..

30th January. Today's gold price: 145,900 euros. (note to self: I must look down behind the cushions to see what I can find!)

Yesterday we had a short walk around Biarritz and we were tempted to step inside the Miremont cake and tea shop (it sounds much different in French). This is one of the last surviving businesses in Biarritz that pre-date the Belle Epoque.. Look at the photos in the link above. This is somewhere to visit at least once in your life.

22nd January. I was ambling around Saint-Jean-de-Luz in mid-2023 when my eye was caught by the sight of a gleaming gold ingot in a shop window. Once back home, and solely out of idle curiosity, I looked up the current price for a 1kg ingot and I found it was 57,000 euros. I later returned to the website every few months to see if there was a trend upwards or downwards. You might be interested to know that today's price for it is - wait for it (put your cocoa down!) - a hefty 132,000 euros. That should tell you all you need to know about the present political situation.

14th January. Mid January and need a lift? This piece should do it!

13th January. We had a spell of cold weather recently (in the bracket 0° - 5°C) and as a result, the bougainvillea that I planted last year is now looking the worse for wear. It had quickly climbed up the front wall of the house to a height of around 8-9 feet - but I've just noticed that all the leaves have shrivelled due to the cold. My question is this: should I prune it back hard - or leave it and let Nature take its course? The outside temperature is now up in the mid teens.

2nd January 2026. First of all, a happy New Year to you!

I just had to check how long it had been since we arrived in the Pays basque.. The answer? 18 years and 4 months.. Phew.. It has f-l-o-w-n by..

We went out yesterday to have lunch at an old favourite of ours - the Restaurant Larralde, Ascain. If ever a lunch started a year with a bang, it was this one. Suffice to say, without going into detail, they did us proud.. and I imagine it will be a long time before we enjoy a better lunch than we had yesterday.. (but I'm always willing to be proven wrong!😃)

297. Once more unto the breach..

2025-01-28T14:48:00.357+01:00

30th December. I must correct a calumny I charged the chocolatiers (in English) of Bayonne with in 2009 when I sought in vain to find someone to produce - as a special order - some marrons glacés dipped in dark chocolate. I came across this perfect combination by chance when I was working in the north of Italy in the 1990s and I brought some home for Madame. To say they hit the spot would be understating the case - but sadly I was never able to find them here in France. Marrons glacés are everywhere at Christmas time and so is dark chocolate - but always as two separate items.

Last year, I thought I'd try again but this time I made my request to a friendly assistant at the Chocolaterie Puyodebat in the centre of Bayonne who was only too pleased to accommodate my request via a special order. I received a call from the shop just prior to Christmas 2024 to say that my order was ready to be collected. I'd only asked for a smallish quantity (somewhere between 12 and 20) but when I arrived, the assistant brought out a box containing a very large number (I must be discreet) and said that I could have them for the price of 12. Madame's eyes nearly popped out of her head when she finally got to see them..

This year, I thought I'd repeat the exercise - and the factory at Cambo-les-Bains again excelled themselves. I think this year's batch were even better than last year's. Where else could you find someone prepared to make a special order of chocolate at Christmas time..? Hats off to the Chocolaterie Puyodebat! 😋

29th December. There appears to be a massive disparity in the postal rates between France and the Independent Coastal State (as the EU likes to term the UK). A simple Christmas card sent from France to that afore mentioned coastal state incurs a charge of 1.39 euros (or £1.21) - whereas one coming in the other direction is charged a whopping £3.40 - almost 3 times the price. Why the huge difference?

I forgot to mention that four of Monsieur Montauzer's fabled boudins blancs were humanely sacrificed the other day in accordance with the customary protocols. Mmm-mmm.😋

The scene below was the beach at Anglet yesterday looking south into Spain.. The sea was almost a flat calm and the only noise came from someone exercising his new Christmas present - a drone that sounded like a wasp trapped in a bottle. Drones are the new 'must haves' here.

28th December. This is Gautier Capuçon with Elgar's Salut d'Amour that I first became aware of after watching Ken Russell's Elgar documentary made for BBC TV in 1962 - a superb production spoilt only (in my view) by Huw Wheldon's narration that was delivered in the manner of someone reading the Highway Code. (or is that just me?)

21st December. Christmas can be a difficult time of the year for people - so if you know of someone who will be alone at Chtistmas, give them a call, make a date, go around and pick them up, invite them in and make it a special day for them.. 😘

We were visiting friends yesterday who live out at Cauneille and we went to "Gnàc é Pause" - the curiously-named hotel/restaurant at Saint-Lon-les-Mines in the south of the Landes.. It was situated in what is known as La France Profonde. Someone had the courage to parachute in to this deeply rural area a fully-formed hotel/restaurant of a standard that would grace many a town centre in France (or elsewhere for that matter). No corners had been cut in its conception - and it was clearly appreciated by the other diners who apparently come from far and wide. There was an extended family at lunch - perhaps 25 to 30 people - all happily enjoying the delights from the very affordable menu.. Well worth a visit! (Reviews here)

Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a healthy New Year

Some seasonal flavour for you!

19th December. Christmas update - we're all done and dusted.. The shopping is complete (as far as I am concerned!), the tree is up and Madame has worked her customary magic with all the decorations.. and at last it feels like Christmas..😊

Here's a little treat for you - Benny Andersson (the musical brain behind ABBA) has released an album of some of his favourite compositions that can stand on their own - played on the piano without all the accompanying falderol (voices, guitars, drums etc etc). He's an extremely talented individual..

Full playlist here.

29th November. There's no getting away from it now.. Christmas trees are sprouting up all over town - and great teetering displays of chocolate are in place in all the usual locations - and Bayonne's big wheel is up and running..

It won't be long now before Montauzer's legendary truffled boudins blancs (best with sauté'd apple as shown here) make their annual appearance..! (Reminder to self: I must sharpen my harpoon!)

Here's another look at Bayonne - it's a photogenic town that I never tire of walking around:

25th November. I've just stumbled upon the following video of England's well-deserved win over New Zealand's All Blacks.. This will keep you warm on cold winter's nights!😊

23rd November. I was down at the beach this morning with Nutty and there was a thunderous roar from the sea as I opened the car door.. A strong southwesterly wind was blowing in and when we arrived at the coastal footpath it was approaching high tide and waves were crashing high up on the beach in an agitated state. Not a day to be out and about in the Bay of Biscay in a small boat.

17th November. England faced the New Zealand All Blacks on Saturday and from what the media tells me the boys in white emerged with what was in the end a comfortable 33-19 win. (Still waiting to see the full match appear on YouTube.. grrr) I'm one of those who firmly believes that the All Blacks should retire their Haka as it's morphed into something very different from how it started out in life. Apparently, in some obscure fashion, the Haka is supposed to signify a 'challenge'. Other teams seem to survive quite adequately just by turning up - without this bit of hokum from the South Seas.

What started off as a quaint spot of folklore has become something very different in recent years. Here's the harmless 1973 version from when the ABs toured the UK.. It looks as though some of them aren't sure whether they're doing the Haka, the Macarena, playing pat-a-cake pat-a-cake or the Hokey Cokey! Some clearly missed out on the dance lessons! See what you think:

Back in 1973 it was performed to the crowd (see here) - but since then it's been turned through 90° and it's now aimed squarely at the opposition. Here's a more recent choreographed version..

This has nothing to do with folk lore, traditions or, it has to be said, rugby - and everything to do with a win-at-all-costs mentality. I simply don't understand how the IRFU allows this nonsense to be officially sanctioned and perpetrated in the name of 'tradition'. Whatever happened to the level playing field?

Anyway, for all the good it did them, they lost. Enjoy the match!😂

16th November. It appears that I've been AWOL (absent without leave) for quite a while. The association that I'm involved with left me no time for posting much here - I was so drained by our intense activity in September and October that I had neither the energy nor the will to post. This situation can't continue so I'm dusting off my keyboard to paint you a picture of what's been happening.

After our big weekend in mid-September we headed for the hills again to unwind after what had been an exceptionally busy period - we returned to Argèles-Gazost in the high Pyrenees where we'd been earlier. This did us both the world of good.

Mandocheneko borda

Two local benefactors have, in a truly magnificently generous offer, donated a sheep barn - and about 8000 square meters of land - to our association. It was actually the last 'safe' house that the evading aircrew used to rest up in before tackling a night crossing of the Pyrenees into Franco's Spain in WWII. It will need complete restoration as it's showing the kind of wear and tear that you'd expect from being exposed to the summer heat and winter storms here for 80+ years. We've had to re-write our constitution to allow us to take ownership of the barn - and we've had our new property properly surveyed in accordance with local norms.

Yesterday we had a sortie to one of our 'banker' restaurants - the restaurant Larralde at Ascain - as they were about to close for an end of season break last night. We've been regulars there since 1991 - and when Nathalie comes to take our order, she knows what my order will be and what I'd like to drink.. She's always spot-on! Yesterday was the final day of their Autumn Menu - and this is what she said I'd have: omelette au cèpes (omelet with porcini mushrooms) followed by rôti de sanglier aux airelles (roast wild boar with bilberries).. Who was I to argue with that! She had my wine order spot on too - a glass of Côtes-de-gascogne white followed by a glass of velvety Irouléguy red (Gorri d'Ansa) from the most south westerly vineyard in France. We had arrived a little early and there were several long tables set up for families and friends. It was blue sky weather with 22°C and it was the perfect end of season day.

This is the kind of music I've been listening to of late - it's ideal for calming the inner man.

Here's another in much the same vein:

29th August. If it were possible, this would have been one to own.. Django as seen by you-know-who. His left hand seems to have a surfeit of fingers though.

21st August. I was in town here earlier this week and there was a braderie in progress.. it was difficult to move through the narrow streets in Bayonne that were thronged with tourists plus numerous dazed-looking compulsive shoppers seeking bargains. It was mayhem. I couldn't finish my shopping quickly enough and head for home!

18th August. Although I put this short video together about the legendary gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France (with Stéphane Grappelli) a good few years ago, I still like the look (and sound) of it. It might need a few seconds to load:

16th August. A good friend of ours kindly offered us a bottle of the intriguingly-named Château Cabidos - red - from the Béarn. It's not one that I'd come across in all our time here. It's worth clicking on their website just to watch their very polished video (2½mins).

One look at the Château makes me want to visit it.. (Best seen full size)

We opened it at lunchtime and it had a rich, velvety taste and that elusive "more-ish" quality. I think a visit is called for.

11th August. It's years since I heard this song - and it's one that reminds me so much of why I feel at home here:

30th July. We drove down to the beach at Anglet at lunchtime as there's a seafood shack - Anaiak - right on the beach there that overlooks the surf. Parking there is metered and as we tried to persuade the parking ticket machine to give us a ticket, it started to rain. When faced with an uncooperative machine, there's nothing quite like a heavy downpour to wind the frustration up into the red zone.. as we cursed the clown who designed its unfriendly user interface.

In the end, after 5-6 attempts to persuade the machine to give us a ticket (using both of our credit cards), we gave up. One of the problems with it was that it had been designed to have two functions - one for issuing parking tickets and, curiously, one for paying parking fines. For a country that prides itself on its logic, there was precious little of that commodity on display as far as the user interface was concerned.

How does it work? (I thought you'd never ask!) If you don't use a smartphone parking app, you'll pay for parking at a horodateur (right). Look around for one in your parking area. You may see people standing in confusion before the machine, puzzling over its arcane instructions on a cracked or scratched, difficult-to-read sun-glared electronic screen. Meanwhile, other would-be parkers line up behind them, waiting impatiently.

It can be surprisingly complicated, so here's how NOT to be that puzzled person holding up all the others. This useful site explains it all - click here and scroll down.

26th July. Where did July go? We headed for the hills for the duration of the Fétes de Bayonne.. large crowds and I don't mix very well and as well over a million fête-goers (or fêtards as they're known here) were believed to be heading for Bayonne (a town of 50,000) it seemed like a good idea to get out of Dodge!

We drove in a south easterly direction for 2 hours and arrived at Argelès-Gazost in the High Pyrenees. More of this later. Meanwhile, here's Planxty - a traditional Irish group - playing the Raggle Taggle Gypsy - it's a good while since I last featured this and it has aged very well. Paroles en français ici - lyrics in English here.

This is another instrument that's worth listening to: it's Bill Whelan playing Caoineadh Cú Chulainn on the Uilleann pipes:

4th July. First of all, happy birthday America..👍 249 today!

Many of us bleed red, white and blue - especially those of us from the US, the UK and France (although for them, it's bleu, blanc et rouge!) - and we don't need a flag the size of a tennis court to remind us of that. In my life, I was fortunate to have travelled widely in the US and to have experienced at first hand their legendary friendliness, generosity and hospitality for which they are rightly renowned.

Now - a reflection of where we are in today's world. It should never be forgotten that the bonds that tie our countries together were not forged in the back office of a firm of accountants but rather in the shared experiences of generations of fighting men in wars and conflicts stretching back over a hundred years and more - plus the unbreakable bonds of personal relationships derived from countless encounters over the years. I'm sure that many of us find the current emphasis on international cooperation in terms of the bottom line of a profit and loss balance sheet to be completely out of place. (I'm being polite!) Instead, we should think of our relations in terms of an ocean - while storms and waves might be raging on the surface, deep down beneath the waves all is serene and still..

A few days ago, I mentioned the rich experiences that can be enjoyed away from the madding crowds that flock to the coast here in the summer months. Take a look at some of the wonders that you can visit further inland in this region. The video lasts for almost two hours, but it's well worth watching.

It has a commentary in French but if you click on Captions, it should come up with English sub-titles. If not, click on the Captions button, then click on Settings - and select Auto Translate - and from the list of languages, select the language you want.

3rd July. I seldom comment on football (or soccer for US readers!) but I was greatly saddened today by the news that Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva had been killed in a car accident en route to Liverpool to start pre-season training.

Obrigado por tudo, Diogo e André. Nunca andará sozinho. Descanse em paz.

The clock's ticking here as we await the tsunami of people who will soon be among us for the Fêtes de Bayonne which will run from 9th - 13th July. Bayonne is a town of a smidge over 50,000 people and the Fêtes de Bayonne attract something like 1.3 million (yes, million) visitors. In our first years, we'd stay here and dip in and out of the activities - but neither of us are great ones for crowds so now we always head for the hills - for some coolth (!) and peace and quiet.

1st July. For the last few days, the airspace in the immediate neighbourhood has been occupied by a squadron of recently arrived swallows who have been twittering around the rooftops at high speed and low level in a non-stop display of sheer exuberance. I doubt if they're chasing airborne insects - no, to me it seems as though they're simply having fun at truly breakneck speeds.

29th June. This is one of those 'calm before the storm' moments when we gird our loins in advance of the annual migration of summer visitors to the Côte Basque. For the next 2 months the roads along the coast from Bayonne to Hendaye will be home to thousands of cars, camper vans and every other conceivable form of motorised transportation as they sit in shimmering queues of slow-moving (on a good day) traffic.

If you're planning a first time visit to the Basque Country, by all means visit the coastal towns and villages - but don't forget to explore the interior and the back country via the tangle of winding lanes. Some of the lanes are unsignposted but as many people now have access to GPS, there's no excuse not to explore the riches that lie inland - especially in the peak summer months of July and August.

One suggestion would be to head for Dantcharia - averting your gaze as you pass the massed ranks of Ventas (supermarkets with, among other things, whisky at 20€ for a 2 litre bottle) on the Spanish side of the border, ignoring the cries to stop, and continue upwards to the Col d'Otxondò before descending into the beautiful Baztan valley. Even at the height of summer you will find that you'll have the roads more or less to yourself.

28th June. A family tale.. I remember my father buying a version of "Desafinado" by Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd in or around 1962 - and shortly afterwards, it vanished / went AWOL aka permanently missing. For some unknown reason, the flying fickle finger of suspicion was pointed (unjustly) in my direction.. but it was a case of mistaken identity. How do I plead? "Not guilty your honour.." In the unlikely event that by some miracle of alchemy, he can access the blog, here at last is that favourite record of his.. 63 years later! I should have bought him a replacement copy - except that would have implied that I was guilty - and I wasn't!

It's still up in the high twenties here - and the forecast for Monday is 35°C.. and I'll be heading down to the border country as two of us from the association we're involved with have been asked to explain what the WWII Comet Line was all about to a class of schoolchildren before leading them over a short section of the old route.

24th June. It's been steaming here today - up in the mid 30s. Even at 8pm, it's still too hot for us out there.

19th June. This morning I decided this was the day when I'd manhandle our plancha (right) out from its winter storage in the garage and put it where it belongs - on the terrace. When I took the cover off it, the usual suspects (spiders and other assorted creepy-crawlies) made their scurried dash for safety.. leaving me to clean off 2 years-worth of detritus. I gave the wood a quick wipe-down with a rag soaked in linseed oil and it soon looked like new again. (think we bought it in 2008) The black object is the cast iron cooking surface.. and I shudder to think what it weighs.

I think there's a cold San Miguel with my name on it in the garage fridge. Who said, "I am just going outside and I may be some time.."?

** Scroll down for the answer;

We're having a few days away next month in the high Pyrenees to escape the heat and the crowds of the Fêtes de Bayonne (9-13th July).

11th June. Hot here today - around 30°C.. and I've just spotted the first few swallows of summer. Madame lived in the Congo as a teenager and the other day she suddenly said that it felt like Africa here. We'd had a sudden warm spell (mid 30s °C) with high humidity and being outside in the garden wasn't an option. We've also had some spectacular electrical storms with sheet lightning and heavy downpours.

3rd June. We watched "The Lake House" a few days back and one of the songs on the soundtrack was this catchy one by Paul McCartney - how does he keep coming up with them? While the premise of the story stretched all our belief (and then some), I wouldn't be at all surprised if, a few days later, you find yourself humming the song.. (blame me!)

31st May. I've been a fan of Tuba Skinny ever since I found them on YouTube a good few years ago. They're a traditional jazz street band based in New Orleans and they play the addictive kind of Dixieland/ragtime/blues jazz that I could listen to till the cows come home. Their line-up changes from time to time but Shaye Cohn (cornet) and Todd Burdick (tuba) are ever-presents. I was surprised to discover last night that they'd been playing close by at Anglet in July 2019. I wish I'd known.. Anyway, kick back and let that jumpy leg of yours beat the time while they play on this very corner next to the beach on a summer's evening some 6 years ago:

1st set here and 3rd & final set here. Just spotted on their website that they'll be playing at Biarritz around 23rd June. Don't know where yet. Here's their version of Happy Birthday! 😀

14th May. Here's one of those pieces that I, and I suspect many others, never tire of listening to. It's the Queensland Symphony Orchestra with Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations:

29th April. We were lucky enough to have been present when Gautier Capuçon gave an outdoor concert at Anglet during the Covid lockdown a few years ago. I thought the full rich sound of his 300+ year old cello (made by Matteo Goffriller in 1701) was a revelation. (More here) Here he is again, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra playing the Adagio from Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85.. with that same very special instrument (filmed at the Barbican Centre, London):

25th April. It really feels like the first day of Spring here - cloudless blue skies, with a forecast of 22°C this afternoon - and the garden has a hustle on!

This cartoon becomes more relevant with every year that passes!😀

22nd April. On Easter Sunday we had lunch at the Auberge Hiribarren, situated in the heart of the beautiful Basque village of Biriatou, overlooking the Bidassoa, the river that separates Spain from France. All I'll say is that we're looking forward to our next visit.

Biriatou

My favourite of all Basque villages, Biriatou is unique in that its centre, comprising the four essential elements of Basque village life - the church of Saint Martin, the town hall, the Auberge and the fronton - could not be in closer proximity. Another plus is that there's no through traffic..

12th April. Some may welcome a rift in the relationship between the peoples of Europe and those of the United States following the recent trade tariffs announced by President Trump, but, regardless of the current tensions, his presidency will end in 2029, and I believe any strain in transatlantic relations, such as they might be, will be short-lived.

We forget at our peril the turbulent years marked by honour, commitment, and courage that led us to victory in both World War II and the Cold War. Countless lives were lost in the defence and restoration of liberty and democracy. The deep bonds and shared values that unite us were forged in the fires of those battles — against fascism, communism, and global terror — and they will endure long after today’s political disputes fade into history.

What brings us together is far stronger than anything that might divide us — and long may it remain so. Reflect on this as you listen to the choir of the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis with their moving rendition of that great naval hymn "Eternal Father, strong to save":

1st April. Spring is on the move down here - the first blooms of wisteria are out, everything in the garden seems to be in bud, I've just mowed the lawn and put away the all-weather cover of the table on the terrace - and the sound of scurrying feet on garden walls tells me that the local lizards have woken up.

Soon it will be time to alert those neighbours of a nervous disposition that my shorts are in imminent danger of making their first public appearance in 2025.

In other news, I had a final rendez-vous with a urologist at the hospital this morning to finish up the work of removing the 13mm (½") stone that had taken up residence in my r/h kidney. Phew - glad that's done and dusted.

Nutty*, our 4x4 English cocker spaniel, has also been in the wars. Unknown to us, he'd eaten one of Madame's sockettes/popsocks and it had caused the MOAJ (Mother of all Jams) in his plumbing. We had to take him to a 24hr vet in the wee small hours on two occasions as he was very distressed. I thought for a few days that we might lose him. The surgeon at the vets found a blockage in his intestines and he had to remove a 20cm section as it was impossible to extract the tangled mass. Nutty lost 2½kg (5½lbs) in a week and he was quite subdued when we brought him home again. Now, however, he seems to have rediscovered his former zest for life and he now sports a 15cm (6") scar on his tum. He's a lucky lad. He's been put on a new regime - his previous daily rations have been split into 8 mini portions that he receives at 1½ hourly intervals. He had to keep that plastic collar on for two weeks - and I think we were all glad when those two weeks were up! (He's now on a 4 small meals a day regime.. until he's fully healed)

* aka Jimmy Sniff - which makes him sound like a Teamster or a Mob enforcer..

16th March. France emerged as winners of the 2025 6 Nations rugby tournament with a good win by over the 'Porridge Wogs' - as the Scots were affectionately known in the RAF a few decades ago. A resurgent England were a close second - one point behind France. Full results table here.

I make no apology for including this next video of yesterday's 6 Nations rugby match between Wales and England at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. This was a result that was long overdue in my view. England has suffered over the years at the hands of the Welsh - so think of this result as payback with a vengeance!

4th March. Ireland welcomes France to Dublin this coming Saturday afternoon - and the encounter at the Aviva Stadium, Lansdowne Road, promises to be the highlight of this year's 6 Nations Rugby tournament. Both sides are renowned for their quick thinking under pressure and the ability to raise their game and play with passion. Ireland has always been my second favourite team (after England) when it comes to rugby.. they've had some marvellous players over the years. However, in Antoine Dupont, France has the ultimate game changer - a mercurial player who seemingly can do it all - plus Thomas Ramos to kick the points. An impossible match to forecast. More here.

For some reason, I was reminded a few minutes ago of an unplanned lunch stop we once made at a 13th century thatched pub/restaurant on Exmoor way back around 2003. The Masons Arms at Knowstone (above) was a real find - I explained to mine host that we hadn't booked - but the genial owner said that he had two sea bream left - and we could have the last vacant table on his sunlit terrace that overlooked the verdant Devonshire countryside. Whooosh!

We had one of those lunches that linger long in the memory - and as we settled up later, I asked him for a card. His name on the card was followed by the post-nominals UAA and CRAFT. I had to ask what they stood for - he said "Unencumbered by Academic Achievement - and Can't Remember A Flipping Thing".. or near enough!😀. As is the way of things, he sold up shortly afterwards and it's now a Michelin starred restaurant. The memory lives on though.

3rd March. I just noticed that Jack Vettriano has died.. I'm sure many of us will have admired his quirky and very commercial paintings of Thirties-era couples dancing on sea shores attended by a butler with an umbrella.. (I know, we've all been there!☺) If I show you one picture, you'll know exactly who I'm referring to.. (or should that be to whom I'm referring..?)

More here.

1st March. I heard a piano piece on the radio a few days ago that rang a few bells with me. Unfortunately I was in the car at the time and due to my unfamiliarity with the touch screen menu, I was unable to find out its name in time - all I knew was that it was a piece that my father used to play. I convinced myself it was Schubert - so once back home, I started wading through endless compilations on YouTube - until I struck gold.. Here it is: Nikolay Lugansky with Schubert's 4 Impromptus, Op. 142, D. 935: No. 2 in A-Flat Major. Allegretto:

9th February. Yesterday saw England and France collide (no other word for it) at Twickenham in the long-awaited/feared (delete as applicable) match in the 6 Nations rugby tournament. The last time this fixture was played at Twickenham in 2023, France demolished England 10-53. So it was with no little foreboding that we welcomed our French friends A and V to sit around the fire with us and watch the match. A used to play for Bordeaux-Bègles - so he has a good understanding of the rules. Without giving too much away, the match turned into one of the most enthralling 6N encounters of recent memory - and A and I are still on speaking terms!

1st February. The 2025 6 Nations rugby tournament opened with a bang last night as Wales were put to the sword 43-0 by a rampant France. All I'll say is that the result was not unexpected as Wales are rebuilding. France are going to take some stopping this year.

Update on new driving licence: it appears that a replacement should be issued within 2 weeks.

Here's one to get your heart started on a cold February morning.. It starts off raunchily - before morphing into a spaghetti western soundtrack:

29th January. Just back from a visit to an outpost of the Town Hall across the river known as France Services to request a new driving licence. Prior to Covid, routine administrative requests were handled by the Sub-Prefecture.. where the large waiting room was probably ideal for the transmission of bugs. As can be seen from the above link, many of these functions have now been transferred from the Sub-Prefecture to this new office.

My request was handled with great efficiency (and friendliness) and once my identity had been cross-checked, the request was launched into the great administrative system that runs France. In a sign of the times, not a single paper form had to be completed.. the whole process being carried out online. All that was needed was access to my Ameli account, my identity card, a recent bill showing my name and address, my old driving licence.. plus two colour photos. It seems that I will receive a provisional acknowledgement of my request in a week or two and this will enable me to take to the road again. Phew!

28th January 2025. Back with you again.. We made it through Christmas, the New Year, the 'Burning of the Clavie'* and Burns Suppers (remember'd) - and here we are again with acres of white space in front of me gleaming in the gloaming - all ready to be filled in.

This next story will come as no surprise to some of you - but here goes. Back in 2016, I changed my UK driving licence for its French equivalent and I tucked the new card straight into my wallet - assuming (uh-oh) that it would run for 10 years. In 2019, I was granted French citizenship (there is a link). Over the last few days we've been test driving various cars as the time has come to replace our MINI Countryman. Before the test drive, I handed over a number of documents to the salesman for him to check - one of which was my French drivers' licence. This was followed by an audible sucking of teeth as he read out its expiry date.. 2021. It appears that I've been blithely driving around here for 4+ years without a valid licence. I think I'd only been given a 5 year licence (instead of the usual 10 years) because I was a foreigner.

Long story short - I think it will be April before I'll have a replacement licence in my hands. This is going to take some managing.

In other news, I'm told that I have a stone squatting somewhere in one of my kidneys. I have to present myself at the hospital in a few weeks time to hear what will be the preferred method of removing it. I'll draw the line at using a Large Hadron Collider..

* No help for you here with this - you'll have to find this one out for yourselves.

296. Into the unknown..

2024-01-05T08:58:00.371+01:00

27th December. Well, once again Christmas has come and gone in a flash. For me - it's 99% of mounting anticipation in the preceding months and weeks and then suddenly it's 1% there - and now it's disappearing fast in the rear view mirror. I hope that you enjoyed your Christmas - wherever you are. We didn't have a white Christmas - no, down here in south west France, we had a grey one. Normally we like to get out and walk along a beach somewhere to get some fresh air - but this year neither of us were tempted. Even Nutty (our cocker spaniel) wasn't keen on staying outside.

Feeling a bit hors de combat at the moment.. I've eaten something that disagrees with me and an early night is called for.

24th December. Christmas greetings to everyone - and here's wishing you all a happy New Year.. (now where did I put those pants with the elasticated waist?) (asking for a friend!😉)

Listening to a Christmas songs channel on our internet radio earlier I heard a 'one hit wonder' dating back to 1978 that I'd liked at the time. I can seldom decipher the words of pop songs (not that I try very hard to) but on digging around to find the song* in question I was surprised to find that the lyrics reputedly had an anti-war message. Live and learn. I like it anyway..

* for example, for years I thought that in the Beatles' "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" that they sang '..the girl with colitis goes by'.

12th December. I interrupted Madame the other day while she was in the middle of disentangling the Christmas lights prior to putting them on the tree - and I recognised that she was getting in a bit of a lather over it. In some exasperation, she blurted out (in French): "I'm losing my Latin with this..". It was the first time I'd heard her use this expression. What does it mean I can hear you ask? Lookee here.

10th December. On Sunday we visited our friends who live in a beautiful old farmhouse in the hills above Cauneille for lunch, some 45 minutes away inland. I can't remember when we last experienced such adverse driving conditions here - with slashing rain, limited visibility, gusting winds - plus spray and standing water on the autoroute. As we passed through flood-prone Peyrehorade, the Adour was as high as I've ever seen it. We were relieved to arrive at our friends D and L without incident.

They spoiled us - their log fire was hissing away in a vast open fireplace - and once the two dogs had negotiated a truce, we were able to enjoy the raclette that L had prepared for us. I'd taught them how to play 'Clag' - an addictive game I'd learned in the RAF. It's a progressive variant of whist but with a twist. You need varying quantities of luck and skill to emerge as the winner - it's always enjoyable though with no two hands the same. We left for Bayonne towards the end of the afternoon while it was still light and in the immortal words of Bill McLaren - we were both "riding very low in the water".

7th December. Rumbling into December, Commander-in-Chief Home uttered these fateful words a day or two ago - "Execute Operation Christmas Tree at the weekend". I was in town yesterday and they'd clearly received the same message there too - as the centre now has a distinctly festive air to it.

After last Christmas was over, I dismantled our artificial Christmas tree (Chinese-made - oh, the shame!) and tried to put it back in its box in some kind of ordered sequence with the idea of making it easier to re-mantle* it this year. After much head-scratching it's now up.

* this should be a word!

Today sees the unveiling of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after a monumental restoration / rebuild following the disastrous fire there 5 years ago. France's craftsmen have achieved miracles in reconstructing what is one of the most celebrated and revered cathedrals of all. I was unable to bring myself to watch the news coverage of the inferno at the time - it was too shocking and disturbing. I'm hoping that a DVD will soon be available to show how builders, artisans and craftsmen of all kinds carried out the painstaking work of rebuilding this great cathedral. France has a long tradition of craftsmen in all fields - and they were all needed as never before. (Listen to the story here)

(I'm somewhat reluctant to mention this point - but I find it curious that the cause of the fire has never been identified.)

Next to this, the fall of the Barnier government will be seen as a minor footnote in history - which is as it should be.

24th November. It was still 22°C at 5.30pm today. No complaints from me.

Strong warm winds from the south today - stripping the leaves off the trees on the garden. Think it's the day for a walk on the beach at Ilbarritz.

At Ilbarritz, spindrift was being ripped off the wave crests by a powerful southerly wind.

Here's an interesting point of view (9 minutes) from John Gray about the need for a new political centre ground in UK politics. (Emmanuel Macron captured the centre ground in French politics when he formed his party En Marche in 2016 by cherry-picking candidates from the Left and Right. En Marche has since been re-branded as Renaissance.)

23rd November. This is one of Paul McCartney's less well-known songs.. but in my opinion, it deserves better. I think he should have stopped at around 3.30.. See what you think..

We've had some early storms blowing through from the Bay of Biscay over the last few nights. I came down one night in the wee small hours to let the dog out - a full-blown storm was in progress with moaning winds buffeting the house and lashing rain. Needless to say, he thought better of an extended stay in the garden.

We've been burning logs over the last few nights like one of those early transatlantic steam ships that ran short of coal at some distance from land.. So far I've not succumbed to the temptation of feeding the flames with a few pieces of furniture - but it's been a close-run thing. Must buy some more logs today!

Black Friday came in handy for a few trinkets for Madame yesterday.

14th November. Chet Baker's voice was made for this song..

13th November. I lit the woodburner this evening for the first time this autumn. In previous years I've finished my C*******s shopping by now. Oops! I'd better get a move on.

William Congreve hit the nail on the head 327 years ago when he opined that ‘‘Music has Charms to soothe a savage Breast’’. This phrase dates back to 1697 as part of his play entitled "The mourning bride". If further proof is needed, play this next piece - it's Schubert's Impromptu No. 3 in G-Flat Major, Op. 90, D. 899:

5th November. I opened the kitchen door to the terrace at just before 5am this morning to a chorus of raucous squawking from above.. yes, another 1,000 bomber raid by migrating common cranes en route to warmer climes.

4th November. Despite the temperature being in the low twenties (°C), there are definitely a few hints that cooler/colder weather is waiting just around the corner. I had the step ladder out again over the weekend - pruning a tree back to its bare bones - ready for another explosive growth spurt from it next year. We inherited it from the previous owner - it throws out long branches with pink blossom. Don't ask me what it's called..

This next piece is - in my opinion - Luciano Pavarotti's greatest-ever recording - "E lucevan le stelle" ("And the stars were shining") from Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera, New York in 1978. (More here) If this doesn't shiver your timbers, there's no hope for you!

1st November. I was listening to RNE Radio Clásica (a Spanish radio station roughly equivalent to Classic FM) in the car this morning and I gathered the presenter was talking about English music because he referred to John Eck-less.. I later realised he meant John Eccles..

Here's Reason No 17 why I stopped listening to the BBC..

29th October. Another sign that winter's on its way - we roasted the first of the season's chestnuts at lunchtime.

Another straw in the wind - a few nights ago I found myself outside on the terrace in the garden at some ridiculously early hour (around 3am) while the dog took his time doing what dogs do - and I heard a raucous squawking overhead as a large formation of common cranes flapped their way south.

Although Sinatra belonged to the generations that preceded mine, I have occasionally featured the odd one or two of his over the years. His rendition of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns" is here on merit. (and just for a comparison, here's Judy Collins with her version) Enjoy:

26th October. Today, Mother Nature is showing us how many different types of rain she can conjure up.. This morning, we had what the weather girls on UK TV would call 'spits and spots' of rain (I even heard it described once as bits and pieces of rain). Since then, we've moved steadily up the scale and now at 4pm we're into heavy downpour. And just as I wrote that, it cranked up to another level - we're now into car wash territory!

23rd October. Another afternoon spent cutting back in the garden. Time to unwind with a great Paul Simon track:

And to follow that - what better than what is probably Paul Simon's greatest solo song:

21st October. I've been meaning to post the following for quite some time now - it's something I see on most days when out walking the dog in the neighbourhood - it's a short phrase painted neatly in 4"/10cm white letters high up on a garden wall nearby: "Le ciel commence ici bas" - which translates as 'The sky starts down here'.

(For those with long memories - it looks exactly like the wall upon which Maigret used to strike his match)

Each time I see it, I always end up thinking that, among other things, it would make a good motto for a flying school. Of course, it would sound better in Latin: Caelum incipit hic - or Coelum hic incipit. Are there any Latin scholars out there who could tell me which would be the better translation?

I suspect though that the original meaning was meant to be that 'Heaven starts here' - and I must admit that that same thought had occurred to me more than once.. that we're actually living in 'heaven on earth' (despite the likes of man-made hells such as Gaza for example). We've been given a planet that's impossibly rich in beauty of all kinds - especially when compared to the countless billions of lifeless planets and stars that populate the unfathomable reaches of the solar system. In the few short centuries since the Industrial Revolution, we've been doing our level best to convert our birthright into a poisoned wasteland - and we seem incapable of controlling our self-destructive tendencies.

19th October. Just come in from the garden where I've been cutting back the late season growth.. (it never stops!) and, in the distance, there was the unmistakeable sound of a 'manif' (a demo).. discordant air horns etc. What this one's about is anyone's guess - but one thing's for sure, the French are not apathetic when it comes to politics - they will get out on the streets to support their cause.

I caught the tail end of this beautiful piece for piano (Frédéric Chopin's Prelude in C minor, Opus 28, No 20) on the radio this morning and it brought to mind a distant memory of a record it had once inspired..

I had to google it in the end - and of all things the mystery record turned out to be a Barry Manilow release from the mid-70s.. I always thought that a little Barry Manilow went a long way* - but the recording below is quite well done (given that it sounds as though he's playing with his gardening gloves on compared to the one above):

* especially if thrown hard enough!

9th October. I'm sure it must have been the latest crop of black-shirted 20-something 'creatives' at Citroën's advertising agency who had opted for targeting the 'low-hanging fruit' with their latest embarrassing ad for electric cars. I'd not previously noticed that electric cars are the preserve of the rich here in France (but I clearly know nothing). Don't take my word for it - see what you think:

20th September. If you like word play, this video is for you.. (the one about tinnitus caught my eye!🙂)

I was musing over the eternal mystery of human consciousness here in mid-August - and the fact that, uniquely of all living creatures, we have been blessed with the ability to think deeply and creatively. What is it about us that has given us the ability to expand our consciousness beyond the 'here and now'?

One possible explanation comes from Michael Pravica, a Physics professor from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It's worth a read.

31st August. This is a collection of photos from Flickr that shows many aspects of the High Pyrenees where we were a few weeks ago..

30th August. We have something resembling a tropical jungle in our back garden with palm trees, bamboo, cacti, bougainvillea, rampant wisteria and much other nameless exotica - and keeping on top of it all is giving us pause for thought. We have the ideal weather here for plant growth - warm days and regular rainfall. What's the problem I hear you ask? Keeping it all under control - that's what. As fast as we both cut back new growth in the back garden, the front garden develops a mind of its own etc etc. (At one side there was a hedge that was threatening to out-grow my efforts to keep it manageable - so I had to lop a foot (30cm) off the top of it..) This is a cartoon I posted a good few years ago - and it's just about right on the money!

What other options are there? Higher management is considering the removal of much of the 'green stuff' in the borders - to be replaced by cacti and other slow-growing things. My vote? I'd much prefer to see if we could find someone in the local area to come in and keep things tidy for a few days each month.

Trimming all the bushes and keeping it all under control is pretty arduous in the heat - but when it's been done, it does look good with a glass of cold rosé in hand. The jury's still out.

24th August. I went for a ride on my ebike after lunch - I followed the Adour to the coast before turning left and heading south for Biarritz. Mixing it with traffic though is not a good idea - and in future I'll go out first thing in the morning.

23rd August. It was one of those bright, sunlit, cloudless starts to the day earlier that somehow reminded of when I lived in Greece a loong time ago. I suddenly felt the need for a Greek coffee - a few minutes later I was sitting outside on the terrace with a cup of Greek-Cypriot coffee (Charalambous Mocha Gold) in front of me.. Aaah.. mmm.

Mm-mmm! I found some grapes in the fridge (that took me back) and that whooosh was the sound of 58 years flashing past.

21st August. Christmas has come early for you this year! Everything you wanted to know about the Subjunctive - but were afraid to ask.. (I'll understand this if it kills me - or die trying..)

For the subtitles, click on the button above that says Subtitles/closed captions.

16th August. I just realised that I'd forgotten to mark the passing of Françoise Hardy, a very special French singer from the sixties. She was poles apart from the instantly forgettable girl singers that we had foisted on us in England back then - her songs were reflective, personal, occasionally melancholic but always sincere. She was 2½years older than me and looked like no-one in my church youth club..! A young lad can dream..

13th August. Thought for tomorrow: many a good tune can still be played on an old 78!

I'd been watching a video entitled "Titanic: the nightmare and the dream" when, during its closing moments (at 46:03) I heard a few bars of Mozart that I recognised instantly. The choir I used to sing with (pre-Covid) had rehearsed this sublime piece - "Ave Verum Corpus" - and even our interpretation of it had the power to make me shiver. It was no "happy accident" when Mozart wrote it in 48 hours.

Scientists would have us believe that Humanity evolved from creatures that climbed out of the mud millions of years ago - and that may well be true. However, when you hear such great art as the piece below, it's hard to escape the conclusion that our human spirits must have been touched by some kind of magic alchemy that made us, and us alone, uniquely capable of deeply creative thought - that somehow bypassed all the other species.

Here's the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra with the Radio France choir as they interpret one of Mozart's finest compositions - written 6 months before his death - and conducted by Myung-Whun Chung:

10th August. One of the abiding memories of these Olympics (for me at least) will be the sight of innumerable medal winners biting down on their medals for the cameras. When did this start? It's been done before I know - but never on the industrial scale that we've seen in the last few weeks.

8th August. This is where we were a few short weeks ago.. a beautiful part of France that needs to be at the top of your "to do" list:

PS No points for spelling here (Pyrenees) - one n.

We left the autoroute (A64) just after Pau and headed for Lourdes and as we neared it, the massive bulk of the Pyrenees started to emerge out of a blue haze.

First, it was just as a series of pale blue outlines before they separated out into individual bulging mountains that jutted out one behind the other. Our size seemed insignificant by comparison and I felt that they possessed a nobility that the hills at our end of the Pyrenees didn't have.

6th August. I used to have this (above) on a record back when I had LPs and a record player.. a long time ago! It turned up by chance in my YouTube selection.

Scenes from a Retirement in France: This afternoon, I decided to take the car through a local car wash - one of those with a hundred water jets and the giant flailing rollers that sweep up and over your Pride and Joy. Not so fast though - a woman in the queue ahead of me was in a Twingo (about the size of a domestic fridge) and she had clearly paid for the "Super Presidential Everything Included" option as the great machines pulverised her P & J backwards and forwards ad nauseam - at one point the overhead display lit up to inform us that she was on a Massage cycle.

I was starting to lose the will to live when suddenly I heard the throaty roar of something very special indeed. Not five yards away from me, and edging along in the early rush hour traffic there was a concours-quality Ferrari 375 MM from 1954-ish with 4 exhausts jutting out from underneath the curvaceous bodywork - looking like the back end of a WW2 bomber. Powering this timelessly elegant beauty is a 4½ litre V12. No 70 year old car should look this good.

To save you wondering, you would need a sum north of US$7m to own one of these legendary cars. More here on this beast.

Ferrari 375 MM Pinin Farina Spyder

Then, as I tangled with those leaving work early, I was held up in two lines of traffic crawling along - with a bike's width separating us all. Then came the enraged sound of a scooter on a charge - and seconds later a young girl weaved her way at speed through the miniscule gaps between the lines of cars as though she was on a mogul ski run. If ever there was an accident waiting to happen, she was it.

30th July. A week or so ago, we had a short break in the High Pyrenees.. and we ticked off a trip that we'd been meaning to do for some years - and that was to take the cable car ride up to the summit of the Pic du Midi (9438ft). However, unlike in the video below, when we went up, the cabin was loaded to the max (which was 45 + 1 according to a sign on the wall). As you can see, the trip up is in two parts.. and there was little to set the imagination spinning up out of control until we switched to the second cable car.. when I made the mistake of looking forward and up. (this part starts at 4:00 in the video) Between us and the distant peak of our destination, there was just a slack cable that led - uninterrupted - all the way up to the top. Below us yawned oblivion. I felt a strong sense of vertigo and in an attempt to control it I forced myself to stare straight ahead. As a cable car approached heading downwards, I did briefly contemplate emulating Richard Burton's leap from one cable car to another in "Where Eagles Dare"..

Suddenly, I could think of a thousand - no, make that two thousand other things I'd rather being doing than trusting my life (never mind the 45 others) to a cable that looked to be no thicker than an inch. I could not bring myself to look sideways or down. I just wanted to get the hell outa there! The problem was - having made it up there we had to go back down again.

We made up our minds to return before long to this stunningly beautiful area as it's only 2 hours from home. The sheer scale of the mountains made us realise that what we have at the western end of the Pyrenees are not mountains - but hills.

27th July. When all the dust has settled, when all the record-breaking athletic performances have been analysed many times over - and when all the thousands of broadcasters, commentators and spectators have returned home after the Paris 2024 Olympics, what will be your abiding memory? What will remain to remind you in years to come of the Paris Olympics?

It might be seen as heresy in some quarters for me to admit this but after enduring about two of the four hours of the bloated and sometimes incomprehensible opening ceremony, I called it a night.

The next morning I saw that the evening had been redeemed by Céline Dion's stunning rendition of Edith Piaf's immortal ballad - "Hymne à l'Amour" - sung on an unseasonably wild and wet July evening surrounded by the latticework of the old Iron Lady of Paris herself - the 135 year old Eiffel Tower:

(Original French lyrics by Edith Piaf, music by Marguerite Monnot. Click here for the lyrics in English)

15th July. The Fêtes de Bayonne 2024 concluded with a midnight firework display that went on and on - to the point that I finally got up to watch the last few minutes of it. The hordes of raiding Visigoths left town this morning.. leaving the streets around us littered with empty litre bottles of Ricard - and other unmentionable detritus! I'm including a selection of videos to choose from here.

Fortunately, we had the perfect weather for the "morning after" - a light shower that washed down the pavements and most of the toxic fumes away.

10th July. This afternoon saw the opening of the Fêtes de Bayonne, brought forward by two weeks so as to deconflict with the Paris Olympics. This morning, the town was already awash with the first wave of white-clad fêtards (as Fête-goers are known). For security reasons, the opening ceremony had been brought forward to 5pm (it's normally 10pm) and it was followed by the usual window-rattling firework display. Normally, I can see the fireworks from Pipérade Towers - but today we had the noise-only variety as it was still bright sunshine.

This is a stunning advert for the upcoming Olympics by French TV - they do these things very well here - see what you think:

In searching for the one above, I came across this longer version - that has more of everything in it. Best in full screen:

4th July. Happy birthday America.. 248 years young!

Meanwhile, the UK is about to enter a strange period in its history - led by someone who has a number of different policies, enough it would seem for a different one for every day of the year. And as he keeps reminding us, his father was a toolmaker.

2nd June. I discovered the forest of Pignada at nearby Anglet a good few years ago and even on the hottest of days it was always a real pleasure to walk with the dog through its shady sylvan glades. The trees were mainly mature maritime pines and the canopy of foliage must have been at least 20-25 metres/60-80 feet above ground level. The sandy trails that criss-crossed the woods were carpeted with pine needles and lined with lush ferns and the distant sounds of traffic etc were muffled by the vegetation. There was room for all there - dog walkers, joggers, families, horseriders and cyclists. (here it is as it was)

Then, in July 2020, a 16 year old disaffected youth set fire to the tinder-dry forest and the flames raced through the woods under the influence of a strong southerly wind. Over 165 hectares/400 acres of beautiful woodland were consumed in the inferno. Since then I've not been back to my usual spot to see the damage until today when I took Nutty (our cocker) for a leg stretch in what remains of the woods.

I'd been avoiding returning to this site as I couldn't face seeing what had become of it - all because of the actions of a mindless adolescent.

Before - avant

Now, look at the photo of the woods (above) as they were - and compare it to the devastated landscape that it's now become (below). It's hard to believe that we're looking at exactly the same location. One or two small trees somehow survived the conflagration but all those lofty mature pines had had to go. In their place, the municipality planted thousands of small bushes (now about 3-4 feet in height) to avoid any further erosion of the top soil. Some replanting of trees has taken place as well but I estimate it will take decades for them to regain their former splendour.

After - après

The trees in the distance above (approx ½mile away) are what remains of the old forest. Four years on, and evidence of the fire still remains - as evidenced by partially consumed branches and fire-blackened trunks - and it was heart-breaking to take in the loss of a once-superb natural environment. I would happily contribute towards a tree-planting scheme if one's available.

23rd May. This morning I listened to a podcast of yesterday's BBC radio news and heard that Rishi Sunak (Britain's Prime Minister) had announced that a General Election will be held on 4th July - to which Keir Starmer (Labour's leader) responded with a pithy 'Churchillian' phrase (ahem) - "Time for change"*. And this from the man who is widely being touted as a Prime Minister-in-waiting. Starmer has been a barrister and therefore his training allows him to be able to represent the case for either the prosecution or the defence with equal felicity. However, as a PM, he would have to lead a government, implement his policies and inspire an electorate. From what I've seen and heard from him thus far, he doesn't convince me that any of these challenges are within his skillset. What are his core beliefs (beyond "I want to be PM") - I hope Sunak will be able to penetrate the blancmange that is Starmer during the one-on-one debates and reveal his hidden shallows.

* Sadly, I jest. If ever there was a moment that cried out for a Shakespearean blast it was then - but I should have known better than to expect anything more memorable from him. He reminds me of John Major - but minus the charisma.

The trouble is - who to vote for? I can't believe that the two principal contenders are the best that the UK has to offer. The choice reminds me of two bald men fighting over a comb..

I spent yesterday in the garden wobbling about at the top of a stepladder cutting back some of the phenomenal growth that had taken place here in the last few weeks as a result of the early season warmth and rain. I practised my topiary skills (such as they are) on half a dozen bushes that looked as though they were thinking about making a break for it over the garden wall. In England, it's said that if it rains on St Swithins Day (15th July) then 40 days of rain will follow. Here in France, the spectre of St Médard (translation here) is invoked instead - although here the date that matters is 8th June. I'm starting to think that St Médard celebrated his Saints day at the beginning of the May.

Mentioning St Swithins Day brings me on to David Nicholls 2009 novel "One Day". The story follows a couple who spend the night together on 15 July 1988, knowing they must go their separate ways the next day. The novel then visits their lives on 15 July every year for the next 20 years. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed this book.

22nd May. Are you dissatisfied with your mainstream news provider? If so, have a browse around this site - it pulls together news feeds from many countries aound the world - and provides them all in one handy place - either in their original language or in English. It's always a good idea to seek out a different perspective from your usual source of news.

21st May. In something of a 'first' for me, next month will see me in prison! (who said "About time too.."?) The association I'm involved with had a BD published last year and it's attracted attention from people we seldom have the opportunity to meet. Last Thursday, the president of the association and I were invited to present the story of the WWII Comète Line to an audience of retirees at the Université du Temps Libre at nearby Anglet.

Next month will see us behind bars at the Villa Chagrin (as the local prison is known) presenting Comète to a genuinely captive selected audience!😃 A couple of days later, we'll be taking an even more select group of inmates outside to walk over a part of the actual route taken by the Comète guides and the evading pilots during WWII. I hope it doesn't give them any ideas!

The Olympic flame passed through a wet Bayonne yesterday.. Having once been soaked in the morning while taking the dog out, I was disinclined to walk into town for a second soaking to see the 'spectacle'..

14th May. Remember Cat Stevens? He made some very listenable-to music in the early '70s - this is one of his:

11th May. Just noticed that the hit counter for the blog is approaching the quarter of a million mark. I remember being excited when it hit 100! Who'd a thunk it?!

10th May. This turned up in my inbox the other day and it gave me a most welcome laugh.

Apologies are due to my faithful reader(s) who might have been excused for thinking that the complete absence of posts since January was perhaps due to your Basque correspondent being forcibly restrained in a canvas jacket somewhere.. If only!😉 All I'll say is that we (the Royal 'we') have had a recurrence of health problems.. plus an unexpected surge in activity linked to the association I'm involved with.

Here's a little video that I've not featured before that focuses on the line that runs between here (Bayonne) and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. We've driven along the road that parallels the railway line many times and each time we comment on how picturesque that particular part of the Nive valley is. The first stop on this line is at Villefranque where those with long memories might remember is where we spent 5 happy months in a gîte when we first arrived in this beautiful and verdant corner of France waay back in 2007. (Almost 17 years ago.. ouch!)

And before you ask, here's one that looks at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port:

31st January. Walking into town this afternoon I was surprised to see Avenue Foch (the main thoroughfare into the centre of Bayonne from Pipérade Towers) completely blocked by maybe 20 huge 4x4 tractors each towing a trailer filled with old tyres although some appeared to be full of some organic vegetable matter (aka fumier). At the head of this line of farm vehicles, four policemen were standing there looking a little lost as all the tractor drivers had cunningly disappeared. As I walked by the lead tractor there was a deafening explosion from its trailer that came very close to causing me to have a wardrobe malfunction in the Trouser Department..! I have no idea what was causing these explosions but they continued at 15-20 second intervals.

What was all this about you may ask? The recent inflationary price rises caused by higher energy costs among other things and the fact that farmers now have to pay the full retail price for diesel has meant than many farmers are working in the red. They claim that the supermarkets are buying in their produce from worldwide low cost suppliers. Madame saw some asparagus from Peru in the shops the other day. This is far too complex a subject to be dealt with here but it was reported recently that young farmers are killing themselves at the rate of two per day - and the farming community has decided that they have nothing more to lose and so they've taken to direct action - largely with the support of the French public. Yes, farmers may be land-rich but they are cash-poor. What hopes can a young farmer entertain for finding a wife and raising a family?

On my return home, I was surprised to see Avenue Foch was open to traffic again. This was clearly just a token 'lightning' protest to demonstrate that they could easily close down the town if they so wished. France's new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has taken some measures to address the farmers' concerns - but will they be enough to satisfy the aggrieved farmers? Agriculture is a key component of French life as it feeds into markets and restaurants - and what would France be without these? We've not heard the end of this. I support the farmers.

14th January. Watching ARTE this evening we were privileged to see Bruce Liu playing Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 in C Minor at the magnificent Kurhaus, Wiesbaden, from the Rheingau Music Festival 2023. His is a new name to me and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from him in years to come. Unfortunately, the original video I posted was taken down (for copyright issues or some such) so I'm replacing it with the III. Allegro Scherzando movement:

11th January. We made a flying visit to Grand Frais (noted for the freshness of its produce) this afternoon (just next to Biarritz airport). I was dispatched to examine the cheese department and in doing so I had to pass through the dramatically-lit displays of fruit and veg.

Clouds of water vapour were drifting over the spot-lit displays of greenery and it occurred to me that all it needed was for Sherlock Holmes (played by Basil Rathbone naturally) to step out of the swirling mists. I shouldn't be allowed out on my own really!

6th January. I was reminded by 50% of my global readership that The Shadows hit "Apache" deserves a mention - not too many records from 1960 have aged as well as this one.

Original version here.

4th January 2024. With the news that last year (reportedly) saw the earth's hottest temperatures in 125,000 years, I can't help thinking that we - on board Planet Earth - have entered uncharted waters - but minus a steady hand or two on the tiller to guide us. And to make matters worse, wherever you look, the political landscape is populated with pygmies. The great Western democracies have become more factionalised than ever before - they are riven with bickering and power struggles. Governments generally have 5 year terms, and even if they had long term policies and goals, these invariably are sacrificed on the altar of short term expediency as our political masters devote much/all of their time and effort in seeking and maintaining electoral popularity. And whether we like it or not, our politicians have to get themselves elected (and re-elected) if they are to function. Churchill famously once said that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Maybe the answer is a benign dictatorship - except that history has rightly taught us to reject anything with 'dictatorship' in the small print. Maybe it's the time for the UK to consider a National coalition government again.. it worked during WWII. The search continues.

I was searching through a number of stations on our internet radio the other day when I came across this minor classic tune by Duane Eddy - one that I hadn't heard for decades. When it first appeared in 1960 (I believe), it seemed to be ushering in a whole new optimistic decade.. With its distinctive electric guitar sound it became the signature tune for countless radio and TV programmes aimed at the youth market.

Meanwhile, across the English channel, artists such as France's Françoise Hardy and others initially flourished as they relied more on words than the amplified jangle of a Fender or a Rickenbacker. I heard just before Christmas that her life is sadly drawing to a close after a long brave struggle with illness.

295. Bird-chirping weather

2023-07-03T08:52:00.168+02:00

31st December. Sorry to have been so quiet lately but we had an unwelcome visitor - a certain Mr Montezuma - and he outstayed his welcome. I think I've had no more than 4 glasses of wine in the last ~~hour~~ oops, week..

16th December. We made a visit to Grand Frais (near the airport at Biarritz) on Friday morning.. and they were fully stocked with 1001 delights, ready for the festive season (or Christmas as I like to call it!). The link above doesn't do justice to the mouth-watering displays of fresh produce there..

Last Saturday should have seen another mass release of Chinese (or should that be Japanese?) lanterns from the centre of Bayonne. Here's a reminder of this event from last year:

Thousands of people crossed the border to come here and take part in another mass release, but we had a period of continuous heavy rain and the event was cancelled. Apparently many people then decided to visit Bayonne's indoor food market and the local TV news later reported that there had been an outbreak of mass shoplifting.. It is hoped that there will be another attempt to launch the thousands of lanterns this evening. The weather looks good so far. The Prefect of Pyrénées-Atlantiques has since decreed that tonight's event will be the last one ever due to "security reasons" and the "risk of fire posed by these lanterns".

4th December. Earlier this afternoon we suddenly had a swirling strong wind that blew sheets of rain every which way. It was difficult to see across the road. All quiet now.

3rd December. Beautiful crisp winter's day here today - a cloudless blue sky and 6°C - and ideal for a walk through the woods or down on the beach with Nutty (our cocker spaniel).

2nd December. Walking by Mr Montauzer's shop in town (aka the Temple to the Pig) the other day, I spotted some boudins blancs (with truffles) in his chilled cabinet. Whooosh - I was in like Flynn.. For reasons known only to Mr Montauzer, his truffled boudins blancs only appear at the end of the year (and occasionally at Easter). And they never appear on his website. (How to make boudins blancs) Served with sauté'd apples (below), there's very little better on God's green earth:

The other day I heard, and then saw, for the first time this year a great straggling vee-shaped formation of grues cendrées (common cranes) making their way towards the south west. Their raucous squawking is the first indication of their presence and then suddenly there they are - great wings flapping, the formation rippling in and out as they head towards warmer climes. It appears that they've been on the move for the last week or two (see here).

1st December. Hard to believe that we're back in December again. It was raining on and off this morning and I eventually took the dog out for a much needed ease springs.. Just as we reached the gate, someone 'up there' cranked up the water pressure to max and we both got a drenching.

30th November. It's become the norm to lavish praise on artists and performers these days but this recording of the 1st Movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto performed by cellist Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim conducting the London Philharmonic in 1967 fully justifies its description as 'the recording of the century'. I was lucky enough to hear French cellist Gautier Capuçon a year or two ago and I, being more accustomed to listening to music recorded on CDs - was transfixed by the richness and the breadth of sound that emerged from his 300+ year old instrument.

(Goose pimple alert!) Prepare yourself to be amazed by the lyricism, the intensity and the colour of her playing:

NB If your goose remains unpimpled after listening to the above video, I strongly suggest that you make an appointment with your medical practitioner asap!

14th November. Here's Eddie Zheng, a talented 22 year old, and I'm sure his is a name that we'll be hearing plenty of in future. This video shows him playing Charles-Marie Widor's Toccata on the Cavaillé-Coll organ at nearby Saint-Palais. If this was boxing, it would have finished as a win on points for Eddie after 15 rounds. The Toccata hardly gave him a moment's respite as he produced an inspired and mature performance that was entirely fault-free. A name to watch..

8th November. To Saint-Jean-de-Luz this morning for a quick visit to our bank, and in walking back to the car, my eye was caught by the gleam of gold in a shop window. The shop specialised in the buying and selling of gold and I found myself looking at a one kilo gold bar. I looked up what the current value is and I must admit to being way off in my estimate. I'll stick to my day job!

(7 Aug 24. Edited to add: when I posted this comment, I remember that a 1kg gold bar was valued at something like 57,000 euros. Today sees it valued at 70,500 euros.)

(24 Oct 24. Edited to add: Today that same 1kg gold bar is for sale at 83,500 euros..)

(17 Mar 25. Edited to add: Today's price is 89,900 euros..)

(3 Apr 25. Edited to add: Today's price is 94,300 euros)..

(22 Jan 26. Edited to add. Today's price is 132,000 euros)

There's a phrase I've heard once or twice that had me confused initially - bourrée de pognon. To my ear, it sounds like something I could easily be tempted into ordering in a restaurant without knowing what exactly it is. It actually means someone who is very comfortably off, full of money, loaded etc.

7th November. As 45 year old songs go, 'Baker Street' still sounds remarkably fresh. Sadly, Gerry Rafferty (Fr translation) was unable to come to terms with the lifestyle that his fame had brought him and he died a lonely death at the age of 63.. This song, with its soaring alto sax (Raphael Ravenscroft) and equally good solo guitar (Hugh Burns), will serve as a lasting reminder of his talent:

3rd November. Heavy rain was drumming on the roof all night - and it was still pouring down this morning. Looking out to the west, I could see patches of blue - and so during a break between showers, I got myself and the dog ready for a quick burst 'round the houses' and off we shot. The westerly wind was blowing hard - and the tall chestnuts and other arboreal entities (aka trees - not very good on names!) were swaying as the wind moaned and roared through the topmost branches. Of course, at the furthest point from home - by the bull ring - it started raining again.. and we arrived home like two drowned rats. This weather looks set for the day. We lit the woodburner last night as the temp had dropped to 11-12°C - and I've reset it for another cosy evening tonight.

The Nive could well burst its banks in the centre of town this evening.

2nd November. Reports about tempête Ciaran in the media this morning are saying that a peak wind speed of 207km/h (128mph) was reported at Pointe du Raz overnight with waves of 21m (68ft) high. I was downstairs at 4am to let Nutty out - he stepped out into the downpour, did a smart about turn and shot back indoors.

1st November. This is getting serious now - yesterday I dismantled our plancha and I wrapped the cast iron cooking surface in an old sheet before lugging it downstairs into the cellar where it will stay dry until Spring. The rest of it I put away in the garage. I secured the all-weather cover over our outdoor table and just now I took down our garden umbrella, rolled it up and put that away in the garage too.

The heavy solid wooden shutters at the back of the house take a real pounding here - they bear the brunt of the winter storms and in summer they have the heat to contend with. I've painted them a few times but we've finally decided to replace them with some new ones - pre-finished in Basque rouge and of a composite construction - aluminium with (I believe) a polystyrene foam interior. They're due here any day now and once they've been fitted, I think we'll be in good shape for the winter.

Those in northern France are being warned to brace themselves for the imminent arrival of storm Ciaran during this evening and tomorrow. The forecast for Brest in Finisterre is for winds of 170km/h (105mph). We had some strong warm winds from the south a few days ago and walking past the bull ring, the wind seemed to be coming from all directions as it whipped up leaves into rustling swirls.

Sign of the times! I've just set the fire in the wood burner ready for lighting on that first cold winter evening (yes, we do have them here). Already, I see the first telltale signs of the approaching festive season (can't bring myself to type the word!) appearing in the streets. For some reason I find these preparations depressing. It only seems 6 months or so since last C*******s.

31st October. I was down in the kitchen at early o'clock this morning after having let Nutty out for an unscripted 'wazz' - and I was wondering whether it was the 31st of October - or the 1st of November today. I found myself silently mouthing a fragment of a chant that had been embedded in my skull a loong time ago - 30 days hath September, April, June and November - all the rest have 31 except for February alone... and that's where my memory faded away. I can still just about recall my class chanting this and our "times tables". We learned - by rote - up to 12 x 12. Not sure what age I'd've been. I believe learning by rote has become unfashionable of late.

Some years ago, educators in the US* determined to prove the old adage 'If it ain't broken, fix it until it is."

* I believe that educators in the UK have followed similar paths.

20th October. For the past few months, my attention has been drawn to the increasing number of people here who have adopted modes of transport on the roads more appropriate to a circus. For decades, the following vehicles could be found on roads here in western Europe: buses, trams, lorries, vans, cars, motorcycles, scooters, mopeds and bicycles. So far - so good. You could be excused for thinking that one or more of these categories would cater for the overwhelming majority of us.

The introduction of 4x4s threw a rock in the pond.. Women liked them because of the commanding view that they offered - and the notion that their sheer size conferred improved safety on the occupants - and these were normally children being driven to school. It didn't take long for the environmentalists to decide that alone of all other vehicles that 4x4s (known as Chelsea tractors in the UK) were uniquely responsible for global warning - and this was enough to trigger the development of electric vehicles to satisfy those of the hair shirt persuasion. There's now a constant barrage of advertising trying to foist electric vehicles on us all.

The humble bicycle has not been left out of this race to madness - we now have electric cargo bikes like these for transporting the little darlings to school - ridden by virtue-signalling parents.

There's also been an exponential increase in the number of these slightly bizarre ebikes (below) - again, for transporting kids to school. Strangely, they're all finished in matt grey or matt pale blue. It's as though the owners feel that they have to apologise for owning such an expensive bike:

Then there are these:

Not forgetting these:

Or these:

All of the above means of transport can be seen on roads around here.

I think the world's gone mad!

Decided not to have a post-lunch snooze today - and tell you something of what's been happening here. I heard the piece below on the radio earlier and it's long been on my list of favourites - set it running and enjoy:

I think it's now been 6 weeks since I caught Covid and the after-effects (mainly fatigue) have been slow to dissipate. What's been happening in the Pays Basque I hear you ask? Up until today, we've been enjoying the most prolonged Indian summer since we've been here - with temps in the mid to late 20s and beyond (think we saw 34° one day). Today though - it's been 'Hello Autumn' - with grey skies and sudden showers blowing in from the Bay of Biscay every few minutes.

Events in the news are dominated by the happenings in Israel. I don't care what political cause was behind these atrocities - but the deliberate slaughter of babies, infants and toddlers by extremists in the Palestine community was beyond the pale and it brought the human race to an all-time low. I hope that those responsible will soon be be squashed like the vermin they are. No cause can ever justify those attacks.

29th September. Went for a post-lunch snooze yesterday and woke up at 6pm. (it's called "Living the Dream - pensioner style!") It was only the telephone ringing at 6.30pm that woke up Madame..!

When walking into town, I pass a café that seems very popular with the local retired community.. They put about 3 tables together and there must about about 10-12 of them - all talking, no-one listening in the classic French style. I call it the Pensioners' Parliament..

28th September. We've both had Covid during the last few weeks and it's left us very short of energy.. and I'm afraid that writing the blog just fell off the edge. By way of an apology, here are a few videos of some of our favourite places.. (never heard so many seagulls at Biarritz! It sounds to me as though they're an addition to the soundtrack)

27th August. Another sport I would gladly see the back of is handball.. There's an indefinable something about it that I find intensely irritating - and it could easily find a home with rap, skate-boarding, graffiti and la trottinette électrique.

23rd August. A blanket of 40° heat has Pipérade Towers firmly in its warm embrace. We're reduced to lurking behind closed shutters. The dog is spread-eagled on the tiles somewhere and, in the interests of energy conservation, even his tail has stopped wagging. I might be joining him shortly.

18th August. I've just realised that I haven't posted anything here for a while - sometimes 'Life' has a habit of getting in the way. It's been one of those months. However, something caught my eye yesterday in a newsletter for the neighbouring town of Tarnos that hit (& demolished) my funny bone. It was an advert for a forthcoming attraction that managed to combine in a single event many of the mindless elements of modern life that make me want to emulate Edvard Munch's "The Scream".

Thè event is called "Rap 'n Skate" (Eng translation here) - which is fairly self-explanatory - that offers "other experiences combining sporting and cultural discoveries", one of which is a graffiti workshop. If there's one activity in the modern world that needs a 'workshop' like a hole in the head - it's graffiti. It would be hard to imagine three other activities that possess a comparable ability to annoy, irritate & frustrate more than rap, skate-boarding and graffiti.

There's one more element of modern life that could and should be added to the list above - and it's the e-scooter or, as they're known here: la trottinette électrique. There's something instantly annoying about these toys and the eejits who ride them in and out of traffic on public roads where they really don't belong. I must confess that the urge to nudge one is compelling* - just as a way of driving home to the hapless individual riding the thing just how inherently unstable and vulnerable they are.

* but of course I don't.

Of course, you could probably put down the above three paragraphs as the rant of of an old person - and you'd be right. It's just that this nihilistic event lays bare the emptiness of the imagination of those benighted individuals behind it.

If, having become enraged at the story above, you need to purge these negative thoughts from your brain - what better than this piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff that, although it's been played to death by the likes of Classic FM, still has the power to calm the troubled waters and sooth the savage breast (according to William Congreve). It's Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: II. Adagio sostenuto, played by Klára Würtz, with the National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine, conducted by Vladimir Sirenko:

26th July. Just managed to redress the balance slightly - the score now stands at Mosquitoes 16 Me 1 (one). The Fêtes de Bayonne starts this evening (10pm French time).. you can follow the action here on a number of webcams.

19th July. No apologies for posting this video of a 1966 Porsche 912 with that timeless styling (yes, it's a 57 year old car!). To me, it's one of those cars that looks perfect from any angle. This particular model is not a fast car but for me it's just that it looks so right with that clean, understated elegance. The problem is other people have realised this too - with the result that the asking prices have soared in recent years. If I'm honest, there's never been a time when I could have afforded one. They've always been out of my reach. This is the closest I'm ever likely to get to one:

3rd July. The Tour de France whizzed in and out of town yesterday. I was talking to some neighbours as they returned from watching. They said they'd been in place since 3pm.. and they had to wait until 6pm to see the riders arrive - then whoooooosh! Each to their own I guess.

This time of the year always provides the first hint of the arrival of the summer crowd.. after which parking in such hotspots as Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz requires either local knowledge or the skills of a Neapolitan taxi driver. I generally allow myself ½ hour of cruising the streets in ever-increasing circles before calling it a day and returning home. From memory, I've only had to do that on a couple of occasions though. Finding a parking space in the same post code as your desired destination in the summer months is the Holy Grail. Sometimes it seems as though you're in danger of straying into a different time zone.

Latest scores: Mosquitoes 3 Me 0.

I'm a little late with bringing out the plancha from its winter storage this year - so today's the day!

The west-facing wooden shutters at the rear of the house are looking a bit weary as they bear the brunt of the winter gales. We've decided to have them replaced with ones of a similar style - but made of aluminium with a foam interior. I can't think of any other jobs that remain after this (he wrote hopefully!).

294. We go again..

2023-01-03T17:56:00.243+01:00

30th June. In between swatting the odd mosquito and other domestic trivia I forgot to mention the impending arrival of the Tour de France here in Bayonne on Monday, 3rd July. More on the route here.

29th June. The recent hot and sultry weather has brought the mosquitoes out and as I seem to be a permanent magnet for the whining little pests, I knew that I'd be targeted. So far the score is 2 - 0 to the mosquitoes. So far..☺

26th June. This is a piece you only need to hear once to be struck by its absolute perfection. It's Claude Debussy's 'Clair de Lune' played here by the greatest guitar duo of all time: Ida Presti (1924-1967) and Alexandre Lagoya (1929-1999).

I must confess that I hadn't previously heard of this prodigiously talented couple, let alone encountered any recordings by them, until a few short years ago (it was actually in 2010 - I remembered I featured this same recording back then - how time flies). It would be well worth seeking out other performances by them (more here).

Their brilliant musical careers unfortunately preceded the step changes in recording, reproduction and video technologies that came along just too late for them - and for us.

2nd June. Seventy years ago, the 6 year old me spent most of the day watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on our new 14" television in glorious black and white. We have witnessed an astonishing number of changes during the intervening 70 years - many of which would have been unthinkable back then. I'll leave it to you to make your own list. We are now exhorted to "embrace change" - but is all change progress - and is it necessarily for the better? Presidents have been elected by tapping into the perception that voters want change. Remember Obama's mantra - "Change We Can Believe In", "Change We Need" and finally "Change". In France, François Hollande used "Le changement, c'est maintenant" ("The change is now"). The trouble with our political masters is once they get their sticky hands on the levers of power, their mantra quickly becomes: "Have you got any spare change?". Say no more.

In the digital age that we find ourselves living in today, it's become easier and easier for software engineers to make changes to applications we all use on our various devices - changes that are necessary if they are to keep their jobs - and so we're doomed to experience a digital world that is constantly shifting. Today, it's Windows 10. Tomorrow, who knows? How many people rub their hands together at the prospect of a new Operating System.. or a new presentation for our Online Banking. I'm not a dinosaur but are all these changes to user interfaces really necessary? Why not preserve the familiar user interface and instead change the underlying functionality?

1st June. I had to return to the hospital yesterday for a thorough check-up following my 'wobble' in February. I had the lot - an ECG, an MRI scan, blood tests, a check by a speech therapist plus a few others - and I was told I could stop taking the medication - and I could eat cheese again. I was glad to leave the hospital I can tell you. Phew.

30th May. Another great singer has made her final curtain call and exited stage left for the last time.. Among her many hit records I think she'll be best remembered for this towering global hit - a song that's timeless in its appeal.

28th May. The pension payment saga is still rumbling on - with the UK's International Pension Centre taking two steps back for every step forward (and there haven't been too many of those). In March, I started the process of requesting that our UK pensions be paid direct in euros to our French bank - little realising that at the end of May two pension providers would still have proved to be incapable of making the changeover both 1. correctly and 2. in a timely manner. These call centres with their multiple choices and their operators who apparently are always 'experiencing a high volume of calls' approach the absolute nadir in terms of customer service.

Apart from the above, I've been trying to take things easy here for the last few weeks as I'm supposed to be in 'complete rest' following my scare in February. I was told no computer work.. but as I'm feeling much better now, I've started resuming 'normal service'. Today, we're meeting up with R and C, friends from the Gers, and we're going up to Esteben borda for lunch. The farm is literally right on the border with Spain with stunning views of the Basque coast and the interior. One of my favourite places - it's in the centre below:

En route, we'll be passing by this small stone cottage that has great appeal for me. There's just something about it. I know it's not practical, that it's - quote - 'far from the shops' (I don't see that as a downside!) and far from doctors and dentists and finally, "where do you buy your baguette"! We're all different.

30th April. A few years ago, I heard the final few bars of this song on the radio and it summoned up the period in the early sixties that just pre-dated the arrival of the Beatles in the US perhaps like no other song. After a few minutes of Googling, I discovered who the artistes were - Nino Tempo and April Stevens, a brother and sister double act. I didn't realise it at the time but I later read that they reversed the standard convention and the recording had Nino singing the melody while April sang the harmony line. RIP April.

25th April. A cautionary tale: Following my medical 'event' in February, I decided that we needed to put in place a "hands-off" system for converting and transferring our pensions in £ sterling from our UK bank into euros for our bank here in France. I was relieved to learn from the UK Govt web site that UK State pensions can be paid direct to an overseas bank in local currency as I thought that if any one of our pension providers would prove to be inflexible, it might be the UK Pension Service. But no, all seemed crystal clear so I started contacting all of our other pension providers to request that they made all future payments directly to our French bank in euros.

Having set all that in motion. I now wish that I'd maintained a diary listing the dates of phone calls (including the names of the helpline advisors), emails and letters sent because what should have been a straightforward operation turned into clerical morass of contradictory advice. The UK International Pensions Centre (IPC) was the clear winner of the "wooden spoon" with their 'advisors' repeatedly displaying their lack of knowledge of their own policies and often giving incorrect and conflicting advice - sometimes on the same day..

For anyone contemplating a similar step, I've extracted the magic words (italicised above) from the first link. Whatever else 'advisors' might tell you, for anyone wishing to have their pensions paid direct, these words should be carved on tablets of stone. I would ignore the telephone helpline number and instead would recommend writing a letter containing all the usual info; name(s), address, National Insurance number(s), bank name and address, name of account holder(s) - and the most vital piece of information of all: your bank's IBAN and BIC. I would select a date at least two months ahead when you want the new system to become active and advise them of that too.

We're fortunate in having an internet phone (VOIP) so phoning the UK was effectively free. All of our other pension providers were quite happy to comply with our request by phone - but just so that you have a record of your requests in writing, I would still say ignore the phone services and write letters. Good luck.

Now breathe deeply - and r e l a x and enjoy some great musicianship (especially from the trumpet of Thimo Niesterok - more from him here):

More here.

20th April. 'Sign of the Times' Dept # 1. I've had a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader for years and despite my initial wariness of the concept, I took to it like a duck to ~~typing~~ oops, water. I hooked it up to Amazon UK thus enabling me to trawl to my heart's content through the gazillion books available in English there. However, a while ago, I found that I was no longer able to browse and select from the vast range of titles in English as before. I first thought that perhaps my Kindle was showing its age but I had a sneaking suspicion that this breakdown of the service was somehow connected to - yes, you've guessed it - Brexit - and that the service had been blocked (as I was effectively importing books on my Kindle from the independent coastal state (as the UK is known in EU-speak) without any import duty being paid).

I asked this question on Google the other day - "Is it possible for someone resident in France to access content on Amazon UK on their Kindle?". (It appears that I'm not the only one - see here) It turned out that the answer is no. Presumably a small-minded shiny-trousered civil servant somewhere decided that my ability to access books in English somehow contravened the spirit of the EU Withdrawal Agreement and that the House of Cards (aka the European Union) might be threatened by my doing so. The upshot of all this is that I have had to sign up to Amazon France. I did think of signing up to Amazon.com (the US site) to be able to access their content in English but then I'd have to pay in US$. Amazon France allegedly has a staggering 4m books in English available to Kindle users. I must see if I can find them.

'Sign of the Times' Dept # 2. How many people from the global English-speaking community do you think listen to BBC radio content online and accessible via an internet radio? In addition to the hundreds of thousands of users among the expats 'out there', there are those who have links with the UK through family - plus those who listen to improve their English and those who simply wish to hear a different viewpoint. My guess would be that it's certainly up in the many millions. You can't imagine how reassuring it (sometimes) has been for me to hear the news and current affairs as seen from the UK. (You can see where this is going already can't you!)

In a high-handed move that will throw a rock into many ponds, the BBC has unilaterally decided that from mid-2023 it will no longer support the streaming format used in many legacy internet radios.

Quote: “We are making changes to the way BBC live streams are distributed via 3rd party services and platforms, and the BBC stream you are currently listening to will stop working by mid-2023. If you are using an internet radio or smart speaker and hearing this message, please contact the manufacturer. If you’re listening on web or mobile, this service is available to stream on BBC Sounds”

Full story here. I suspect the BBC bean counters have a cunning plan to put in place a system whereby listeners will have to pay to subscribe. What will I do? It would stick in my craw to be forced to replace our existing perfectly serviceable internet radio with another - just so that it would be compatible with the BBC's stream. And so it goes.

As much as I enjoy living here, I have no wish to be deprived of my favourite Anglophone authors on my Kindle on the one hand and the convenience of BBC news (and other familiar content) in English on the other - even though the BBC News programmes have taken a decidedly political turn. Instead of reporting the news, it appears that they have unilaterally taken on the role of "holding the government to account". There was me, in my naivety, thinking that this was the job of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition in Parliament. There must be other news stations. I hope I can work out a new support regime.

Now back to the Pays basque.. (phew!)

14th April. Just finished a prolonged period of blog maintenance.. Please let me know if you come across a link that no longer works.

7th April. I spotted a protester's placard on the news earlier. The message on it summed up a mindset that seems all too prevalent these days.. It said: moins d'impôts, plus de apéros - or in Angliche: fewer taxes, more drinks.. Many shops and businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit staff - as a sizeable slice of the workforce became accustomed (during Covid) to not working - and they're reluctant to re-engage with the world of work.

30th March. There's a new promo video for Bayonne. Perhaps I'm biased (!) - but for a town of 50,000, there's a lot going on here:

29th March. I'm halfway through trouble-shooting the blog - restoring defunct videos, replacing photos that have disappeared off into an electronic soup and links that no longer work. Keeps me off the streets..

After a few false dawns, I finally took the all-weather cover off the table on the terrace this morning and stowed it away for another 6 months. Next up will be the plancha.. It will have been home to several large arachnids in the garage over the winter months - so it's always interesting when I remove its cover.

28th March. In the Bayonne area and looking for a restaurant at midday? I don't think I've ever given a recommendation - without caveats or reservations - to a restaurant here before but I've just added the Brasserie les Arènes to the restaurant map in the left hand column. The cooking here can stand comparison with any of the more prestigious restaurants in Bayonne or indeed Biarritz. It really is that good. Definitely somewhere to book. Closed in the evening.

24th March. In an exercise akin to painting the Forth Bridge, I've been engaged in doing some much-needed house-keeping on the blog - repairing broken links, replacing deleted videos, looking for coins that have dropped down the back of the sofa etc etc.

It's one of those jobs that I've been putting off - but I finally convinced myself to make a start on it. I'm about a third of the way through.

19th March. Hard to believe but this piece - "Take Five" - was first recorded by Dave Brubeck's quartet 64 years ago.. and it still catches the imagination:

Try "Take Ten"..

Yesterday was the final day of the 2023 Guinness 6 Nations rugby tournament and Ireland were crowned as worthy winners of the Grand Slam, with France in second spot and a resurgent Scotland finishing third. For me, the stand-out fixture of the tournament was the Ireland France match - that saw two teams at their peak playing champagne rugby.. One of the greatest-ever matches I've been privileged to see.

14th March. Last weekend saw France dish out an uncompromising and painful rugby lesson to England - a lesson that left all onlookers in no doubt whatsoever that there is clear blue water (and lots of it) between the sides..

France were brilliant to watch and they demolished (no other word for it) England with some ease and they deservedly emerged victorious with a record 53-10 win. Ouch! If I could make one comment, it would be that any one of the dynamic French forwards could have been awarded the Man of the Match accolade as they were immense. I think Ramos, the full back, who was the actual recipient of the MoM award, had a great game - but the key to their record victory stemmed, in my view, from the platform that his dominant forwards created. No criticism of Ramos is intended by the way.

This coming Saturday will see three countries playing away from home (Italy, Wales and England) with more unpleasant medicine to swallow.. and it's difficult to see anything other than three home wins - in ascending order of points difference - for Scotland, France and Ireland.

7th March. This particular interpretation of J S Bach's "Sheep may safely graze" BWV 208 - sometimes known as the Hunting Cantata - is a piece I've been listening to frequently while I'm in this period of complete rest. It was written 310 years ago. Out of all the different versions 'out there', Doug Marshall's is, to my mind, the only one at the right tempo - plus his interpretation (using all available limbs) is unmatched for its emotional power. Bravo Doug!

There's also a synthesized version that's very listenable to.

Some extremely talented musicians here.. with the world's longest song intro. As good as it sounds here - imagine how much better it would be in an atmospheric cellar somewhere. Health warning: Don't try this at home!☺ (might take a few seconds to load)

2nd March. Meanwhile, back at the 2023 6 Nations Rugby Tournament, we were privileged to witness (on TV) one of the greatest-ever matches - it took place in Dublin on 11th February and it was between the two top-ranked teams in the world - Ireland (#1) and France (#2). It provided a thrilling spectacle of running rugby, played at speed with total commitment, fast hands and little in the way of foul play. You'll be lucky to see a better game than this one between 2 great teams at the top of their form. It was no disgrace for France to finish second best - both teams can be proud of the way they played. If you missed this match (shame on you), take your phone off the hook, switch it off or pull the wire out and sit back and enjoy the highlights of this pulsating match between the two giants of world rugby (give it a few seconds to load):

22nd February. I had an unexpected stay in hospital last week - 2 days in intensive care followed by 2 days unplugged! The carotid artery in the neck provides the main supply of oxygen-rich blood to the brain and mine must have suffered a temporary flow restriction at midday on Sunday 12th - because the lights in my world suddenly started going out. (more here)

I found myself sitting in front of my PC wondering how to switch it on - I stared at it for a full 5 minutes - unable to convert a thought into an action. I went downstairs and Madame spotted that I wasn't my usual self. She asked me to form a sentence - I couldn't - so fortunately she had the presence of mind to phone for an ambulance straight away. Once again, the sapeurs-pompiers outdid themselves and arrived here in under five minutes. From then on, I was whizzed into the A&E unit at Bayonne hospital - and after checking all the vital signs (Ts & Ps) I had an MRI scan (IRM in French).

After that, I became a spectator as a team of medics installed me in an ICU suite and I was adjusted, jabbed, poked, prodded, tagged and wired up to a bank of bleeping machines at the bedside. I was receiving the full attention of the hospital staff night and day and when I heard that I was in intensive care, the centime dropped - it dawned on me that the situation was serious. (Too Much Information alert: the pistolet and I never became an item..)

I have the utmost admiration for the French health system - and all those who man it. Professional, kind, thoughtful, tireless, friendly, spotlessly clean and efficient, it's the very model for how a first world European country should be providing health care for its people in the 21st Century. And when I was discharged on the Thursday, because Madame was still unable to drive, I was sent home in a taxi provided at the hospital's expense.

I've been prescribed medication to restore me to full health and I've an appointment at the hospital at the end of May to see the specialists following a battery of tests and an MRI scan.

It's sobering to read of the NHS meltdown in the UK - there appears to be a yawning chasm between the two systems. It's also sobering to realise just how little it takes for our carefully constructed world to collapse like a house of cards.

4th February. This afternoon sees the start of the 2023 Guinness Six Nations rugby tournament.. featuring England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales (listed here in alphabetical order - although I'd be delighted with that as the finishing order at close of play on 18th March). Here's the fixture list. If you're new to the game - or in need of a refresher - take a look at the basic rules.. or buy the book:

2nd February. I'd better be on my best behaviour tomorrow - I've been invited to lunch by an association of retired police and gendarmes in the local area. (so - no rubber cheques!)

Our finances took an unexpected torpedoing the other day - as we needed a new electrical distribution control panel in the kitchen. The existing one looked well past its sell-by date. It was one of those jobs I've been postponing for a while as there's no immediate benefit - but it had to be done. We now have a new smaller wall-mounted control panel with multiple circuit breakers for all the circuits in the house. We've managed to establish which of all the 23 circuit breakers control all the various circuits and power sockets - wouldn't you know it - all except one.

24th January. I was down at the beach a day or two ago with the dog and it was cold - according to the car it was +1°C.. (midsummer in Nebraska!) The sea was fairly flat - with no giant rollers rearing up to break with a crash - and to my surprise there were upwards of 20-30 surfers out there. It made me cold just thinking about it.

19th January. We were out at the neighbours at the end of the afternoon yesterday and walking back the few short steps to home in the blustery cold and wet made me thankful that I'd cleaned out the woodburner earlier and reset it with logs and condensed wood - so once we were back in, all it needed was one match and away it went. I closed the shutters, turned off the radiators that we'd left on, and Madame came out with the DVD for "Sleepless in Seattle". A heart-warming story just right for a cold night. I'd forgotten just how good the film and the soundtrack were - so here - at no extra charge - it is:

If the video doesn't step through all 15 tracks without needing to be nudged, click on this link.

18th January. One of the most distinguished and distinctive of all the voices on broadcast radio in the 20th century belonged to Alistair Cooke. I grew up listening to his weekly "Letter from America" programme that was broadcast every Sunday morning by the BBC. Earlier today, I was listening to his measured tones in an archived recording of one of his monologues (just over 14 mins long) entitled "Summer's end".

My ears pricked up at one point (at 7.40) as he recounted how, in 1890, William K. Vanderbilt, Edward Meade and Duncan Cryder visited Biarritz in south western France. At the resort they met Scotsman Willie Dunn, who had just built a golf course there. They were so taken by the sport that they decided to introduce golf to New York. The men scouted around the city for a spot; Meade thought upstate New York was a good place, while Cryder preferred Yonkers. Long Islander Vanderbilt urged them to look east. 80 acres of land in Shinnecock was purchased for $2,500 and 44 original members signed up for $100 each and the result was the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

17th January. Just back from an ill-timed trip on foot to the boulangerie - it was raw and cold òut there with gusty winds containing a mix of rain and hail. Managing the dog, an umbrella and the bag containing the bread was (word of the moment) compliqué. It looks like we're stuck with this weather for a few days. This was the scene at Biarritz earlier (clearly an OMG situation!):

We've not escaped the wintry weather that has afflicted other regions further north - in the early hours we had a visitation from one of those winter storms that we've become familiar with that blow in occasionally from the Bay of Biscay.

It all started with the sound of the wind rising and moaning around the roof and chimneys, setting the shutters all a-rattle. This was followed by the 'car wash' style rain as it drove against the roof and the shutters - and seconds later, the gutters started to gurgle noisily. Then came a brilliant flash of light - followed seconds later by a prolonged crash and thunderous rumble close by. Cue yet more rain as the deluge intensified. I suddenly felt the weight of our 17kg cocker spaniel across my feet as he nobly decided to keep me company up on the bed. At that point I realised that there was nothing for it but to lie still and go back to sleep.

4th January. I've just found this short video made by visitors to Bayonne on 18th December - it features a glimpse of the mass release of thousands of Japanese lanterns.. it's a spectacular sight:

3rd January. A Happy New Year to you (I nearly added: to you both). I hope you emerged intact from what can be an emotionally draining time for some. Stress, families, alcohol and an ill-considered phrase or two are often among the usual culprits - in vino veritas - say no more.

We spent lunchtime on New Year's day ensconced at our favourite restaurant (no prizes for guessing where!). The owners opened up only hours after they'd crept up to bed at 4am that morning! They are made of strong stuff in the Pays Basque..

I noticed that the car was showing the outside air temp to be 22.5°C.. it felt like summer.

293. Summer is upon us..

2022-07-04T11:02:00.352+02:00

31st December. Another unseasonably warm day for forecast for today. I think it calls for a good walk along the coastal path down to Biarritz with the pooch.

What a world we are living in - we seem to be beset on all sides by many more problems than usual - with few solutions evident - and even fewer statesmen around to steady the ship.

Best wishes to you all for a happy New Year - and good health. We'll be keeping clear of large gatherings in enclosed spaces and hoping for the best.

28th December. 19°C today. Lunchtime bliss.. we each had a couple of Montauzer's boudins blancs with truffles today - served with sauté'd apple. For some unknown reason, they only appear for a month or two around Christmas. When I'd finished mine, I found myself wishing I could rewind the previous 10-15 minutes - and enjoy them all over again..!

24th December. Wishing all those who find their way here, whether by accident or by design, a very Happy Christmas and, above all, a healthy New Year in 2023. Let's hope that those in power who affect our daily lives will try working together for once, for the common good - instead of the endless sniping we've heard so much of lately. One can but dream..

Let this song by the often-overlooked Helen Merrill cheer you up..! (more here)

19th December. We paid a visit to one of our favourite restaurants at lunchtime yesterday. They'd just re-opened after the annual end-of-season break.. and it was good to be back there. I shared a beautifully-made omelette aux cèpes with Madame. I'd like to watch how the chef makes these.. totally non-greasy and delicious. We followed that up with a sole belle meunière for Madame and canard à l'orange for me. I could easily make that a weekly visit..

17th December. This is a 25 minute video about the Pays Basque.. yes, it's in French but if your French isn't up to following the narrator, try clicking on the Settings button.. (it looks like a gear wheel) - then click on sub-titles, then 'French (auto-generated)', then 'Auto-translate' - and then scroll down to click on the language you want.

15th December. This is another great old song that lends itself to the jazz manouche guitar treatment.. It featured in Woody Allen's excellent 1999 film "Sweet and Lowdown"..

14th December. I'll have to whisper this - this morning the thermometer on the terrace was reading 17°C (62°F) - in the shade. I promise I won't mention it again.

I finally finished my Christmas shopping this morning.. <sigh of relief>.

13th December. Here's a version of one of my favourite old Russian songs - Les yeux noirs - or Dark Eyes..

Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie in company with some other jazz greats recorded 'Dark Eyes' in LA on 16th Oct 1956..

And here's Gypsy Moon with something close to the original intention.

11th December. There were very few people out and about down at the beach this morning.. one or two hardy runners, a couple of dog walkers and that was about it. On the way home after a bitterly cold* walk, I turned on RFM just in time to catch the start of this song - one I'd always liked the sound of without knowing who it was by (The Korgis) or what it was about.

* I should have added: for here. (calm down in Winnipeg!☺)

Yesterday evening, it was time for the annual release of thousands of Japanese (or are they Chinese?) lanterns from the centre of town - and already by 5pm cars were nose-to-tail as they prowled around looking desperately for parking spaces. The first time we attended one (in 2018 I think) it drew an estimated crowd of 50,000. It was a cold still night for it. By the way, does anyone know the title of the duet being sung at the beginning of the video? (Please let me know if you do - thanks)

4th December. It struck me last night that with my recent acquisition of an iPhone, I now have 3 devices each with a different operating system: PC - Windows 10; my Samsung tablet - Android and now my iPhone - iOS. Is that a bad thing?

2nd December. Madame's face could be described as Color by Technicolor this morning - she took a real bang to her head and her face.

I've been entrusted with going to the indoor market this morning.. (Promotion!☺)

Here's something to brighten up a cold, misty morning:

1st December. In the pursuance of my newly acquired domestic duties*, I found myself at Le Comptoir Irlandais this morning to pick up some mince pies that Madame had ordered for Christmas. (Explanation: Mince pies don't contain mince and they're not pies - but your mileage may vary!). After collecting them, I stood back to admire the mouth-watering display of Scotch whiskies.. (each to their own but as far as I'm concerned there's no other kind) After a few moments lost in thoughtful contemplation, a charming assistant came over and asked me if I'd like to taste some. What a question - but I had to decline her offer as it was only 9.30am.. (what was I thinking?!)

* Madame had a fall on Monday evening just outside our dentists a few steps away from home and in so doing she broke a bone in her wrist - and her face tells its own story. The strange thing is that just a few days previously we'd talked about the need for her to take extra care with all the wet leaves around.

People from our dentists came to look after her - one brought a chair out for her - and a passer-by phoned for an ambulance while Madame called me on her phone. I wasted no time in driving down there asap.. I arrived there at the same time as the ambulance arrived - it belonged to the Sapeurs-Pompiers (firemen) based 3 km away. (hats off to the pompiers for the speed of reaction) The pompiers took her blood pressure while she was still at the scene and I can't praise them enough - calm, reassuring and professional - exactly as it should be.

Once again, the French health service came up trumps - her subsequent treatment at Bayonne hospital was excellent (arm and wrist x-rayed and concussion check) and it served to remind me of how far the sainted NHS in the UK has slipped. Hats off to all those in and around Bayonne who helped. If it had to happen anywhere, it was best that it happened here.

I never cease to be surprised at the way that memory works. Nutty, our oversized English cocker spaniel, woke up early this morning and decided that it was high time I woke up too. He raced down the stairs like a runaway train - and click - without me being aware of it, an old memory came to mind and next minute, I was humming along to a song (that I'd completely forgotten about for decades) that had kept us all entertained in the car when I was a child..

I turned on our radio in the kitchen (tuned to a '60s Gold station) and they were playing a song I'd always liked. Meanwhile, we in the UK were producing cringe-worthy songs like this (it was played at a thousand naff weddings with index fingers in the air..).

Someone sent me this the other day - it rang many bells with me! (It's in French so you might need to run it by Google Translate).

29th November. Who would have thought that Paul McCartney of all people would have recorded songs that could truthfully be described as little-known - but here's one that I came across earlier by chance that was new to me. Two of the Beatles have already gone - the day we lose Sir Paul will truly mark the end of an era as, for those of us of a certain vintage, their music really was the soundtrack of our lives.

28th November. We were down at Saint-Jean-de-Luz on Saturday for some (Christmas) shopping - and it was so pleasant to stroll around the uncrowded streets in the late November sunshine.

Afterwards we drove around to Socoa and studied the menus at the seafood restaurants there. We decided to go to Chez Pantxua even though we haven't been there for a couple of years due to Covid and other reasons. We had a table outside and we had a freshly made paëlla (the best we've ever had there) - and at the end, our waitress offered us coffee on the house.. before we waddled away.

25th November. We were invited to attend a citizenship ceremony at the Town Hall, Bayonne, yesterday evening. There were around 200 of us altogether and Mr Philippe Le Moing-Surzur, the sous Préfet of Bayonne, spoke in a warm and moving manner in his address of what is entailed in French citizenship.

22nd November. I forgot to mention that yesterday when we were cruising around the town centre looking for a parking space, we happened upon Bayonne's Christmas tree.. Words can't describe it - instead of a tall pine brought down from the mountains and covered in lights - we have a garish plastic tree that a child could have designed - festooned with a few oversized football-sized globes. I haven't seen an uglier Christmas tree in my life. I'll have to go back and take a photo of it for you..

Those of us of a certain age will never forget the moment 59 years ago today when gunshots rang out in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas - gunshots that echoed and resounded around the world.

For those who weren't around at the time, JFK's inaugural address on 20th January 1961 set the bar very high indeed. I doubt if it has ever been equalled - let alone surpassed.

I finally took the plunge yesterday and consigned my clunky old Android phone to the back of my desk drawer from where it will gather dust together with a few other relics of redundant technology (mainly cameras - six at the last count) - because Madame persuaded me to make the switch to an iPhone.

While we were splashing around outside in gusting rain that threatened to turn our umbrellas inside out, we went for our 5th Covid jab..

After all that excitement, when we came home I closed the shutters, lit the woodburner, and then we had something Scottish and warming (no prizes for guessing!).

18th November. Yesterday evening there was a flash of lightning followed seconds later by an ominous rumble. Then, as if someone was opening up all the valves that control rain, a drizzle morphed into a noisy downpour that intensified into a deluge. Just as well we weren't caught outside. Then this morning at 5am I woke up to the sound of rain drumming on the roof and water running in the gutters. It looks like we're in for a wet few days.

17th November. The Beaujolais Nouveau is in the shops. I always thought (in the UK) that it was highly over-rated - but not here. If you see any by Georges Duboeuf, it would be worth trying. Fresh, fruity and v drinkable.

16th November. This record by Kim Carnes provided the ever-present (albeit scratchy!) soundtrack to my first visit to the US in 1981.. (Was this a one-hit-wonder for her?) She looks like one scary lady..

This was another song that blasted out continuously from many US radio stations at the time.

15th November. DIY Rules: A few new ones for you..

Rule No 26. Nothing is more permanent than a temporary fix.

Rule No 27. Keep the receipt.

Rule No 28. If all else fails, read the instructions.

(You can download the complete Rules by clicking here)

8th November. Another annoying word has crept into general usage recently in the sovereign independent coastal state* (or the United Kingdom as we prefer to call it). Apparently we no longer have debates, discussions or oral exchanges of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas - but conversations. To me, an ageing out-of-touch dinosaur, a conversation is something you might have at a bus stop, in the pub, or over the garden fence. A conversation has no starting or finishing point - they are simply characterised by the noise our lips make as they flap together. The use of this word legitimises a pointless speech exercise where there's no imperative to reach a conclusion. What are we doing to our great language? Winston Churchill (who else?) said it best when he declared that "short words are best and the old words when short are best of all."

* in Brussels-speak

Our plumber arrived yesterday with a huge package containing our new 200 litre water heater to replace the one that gave up the ghost the other day after only 10 years. This seems to be the design life of white goods these days. After removing all the packaging, I took one look at the contents - and it struck me immediately that while it was shorter than its predecessor - crucially, it was wider. We must have measured its width and the narrowest part of the dog-legged staircase down to the cellar several times but both measurements remained obstinately within 1mm of the other. It was also very heavy. There was no way we could try to manoeuvre it down the stairs with the severely limited clearance available without damaging it.. which would have made it impossible to return it to the supplier. It was the same brand as the one before - but it seems that the manufacturer had chosen to re-size the thing without stating the dimensions on the packaging. Ultra frustrating - and it proved Rule No 1 of the immutable Rules of Home DIY yet again.. namely, that there’s no such thing as a simple job. (I've included the complete list below)

This morning, the plumber was back here at 8am - with a new, slightly smaller one and we managed to get that down the stairs without any bother. This time it has a 150 litre capacity.

The absence of instantly available hot water over the last few days put me in mind of those poor souls from not that long ago who had to wash in cold water. We're spoilt these days.

Rules of Home DIY

1. There’s no such thing as a simple job.

2. If it isn’t broken, fix it until it is. (This replaces the old rule: if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it)

3. If the screw isn’t going in, use a bigger hammer.

4. The drill bit you want is the one that’s missing from the box.

5. Never be tempted to change the drill bit in your electric drill with the power still on. (I'll tell you the story one day!)

6. Measure twice. Cut once. (This rule can be applied to many areas in Life)

7. The best tool is a mug of coffee. Look at the job often - thinking time is never wasted.

8. Anything thrown away will be required within the week.

9. If you drop an Allen key, nut, bolt or screw it will always end up in the most inaccessible place.

10. As soon as you get your hands greasy you will need to scratch your nose or use the lavatory.

11. If you are in desperate need of one item to finish a job, the shops will be closed.

12. When the shop is finally open, the one item you want comes in a pack of six.

13. If it's your lucky day, and the shop sells the item you need in a single pack, they will have it in two

sizes: too large and too small.

14. You've been saving something for 20 years knowing that one day you'll need it. When that day finally arrives, you can't remember where you left it. (happened to me yesterday!)

15. Never start a job on a Sunday afternoon.

16. You'll never find the thing you need until the day you don't need it.

17. Someone will have used the last bandage/band aid the day before you do involuntary finger surgery.

18. The only known supplier of the part you need closed down last weekend.

19. The most useless tool in your tool box is the wrong size Allen Key!

20. Superglue is a must for many DIY tasks - it is guaranteed to rapidly and permanently stick objects to things other than that intended.

21. Despite tidying up after a job and putting everything back in place on the right hook, in the right box, on the right shelf - things disappear.

22. If you have to remove twelve rusty nuts/screws/nails that have been untouched since the Spanish Civil War, eleven of them will unscrew/come out easily.

23. You have a couple of partitioned boxes neatly filled with every type and size of nail, screw and bolt known to mankind - except for the one you want.

24. You discover that the new lamp that you bought just before closing time on Saturday afternoon doesn't come with a light bulb (and this fact isn't mentioned on the box it came in). You then discover that it will only accept a new type of bulb - and none of your spares will fit.

25. Screwing up today's "small job" turns it into tomorrow's "big job". (Hands up all those who haven't done that!)

I'd welcome any additions to the above list.

6th November. Perfect weather this morning for a walk along the beach at Anglet (just 10 mins away) - a calm blue sea with dazzlingly white rollers breaking under blue skies, a light breeze somewhere between warm and crisp, and the northern coast of Spain standing sharp as though cut out with scissors.

A minor "pinch me" moment.

4th November. The plumber's just been and gone - and the upshot is that we need a new 200 litre cumulus eau chaude (Google trans: storage water heater) - I couldn't remember the English term - would it be immersion heater? Should have a new one in on Monday afternoon.

Mopping up operations in progress down below..

3rd November. Just when I thought that all the domestic jobs were done and dusted and that there's nothing left on the 'to do' list, I went down to the cellar a few minutes ago only to see a pool of water spreading out from underneath our 200 litre hot water boiler. Our Basque plumber installed it almost 10 years ago to the day - I remember manoeuvring it down the stairs with him - anyway, he's just texted a message to say that he'll be here this afternoon. Phew..

2nd November. Watching ARTE today, my eye was caught by a glimpse of graphic art (right) that had T shirt written all over it. I think it had been inspired by that slick and highly memorable logo for New York (it comprised just 3 characters and one symbol) from the late 1970s. The true test of great design is that, fifty years on, it still looks timeless in its simplicity.

We had our flu jabs yesterday.. and Madame is feeling her shoulder today. A number of our friends have tested positive for Covid recently - which is a timely reminder to wash our hands regularly and to wear masks when appropriate. Fingers crossed.

The seasons and the weather now appear to be in sync for the first time in months.. October was unseasonably warm but finally normal service seems to have been resumed with Mother Nature. I can't help wondering what treats she has in store for us in the months to come.

31st October. This painting of a winding street in Ciboure - attributed to Pierre Labrouche - caught my eye.. I liked his treatment of light and shade.

25th October. Films/Movies: there may be better opening scenes out there but I can't think of one. Here's Woody Allen's "Manhattan":

A friend in England reminded me of this opening scene (best in full screen) from "Out of Africa" - one of our all-time favourite films - as a contender with the one above. As I've mentioned before here, the movers had inadvertently packed all our books except one during our move in 2007 - and that book was Isak Dinesen's "Out of Africa". Reading it, it was hard to believe that English wasn't the author's mother tongue. I think I read it three times while we spent 5 months in the gîte at Villefranque. Highly recommended if you haven't read it - and even if you have.

24th October. I read somewhere today that among the many and varied accomplishments of the new British Prime Minister-in-waiting is the fact that he'd been Head Boy at Winchester College, his alma mater. My Maths teacher at school was also an Old Wykehamist and his standard punishment was to have boys write out (in multiples of 50 according to the offence) his school motto: "Manners makyth Man" - three small words that lose nothing in repetition. I wish our new PM well.

23rd October. While we've been enjoying a warm week or so down here with temps in the range 23 - 31°C, it can't be long before Autumn morphs into Winter. The clocks go back next weekend and then it can only be a matter of time before a storm rises up out of the Bay of Biscay and comes roaring in. A few days of wintry gales will set the shutters a-rattling and strip the trees of their leaves - and the period that follows always puts me in mind of this next piece:

This live version by the Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is arguably the definitive rendition of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" - but I selected the one above simply because of the moon..

17th October. A few internal bulkheads were creaking and groaning last night after our copious lunch yesterday at our "banker" restaurant when we sampled their Autumn menu. Neither of us felt the need to eat a single thing in the evening - and even today, I could give lunch a miss..

We'd arrived early at Ascain yesterday and so we took a slow drive around the same leafy lanes where 30 years ago we used to go for a run before breakfast.. (was that really me?) It's still my favourite village in the Pays Basque and it was at its best yesterday under the October sunshine with few tourists about. A Basque brass band was creating a lot of noise (playing as though their trousers were on fire..) in the square but as we'd reserved a table outside in the secluded rear garden (right) of the restaurant we were well out of earshot. I hope it's not the last time that we'll be able to do that this year.

16th October. When we left the restaurant this afternoon, we were both - in Bill McLaren's memorable phrase - riding very low in the water.. after enjoying an omelette aux cèpes, followed by sanglier (wild boar) in a sauce grand veneur (a red wine reduction), then a couple of Basque cheeses - all eased down with a velvety Irouléguy Gorri d'Ansa (more here) - then dessert and coffee. It was also 31°C..

15th October. One of our favourite restaurants is offering its long-awaited Autumn menu - featuring such things as wild boar, venison and wood pigeon (and no, it doesn't all taste like chicken!☺). We're off there tomorrow for lunch..

14th October. Just back from the hairdressers after a shearing.. and after contemplating the stranger in the mirror in front of me, the title of one of Hemingway's short stories sprang to mind - "The Snows of Kilimanjaro".. Can't imagine what made me think of that!

Meanwhile, walking back from town I couldn't help noticing this display of pink umbrellas overhead in support of something called 'October Rose'.. (I believe it's a breast cancer campaign..)

I'll be watching England take on France tomorrow morning at 0800 GMT .. in the Women's Rugby World Cup.. Think there might be some skin and hair flying!

11th October.. (already!) There are some great songs tucked away in here.. I don't think I've ever bought an album, a CD or - what have I forgotten - a cassette tape by any of these artistes (apart from a few Billie Holiday CDs) but still - these songs will be played loong after I've gone..

29th September. If you enjoy the sound of someone at the very top of his game playing those old standards on a guitar, this is for you. I've mentioned Joe Pass before here - but his 'Virtuoso' album (1973) is really worth listening to from start to finish:

"Night and Day" (Cole Porter) 00:00; "Stella by Starlight" (Ned Washington, Victor Young) 03:38; "Here's That Rainy Day" (Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen) 08:47; "My Old Flame" (Sam Coslow, Arthur Johnston) 12:20; "How High the Moon" (Nancy Hamilton, Morgan Lewis) 17:37; "Cherokee" (Ray Noble) 22:37; "Sweet Lorraine" (Cliff Burwell, Mitchell Parish) 26:13; "Have You Met Miss Jones?" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) 30:20; "'Round Midnight" (Bernie Hanighen, Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams) 35:02; "All the Things You Are" (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern) 38:38; "Blues for Alican" (Joe Pass) 42:32; "The Song Is You" (Hammerstein, Kern) 48:04.

If the video is taken down again, you should be able to listen to it all here.

Joe Pass - of whom it was said that "he looks like somebody's uncle and plays the guitar like nobody's business.."

18th September. I won't add (much) to the Niagara of words that have been and will be written about HM the Queen - but for me, there's one thing that has jarred.. and that is the sight of the extended Royal family standing in 'vigil' around the Queen's coffin. This seems one step too far to me. The acid test is could you ever imagine her doing this for her father? I'm afraid the UK media is in danger of going over the top with the 24/7 coverage, analysis and adulation of the late Queen. Of course, I respect her for how she conducted herself over her long years on the throne - but we're in danger of beatifying her.. and I think she's the last person who would have wanted that.

We've definitely turned a corner into Autumn. I was out buying logs yesterday - and this morning I reached for my dressing gown!

28th August. I was just looking back at an earlier post - and I noticed that quite a few of the videos and links in older posts don't work anymore. I've been putting off this job for some time - as it is a long, fiddly process but I can no longer put off the painful job of blog maintenance. So, if you don't mind talking amongst yourselves for a while, I'll be off with my bag of hammers. Just ignore any bangs and thuds from your PC. Back in a while.

25th August. I don't think mosquitoes and midgies know the meaning of the expression, "Once bitten, twice shy.." as they've been consistently nibbling at my extremities for the past few weeks. We've both been scratching ourselves like demented chimps.

A new colour for cars has hit the streets - it's a non-metallic mid-grey colour.. the kind of ultra boring colour you would paint a car if you were ashamed of owning one. Perhaps that's the message.

I mentioned the Citroën Ami a while back - a car the former East Germans would have been proud to produce. How big are they? Imagine 4 tea chests pushed together to make a 2 x 2 square - then imagine another 4 placed on top - and bar a little bit here and there, you've got it. This is a real anti-car.. if only they came in mid-grey!

13th August. The forecast is for 26° today - that's more like it after the temps in the mid-thirties we've had this week. The high temps gave the local mosquito population a boost and I've been the target of these whining pests.

I was down at Biriatou this week checking on the state of a memorial we put up there on the banks of the Bidassoa and the surroundings were like a tinder box. A fire swept through the valley a year or two ago from Spain and a strong southerly wind carried sparks and embers across the river and the blaze roared up the slopes and continued almost as far as Ascain..

Fires are wreaking havoc in areas we know to the north of here (above). As for the Pays Basque, it's green for a reason - but in the current drought its forests and woodland have surely become vulnerable to fires. The cause of these is unknown for the moment but while some are undoubtedly caused by accident, barbeques or thoughtless discarding of cigarettes, pyromania is a known condition. (the cause of the fire that ravaged Notre-Dame in Paris has never been found)

11th August. I was using the Kärcher pressure washer a few days ago to clean the tiles on the terrace when I noticed that I needed to renew some of the grouting (a real Anglo-Saxon word that!). I managed to find the right material - Portland cement - at our local Castorama (a DIY store) - but I thought I'd check with an assistant that I had the right product for the job in hand. A few years ago, this kind of conversation would have been way beyond me so it felt like a minor victory when the assistant and I understood each other the first time around. Another plus was that it came in a handy 2½kg pack - I didn't have to buy enough to re-grout Trafalgar Square! The job was soon done with the aid of one of Madame's rubber spatulas discreetly borrowed from the kitchen. I thought it best not to ask prior permission! She is very happy with the result. What she doesn't know etc..

This T shirt (right) made me smile! We're in for more heat today.. Yesterday it was 34° in the shade - today's forecast is for 36°..

9th August. After days of relentless heat and humidity, I've become accustomed to waking early, going downstairs and opening the windows front and back to let some early morning 'coolth' waft through the house. This morning I did so and was sitting in the half light reading by the light of my Kindle when I heard what sounded like someone moving a piano upstairs.. Fine, except we haven't a piano! It was the discreet rumbling of thunder. I went over to the French windows that open out on to our terrace to see the garden lit by a strange orange light.. and I could see leaves quivering on a number of plants and bushes as large drops of rain spattered down. Slowly, as if someone was cranking open the tap, the spattering turned into a downpour.. I put on my Crocs and went out to make sure that the tap from the main down spout to fill our 350 litre récupérateur d'eau de pluie (rain water barrel) was open (it was) and stood there for a while taking in the sight and sound of rain again.. and savouring the smell of the parched earth and plants as they were revitalised. I can't remember the last time it rained. Unfortunately this downpour didn't last very long - maybe 10-15 minutes - but it was very welcome. I suspect rain water barrels will be selling well these days.

We managed to escape the crush of the Fêtes de Bayonne - we headed for the hills and stayed for a few days at Vielle-Aure (near Saint-Lary-Soulan). We were up in the Hautes-Pyrénées - very close to the Spanish border - and we were surrounded by some seriously steep mountains.. with roads to match. Wherever we drove, cyclists like racing snakes in neon coloured outfits were grinding up the endless hills - you have to admire them. One day, we visited the tiny village of Ens (pop'n: 21) - situated on a valley floor surrounded by soaring mountains.

It featured a charming simple 12th century church - L'église de l'Invention-de-Saint-Étienne (Eng translation here) - situated on what could be described as a small elevated headland (Wiki describes it more accurately as a glacial plateau). The above photo doesn't do it justice. We missed the church going into the village - but spotted it only on our departure. I stopped the car and tried the door to the church but it was locked with a note saying that the keys could be found at a nearby address. What struck me though was the cemetery.. If we have to be buried - and sooner or later we all do - I doubt if there's a better place in the world to be laid than here in this graveyard with open skies and stunning views on all sides. I don't think it's a morbid thought.. is it?

By the way, it's one 'n' in Pyrenees.. not two! (even in French: Pyrénées)

28th July. At the conclusion of the opening ceremony of the Fêtes de Bayonne shortly after 10pm yesterday, it sounded as though 'Saving Private Ryan' was being filmed in the centre of town as the night air echoed to what sounded like a belt-fed mortar company firing off a year's allocation of ammunition! The Basques like their fireworks chest-poundingly noisy - and I imagine that no-one present was disappointed!

27th July. Just back from taking the pooch for a quick walk around the Bull Ring and return before the neighbourhood is swamped with people off to the Fêtes in town. I saw a note stuck to a mail box that a few years ago would have puzzled me. It read like a message to an errant or a bibulous husband - "Stop à la Pub". It doesn't mean "Stay at the Pub" - although perhaps it should. All it means is "No advertising material". Advertising material in French is publicité - and thus, knowing the French penchant for shortening words, it becomes Pub.

I was half listening to a discussion on French TV yesterday and someone came out with barbeq - no prizes for guessing what this refers to.

Here's another one that may catch you out the first time you hear it on leaving a shop. If you thank the shop assistant, you will often hear back, "Non, c'est moi.." ("No, it's me..") which is the short form of "Non, c'est moi qui dois vous remercier." ("No, it's I who should thank you..") Contrary to what you might read in the papers, la politesse is alive and well and living in France.

26th July. This magazine is telling us something that both of my regular readers here (yes, you Madame - and you, Sir!) will have been aware of for some time. Only No 3 though? *

* This refers to a survey that placed Bayonne 3rd on the list of the 50 best French towns & cities (of more than 2,000 inhabitants).

22nd July. Many of you will have seen images of the forest fires that have beset France recently. One of the tools that Sécurité Civile has at its disposal is the Canadair - and here are three of them dropping in to scoop up water from the Garonne near Tabanac:

More about the Canadair here.

19th July. Here's a view of the paintings of Van Gogh as you've never seen them before..

18th July. I feel slightly guilty for not including England's series win in Australia - so allow me to correct that right now. Watch out for Marcus Smith's 50 metre dash to the try line. He's a special talent and provides England with that touch of unpredictability and verve that they so need. Other plusses? The formidable Ellis Genge has developed into a world class prop and ball carrier. Michael Hooper - no slouch he - attempted to tackle Genge head-on and bounced backwards off him as if he'd run into a tree. (video here) To be fair, Hooper was caught off balance by 250lbs of Bristolian beef on the hoof. There's more footage of England's one-man wrecking ball here. Let's hope that Genge's medical condition does not worsen.

The clock's ticking.. the Fêtes de Bayonne starts on 27th July.. when upwards of a million people will converge on Bayonne (pop'n: 50,000) over the 5 days.

Downstairs at 3.30am to let a restless dog out (he wasn't the only one!) and I noticed that the thermometer outside showed 26°C (79°F). The forecast is for 39° here today. Up at 6am to open all the windows to let the cool morning breeze waft through the house. I'll try and catch up on lost sleep with a siesta during the afternoon heat.

16th July. I've been a fan of Irish rugby (second to England) for as long as I can remember - but today, in the All Blacks back yard in Wellington, they achieved a mighty first, namely, to win a Test series against the most formidable of rugby nations for the first time since matches between the two began in 1905. Enjoy:

The 50:22 rule explained.

We're steaming in the heat here in the Pays Basque - the shade temperature in the garden is 35°C (95°F°) at 5.30pm. It's too hot for your correspondent. Madame has just returned from a trip into town and she'd like some ice cream. Always happy to oblige!

8th July. I was in town early this morning and the appearance of two girls near the coach departure point dressed in white with red sashes and a red bandana each reminded me that the festival of San Fermín had just started at Pamplona across the other side of the Pyrenees. Hemingway has much to answer for. I've mentioned before here that this is one festival I will never attend but for those of you who'd like to experience vicariously the dubious thrill of running down a narrow crowded street echoing with the sound of drumming hooves behind you, this (below) was the opening encierro (bull run) of the festival. As always, my money's on the bulls as this is the one and only chance they get to fight on a level playing field with their tormenters. This goes on every day until next Thursday 14th July..

4th July. This is going to be one long post! (I'm allowed 300 posts with my Blogger account) so each post from now on will cover 6 months of ramblings from the Pays Basque.

First of all, happy birthday America..

I don't want to pass comment on a great Nation that has never seemed so divided - perhaps since the Viet-Nam war - but I'm hoping that one day a politician and statesman will emerge from somewhere in that vast country who will pick up the torch and lead the American people back to the values that its founding fathers so wisely laid down almost 250 years ago.

A friend in the US kindly sent me a link to the story of Walter Anderson - an American artist whom I suspect very few, myself included, have heard of. Once you see his work, you will be astonished that someone of his creativity is not more widely known. Like all great artists, he had a unique 'eye' through which he viewed the world. His talent - his genius - was, in my view, unlike anything that preceded it or followed it. He possessed the single-minded spirit of a true artist who was determined to express himself above all else.. regardless of what people thought of him (reminiscent of van Gogh).

Horn Island is here.

292. Next stop? Spring!

2022-02-03T14:40:00.208+01:00

29th June. I thought I was pretty well-read - until new words started appearing in the 'meeja' in the last few years that I'd not heard of previously. Is it me or did these words catch everyone else by surprise too? I'm talking about words like these: avatar, meme and trope.. and there are more. Fortunately there aren't enough minutes left in the day for me to find time to look up what they actually mean. Are these real words - or is there a sub-editor at the uber-trendy Guardian hard at work dreaming up new ones as we speak? (and if I hear one more 'iconic', this PC is going out of the window - or through it)

28th June. While we have Gary Larson fresh in our minds, how about this one:

27th June. It was just over a week ago on Saturday, 18th June, that Bayonne lay sizzling under a stiflingly 42° heat with humidity to match. (A friend told me that at Tarnos - just the other side of the Adour - that temps of 47° were recorded on that same day). We closed all the shutters and still we sweltered indoors - only Nutty (our cocker spaniel) felt the occasional need to go out and, after doing the necessary, he would shoot straight back in again. I failed to keep myself adequately hydrated and this mistake led to a medical problem that hit me hard. I'll leave it there - but suffice to say I've learned the importance of drinking at least a litre and a half per day.

26th June. Gary Larson with his Far Side cartoons has long been a favourite of mine. For reasons that will be obvious to those who know me, this one is a special favourite!

Here's a short guide (in English) to one of the most famous products of this area - jambon de Bayonne. As with all of these cured hams, ask for it to be sliced as thinly as possible so that it melts in the mouth.

19th June. Apparently all records were broken for Bayonne yesterday with temps just shy of 43°. I'd taken the dog out earlier, walking him in the shadows. As for us, we couldn't do much else except close all the shutters and lurk indoors with a fan blowing warm air around. The humidity was off the clock and it really was unpleasant.

Then at around 4pm, there was a sudden swirling wind and the temp dropped down to 26° in less than 30 mins. What a relief to open all the windows. Phew!

18th June. Just back from walking to the bakers and I'm perspiring like a porcus maximus. According to our thermometer in the west-facing garden, the shade temp at 10am local time is already 28° - and the forecast is for 40° today. We have all the shutters closed and a fan in the study is moving the air around..

I was at Hernani in the Spanish Basque country yesterday for a simple ceremony to celebrate one of its most famous sons - Florentino Goikoetxea. He was the legendary Comète guide and smuggler who led many evading Allied aviators out of occupied France over the Pyrenees into Spain. After the war, he was invited to Buckingham Palace to receive the Kings Medal. While waiting in an ante room to be received by King George VI, he was asked by an aide-de-camp what he did for a living. Florentino replied memorably - "I'm in import-export!".

We had a musical interlude when Joxan Goikoetxea (Florentino's grand-nephew (?)) provided the accompaniment to a stirring rendition of this song. Joxan is an internationally recognised accordionist - here he is with Karl Jenkins' "Benedictus":

16th June. Temperatures for the next 3 days are forecast to be: 35°, 38° and 41°..

15th June. As it was a fine warm day today, and we had a bottle of Listel rosé in the fridge, and the plancha was gleaming, it seemed a pity not to fire it up and throw some sardines on it..

Aah, that feels better!👍

14th June. What with the heat and the odd shower of rain, the garden has seen some stupendous growth recently, with some of the bushes that I've slowly been pruning into shape (Topiary 101) suddenly sprouting in all directions. I planted a wisteria 2-3 years ago and its tendrils were everywhere they shouldn't be. I couldn't put off the job any longer - so yesterday out came the stepladders, the extendable ladders and the long-handled shears - and before long I was tempting fate again on the wobbly top step, reaching out into oblivion.

We didn't use our plancha at all last year - as the weather had been too unpredictable and as a result, it stayed under wraps in a corner of the garage where it's been home to some frighteningly large spiders for the last two years - and I'd put the cast iron cooking surface (the part in black =>) down in the cellar, lightly oiled with olive oil and wrapped in an old sheet. Today, however, was the day of the 'Big Clean Up'.

First up though, was the chariot that the cooking surface rests on. To spare you the thousand words, here's a picture. I heaved this out of the garage and up the steps to the terrace where I was going to clean off the grease I'd applied to all the metal surfaces prior to putting it away in 2020. I found some white spirit and boiled linseed oil (that miraculously appeared a year or two ago after being 'lost' for 13-odd years) and I set to wiping off the dried-on grease from the metal surfaces and then wiping down the wood surfaces with white spirit, before applying some linseed oil. If I say so myself, it soon looked like new again.

I went down to the cellar and took hold of the cast iron top in a death grip - it weighs a ton* - and lurched back upstairs and out onto the terrace where I eased it back into position. Its last coating of olive oil had solidified and so I turned all the gas taps to 'on' and lit the burners. After 5 mins, I wiped off the surface and all the hardened oil came away. I turned off the gas, let it cool down, re-oiled the surface with olive oil and stood there admiring my handiwork (as you do!). All we need now is a fine day, some fresh sardines and an icy-cold bottle of Listel rosé Grain de Gris from the Camargue (worth searching one out).

* I'm sure the metal was recycled from the Tirpitz..

13th June. This is a song I've always liked - it's Georges Moustaki with the aptly-named song Le Métèque.. (a 'métèque' is a pejorative word for a shifty-looking immigrant of Mediterranean origin!)

12th June. We voted in the Parliamentary elections this morning at a school a couple of minutes away. There can't be too many Brits here as they remembered me from the last time (is that a good or a bad thing - you decide). I was asked if I would like to come back this evening to assist in the count - I must have an honest face! The system is well organised and it runs like clockwork.

10th June. I've just added a link to Impact FM's 1960s channel in the left hand column. (give the widget some time to wind up..) If you're anything like me, you'll be amused at some of their attempts to convert gen-u-ine rock 'n roll lyrics into French. I mean, where do you start with Be-Bop-A-Lula..?! There are some great French songs from the period though..

2nd June. I tried a glass or two of Spain's Rueda Verdejo white wine the other day for the first time - dry, crisp, fruity and very more-ish. Worth looking to see if you can find a stockist wherever you are..

1st June. For any golfers out there who are thinking of visiting the Pays Basque, here's a list of the most beautiful golf courses in the area.

It's hard to believe that the longest day of the year is only 3 weeks away.. Aarrgghh.

24th May. We had a few days away up at St-Malo last week.. and fortunately we missed the wave of heat (32°C) that sat on Bayonne.

We stayed in a hotel that if it had been any closer to the sea, we'd have had wet feet. This was the view from our window straight down one morning:

The hotel was situated right on the sea wall a short walk from the old walled town of St-Malo - - and for lovers of tidal action, the hotel is on the front line - as can be seen below. Our hotel shows up at 0.39 - it's the one with a flag on its roof:

The tide at St-Malo, with its 12 metre range on average, is one of the highest in Europe - and when the Spring tides occur (6-10 times per year), the results can be seen above.

Unsurprisingly, with all the water around, seafood plays a big part in the local diet. I enjoyed some of the best oysters I've ever had at the Café de l'Ouest. Yes, it's something of a tourist magnet - but the staff were friendly, efficient and on the ball - and the oysters (N° 4 size) that we started with were something special. After we got into our stride, we each had a seafood choucroute. There was a buzz and a hubbub reminiscent of those famed Parisian brasseries.

We continued to eat seafood and oysters (this was taken at "Le Bout du Quai" at Cancale) until we left last Saturday.. (and I'm still peckish for another stack of those N° 4s from the Café de l'Ouest, Saint-Malo..!)

15th May. I was having a haircut on Friday when suddenly the coiffeuse shrieked, dropped her comb, followed by the satisfying sound of a splat as she dispatched what she said was a tiger mosquito. These pests are now to be found in France south of the Loire (map here) and I would urge tourists planning on visiting the south of France to make sure they equip themselves with mosquito repellent. There's nothing worse for a mosquito magnet (like me) than hearing the hum of a mosquito in a bedroom after turning out the light.

14th May. Here's 'Tuba Skinny' - that great street jazz band playing here in the 'Big Easy' (aka New Orleans) - showing that 'jumpy leg syndrome' needn't necessarily disqualify you from a career in music! In case you're wondering, the trombone player is behind the box of CDs:

More here.

13th May. I think it was yesterday that I heard and then saw the first swallows of summer.. (or were they house martins? I'm not sure what the difference is.) There was a formation of about 8 of them racing around the rooftops at breakneck speed skimming past chimneys screaming for all they're worth.

11th May. This is the Hot Club du Nax with their very-listenable-to interpretation of 'Joseph Joseph'.. (Isobel Cope, the singer, has a great jazz voice.. is it me or is there not a touch of Amy Winehouse in the timbre of her voice - especially in the lower registers?)

10th May. The "Great Warming Up" seems to be underway at last. We had lunch out on the terrace a day or two ago and today the temperature here is set to be 23° - with Bordeaux to the north at 29°. Suddenly it's summer..😎

8th May. We took our eyes off the garden over the last few weeks and it had a sudden growing spurt.. Yesterday, we were out there cutting, pruning and snipping - and filling bags ready for a trip or two to the décheterie (the recycling centre nearby). We have two palm trees out front and three in the back and when the blossom (doubt if that's the right word) emerges and blooms, everything (like the car!) within a radius of about 25-30 yards gets covered in a fine layer of yellow dust (pollen?). Elsewhere, the countryside is now freshly green and the skeletal tree forms of winter are but a distant memory. Yesterday evening we had our first apéro on the terrace. It won't be too long now before the shorts come out. I'd better warn the neighbours!

28th April. A small group of us were out on the road yesterday briefing mayors in a couple of villages about the content of the programme of our association's commemorations this September. We had a break at midday at a restaurant known as Aldaburua in the über-Basque village of Larressore. Here we were - at a time when the cost of living is high up on the national agenda - walking in to find almost every table taken.. Without boring you with the details, we took the set 3 course lunch, including a carafe of rosé and red. It was far better than it had any reason to be - and when the bill landed on our table with a whisper - rather than with a thump - it came to 13 euros each..

27th April. Who would have thought that the vote for both of the main political parties of the French Right and the Left combined would have collapsed to the extent it did in the first round of the presidential elections in the weekend before last - with the vote for the official candidates for the Right and Left totalling only some 6% of the total vote.. These two parties had previously provided all the presidents of the 5th Republic since 1958. In forming his La République En Marche party from scratch five years ago, President Macron had cleverly cherry-picked the brightest and best from France's main political parties from the Right (Les Républicains or LR) and the Left (Le Parti socialiste or PS) to join him. In doing so, he effectively left them both with a leadership vacuum in the centre of their ranks and they were forced to field two lack lustre candidates who achieved that mighty 6% total vote.

Could a similar thing happen in the UK? In theory - yes - because neither of the main Parties in the UK have any inspirational people - and political debate has been reduced to the ritual name-calling during Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons. In practice - no - because there are so few in Parliament who could qualify to be included in a category called the "brightest and best". On the other hand, there's no shortage of shiny-trouser'd dullards.

25th April. There's no better way to start the week than with a burst on my banjo:

Are we having fun yet?

Last chance!

24th April. I voted this morning in the second round of the French presidential elections here.. It was one of those occasions when I had to remind myself which candidate I disliked the least. No prizes for guessing.

I've said this before here I think but we're living in an age at a time when we don't seem able to produce statesmen or -women anymore. Is there one statesman on the world stage at the moment? Can anyone name one? Someone of genuine integrity, with impeccable judgement, a vision for the future and the ability to persuade us via his power of oratory that he or she is right? In other words - to lead us? There are one or two around who can tick some of these boxes - but not all four.

In an attempt to slow down the speed at which Nutty, our English cocker spaniel (aka the 4 legged Dyson), devours the contents of his bowl - we've bought one of these - and it definitely has added a minute or two to his usual 50 seconds. In French, it's known as an "anti-glouton" bowl (no dictionary required to work that one out!

10th April. We had a walk around Biarritz this morning - blue skies but with an onshore breeze that was two steps up from chilly. Many people out and about - so we found a seat at the Bleu Café at the Grande Plage to watch the world go by.

A girl in her twenties had a shoulder bag that bore the message: Ctrl + Alt + Delete Last Night - that made me smile! - but not quite as much as when I read the result of the Australian F1 GP - this song sprung to mind.

5th April. I have to admit that the appeal of golf* has always been lost on me. Yes, I've got a bag of golf sticks/bats/whatever in the garage but to me, it's a 'sport' that requires an inordinate amount of preparation prior to playing.

First of all, you have to find a club to join (ker-ching!), then there are the green fees (ker-ching!), then you need to ~~spend~~ oops, what am I saying, invest a large amount of folding in a set of clubs without any guarantee that you'll be able to hit a single ball with any of them (except perhaps the putter). When I served in the UK military, golf was known by the unwashed, and even by some of the washed, as 'swish f***' - this being the sound that the club head made as it scythed at speed past the ball - that remained tantalisingly fixed on its tee - and the inevitable expletive that followed.

I rest my case

Secondly, you need to outfit yourself with clothes that say 'golfer' - polo shirts with that 'must have' crocodile brand, chinos, a peaked cap and not forgetting the single golf glove dangling from the back pocket of your breeks (trousers).

Finally (but there's probably much more), you have to draw a happy face on your golf balls to remind yourself that you're not trying to kill the thing - simply to hit it - and eventually sink it in a hole.

There's no shortage of golf courses either in this part of the world.. looky here.

* or, as golf is known in Scotland: a good walk ruined.

4th April. The more news I read or watch, the more I am convinced by the sentiments expressed below by George Bernard Shaw:

1st April. We started off the morning with what looked like sleet - and just after lunch we had the MOADs (the Mother Of All Downpours). We're going to the cinema this afternoon to see "Seule la terre est éternelle".. (Only the land is eternal):

27th March. We had a sad accident in the house a couple of evenings ago. We have a 19th century spring-driven brass lantern clock very similar to this one and it's been sitting on a bookcase in the dining room out of the way.

Or so I thought..

I was taking something through to the kitchen past the bookcase and just as I entered the kitchen there was an almighty crash behind me. On turning around I saw my beautiful old clock was lying in the floor in a state of disarray. I found the major parts of the clock where you'd expect to find them - directly underneath where it had been standing for 15 years - and after a careful search we managed to find the hands. However, the little cup washer that retains the hands in place had vanished. I now need to find a clock restorer to put it all back together. The clock hadn't been running for some years - it had slowly started gaining time to the point where the regulator could no longer restrain it. I'd taken it to a clock specialist in town about 3-4 years ago and in the end I had to go and retrieve it over a year later as he hadn't touched it. No apology from him either - so that's one place I won't be taking it to. I wish I could bring it here.

What caused it to make a sudden leap for freedom? I know I didn't touch it - the top of the bookcase is 4 feet off the ground. I think the clock must have been moving forward imperceptibly over the years due to vibrations caused by my footsteps (OK - who said elephantine?!) .

The all-weather cover will be coming off the table out on the terrace today. It feels like Mother Nature has changed a gear - and we're on Summer time as of now. So goodbye string vests!😊

Here's the Man himself playing his own notoriously difficult Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30:

25th March. We took advantage of a sunny day yesterday to have lunch at Larralde at Ascain - an old favourite of ours. We had a table outside in the sheltered south-facing garden and once again I was reminded how lucky we are to be able to enjoy days like this - and in March too.

24th March. We missed an innovative exhibition/celebration (22nd Feb 2019 to 5th Jan 2020) of Vincent van Gogh's paintings as they were brought to life in a magical swirling display at the Atelier des Lumières, Paris in a novel immersive experience:

I've just realised that I'd forgotten to post the outcome of the 2022 Guinness 6 Nations rugby tournament. There was only ever going to be one winner (although before the first match was played I thought that Ireland might be in with an outside chance) and that was France. Enjoy the final day against an England team that just didn't have what it took on the day. (England won only 2 of their 5 matches - same as in 2021) France were clearly the team of the tournament - they were head and shoulders above the rest - and I fully expect that they'll go on to win the Rugby World Cup in Paris in 2023. They have quality running all through their side with at least seven world class players. I can't think of one English player - or any other player from the remaining 4 Nations - who would make it into the French XV on merit - and that says it all. Well done on a thoroughly deserved win and Grand Slam!

18th March. I came across this very atmospheric collection of photos of the landscape around here.. Well worth a look at.

10th March. Out on my ebike on a bright afternoon for the first time this year - good to get my legs pumping again.

Walking back from the baker this morning, a BMW i3 went whirring by (impressively in my opinion) and it struck me that electric cars will become more popular if, like the BMW, they resemble normal cars (ie, with internal combustion engines) - and if the range can be extended to 500km and if there's a truly national recharging network.

It was followed shortly afterwards by two examples of electric vehicles by French manufacturers - the Renault Twizy and the Citroën AMI.. As Citroën itself says in the link - without a trace of irony: "since making its debut in 2020, Citroën AMI has been turning heads around the world – not least here in the UK".

I think the target market for both of these cars will be found in the ranks of the counter culture.. the visibly green, bearded with a penchant for hugging trees. I can't imagine a moment when I could seriously entertain the idea of owning either of these two vehicles: the Twizy looks like it's escaped from a fairground while the AMI looks like not much more than a motorised tea chest designed by a 10 year old. BMW has shown with its i3 that electric vehicles don't need to flaunt their green credentials so obviously as the two French offerings.

9th March. We 're getting down to the nitty gritty in the Guinness 6 Nations Rugby Tournament. France travel to Cardiff to take on Wales at the Principality stadium on Friday evening - while on Saturday England welcome Ireland to their Twickenham headquarters. Earlier on Saturday, Scotland travel to Rome to take on an improved Italy. My predictions - and bear in mind I have a poor track record - are for France, Italy and Ireland to emerge victorious.

8th March. You can listen here to one of the most fascinating discussions on BBC Radio I've ever heard. The programme is called "The Life Scientific" and Shankar Balasubramanian outlines in 30 minutes how he and a colleague David Klenerman decoded DNA. Shankar Balasubramanian is an internationally recognised leader in the field of nucleic acids who is distinguished for pioneering contributions to chemistry and its application to the biological and medical sciences. He is a principal inventor of the leading next generation sequencing methodology, Solexa sequencing, that has made routine, accurate, low-cost sequencing of human genomes a reality and has revolutionised biology. More here. (Now to try and understand it!)

4th March. I've been aware of Wordle for some time now - and until a day or two ago, I'd not tried it. I didn't think it was particularly engaging - but then I don't do Sudoku either. Here's today's special offer - click here to launch Wordle.

26th February. You'll be pleased to know that you'll not find 24/7 coverage (or speculation) here on the situation in the Ukraine. I'm already fed up with right-on presenters on the BBC's "Today" radio programme who have started pronouncing Kiev as - wait for it - Keeve. (Thwack!)

There's not much to smile about in the news today but this caught my eye:

18th February. No sign here of the high winds that are howling over the UK today.

17th February. A few minutes ago I was standing idly watching some skating from the Olympics and at the end of one routine, the commentator on French TV mentioned Triple Salchows and Double Axels and for some unknown reason a snatch of music (from the fifties) sprang to mind. I think our memories may be interlinked and capable of being accessed and stimulated by a complex set of cues. I've got no idea of the connection between the music and the ice skating terms (never having ice skated). Is it me - or are others similarly afflicted? Anyway, here's that piece of music that will be familiar to readers 'of a certain age'.. It also brings to mind Sunday lunches at home decades ago..

14th February. Here's the late Cesária Évora with Cabo Verde Manda Mantenha - I find this very 'listenable' to:

13th February. No more rugby predictions from me! Both Wales and France won their fixtures yesterday in two different matches that were both compelling. Of the two, the France-Ireland match had physicality and intensity in spades. With the score at 22-7, I thought Ireland were out of it - but they came back with 2 quick tries to bring the score tantalisingly close at 22-21.. France though had that little bit extra in the tank and they ran out 30-24 winners after one of the greatest 6 Nations matches in modern times!

12th February. We're all set here for two major confrontations this afternoon: the first will take place at the Principality stadium (formerly the Millennium stadium) at Cardiff between Wales and Scotland.. with the second - probably the match of the tournament - between France and Ireland in Paris. The winner of this encounter will probably go on to win the 2022 6 Nations rugby tournament. I'm going for wins by the 'away' sides in both cases.

9th February. As the lunchtime weather forecast pointed at Biarritz as being the warmest in France with an afternoon temperature hitting an unseasonal high of 20°C, we decided to drive over there to sit in the sun somewhere ~~and shout at the traffic~~. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a café with the sun warming its terrace - so we eased into the Miremont - that grand old lady of cafés - or perhaps I should say salon de thé - that has seen it all (it's featured on page 143 of this guide). On the ground floor, the walls are lined with ancient mirrored tiles (ideal for discreet people-watching) that have clearly seen better days - but that's all part of its Belle Epoque charm.

We were lucky to find a table right in front of its picture window that overlooked some of Biarritz's prime real estate and the sea. Once in place, we invested (invested being the operative word!) in some weapons-grade pâtisseries - an éclair chocolat for Madame and a russe pistache (right) for me. The cakes here exemplify the very best of the fine French art of the pâtissier. Be warned: there's a link here to photos that will make your mouth water if you have a sweet tooth.

This magnificent old building below - the former Casino Bellevue dating from 1857 - dominated our view of the outside world. I've included a clunky guide (here*) to the Bellevue that gives a flavour of its former prominence in the town. Remember, it was built just a few short years ahead of the south westerly extension of the French railway network that opened up Biarritz to the rest of Europe. Biarritz then became a 'go to' destination for many of the crowned heads of Europe.

* Click on the play button at the bottom left. Note: it works fine on my Android tablet.. but it stutters on my PC.

France's rail network expanded dramatically with Biarritz being connected to it in 1865.

It's days like these that make up for the rainy ones - and yes, I still pinch myself.

3rd February. The annual bright spot for me on the sporting calendar is fast-approaching - yes, the Guinness Six Nations rugby tournament kicks off this coming Saturday with some tasty fixtures programmed for the opening Saturday. Your weekends should be built around these matches (with kind permission of She Who Must Be Obeyed of course!):

291. November rides again

2021-11-02T09:24:00.187+01:00

31st January. Rain today for the first time in what seems like weeks. Also my supply of Sir Edwards' Highland Tincture has run dry.. I was surprised to see from the link that my preferred tipple - Sir Edward's Finest - is listed as 3 years old or more. There's no hint of that in the taste.. at least not to me. I'll be making a mercy dash over the border for some more in the next day or two.

This next short clip was just by way of experimentation (the things you do when you're bored!). It's just a short video of our woodburner, filmed via my tablet.. It's worth its weight in gold in winter. The video seemed reluctant to run here so I converted it into a GIF file instead - another 'first' for me. However, the GIF image still takes a few seconds to load - so, patience!

29th January. Still cold down here with the temps hovering around 0°C this morning. We won't be doing much lotus-eating today! Still, this cheered me up! 😁

27th January. I had a rush of what could have been cabin fever this morning - so I decided to take Madame out to lunch at Ahizpak - a restaurant on the outskirts of Biarritz with a distant sea view. Apart from the outstandingly good cooking, one plus point separates it from many others here and that is that it has a l-a-r-g-e car park.

21st January. I was down at the beach yesterday morning and well-wrapped up as the car indicated 4°C.. (howls of derisive laughter from Nebraska - I hear you!) but there were people out in the water surfing! I've heard it said though that the water temp is often warmer than the air temp. I'll take their word for it.

Santa was kind enough to leave a bottle of "Highland Park" 12 year old single malt under the tree for me. After the fire had settled down to a red glow this evening, it seemed the perfect time to try a dram from Scotland's Orkney Islands. An interesting dram it was too.. (tasting notes here) The hint of smokiness was right on the limit for me. Glenmorangie (Original - 10 year old) remains the firm favourite at Pipérade Towers.. I've yet to find another that ticks all the boxes and satisfies both Madame and I. I was weaned onto it in the mid-1970s and I've never looked back.

Unfortunately following its sale to LVMH (the French conglomerate), the original bottle was ditched and they started ageing the whisky in (don't start me off!) in Sauternes casks (why on earth would you do that?) and it gets worse. If you want to read up on what's happened to this superb single malt, the sad story is out there on the internet. Fortunately they've left the 10 year old alone.

This cartoon hit the spot with me..

"How's the Psalms' title page coming along?"

15th January. Sunny with blue skies - but cold. If it's grey and wet where you are, light the fire/turn the heating up, make yourself comfortable and sit back to enjoy this - one of the great films of all time. (hope the link works wherever you are)

13th January. Veronica Bennett aka Ronnie Spector - the lead singer of the Ronettes (you'd remember them if you were around then) passed away yesterday. They made waves with their style - although when looked at today, they appear a lot less subversive than at the time. Still, a great sound..

6th January. This time last year the surgeon was firing up his angle grinder ready to remove parts of my right knee prior to fitting a prosthetic replacement. After a slow start, that year has passed quickly.

This is a piece I've been hearing often over the festive period - it's Hector Berlioz's "The Shepherds' Farewell". This was one of the last pieces we sang in the choir before it all ground to a halt due to you-know-what. (Needless to say, this isn't our choir!)

5th January. The newsreader on the lunchtime TF1 news was discussing the sudden drop in temperatures - yesterday it was 18° here and today it's 6° - and he came out with an expression I'd not heard before that "il fait un froid de canard".. which means it's cold enough for ducks. Explanations here (in French) and here (in Angliche!).

4th January. I was listening to the radio in the car yesterday and there was someone (I think) from the Académie Française explaining how they assign a French word (or words) to everyday words in English. The part I heard addressed the 'thorny' issue of Post-It notes. These will now be formally known as Notes Adhésives Repositionnables. Don't believe me? Try Googling it.

To a greater or lesser extent, intransigence and pedantry are part of the French character and the insistence on precision is evident in the "Notes Adhésives Repositionnables" mentioned above. Both the "Adhésives" and the "Repositionnables" must end in an s to agree with the plural "Notes". This is slightly obsessional to those of us of an Anglo-Saxon persuasion and it may be that this finicky eye for exactitude has been absorbed into their national character. I've been astonished to hear friends being sidetracked over points of linguistic detail and arguing - instead of just agreeing to differ and moving on. At times like those, it's clear that the French language is more than a language.

2nd January. It didn't take long for the season of "peace on earth and goodwill to all men" to evaporate. I'd taken the dog with me for a walk into town to buy a baguette and I decided to return via the banks of the Adour. I was walking along a newly surfaced walkway (here) when I saw a group of three people - each with a small dog - approaching. Next minute, as we became a group of four, the dogs started sniffing each other and tangling their leads (as is their wont) and then there was a squeal of brakes as two cyclists came to a hurried stop - "This is a cycle path!" - "No it isn't - it's a footpath" - "It's signposted as a cycle track.." - "No it isn't!" - and so it went on. Neither side wanted to back down, let alone apologise.

For some here, intransigence is the default mindset. I hate to say it but in England I don't think this would have happened - at least not in the England I knew. Maybe I'm wrong but I like to think that there would have been an exchange of "Sorrys" and that would have been it.

Moving on, today we're going to have a raclette.. an ideal dish for winter (even though it's 18°C as I write) - but it makes a nice change and it gives Madame a break! We have an electric Tefal table top raclette (available here) and it's simplicity itself to use.

1st January 2022. We went for a walk at Milady Beach to the south of Biarritz this afternoon as it was - wait for it - an incredibly warm 23°C.. People were having picnics on the grass and I felt overdressed with a sweater on. What a beautiful start to the year. Happy New Year to one and all.. (OK, to both of you!)

31st December. Here's a curiously likeable little video that popped up this morning..

30th December. We'd planned to go out to one of favourite restaurants tomorrow evening but given that the Omicron virus appears to be so highly contagious, we decided to err on the side of safety and so we've just cancelled. We decided that it wasn't worth the risk - plus if we'd gone out, I was planning to have only one glass of wine as there's sure to be a heavy police presence out on the roads. Staying at home means I can have two! (who said, "Or more!"😈)

25th December. Returning from a walk along the beach on this mild Christmas morning (temp 15°) I put the car radio on to France Bleu Pays Basque and I heard this song being sung in Basque - a song that became increasingly familiar as it progressed. See how long it takes you to guess what it is:

24th December. A Happy Christmas to all -- especially to those who, for whatever reason, are unable to be with their loved ones at this time..

22nd December. Norman Rockwell was known and loved for his folksy paintings of an America that portrayed, and perhaps idealised (nothing wrong in that though), the optimism, family values and innate kindness that many of us believed characterised the country in the mid-twentieth century. More here.

19th December. Here's a Christmas Carol (not a Christmas song!) or two to put you in the mood for the coming few days:

Last night I'd arranged to join in with Aeolia, a choir from Tarnos - as they'd planned to sing some traditional English carols at 5.15pm in the centre of Bayonne next to the Château-Vieux (interior photos here). But as Robbie Burns said - in his poem "To a mouse" - the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley.

The Town Hall had planned a mass launching of Chinese lanterns on 4th, 11th and 18th December. In the past, this popular event has attracted huge crowds (of around 50,000) but due to the recent intemperate weather, the first two releases had to be cancelled so yesterday evening's event proved a great draw. All the traffic on the approach roads to the centre appeared to be static and as the witching hour approached, there was no sign of anything that looked like a choir. To be honest, standing in the cold waiting just about finished us off so we elected to head for home. The release of the lanterns took place at 7.30pm:

As we walked into town the traffic was at a standstill as the world and his dog were looking for parking spaces.. Also, the arrival of Santa Claus on a huge float accompanied by dancing elves coincided with the time that the choir was supposed to start singing. We waited for a while but couldn't see anyone and in the end we left. Once home, I closed the shutters, put a match to the woodburner and poured a couple of attitude adjusters (I had a festive warming dram from Dr Speyburn (Dr Glenmorangie's locum)).

11th December. I know it's shallow and I shouldn't find this motto funny - but there's just something about it that appeals to me.

8th December. Into town on foot on a windy morning to pick up a few goodies for sending to friends in the Independent Coastal State (as England is now known in Brussels). I had my Barbour jacket on and I needed two hands at times to hold on to my umbrella in the gusting wind. Of course, I'd only been gone one minute and it started raining and hailing.

In the town centre, the loudspeaker system was playing this (normally one of my favourite Christmassy songs) as I sang along through gritted teeth!😀 I turned a corner into a gale and it was only by executing a no-notice Cruyff turn (left) that I managed to keep the umbrella from doing an inside-outy. I arrived back home dripping wet.

7th December. It's 80 years to the day that Japan struck a surprise blow against the US at Pearl Harbour - and in doing so woke a sleeping giant. America came into WWII with its vast untapped resources of men, materiel and factories and from that moment on, the outcome of WWII became only a matter of time - not 'if' but 'when'. Four years later, the world looked a very different place.. with atom bombs, rockets, jet engines, computers, penicillin and many more inventions that would - for better or worse - change our lives forever.

Untold millions had died in the process and new crimes were added to the statute books. Once the dust had settled, new alliances were created - either willingly or under pressure - along with new borders and frontiers as countries re-aligned themselves in the New World order. In the West, the post-war alliances are still extant while the Warsaw Pact collapsed in 1989. Are we about to experience another global convulsion as a resurgent China begins to flex its muscles? Their motto seems to be "Softly, softly, catchee monkey".

5th December. Predictably perhaps, the release of thousands of Chinese (or should that be Japanese?) lanterns planned for yesterday evening was cancelled due to the inclement weather. Just to emphasise the point, Mother Nature laid on a storm for us in the wee small hours that buffeted the house with moaning winds and deluges of rain that swept against our sturdy shutters.

The evidence was clear to see on the roads this morning with piles of twigs and wet leaves scattered at random on the wet streets of Bayonne. I took advantage of a gap (or so I thought) in the procession of rain-bearing clouds to take Nutty for his morning run down by the sea (below). However, in the few minutes that it took to reach the coast, a wall of gunmetal grey/blue clouds had formed out to sea and we only managed 5-10 minutes before we had to beat the rain in a dash back to the car. Our cocker spaniel does 'indignant' very well!

While drying us both off in the kitchen, I switched the radio on only to hear a piece I haven't heard for decades.. It took me back to childhood - sitting with my mother in front of the fire at 1.45pm.. listening to a radio programme for young children. I think I would have been about 4 or 5 years old. How is it that these memories can survive being buried for so long in that grey matter between our ears - and yet I can't remember what we had for lunch yesterday? (Don't tell Management!😄)

3rd December. We had a wood burner installed a few years ago and it really comes into its own when the weather is cold, wet and windy - as it is now. The one we have is fairly similar to the one shown below - and with the shutters are closed, the stove lit - and a house call imminent from Dr Glenmorangie, life doesn't get much better than this.. (in winter!)

Our first Christmas card arrived today from England - and I was shocked to see the price of the stamp necessary to send a card from the independent coastal state formerly known as England to France these days - £2.55! A week or so ago I had to return a form I'd received from the UK State Pensions to certify that I was still alive. I had to pay 1.50 euros for a stamp to send an envelope containing a single sheet of A4. As much as we enjoy hearing from our friends in the UK at this time of the year, these extortionate postal rates are beyond the pale - so for those of you who customarily send us a card, we'd be more than delighted to receive an e-card from you instead..

1st December. This virtual ensemble comprises 25 players from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and 218 singers from the Stay at Home Choir (just love that name!) - here's their spine-tingling rendition of Vivaldi's Gloria:

If the above video is reluctant to start, try here while I go around the back with a large hammer!

30th November. Into town quickly this morning for some shopping and while there I took the opportunity to pick up a few of the last remaining bottles of Georges Duboeuf's Beaujolais Nouveau to keep for a rainy day - of which there's no shortage at the moment - so things are looking up!

The centre of town was all a-bustle with the signs that Christmas is fast approaching: lights and decorations going up; mini fairground rides for kids being constructed; the appearance of stands selling churros; the mini locomotive with its hot chestnuts; and the clincher: the lingerie shop with its window full of <look away now!> black and red unmentionables!😉

There's also the release of innumerable Chinese lanterns from 7.30pm on 4th, 11th and 18th December (weather permitting) on the banks of the Nive to look forward to. See here for further details of all the festivities planned for Bayonne.

28th November. Just back from walking the dog on a raw November morning. As it was a cold and blustery day with rain showers blowing through it seemed like a good idea to put my duffel coat on for the first time since we've been here. It put me in mind of that classic film from 1953 - "The Cruel Sea" - when duffel coats were just about the only protection available for those on the exposed bridges of the convoy escorts in the wintry Atlantic. (Here's a link to "The Cruel Sea" - full movie - in English here)

The sea must have been quite a sight to see this morning with the strong north westerly winds that have been blowing for the last few days. Last night as I closed the shutters upstairs I could hear the distant roar from the coast and I didn't envy those who found themselves out on the ocean wave. I grew up on the coast in England and yesterday there was something in the air that reminded me of home - it must have been the salt-laden air.

21st November. It was a good day for (armchair) sport as far as I was concerned yesterday. In the Autumn rugby internationals, England squeaked home 27-26 against a powerful Springboks side, then Wales did the same against Australia winning 29-28 - before the result of the day in Paris where les Bleus beat the New Zealand All Blacks convincingly 40-25. In between all this, Lewis Hamilton qualified fastest for the Qatar GP. Then in the round ball game, Liverpool thrashed pretenders Arsenal 4-0 - and finally, Max Verstappen (the accident waiting to happen) has been handed five-place grid penalty for ignoring yellow flags during qualifying.

9th November. We're now all fully jabbed-up as we 've had 3 x Covid vaccinations - and this afternoon we both had flu jabs. I asked for mine in my left arm as my right arm is my vacuum cleaning arm..😀

Citroën DS

How times have changed.. This - the Citroën DS (pronounced déesse in French - or goddess) was the futuristic car that was launched on an unsuspecting public way back in 1955 (yes, in 1955). The DS was known for its aerodynamic, futuristic body design and innovative technologies, and it set new standards in ride quality, handling, and braking - thanks to both being the first mass production car to be equipped with hydropneumatic suspension, as well as disc brakes. The 1967 series 3 also introduced directional headlights to a mass-produced car.

At the risk of being branded a philistine (again), I have to say that yes, the DS is resolutely modern - it's different, it's bold, it's striking - it's all of those things - but is it beautiful in the way that early Jaguar XJ6s or early Porsche 911s are beautiful? Even today, 66 years on, the DS still has enough about it to challenge our ideas of what a modern car might or should look like. However, it has a certain brutality about it in a way that the two cars mentioned above don't. I think the expression that describes it most accurately is jolie laide. To my eternal regret, I've not been in one, ever - let alone driven one. I'm open to all offers. Seriously.

Now, fast-forward 66 years and look at the Ami - the latest all-electric offering from Citroën (left).. The Ami is roughly cube-shaped (which presented a challenge to the designers) and the resultant horror is as different as you could possibly imagine (in your worst nightmares) from the DS shown above. Looking at the Citroën Ami, you could be excused for asking: is that the car or the box it came in? The answer of course is that it's both. It looks like nothing less than something that escaped from that children's TV programme "The Magic Roundabout". It's beyond ugly.. Yet someone will buy one. I've read that they're going to be imported to the UK - but only the left hand drive version. Good luck with that. The Islington chatterati will probably go for them - but I can't imagine the good folk of Widnes or British West Hartlepools taking to them.

(Edited to add: I've already seen a few of these dorkmobiles here on the road) Watch this and cringe..

7th November. Sad news - we heard from a friend this morning that Jean Pierre Paroix, the owner/chef of les Bains de Secours at Sévignacq-Meyracq has decided to look for a buyer for his fine restaurant. It was never somewhere you would just stumble upon - indeed, finding it - even when you knew roughly where it was - was always a challenge. It would be true to say that it was buried deep in la France profonde in an unparalleled bucolic setting. More photos here.

We were last there in September and, as always, it was a wonderful experience, unmatched by anything we've had elsewhere. His savoy cabbage stuffed with confit de canard, foie gras and minced pork will live long in the memory. What a great pity.. We were lucky enough to have stayed there on two occasions, both times for 3-4 days, to escape the heat and crowds of the Fêtes de Bayonne.. Thank you Jean-Pierre for looking after us so well. You will be greatly missed.

5th November. This is a song that I haven't heard in a loong time.. and it's performed here by one of those virtual choirs.. but I think it works better if you set the playback speed to 1.25.. Try it!

↑

Click on the Settings control (above) and change the playback speed to 1.25

3rd November. The "Hermione" has been opened up for visitors.. details here.

Back from a trip into town (in the car as it was raining) to collect the dog from the groomers. The narrow streets were full of people driving around looking for a space but I was lucky to find a paying space within a few yards of the shop. I grabbed a folding umbrella out of the car and went to buy a short stay ticket - only to be confronted by a new ticket machine with a minimalist screen that defined 'user unfriendly' - in fact, it was user hostile. (Don't manufacturers ever test their products with people who are unfamiliar with them? Grrr!)

Standing under a torrential (as in torrential) downpour trying to figure out how the thing worked suddenly became all too much (I'm no Gene Kelly!) and so I abandoned the idea of buying a ticket, gambling that few parking attendants would be zealous enough to be out checking tickets in weather like this. After collecting the dry dog, I returned to the car and by the time I put him inside, he was soaked to the skin.. Some of the roads had lakes of water across them complete with waves! Just to make life interesting, the downpour turned into a deafening hailstorm as I made my way to the bakers where I was soaked again in the few short yards from the car to the shop. On the way home, I took a short cut the wrong way down a one-way street to avoid the worst of it and made it into our garage which was starting to flood. Fortunately we'd been emptying the fridge so I unplugged it. That's more than enough excitement for one day!

2nd November. We've just finished the final few jobs that remained from the list that we started 14 years ago. The stairs and the upstairs landing have been carpeted; the floor of the downstairs utility room has been re-tiled; we've fitted a dog guard to stop Nutty from going upstairs (except when invited!) and we finally replaced the oversized downstairs lavatory with a more modern one that doesn't require an HGV licence to use it.

Now we start again!

1st November. I was out in the garden 2-3 nights ago as night was turning into day when I heard the unmistakeably raucous calls from overhead as thousands of migrating cranes from northern Europe and Scandinavia headed south for the winter. They appear to fly at all hours - I've heard them overhead at 3am. These latest ones were invisible in the half light but I expect we'll see more of their great flapping formations in the next few days.

290. Summertime

2021-08-01T09:32:00.266+02:00

30th October. As the number of visitors to the blog approaches the 100,000 mark, I'd like to say a big thank you to all those of you who have visited over the years.

24th October. There's a well-written descriptive 'primer' about the Pays Basque in the "Independent" for those who wish to know more (in one article) about this endlessly fascinating corner of Europe that straddles the border country of France and Spain. My regular reader(s) may remember that Madame and I made our first visit here 30 years ago and that we were instantly smitten by its unique identity as expressed by the warmth and generosity of the people, the impenetrable Basque language, the Basque culture, the gastronomy, the style of the houses, its distinctive landscape - it goes on.

It didn't take long for us to decide that here was where we were going to live one day. The area combines everything we love in our lives with very few of the factors that combine to make life disagreeable elsewhere. And there aren't many places in the world where I can say that.

The "Independent" article (above) about the Pays Basque compresses neatly into a column what I've been trying to do for years. I've been writing about the Pays Basque here since 2009 - trying to capture the essential spirit of life here - if I'm honest, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's. Top tip? Start at the beginning!

22nd October. I've come across a copy of Orson Wells' film (in English but with French subtitles) made in 1955 about the Pays Basque..

19th October. Woke up today to a beautiful morning here in the Pays basque where the temperatures were heading for the high twenties with a soft warm wind from Africa (according to the forecast). We decided to take a walk along the coastal footpath at Anglet hoping to make a stop at L'Arrantza, a quaint-looking café overlooking the sea and set up with grass-fronded parasols and comfortable chairs.. You'll find it at the Plage de la Madrague..

Unlike similar establishments at its glitzier neighbour (Biarritz), a couple of coffees here were only 2.20 euros. And its comfy chairs made leaving difficult! This is somewhere we'll return to before the weather changes.

As you can see from this short video, there's no shortage of beachside bars and cafés along this stretch of coast. The 'in' drink appears to be a Mojito.. (I prefer the ones I make.. they're teeth-crackingly cold - and they really do hit the spot on a hot day..)

16th October. I spent the whole of yesterday translating the quarterly newsletter of the association I'm involved with from French to English. The dog woke me up at 4.45am (bless him!) and half an hour later I found myself in front of my PC making a start on it. Apart from meal breaks, I worked through until 9.30pm when I finally called it a day* after finding myself staring at the screen for 5 mins. I've almost finished.

* It was 32 pages long - before any wags here are tempted to suggest that that's not bad for a one page document! 😁

14th October. Earlier this week, we went to the local hospital where a vaccination point had been set up. The appointment for my third vaccination was timed to the minute and there was only a negligible delay as I was fed into the well-organised system. A doctor asked me a few yes/no questions - and then despite the fact that we were both wearing masks, she said that she recognised me. She lives in an impasse (cul-de-sac) behind our house and a couple of years ago, she and her husband organised a highly enjoyable apéro-dinatoire for all their immediate neighbours.

Having a Britannique in line (albeit one with dual nationality) was clearly a novelty and so I received the full attention of the nurses - with lots of good-humoured comments. The nurse actually giving me the vaccination didn't take a run at me in the manner of someone throwing a javelin - but after asking me if I had a preference for left or right arm, she just wiped the target area with alcohol - and then seconds later she rolled my sleeve back down again. That was it - done - and I hadn't felt a thing. The most painless injection ever. I thought she'd had second thoughts and decided not to give me the vaccination.

We finally decided to address one of the very last of the jobs remaining with the house and that is to carpet the staircase and the upstairs landing. We've chosen sisal carpeting and we've had the measurer and fitting team around to plan how they're going to fit it - as there are some complications. I've just downloaded pages and pages of documents from the carpet company all written in legalese - 5 out of 6 of which need signing and dating. It's a lawyers world that we live in.

13th October. There are a couple of small wooden balconies at the front of the house - one upstairs and one downstairs - both are painted Basque rouge as is the norm here. The upper surfaces of both were looking the worse for wear with the paint all cracked and blistered as they attract the full force of the sun. After giving them a good rubbing down with sandpaper, I filled all the cracks with wood filler and after rubbing down a second time and refilling - and re-sanding - they were looking much better. (In case you're wondering, there is a point to this story!) I applied a coat of undercoat and today was the day when they were going to receive a fresh top coat of Basque Rouge. (interesting article here on Basque houses)

I brought an extending ladder out from the garage to make the job of doing the upper one that little bit easier and so with an open litre can of paint in one hand - and a paint brush stuck in my back pocket, I set off up the ladder. I hadn't bargained for my right leg (due to my new knee) being less flexible than my left - so I had to shuffle slowly up the ladder one step at a time.

When I'd finished, I started back down the ladder again (with the open can of paint in my left hand) but when I was about 4 steps from the bottom, my shuffle turned into a plummet as I lost my balance - aaarrgghh - and fell the rest of the way, landing flat on my back, still clutching the can of paint - but being a Northerner, I hardly spilled a drop..! 😀

Job done.. Next time though I think I might just pay someone to do it.

4th October. This song by Gilbert Bécaud describes an (imaginary?) encounter with Nathalie, a female Intourist guide in Moscow.. It made the 18 year old me want to visit the Café Pushkin.. (lyrics here - click on version #2)

1st October. I could listen to a lot of this:

30th September. We set off early this morning for Andernos-les-Bains (about 2 hours to the north) to take a friend for lunch at Le F des Fontaines, a restaurant with its feet in the water at nearby Taussat. It had a extended deck outside that overlooked the bay of Arcachon.. and I can't think of anywhere we've ever been that's had such a panoramic close-up view of the sea. Fortunately the cooking was up to it as well. This is highly recommended for anyone finding themselves in the Bordeaux region. Here's the restaurant under a big sky - just as it was today. More photos here and here.

27th September. We watched a concert (Julian Rachlin & Denis Matsuev with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1) on the box the other evening and we were transfixed by the power and the passion of Denis Matsuev's playing. Here he is with Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.3 - a Russian playing real Russian music.. Stand by for fireworks!

Here's another look at my 'dream'.. a 50+ year old Porsche 912 that still looks the business in a very understated way - no aerofoil wings, no untoward lumps and bumps - just timeless styling:

21st September. I was out for a ride on my bike along the banks of the Adour this morning when I came across 'Hermione" in dry dock. She's a replica of an 18th century three-masted French frigate of the same name. I was surprised to read somewhere that back in the 18th C she had a crew of 300..

She's here in dry dock in Bayonne for 6 months - having some damage below the waterline put right - so I'm hoping to have a look around her. With our long maritime history, I think this is something the UK could and should emulate. (Looks like someone has already had this idea - Google has just turned up the Lenox project)

18th September. Back home after a few days away at Bielle in the Vallée d'Ossau.. with its stunning mountain scenery, towering peaks and alpine-style roads with vertiginous drop-offs. The big plus for us though was that we could breathe at last after the heat and humidity of the recent weather on the coast.

Every field seem to be devoted to the growing of corn or maize (maïs in French) - the stalks of which were a good 7-8 feet high. It's rarely seen on menus in France though as it's only considered suitable for animal feed here..

The owner of the hotel where we stayed had an immaculate Lancia Montecarlo* in rally trim in red - what else!

* It may have been the legendary supercharged 037 model - it had 4 pipes sticking out of the back - my knowledge of Lancias is not that great.

During one prolonged day of rain, we decided to revisit a favourite restaurant of ours - Les Bains de Secours at Sévignac-Meyracq - for lunch. It's situated in la France profonde. Once again, we enjoyed a wonderfully inventive lunch there - full of surprises - all of them good! I don't think we've ever had better anywhere. Highly recommended - and well worth making that special journey to visit it - you won't be sorry.

For our last night in the Vallée d'Ossau, we decided to treat ourselves at a restaurant in nearby Laruns that featured garbure.. To an ear attuned to the sound of the English language, garbure doesn't sound that appetising but, when made well, it is a very special dish indeed. See what you think:

Unfortunately, our garbure was nothing like the one shown above!

After driving through a more or less constant downpour we arrived back in the Pays Basque and after picking up the pooch from the kennels we took him down to the beach for a good run.. As much as I like being up in the mountains, there's something indefinable about the sea that has always drawn me - is it the distant horizon with its constant reminder of a world beyond? Or is it that salty tang? Or the eternally restless sound of the waves? Or all of the above?

9th September. Here's Jean Paul Belmondo making his final appearance at Les Invalides this afternoon. I'm sure he's still smiling in there..

7th September. Sad to hear yesterday of the demise of that great French actor - Jean-Paul Belmondo - who for many epitomised the charm of the Frenchman with his confident swagger, sheer likeability and easy charisma. With his distinctive features, there was only ever going to be one job for him and he found it early on. He was one of a dwindling number of film stars who could, without any exaggeration at all, be said to be irreplaceable. He was to generations of French filmgoers what Sean Connery (and Kirk Douglas before him) had been to the Anglophone world - a larger-than-life character who, by some strange magic or alchemy, was able to dominate every scene of his films. To many French men, he typified the French man they'd like to have been. Ask yourself: who's left?

Over the weekend, we had 3 days of bullfights at Les Arènes nearby.. The bullring is on my early morning dog-walking route and I think it was on Sunday morning that I saw a "suit of lights" hanging up on a garment rail inside the grounds of the bullring as vans were unloaded. It struck me that the spectacle of the bullfighters and the whole carefully calibrated charade of the presentation is designed to divert and distract the viewing public from the essential cruelty of bullfighting.

Hemingway fell hook, line and sinker for the spectacle in the 1920s and wrote "Death in the Afternoon" - what many have subsequently described as the 'bible' of bullfighting - where he wrote of: “the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick.” (conveniently forgetting the sword) I'm not sure that the bull would agree with him. There's no mention of the cruelty in Hemingway's world. As an activity, it is abhorrent, medieval, cruel and decadent and it has no place in Europe, let alone in France.

I remember reading "Death in the Afternoon" as an impressionable 20 year old and I have to confess that Hemingway's persuasive prose had me nodding along with him. This is the problem when you confuse a description of bullfighting when written by an author at the peak of his powers with the sordid reality of it. I remember once trying to convince a girlfriend at the time that bullfighting was a noble art - having read his book but never having seen a bullfight. How wrong I was.

If I were to go into a field and start stabbing at a bull or a cow with a sword, I'd fully expect - and deserve - to be arrested for cruelty to animals. However, in a bullring, matadors are applauded.

Later on in the day, during the mid-afternoon dog walk, I crossed paths with 4 elegantly dressed, coiffed and perfumed ladies who were en route to witness 6 bulls being put to death for their evening entertainment. I would have liked to have thrown the contents of a full dustbin over the lot of them (and more).

2nd September. The sky has suddenly gone black - as in black - here - and a few minutes ago a lady from a flat behind us called to say our garage door was open and that there was a storm coming.. Moments later, the sky was full of lightning and now the rain is now falling in sheets like a monsoon. There are some kind people around. Merci beaucoup!

I should have taken a photo of the western sky - a dense black wedge of mammatus cloud - black as night - was driving in from the sea and it split the sky - with clear blue sky showing on either side. I've seen mammatus cloud before but this was an extreme example of it (the cloud was denser and blacker than any of the photos shown in these two links). There were multiple soundless flashes of lightning within this mass and then suddenly the skies opened with a torrential downpour accompanied by lightning flashes and violent crashes of thunder.

One good thing to come out of the Covid 19 global pandemic has been the eruption of virtual choirs.. here's one with Judy Collins' "Amazing Grace":

Apparently there's a shortage of Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) drivers in the UK..

Yesterday marked our 14th year since arriving in the Pays basque in September 2007. I meant to post on the subject yesterday but I ended up in a stressful online electronic tangle with a Forex trading company that we'd been using since February. In the middle of a routine monthly online transaction to change our £ sterling to euros, they suddenly demanded to know my employment status, then they asked for a photograph - not a scan or a photocopy - but a photograph of my passport - and finally to surrender control of my mobile phone to them so that they could take a "selfie" of me.

I wasn't sure if their site had been hacked or not but I thought the security measures they were taking were out of all proportion to the risk. And under the pressure to complete the transaction I started responding to their demands before I suddenly realised that they were excessive and potentially damaging to me. Why hadn't they emailed all their clients to brief them on their new security policy so that we could read through it in slow time and prepare the necessary info for them? To launch into these bizarre requests in the middle of a transaction caused other sites I was using to time out - amid great frustration.

I pulled the plug on that nonsense and started googling for an alternative Forex dealer. Finally, after starting the abortive transfer process at around 11am - I finally completed the monthly currency exchange with a new Forex dealer at 9.30pm.. Phew! In between all of that, I called my UK bank* to brief them on what had happened and to ask them to block any requests from the offending company to transfer money from our account.

* This involved an inordinately long time waiting on their "Customer Service Department" (ahem!) to pick up the phone.. I gave up the first time after waiting 18 minutes stuck in a queueing system. Aaaarrgghh! Breathe deeply - and now r e l a x.

29th August. This is the weekend of le Grand Retour (the big return) when those holidaymakers with children will be making the great trek back home. Not a day to be out and about on France's autoroutes, especially those heading towards Paris.

25th August. Earlier I was half-listening to someone on the radio prattling on (and on) about the joys of WFH as he called it.. (it's known as working from home to the rest of us). It struck me that one of the reasons why we've enjoyed the last 14 years so much is because we too have been 'working from home' - if you can call work taking the dog for a run on the beach; exploring mountain passes in the Pyrenees; having lunch out in Basque villages where life stops at lunchtime; wondering which pair of shorts to wear or any one of a thousand other things. If this is WFH, then long may it continue.

23rd August. I really don't understand anti-vaxxers - I remember thinking right at the start of it all, that the only way that we'll be able to defeat Covid would be via mass vaccination. Yet the anti-vaxxers have all kinds of fanciful theories - ranging from the bizarre - Bill Gates wants to inject us with tracking devices - to the nonsensical - such as Boris Johnson is "behind" it - whatever that means. Then there are those benighted anti-vaxxers here in France who shout "Liberté" when they are really making an anti-Government protest. If ever I met an anti-vaxxer, I'd be tempted to show him/her this.

We paid a visit to Biarritz yesterday morning and found a table at the Bleu Café on the Grande Plage - but someone has had the bright idea of installing some OTT monster parasols.. so now there's just a letterbox view of the sea. There's still nowhere else we'd like to be on a Sunday morning though!

21st August. Out in the car this morning for some minor shopping, and at a set of lights there was a young man standing in front of three lanes of stationary traffic juggling 3 Indian clubs before darting among the cars looking for tips.. The summer always brings more than a few of these 'hopefuls' down here - I once saw a lady in town waving a 6 foot ribbon around in the hope of capturing spare change from passers-by. Her 'act' couldn't have been more minimalistic..

There are no words sufficient to describe the human tragedy that is unfolding in Afghanistan in the wake of the decision to pull out. Without wishing to point fingers at any individuals, it's clear that, in the West, we have too many politicians and not enough statesmen. In fact, no statesmen. It seems to have escaped our politicians' attention that there's an unbridgeable gulf between our Occidental concepts of democracy, law, education for all - and the type of society that the Taliban seem to want to impose - backed by Sharia law - where medieval punishments such as stonings for adultery and hand amputation for theft are de rigueur.

There's one ray of sunshine as far as I'm conerned (you may think it trivial - and you're probably right) but perhaps the day is fast approaching when I'll no longer have to endure listening to the BBC 'journalists' talking about Afghanistarn, Karble and the Talibarn. It might be a small thing but these languid Home Counties pronunciations have had me gritting my teeth for 20 years. The last time I looked, the diminutive of Stanley isn't Starn - it's Stan; and Karble should be Ka-bull (Ka to rhyme with cat) and Talibarn should of course be Talibann.. I think I'm fighting a losing bartle though! 😀

20th August. Blue skies this morning.. At last! 😎

Here's Scotland looking at its best.. (music from the soundtrack of the cult film "Local Hero")

19th August. For all dog owners 'out there' who think they know their dogs, here's a cautionary tale.. I went out in the garden this afternoon to see Nutty (our cocker spaniel) standing astride a fluttering fledgling. When he saw me coming, he grabbed it and disappeared with it like a flash into the 'jungle' - some big bushes that are his preserve. We managed to catch him in a pincer movement - but too late.. he'd eaten it. First lizards and now fledglings.. he's a serial killer. He's the fourth cocker we've had but he's the first (that we know of) to eat other species. Not good.

I had a good ride (on my ebike) early this cool morning along the banks of the olive green Nive - and, to my surprise, for such a beautiful river, I was disappointed that there wasn't a single boat out on the water.

However, there was quite a few holiday makers with loose toddlers on the towpath, along with roller-bladers plus a couple of anti-social lycra-clad cyclists riding two abreast - so I had to keep a watchful eye out when passing them. I rode as far as the footbridge at Villefranque - I think I did about 30km in total. I know, it's hardly Tour de France territory but it's better than not doing it.

17th August. I've just spotted an account in an English newspaper of a bizarre construction that's appeared adjacent to London's Marble Arch.. a 25m (82 feet) high artificial hill (or mound) that's cost £6m (so far). It's designed to attract people to come and shop in Oxford Street.. How threadbare must your imagination be to think that something as ill-conceived as this could possibly bring people back into central London and not only that, but people would pay to climb up it? In failing miserably to touch the human spirit, this project is akin to the loosely-named Millennium Dome.. that was anything but and could easily have been charged with an offence under the Trade Descriptions Act. What to say except that somewhere in London the lunatics are running the asylum..

And in other news, from the roof of London's Dorchester Hotel nearby, read this review of their 'Polo Lounge' and weep.. (The bread basket is £16. The salads start at £28. A bowl of pasta is £38. A steak is £135. Proof that I'm not making this up!)

Far from encouraging me to visit the self-proclaimed "world-class city", stories like these have the opposite effect on me. I'm more than happy to leave them to it.

This is Silbury Hill - and it was built around 4,500 years ago.. without fanfare. More photos here and more info here.

12th August. Just cooling down after driving back home through the massed holiday traffic from Ascain where we had lunch at Restaurant Larralde with a friend who's going through a rocky patch in her personal life. There were a few long tables set out under the trees for family parties of Basques - very traditional.

It was warm and heavy until, with a sudden rolling crash of thunder up in the mountains behind us, the spattering of drops turned into an instant downpour - forcing groups from unprotected tables to scurry indoors clutching their glasses of wine.. while the waitresses quickly stripped the tables that were bearing the brunt. We were dry under a big umbrella.. Minutes later, it was all over and the garden dried out quickly under a hot sun.

It normally takes us ½ hour to drive there - today, it took 1 hour 20 mins.. I don't think I've seen holiday traffic as bad as this for a loong time. It was a tad grey so I think people had decided to give the beaches a miss - so the roads were full - as were the restaurants. Fortunately, we'd booked.

This was playing on the radio earlier..

11th August. I wouldn't have thought this was possible - but - never say never. Here's the Joscho Stephan Trio in a dazzling display of technical virtuosity as they present their acoustic version of Jimi Hendrix's epic sixties single "Hey Joe" as you've never heard it before.. (the few bars from 2.49 to 3.05 do it for me) Caution - do not try this at home!

9th August. Just back from a trip to the coast to give the pooch a leg stretch.. On the way back, on a two lane road, a young lad on a scooter filtered down the middle of the road with inches to spare on either side.. The problem was, he had a full size long board attached loosely to a support on his scooter. Another one for the Darwin Awards.

Make yourself a cup of tea/coffee/whatever or pour yourself a cold one and relax with this video (no music or commentary - just the sound of the sea) of the endless motion of the Atlantic as it surges up against the beaches and rocks at Biarritz:

5th August. No prizes for guessing the title of this next piece - it's catching!

("Dark Eyes" - it starts at 0.50 if you want to cut to the chase!)

Just back from a trip to Grand Frais (just by the airport at Biarritz) - a supermarket chain that specialises in f-r-e-s-h produce. I seldom make reference here to food shopping in supermarkets but to anyone planning on visiting France I'd say make sure you pay Grand Frais a visit.. they have stores all over France. They're unlike any other food shop that I know of and it makes shopping a pleasure.. rather than the stress of hunting down what you want in France's crowded giant-sized supermarkets. Their fruit and veg is incredibly fresh, with some of it gleaming as clouds of water vapour drift across the spotlit displays. It's also human-sized.. If I wander off to look, say, at the cheese - then unlike at the ultra large supermarkets that straddle a few post codes, finding Madame again was a simple matter. Needless to say, I have no connection with Grand Frais other than as a satisfied customer..

4th August. Stuck at home but feel like an early evening stroll around Biarritz? Try this (I suggest you ignore the first 55 seconds) and see what you think.. it's best in full screen (with something cold!). Our favourite place for wave-watching (and people watching) is the Bleu Café - it shows up at 9.20:

What would be your first reaction to an admittedly innovative carbon fibre ¾ scale acoustic guitar (that contains no wood) that was made in China (where else..?). Before you heard it play, I suspect your initial impression might be less than favourable - but it appears to have received an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the guitar community.. The oddly-named Lava Me 2* comes with some slick built-in electronics that allow volume, reverb, delay and other effects (like chorus).. More here. Given the choice between this though and a traditional wooden guitar, for me the aesthetics win every time. Yes, the Lava Me 2 might sound good but, in comparison, it looks like a child's toy.

* it sounds like an Italian DJ attempting to pronounce the title of the Beatles first record..😎

1st August. Here are images of a migrant encampment set up in the Place des Vosges - one of the most glorious locations in all of Paris - filmed just before the French authorities moved them on.

The EU seemingly does not have a policy for dealing with the issue of uncontrolled migration. We've seen the people-trafficking gangs exploiting those who wish to move to the EU - and those who wish to move from the EU to the UK. This is one of the major human tragedies that affects us in Europe and yet the EU seems unwilling or unable to address it. Despite it being a Europe-wide issue, there's a deafening silence from Brussels.

Unfortunately for those in Brussels who are studiously looking the other way, this problem isn't going to disappear. In my view, the migrant crisis owes much to the Schengen Agreement - which, as you know, led to the abolishment of the signatories national borders, to build a Europe without borders known as the “Schengen Area”. In an ideal world, this was all very laudable but in reality it was and still is an impractical policy that ignored the darker side of human nature. It was obviously dreamed up after one too many exotic cigarettes.. but the EU being the EU, it will continue with Schengen as to do otherwise would be an admission that one of its key policies is not fit for purpose.

According to this, the EU is the largest donor of development aid in the world. It is committed to increasing its contribution, and to donating at least 0.7% of its gross national income a year. But financial aid alone is not enough to sustainably reduce poverty.

Political action is needed to overcome challenges in governance, trade regimes and geography, and to make best use of the opportunities arising from globalisation.

So - what is the EU doing to bring a halt to the number of migrants who are mobile in Europe? What is the EU doing to ensure that its development aid reaches those for whom it is intended?

Meanwhile - where's summer?

289. And after winter folweth grene May*.

2021-05-05T11:58:00.119+02:00

22nd July. We came here to Ostalapia (below) the other evening with R and C, friends from the Gers ('ere be dragons!) who were visiting the Côte Basque for a few days. Not sure where exactly the Gers is? Try looking one département to the right and one up from our own Pyrénées-Atlantiques (technical term). I have to admit that it's not an area that I'm that familiar with. I think it would be fair to say that if you were looking for la France profonde, then this would probably be a good starting point. No criticism of the Gers is implied in this - in fact, quite the opposite. This is where the quintessential charm of French rural life can still be found, lived as it always has been - plus a tractor or two.

They had P with them, an amusing friend of theirs from London and we sat out on the terrace at Ostalapia on a warm evening with a perfect view of the brooding outline of La Rhune - the emblematic mountain that dominates the skyline of this part of the Pays Basque. For a Monday, there wasn't a single empty table. It was a memorable evening and our thanks are due to the three of them for their generosity..

Ostalapia has a definite 'retro' look to it - it's almost like a film set - and it's all too easy to feel instantly at home (that wooden Kelvinator fridge on the left is almost certainly 1920s or 30s).

17th July. Here's an unsettling image of Saint-Jean-de-Luz filmed in drone-a-rama in 2020 during the confinement that is strangely reminiscent of Stanley Kramer's movie "On the Beach" (1959) about a US submarine arriving off a deserted Melbourne in a post-apocalyptic world in the aftermath of a nuclear war (full movie here).

Anyway, here's that video of Saint-Jean-de-Luz - see what you think..

15th July. President Macron outlined his new policy on TV the other evening in a clever move designed to increase the numbers of those here who have been vaccinated. He told care workers that they will have until 15th September to get vaccinated. After that date, checks will be made and sanctions applied. As well as being asked for vaccination passes on long distance planes, coaches and restaurants, anyone going out to eat or drink will need one from 1st August. He said from the beginning of August, the health pass would apply to cafés, restaurants, hospitals, retirement homes, and long-distance transport: planes, trains and coaches for long journeys.

If the State tried to introduce a compulsory vaccination policy, the squeals of faux-outrage and cries of "Fascist!" from the ranks of the easily-offended would be heard across the Channel. Doing it this way puts the onus of vaccination on the individual.

Macron's announced measures buck the trend in most other European countries, where Governments have generally shied away from vaccine requirements and instead made it a voluntary measure. He's not forcing anyone to get vaccinated - but he's simply saying that if people want to visit restaurants, bars, cafés and/or use long distance transport, visit hospitals and retirement homes - then they'll have to be vaccinated. Well done President Macron. In what can only be a coincidence (!), over 2½ million people applied for vaccination appointments in the days following the President's speech on 12th July. Boris - take note!

For those of you 'out there' who like me have become frustrated with the standard of BBC radio journalism, a friend has just given me a tip - try Times Radio.. I'm not making any promises but it can only be better. Let me know what you think!

It looks like we could be set for some sunshine in the next few days after the recent spell of grey skies and rain. If so, this is how the beaches at Anglet (just to the north of Biarritz) will look:

6th July. Yesterday at 7pm the thermometer on the terrace read 37°C.. The dog and I were inside while Madame continued to fry on a low light in her deckchair - but even she came in shortly afterwards saying it was too hot. It's hard to imagine what temps in the high 40s must have been like in the north west of the US and Canada recently.

After a routine eye check the other day, I emerged with a prescription for a pair of specs with progressive lenses (one trade name is Varilux). I went to an opticians in town this morning to order a pair and I was amazed at the hi-tech aids that the optician used.. I ordered a pair and then what really impressed me was the offer of a pair of sunglasses with progressive lenses for just an additional 40 euros.. A no-brainer!😀 I'd been using a pair of sunglasses with prescription bi-focal lenses as issued to me in the military 25 years ago but the gap between their performance and my eyes had widened to the point where a replacement pair was called for.

28th June. I went out on my bike this morning upstream along the Nive which was lined by fields of corn (maïs) growing while-U-watch.. The young plants were all about 3 feet high but with the Basque climate supplying sunshine and rain, it won't be long before the fields are a rustling mass of corn 8 feet high. Very few corn cobs appear in the shops as it's largely seen here as animal feed. I stopped off at Villefranque to say hello to the couple whose gîte we stayed at for 5 months when we arrived here in 2007 (more here). It was a real pleasure to see them again. We'll never forget their kindness to us during that stressful period when we were searching for a house.

25th June. Here's a fascinating glimpse of la vie Parisienne in the 1920s:

20th June. As I'm now a fully signed-up French citizen (while still retaining my British nationality), for the first time I was able to vote in the departmental and regional elections being held today.

However, as things currently stand, I'm no longer eligible to vote in the UK - as it had been decreed for reasons known only to politicians and legislators that expats should lose the right to vote after living outside the UK for 15 years. What's the magic significance behind the 15 years? If it was right for me to be able to vote after being an expat for 14 years, why should I be permanently disenfranchised by denying me the right to vote a year later? I have to pay UK tax on my occupational pension so surely I should have the right to vote on how my tax is spent? Remember "no taxation without representation"? Wars have been fought for less!

16th June. I've started looking at photos we took in Brittany.. This is what the hotel offered us on our last night. (OK, who else thought, "Where are the chips?") (or was I the only one!😁)

Of course, while we were away, there were temperatures of 33° here - so the garden put on a growing spurt. I had to get the ladders out this morning while it was cool to cut back a few bushes - this afternoon or evening there are more storms forecast - it's uncomfortably hot and humid.

15th June. Arrived back home last night after a loong (10 hour) drive from Ploumanac'h in Brittany. "Ploum", as it's known by locals, was voted France's favourite village in 2015.. We stayed at an hotel that overlooked the beach at Saint-Guirec.. and the view from our room was, as the French say, époustouflante.. (click to enlarge)

The hotel shows up at 5.02 in the video below - it's the pinkish granite building in the centre of the image. The massive granite rocks that decorate the coastline are what remains of 300 million year old magma - some of the rocks have been weathered into almost organic forms.

After a prolonged siesta this afternoon, we finished a previously opened bottle of ice cold rosé in the garden in the early evening - and it really hit the spot. It was Listel Grain de Gris (and only 12° BV as well) which we used to find from time to time in England. It comes from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and it doesn't get much further south than this. This image just caught my eye.. it seemed almost a pity to empty the glass!

7th June. I've often said here that shops that sell greetings cards (especially funny ones) are thin on the ground in Bayonne - but that hasn't been true since 2018 with the advent of La Karneterie at 7 Rue Thiers.. Run by Éric and Fiona, a friendly Franco-Scottish couple, they've finally put an end to the dearth of humorous cards available here. Before their arrival on the scene here, it had reached the point where each November we'd order Christmas cards off the internet from the UK - only to send them back again once written.

3rd June. This is Jonathan Scott at the keyboard of the organ of Chester Cathedral.. with Richard Wagner's Overture to Tannhäuser (arr. EH Lemare).. This never fails to stir the spirit..

As you might have expected, there's a tenuous link between Wagner's organ music and the Pays Basque.. This Baron Espée sounds like a character from fiction - but surprisingly it's all true.

1st June. Late last night a powerful storm rolled in from the Bay of Biscay with lightning flashing followed quickly by the explosive crack and boom of thunder that made the house shiver. Prior to this, there had been some light rain but suddenly there was a shriek of wind followed by a deluge of rain drumming on our heavy wooden shutters. Nutty was oblivious to it all and slept through it undisturbed.. On opening the shutters this morning, there was no sign of last night's fun and games at all.

Need a currency trader to change your funds from your currency to euros and send them to your French bank account? I'd been using World First since 2007 until recently when they decided to abandon private customers - they recommended Xe to their former customers. I've been using Xe for several months now and their service is excellent.

28th May. We went to Saint-Jean-de-Luz at midday for the first time since I don't know when - it must be at least 6 months ago? Here's a walking tour of the town that never fails to charm us..

NB.. If you want to cut to the chase, fast forward to 8:45 which is when Véro starts her walkabout:

What a pleasure it was to reconnect with one of our favourite places..

We stopped for lunch at a new spot (all of our usual haunts were fully booked) but the number of restaurants with space for outside seating is not as great as you might imagine. (At the time of writing, restaurants here can only open if outside seating is available.) Suffice to say, next time we'll book somewhere we know.

I've been looking for a video of a walking tour of Bayonne - and this seems to fit the bill:

27th May. I was out in the garden most of the afternoon up various ladders cutting back bushes that, with all the recent rain and sunshine, had started to grow visibly. While I wobbled on high, I heard the dog getting excited about something - so I distracted him with a biscuit and found half a dead lizard in the middle of the lawn. The garden lizards are his current obsession and he's forever poking his nose in the borders in the hope of scaring one into making a dash for it.

19th May. Nutty (our English cocker spaniel) thought all his Christmasses had come at once because he spotted a lizard in his kitchen.. By the time I arrived there, he was head-down, all-a-frenzy and not listening.. I took him by the collar and put him in the dining room - meanwhile back in the kitchen there was a small lizard minus its tail. I put it out in the garden and it scurried off.

Meanwhile Nutty started dodging around the dining table and he had something in his mouth. The only way I could attract his attention was to fill his bowl with his biscuits.. while his attention was elsewhere, I found the lizard's tail under the dining table. I think he'll chalk this up as a victory!

10th May. I took my ebike out for an hour's ride this morning to give my knee something to think about and when I arrived at the Plage des Cavaliers, (scroll down here for its webcam) this was the scene that faced me as I looked south towards Biarritz - with Spain in the background. In case you're wondering, it's a composite image of 3 photos - click for full size:

I made it using Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) which no longer seems to be available from MS - but I'm sure Google could turn up a free download somewhere for you.

Voilà - I've found a free MS 64 bit download of ICE.. It couldn't be simpler to use.

While you're here, take a look at la Grande Plage webcam at Biarritz (it takes a few seconds to load).. a favourite of ours for a Sunday morning stroll.

9th May. I took Nutty (our cocker spaniel) out for a walk in the late afternoon yesterday and I saw that the thermometer (in the shade) on our terrace was registering 33°. I'd forgotten what this level of heat felt like.

The restrictions on restaurants here will be lifted in early June - so with that in mind, we've booked a few days away on the coast up in Brittany - for some sun, sand, seafood - and snoring!

8th May. A beautiful summer-like morning here so I put on a pair of WWII shorts and a matching 'Che Morecambe' t-shirt, wheeled my ebike out of the garage and with a hey nonny no we were off. I rode up the Nive which, in retrospect, was not a great idea as everyone else was out there too. Still, it was fun to be out on my bike!

7th May. The forecast for the weekend here is a cheery one: 31° on Saturday and 28° on Sunday. I'd better dubbin my legs in preparation! 😁

5th May 2021. History buffs will have noted that it's 200 years to the day that Napoléon died in exile at Saint Helena - six years after his defeat at Waterloo. I suspect there will be a ceremony at Les Invalides today to mark the occasion. In his speech (English translation - by Google - here) at the Institut de France, President Macron trod a fine line between fulsome praise for Napoléon's achievements while mentioning his darker sides.

He (Napoléon of course..!) was a remarkable man - a true visionary and a moderniser who changed the face of France in many ways: a man of prodigious talent and energy who rose like a rocket through the ranks in the Army and who was a General by the age of 24. As First Consul of the Republic, he introduced the administrative system of the prefects, the Napoleonic Code, the judicial system, the Banque de France and the country’s financial organization, the centralised university, and the military academies - and more. Despite these undoubtedly great achievements, he remains a divisive figure for he was also a tyrannical dictator who led his feared Grande Armée to engage in what became known as the Napoleonic Wars around Europe. It is estimated that up to 5 million people died in the course of these military adventures. I think the jury will remain out on him.

One advantage that leaders of that era had over today's major politicians is that they weren't subjected to 24/7 scrutiny by an army of reporters and paparazzi as is the case today. Today, every utterance and action by our leaders is picked over and - in a favourite word here in France - "decrypted".. with the result that we - the poor electorate - are faced with journalists and reporters telling us what this or that politician should have said and/or done to the point where I suspect many of us simply glaze over and lose the will to live. And, to cap it all, when the politicians themselves can't decide on a course of action despite being briefed in minute detail by legions of civil servants, special advisers and other interested parties, they throw the question back at the people and expect us to be able to make the decision for them in a yes/no referendum. Fortunately, the question we were asked in June 2016 was a straightforward one and, given the way we'd sleep-walked from the EEC into what became the EU without a mandate from the country, I think that it was entirely legitimate for the electorate to have a vote via a referendum on our continued membership of the EU - or not. I'll leave it there.

I've mentioned Ramiro Arrue several times before here. Born in Spain, he spent most of his life in the Pays Basque where his distinctive style captured the Basque spirit. Here's a feature in two parts from TVPI (our local TV station) that includes some superb imagery of the Pays Basque and really captures the strength of the bond that Arrue had with his adopted homeland:

* Geoffrey Chaucer

288. Back in the saddle..

2021-02-14T13:33:00.160+01:00

29th April. French idioms are often full of references to fruit and veg.. Here are a few for you to try and work into your next conversation with someone of Latin extraction!

Avoir la banane -

Literal translation: To have the banana. English equivalent: To be on top form

En rang d’oignon -

Literal translation: In a line of onions. English equivalent: To be lined up like toy soldiers

La cerise sur le gâteau -

Literal translation: The cherry on the cake. English equivalent: The icing/cherry on the cake

C’est la fin des haricots -

Literal translation: It’s the end of the beans. English equivalent: Game over!

Tomber dans les pommes -

Literal translation: To fall in the apples. English equivalent: To faint or pass out

Avoir un cœur d’artichaut -

Literal translation: To have an artichoke heart. English equivalent: To fall in love easily

Couper la poire en deux -

Literal translation: To cut the pear in two. English equivalent: To compromise or to meet someone halfway

Appuyer sur le champignon -

Literal translation: To press on the mushroom. English equivalent: To put your foot down (when driving), step on the gas

Ramener sa fraise -

Literal translation: Bring one’s strawberry. English equivalent: Come here

Compter pour des prunes -

Literal translation: To count for plums. English equivalent: To count for nothing

Avoir la patate -

Literal translation: To have the potato. English equivalent: To be full of beans

This is more my kind of music..

26th April. I've been playing some tracks by the late Cesária Évora - one of the Cape Verde islands greatest exports - this is one of hers that should set your foot tapping. She and her friends seem at ease with the complex musical rhythms and they have little difficulty in clapping along in time with it. Try it for yourself.. it's not a simple as you might think.

The enforced 'staying at home' regime has had me exploring my banjo again - and in doing so, I came across this interesting piece - Indifférence - played by Lluis Gómez (5 string banjo) & Valentí Moya (manouche guitar) with Oriol Gonzàlez (mandolin) and Maribel Rivero (double bass) - at the L'Ànima del Vi, a wine bar in Barcelona.

23rd April. The last few days have seen us both tackling the latest Spring growth in the garden before things got out of hand. I had the extending ladder out to enable me to reach the tops of three palm trees to cut back old fronds - not my favourite job. We'd also had a small problem with the new garage door - so there was a build-up of garden waste (I counted at least 20 sacks) to be taken to the recycling centre once the door was fixed.

I'm sorry for the outbreak of domestic trivia above - but our options are a bit limited at the moment by the Covid restrictions: no travel beyond 10km from home (unless the journey is one that falls into an approved category listed on the attestation - scroll down the link for the English version), all restaurants, cafés & bars & many 'non-essential' shops are closed - plus there's a 7pm-6am curfew. Fortunately, the garden is there to distract us.

The forest at Pignada - before the fire

Earlier, I'd been out on my ebike for an hour or so - out along the Adour to the coast before turning south towards Biarritz, a route that took me past the charred remnants of the forest at Pignada. The council has been busy cutting down trees there that had been damaged irretrievably by a blaze started by a disaffected youth in July last year. There are now great open spaces where once towering maritime pines had provided the perfect woodland environment for walking the dog in tranquillity.

It was an airless 26° this afternoon so we sat outside in the early evening and played a few hands of rummy with - what else - the first of my rhum specials this year. (I can feel it now too!) We were kept amused by the antics of the newly-arrived swallows as they darted at speed around the roofs.

This just in from a friend in England:

I've been keeping an eye open for swallows over the last few days - and the first pair I've spotted this year just darted overhead in that familiar swooping flight of theirs..

21st April. This is exactly the kind of sax playing that I could listen to for hours.. Here's Paul Desmond with his interpretation of "A Taste of Honey":

Balsamic vinegar has slowly been making inroads into our collective consciousness over the last few decades - but how many of us know where it comes from (apart from Sainsburys!) and/or how it's made? Sadly I never thought to bring some back with me when I worked in northern Italy in the 1990s. What I do know is that it is delicious on a piece of fresh crusty bread..

19th April. Balsamic vinegar has slowly been making inroads into our collective consciousness over the last few decades - but how many of us know where it comes from (apart from Sainsburys!) and/or how it's made? Sadly I never thought to bring some back with me when I worked in northern Italy in the 1990s. What I do know is that it is delicious on a piece of fresh crusty bread..

18th April. Down to the beach this morning with the dog to see a completely flat sea.. Not a surfer in sight.

There's a police drama that's breaking records on French TV - one in which we're expected to believe that Capitaine Marleau - a completely ludicrous character as played by Corinne Masiero - is apparently an 'eccentric' Range Rover-driving captain (the headgear..) of the National Gendarmerie. While I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it unwatchable, there are clearly many more who are glued to their TV sets. So far, UK networks have resisted signing up for it. If you live in the UK, I think you dodged a bullet there!

17th April. I was ironing a few shirts* a moment or two ago, half-listening to the Classic FM presenter's background prattle as he announced the dedication for the next record - someone's wife had written in asking for a certain track as a reward for all the wonderful work her husband had done on - at this point I thought that perhaps he'd developed a new Covid vaccine, or that he'd supplied clean drinking water to African villages or maybe he'd helped to build the next lunar lander - but no, it was as a reward for all the wonderful work he'd done on his vegetable plot.. (collapse of stout party!)

* I just thought I'd get that in!

9th April. Another job ticked off..😊 We have 4 or 5 bushes (up to 12-14 ft high) at the side of the garden that, as a result of our warm and wet spring, have been sprouting in all directions - and I could no longer put off the job of exercising my topiary skills, such as they are. I was a bit watchful due to my new knee and a slightly unstable stepladder, but, standing on the top platform, and ignoring the wobble as I leaned out into space, I was able to trim virtually all of them. I think this is a job that might well be delegated in future!

I've now had my two Pfizer vaccinations with no apparent side effects, unless you count barking at buses or howling at the moon.

8th April. We watched "Woman in Gold" (2015) the other evening - the story of a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907 - a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. It's impossible to catch the full impact of this gleaming work in a still image either on a screen or on paper as Klimt made copious use of gold leaf.

Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds are both excellent in the film - that's all I'm saying! Well worth searching it out.

4th April. Happy Easter to all of you out there (yes, you!) from us here at Pipérade Towers. It's a dazzlingly bright Sunday morning in the Pays basque, with wall-to-wall blue skies but still only 9°C in the shade. I'll be taking Nutty down to the beach in a few minutes.

On Thursday morning, I'm booked in for my second Covid jab, precisely timed for 11h48.

Here's a reminder of those innocent days in post-war America when everything seemed possible:

1st April. I've just decided I'm going to squeeze in 3 months into each post from now on.. I remembered this blog only gives me 300 posts.. (OK, who said, "That many?!") So, by my reckoning, by doing so it will give me almost 3 years-worth of posts before I hit my limit. I just couldn't face having to set up another blog from scratch.

After President Macron's broadcast yesterday and the new lockdown programmed to start on the weekend, I thought I'd better have a mercy dash across the border to Dancharia (there are a number of different spellings) to pick up some essential supplies (no prizes for guessing what!). In the past few months, I've been forced (during lockdown travel restrictions) into topping up my diminishing stock of vital fluids by buying the odd bottle of Highland tincture from supermarkets in France - where it retails for about 16 euros/litre. Across the border, this morning I was charged a wallet-busting 18 euros for a 2 litre bottle (£15.65 in Ye Olde Poundes Sterling) of the same brand.

31st March. Just checked the outside temperature - it's 29°.. not bad for March!

30th March. Here's the coast from Bayonne to Saint-Jean-de-Luz filmed from a drone at times of the day when the light is at its best. The film jumps about a bit - it starts at Biarritz (from 0:00 to 4:22), then goes to the beach at Ilbarritz just to the south; then back up north to the optimistically-named Chambre d'Amour at 5:34; then at 6:22, it's further north to Bayonne before finally disappearing south to finish up at Saint-Jean-de-Luz at 8:52.

I know it's tempting fate somewhat but there are signs that life is slowly returning to normal here. Before anyone points to the third wave of Covid infections that has parts of northern and eastern France in its grip, I should add that I'm referring to life within the 'bubble' of Pipérade Towers.. The grass is growing and plants, bushes and trees are sprouting tender new green shoots, my ebike has been wheeled out a few times and we've had one or two lunches outside on the terrace. All we're waiting for now is <roll of drums> the first appearance of your newly-scarred correspondent in a pair of shorts. It does feel good though to have put the first three months of the year - never my favourite period - behind us. And the forecast for this afternoon is 27°..

I've just realised that I haven't congratulated the Scottish rugby team for the magnificent result that they achieved in Paris.. even if it did allow Wales to win the overall championship. What a match by those Scottish warriors who took the battle to France from the outset.

26th March. Not much to report at the moment - yes, we can go out during the day but there's little point because all the restaurants, cafés and bars are closed. We normally like to visit somewhere - either on the coast or inland high up in the hills, before stopping off at a restaurant for lunch or a café for a seat outside to enjoy the early season sunshine. I took the dog to one of his former stamping grounds - and I realised that I hadn't taken him there since the start of the year. There's a great expanse of grass there for him to charge about at will.

Apart from walking the dog, there isn't that much to do - yesterday I was in the garage checking the tyre pressures of our new car and our ebikes - and charging their batteries as well - (well, you did ask!) all made a bit trickier by my new knee.. (Surprisingly, I have more leg room in the new car than ever before)

For those interested in our current Covid status, we have a 7pm to 6am curfew at the moment. However, even though our département (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) is currently one of the least affected areas of France, I hope that the Govt can resist calls to allow holidays (with public opinion on the matter being whipped up by the media with its own agenda) as that would surely lead to the spread of the UK variant of Covid that appears to be building up a head of steam in Paris and the départements to its north. There is an interactive map here (second one down) that shows the national situation as of 3 days ago.

For those interested in rugby, there's an impossible-to-call match this evening between France and Scotland in Paris that will decide the outcome of this year's 6 Nations tournament. France need to win by at least 21 points to take the championship - whereas any other result will see Wales as champions. Me? It's many years since I've last been a fan of Welsh rugby (the 70s) - but I don't think Wales would be worthy champions (IMHO - your mileage may vary). I've greatly enjoyed watching the progress of this hugely talented French team - so I have to say that - sadly - I find myself hoping that France can pull off a win against a resurgent Scottish side that has entertained us with some sparkling rugby this year. Unfortunately, there must be winners and losers in sports.

To save me confusing you all with an explanation of what France needs to do tonight, it's like this: to be crowned champions, France require a bonus point, which is of course obtained by scoring four or more tries. Again, even this may not be enough, however, as in obtaining the bonus point, the title will then go down to points difference. France's points difference of +41 is 20 below that of Wales' +61, meaning they need a four-try win of 21 points or more to be crowned champions.

21st March. We were privileged to witness yesterday evening one of the greatest ever rugby matches of all time. I realise in writing that that some might think I'm guilty of exaggeration but I'm including the full match here as no compilation of highlights could do it justice.

This was a very experienced Welsh side in Paris to face a relatively inexperienced French team. If Wales were to win, they'd claim the Grand Slam (that would mean wins over the 5 other teams: England, France, Ireland, Italy and Scotland). If France were to win - and they go on to beat Scotland next Friday evening by a 21 point margin, they could claim the Championship. Sit back and enjoy a fiercely contested match - the match starts at 10:15:

13th March. I'm going to tag March onto February's post as I seem to remember I'm only allowed a maximum of 300 posts with this blog. One of the side-effects of my recent 'op' is that I find it hard work to concentrate on writing - but I'll give it a shot.

I had my vaccination this afternoon at a gym in town that had been re-purposed as a centre capable of handling a large throughput of people. The organisation left nothing to be desired - my appointment was set for 3.36pm precisely - and I received my Pfizer jab, then confirmation of the date of the second one then I was free to watch the Italy - Ireland match on a TV that had been set up in the recovery area. I suffered no side-effects at all.

I had my last session of physio at the clinic last Wednesday - an hour of work in the sea water pool (34°C) followed by another hour of leg presses, walking on the treadmill and finally 20 minutes of "hot leg". Imagine pulling on a single trouser leg (including a foot) in flexible plastic - that's divided into about 5 sections, each of which is connected by a pipe to a machine that pumps hot water under pressure sequentially into each section - and you've got it. Rather like a pilot's g-suit - but using hot water instead of air as the medium. The sensation is that the leg is being progressively compressed from bottom to top and then relaxed - before starting again.

Impossible to predict the outcome of the "Crunch" this afternoon at Twickenham (the England-France Six Nations rugby match). The England players are going to have to raise their game if they are to have any hope of winning against a young French team that play an attractive brand of free-flowing rugby. Eddie Jones has picked Max Malins for his first start - and he'll be under pressure to make an impact. France's speedy winger Teddy Thomas will take some catching if he gets the ball - but Malins is a quick boy too. Maro Itoje and Tom Curry will be on Antoine Dupont like a flash - and both England players will be aware of the need to stay on the right side of the referee. Luke Cowan-Dickie will start in place of Jamie George - and L C-D is a dangerous player with his hands on the ball and more often than not he manages to be there or thereabouts when it comes to try time. I hope substitute scrum half Dan Robson manages to make more than a cameo appearance as he seems to bring his own electricity with him when he plays.

Wales travel to Rome to play an Italian side that has leaked tries so far. I have to say that I admire the Italians for their sportsmanship and courage - they've never stopped playing and they've never reverted to foul play to disrupt the opposition.

Tomorrow, Scotland line up against Ireland in a match that's impossible to call. Scotland play some great attacking rugby - often involving Stuart Hogg - but Ireland? Who knows.

28th February. Ireland got a much-needed win in Rome yesterday to put some points on the board. Meanwhile in Cardiff, Wales benefitted from some truly bizarre refereeing decisions by France's Pascal Gaüzère for a significant 40-24 win over England.

27th February. Every now and again I find a piece on YouTube that stands head and shoulders above all other interpretations. I make no apologies for featuring (again) the University of Redlands Choir with J S Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze".. recorded in 1957. Even though over 60 years have passed, I've yet to hear a better performance than this:

It's the 3rd round of the Guinness 6 Nations rugby this afternoon. The France-Scotland match scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed (due to Covid) so this afternoon will see Ireland (Lost 2) visit Rome in search of their first win against an Italy XV (Lost 2) in the same boat. Looks like being a blood and thunder encounter. Meanwhile England (Won 1, Lost 1) will visit a silent Principality Stadium in Cardiff to meet Wales (Won 2). This is a 'must win' for England - and also for Wales who could top the table with a win or a draw.

Predictions? Ireland to win in Rome and England to beat Wales narrowly in Cardiff..

26th February. I've been given dates for my first and second vaccinations - with the first in March and the second in April.

25th February. Yesterday we found that a warm southerly wind had brought with it temperatures of 22°C. I removed the all-weather cover from the table out on the terrace and took out a couple of chairs from the garage, dusted them off and we were in business - our first lunch outside this year. Later on in the afternoon, I sat out in a deckchair and took advantage of the sunshine - and did that feel good!

23rd February. I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital yesterday with the surgeon who performed my recent knee replacement 'op'. He declared himself pleased with the outcome and assured me that my recovery was well on track and that I was making good progress. He made a further appointment to see me in a year's time.

I must say that my treatment from start to finish has been exceptional. Last year, it started with 15 sessions of physio to build up the musculature in my knee prior to the operation as the view here is that this speeds up the recovery. After the 'op', I stayed at the hospital for 6 days - starting physio on the penultimate day - before being transferred to the 're-education' clinic at Bidart (on the coast south of Biarritz). There I started a daily routine of an hour's physio in the morning and another in afternoon. After three weeks, my stitches were removed and I was released back into society (ie, home).

The physio continued and a taxi ambulance collects me from home 3 times/week to take me to the clinic for an hour's physio. When my scar had fully healed in early February, I was allowed an additional hour to use the physio pool at the clinic. This was an eye-opening experience: the water temp was 34°C and the air temp was 28°C - so it was a real pleasure. The pool was about the size of a tennis court and there were never more than five of us in there - plus the physiotherapist who made sure that we each had exercises appropriate for us. This post-op physio will continue until 10th March.

20th February. I've been remiss in not covering the 2021 Guinness 6 Nations rugby tournament so far. I had France down to run away with it this year - but last week it was announced that their inspirational manager Fabien Galthié has tested positive for Covid - and I've just read that their playmaker Antoine Dupont, a pocket battleship of a scrum half if ever I saw one, has also tested positive, along with Gabin Villière (wing) and Mohamed Haouas (prop) and assistant coach William Servat. What a pity.. Still, they could still do it as they, perhaps more than any other team, have about 2 complete teams-worth of talented reserves to call upon. Here are les Bleus in winning form against Ireland in Dublin last week:

To see just how much the game has changed in less than 20 years, take a look at England's visit to Dublin in 2003. It bears no comparison to what we are offered today. No endless pick and go's, no defensive lines stretched from one touchline to another, plus we get to see the backs play. It gets my vote. Today's rugby is more like a 15 man version of rugby league (ouch!) and players risk serious injury in contact with the present generation of pumped-up forwards and even some of the backs. I think we're nearing the time when, in the best interests of player safety, World Rugby must consider imposing a max weight limit on squads. If not that, then other measures designed to reduce the crunching impact of collisions and associated concussions. I don't think that doing nothing is an option.

19th February. I was returning from the clinic at Bidart this morning when I spotted an uber-cool new surf shop (right).. I don't know about you but the name conjures up all sorts of connotations - none of which are especially inviting.

14th February. It's been a while since I last put stubby finger to keyboard.. but today seems like a good day to kick off again with some random reflections.

First of all, here's another chance to enjoy Gautier Capuçon's virtuosity.. When we saw him last year in concert, I was amazed at the richness of the sound that he was able to produce from his 300 year old cello.. and this recording only begins to hint at its sonority and tone..

I mentioned earlier that I was booked into hospital for a replacement knee 'op' on 6th January. It was my first ever prolonged stay in a hospital (apart from an 'overnighter' I had here about 13 years ago) and it came as something of a shock to me when I realised that whatever dignity I thought I possessed rapidly dwindled away to next to nothing in the first few minutes.

For the first couple of days I only had on one of those hospital gowns that open at the back and after some initial shyness (well, maybe two days-worth!) I decided resistance was useless and so I just let the nurses get on with whatever they wanted to do.

I soon understood that I was no longer an individual human being but rather I was now a "patient" occupying a bed space and as such I was available to have all my vital measurements recorded 24/7 by nurses and student nurses. I got used to having blood samples taken at daybreak, my temperature recorded at 1am and seemingly at random times thereafter, blood pressure and heart beat measured as the shifts changed, and soon I was dotted with sticking plasters where I'd been stuck repeatedly with needles. I felt like a human dart board.. I remember waking up early one morning with my room in darkness to find a nurse's hand roaming around inside my pyjama jacket. She claimed to be looking for my armpit to take my temperature!😉 A friend of mine had warned me that a favourite tactic of the nurses was to wake you in the dead of night and then to ask you if you needed anything to help you sleep!

A major challenge was the process of getting out of bed to answer a call of nature in the wee small hours. Even though I'd had 70+ years of practice, I soon found I was in danger of embarrassing myself. I had a stiff nylon sleeve velcro'd tightly around my right knee that effectively stopped me from bending it. I also had an on-demand pain relief system connected by a tube to a catheter at the top of my leg.

So - picture this - I'd wake up in the dark feeling the need for relief only to find it almost impossible to extricate my right leg from a tangle of bed sheets. Finally, I found that with the aid of a crutch I could lift the bedding off my leg and then, with an increased sense of urgency, I could start heading towards the bathroom on two crutches - only to be brought up short by the tube - now taut as a bowstring - connecting the pain relief machine (clipped to the side of my bed and about the size of a heavy duty paperback) to the catheter implanted in the top of my leg.. Aaarrgghh! I'd make a quick U-turn and then shuffle back to the bed to detach the pain relief box from its mounting before making a panicky whimpering dash for the bathroom again with my hands full (two crutches plus the box and all the tubing).. while trying to ignore the danger signals from below!

Now, the question of the day is - how many times do you think I did that before I remembered I was connected to the pain relief machine? Answer A: Just the once; B: two or three times or C: four or more (no-one could be that stupid surely?).

I did have the means of summoning a nurse in the middle of the night via a red call button - but that went against the grain with me. (I know, I know..) Those first couple of days and nights at the hospital seemed interminable. This was serious Man Pain!😁

287. New Year strikes again..

2021-01-02T14:42:00.015+01:00

27th January. I spoke with the doctor here yesterday and he confirmed that the stitches in my knee will be removed today - and, best news of all, that I'll be going home on Tuesday 2nd February. It's been a long four weeks.

26th January, I had my knee replacement surgery almost 3 weeks ago at the hospital at Bayonne and it appears that the surgeon did a good job. Since arriving here at the Re-education clinic, Bidart, from hospital 2 weeks ago my twice-daily sessions of physio have been targeted at reducing post-op swelling and restoring the usual flexibility. I was released onto some of the more dynamic apparatus in the well-equipped physio room here yesterday afternoon and none of it posed any insurmountable problems. I should be having my stitches out on Thursday - and after that? Who knows.

5th January. I'm off later on this afternoon to the hospital to have a new knee installed.. I've painted a blue ring around the affected limb so there shouldn't be any doubt as to which leg the surgeon should attack with his angle grinder. I hope to be back here in Pipérade Towers towards the end of the month - so you'll have to talk among yourselves for a few weeks.

The condemned man ate a hearty lunch - two of Mr Montauzer's finest boudins blancs with truffles accompanied by sauté'd apple were eased down together with a glass of Saint-Pourçain rouge. Any crevices that remained unfilled were filled with a slice of galette des rois (right). Complete the following phrase in four words: "It's a tough job but someone...................".

2nd January. I hope you all had a happy New Year in spite of the restrictions wherever you might be. It's probably a sign of age but I was glad to pull the plug at 00h15.. and subside gently into a coma.

This was the scene at the dog-walking beach at around 11am this morning at Anglet.. the air temperature was 2°C and there were quite a few surfers out there in the waves. (rather them than me..!)

286. 'Twas the season to be jolly..

2020-12-03T17:43:00.069+01:00

31st December. As we stumble wearily towards the midnight hour and a brand New Year, who would have thought just 12 short months ago that tonight we'd all be masked up and isolated. Plus, the long drawn-out saga of Brexit has finally been concluded to the satisfaction of both parties.. sign of a good deal (or maybe that we just haven't read the small print!) So, to all the readers of this blog - whoever and wherever you are - let's make 2021 the year when we restore our way of life back to the way it was. Happy New Year one and all!

30th December. I grew up to the sound of my father playing the piano - and endlessly practising pieces like Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" - played beautifully with great passion here by Daniel Barenboim:

We saw Gautier Capuçon, one of France's greatest cellists, here in Anglet a few months ago.. Here he is with Édith Piaf & Marguerite Monnot's "Hymne à l'Amour". Think this is one for full screen:

I'm having my final session of physio this morning prior to the knee 'op' in a week's time. I'll be spending most of January behind bars - 4-5 days in hospital then 2-3 weeks in a sinister-sounding 're-education centre'.. so you'll have to talk among yourselves for a while!

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish both of my long-~~suffering~~ oops -standing readers my best wishes for 2021.. Let's hope these new vaccines are effective (now there's a New Year's wish you don't often hear..).

28th December. I woke up early (5.40am) this morning to the sound of a deluge of rain running in the gutters - and winds howling around the house. Fortunately we have these solid wooden shutters at the west-facing back of the house that keep the winter storms at a distance. Grey skies, lashing rain and gusting winds.. it's still blowing hard now. Probably not what you might imagine our lot to be here.. Fortunately we seldom get any snow - and if we do, it's usually gone by lunchtime.

It's now 8.30pm as I write this and it's still blowing a gale and raining as hard as it was this morning.

27th December. I was just returning from walking Nutty along the beach this morning when I put on the car radio - France Musique - and it was an interview with someone talking about their childhood musical influences and she happened to mention Louis Armstrong's "When it's sleepy time down south" and - whoooosh - that took me straight back 60+ years.. My father had an old 78 record of that very tune - and of all the music he played, I'd say it was right up there in his top three. I must have heard it a few hundred times! It's strange - I haven't heard that song or thought of it for decades - and yet - boom - the memory of it brought him back instantly.. so here's the same version (on a 45) of that great old song that my father loved so much:

25th December. A picture's worth a thousand words - so here's the lad himself getting into the Christmas spirit.. (a lady friend gave him the tie..)

I hope that you all have a happy Christmas - even if your friends and family are at the end of a Zoom call..

22nd December. Time for a Christmas Carol - here's the choir of King's College, Cambridge with "The Angel Gabriel".. (sometimes known as the Old Basque Carol):

It was unseasonably warm here yesterday with 17°C.. and today the forecast is for 19°.. It's definitely not woodburner weather. However, with the current Covid restrictions in place - restaurants, cafés and bars all closed - means that some of the usual pleasures of going out for the day - a seat outside somewhere or a little lunch - are unavailable. I'm not looking for sympathy! (just as well because... fill in the rest yourselves!)

I've been having 3 sessions of physio a week on my right knee in preparation for the forthcoming 'op' in January. My usual physio has taken a week's leave over the festive season and so it was her replacement that I saw yesterday. She gave my knee an intensive work-out and it would be fair to say that your correspondent is presently at the 'ouch' end of the pain spectrum. I have further sessions with her today and tomorrow. (gulp!)

18th December. If only Life was like this.. 😉:

16th December. The house is looking very Christmassy now - Madame has been busy and she has worked her customary magic - and finally Christmas seems real again. If I stood still for long enough I'm sure I'd end up with holly and ivy wound around my extremities!☺

I was in town yesterday evening to collect Nutty (our cocker) from Allo Toutou (the dog groomers). As he wasn't quite ready, I walked down to the Comptoir Irlandais to look at the mouth-watering display of Scotch single malt whiskies. Talking to one of the assistants, she suddenly darted off to the desk and poured me a wee dram of Glenrothes 12 year old.. And a very impressive drop o' the cratur it was too - and very different from Glenmorangie, my preferred single malt. I must have a look in the Spanish shops on the border to see what they charge..

15th December. I picked up an early Christmas present from our local pharmacy the other day.. Yes, a racy pair of aluminium crutches.. although it would no longer surprise me if they had a fancy new name these days - such as "personalised augmented stability system". They'll come in handy when I'm released back into society at the end of January after my replacement knee has been fitted and I've negotiated my way through the 2-3 weeks of post 'op' physiotherapy. (Thinks: there's never a parrot when you want one is there?)

By the way, for the benefit of any Brits in France, here's a helpful newsletter from the British Embassy in Paris.

I'm late with my Christmas shopping this year and I'm struggling for inspiration - especially for those small stocking fillers. Normally, I'm done and dusted by the end of November but for obvious reasons, this wasn't possible this year.

13th December. There was a short feature on TVPI, our local TV station, this morning about the paramotor club at nearby Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle. I watched the short film in a kind of suspended fascination and fear all at the same time.. I've previously experienced flying viewed from within a metal structure - and so I must admit to feelings of vertigo while watching the video below and, as I don't bounce well, I found myself wondering just how strong the equipment was.. Sitting up at 2-3,000 feet is not the place to be having thoughts like these..

9th December. I guess there's no putting it off any longer - I'll have to start writing my Christmas cards very soon. I've just brought our Made in China Christmas tree* up from the cellar where it's been skulking since January. It just doesn't seem like Christmas..

* I never thought I'd succumb to an artificial tree but they're more manageable than the real variety.

8th December. We've had rain and lots of it over the last few days. Yesterday though, the weather gods decided to crank the dial round into the red zone and what had merely been heavy rain blown by strong gusty winds turned into rain the like of which I've never seen before. From the study window upstairs, the noise was deafening and the intensity of the downpour significantly reduced the visibility across the avenue outside. The poor dog would go outside and come straight back in again. I did manage to take him out at one point when the rain slackened off a touch.. The sky is still heavy with grey storm clouds. My Barbour jacket has rarely been used so much here!

4th December. For many of us, this year's Christmas will be very different - due to Covid - to ones we have known previously. For me, one of the elements that used to 'make' Christmas was the Christmas Carol Service in the centuries-old country church in the Herefordshire village where we used to live. The annual Carol Service was always a special evening in the life of our village as people came together to sing the old carols - and afterwards to enjoy a hot mince pie and a glass of mulled wine with friends and neighbours before heading off home in the dark.

The magic of Christmas is all wrapped up with childhood memories - and yes, they are unique to a time and a place. This is now our home - but even though we are content here, inevitably there will be one or two of the old Christmas rituals that can't be replicated here. Hemingway once observed that "you don't know what Christmas is until you lose it in some foreign land.." - but our experience of Christmas is that it changes as we get older - and so it's no good harking back to days of old - because those Christmasses of yesteryear live on only in our memories - and are unrepeatable.

3rd December. We enjoyed an unexpectedly moving evening here in town a year or two ago - a riverside Chinese lantern festival. Watch this in wonder - like the many goggle-eyed small children who were present that night. It was later reported that around 50,000 people were present in Bayonne's narrow streets - and its very success means that it is likely to fall victim to the confinement this year. (Edited to add: yes, it's official - sadly, no mass release of Chinese lanterns this year..) This video is from 2018.. it was an incredibly moving event..

285. A timely reminder..

2020-11-02T08:54:00.060+01:00

29th November. We've been sampling the Beaujolais Nouveau (right) over the last few days.. (a tough job but.. etc etc) My recommendation - for what it's worth - would be to try Georges Duboeuf's offering..

28th November. Prior to the arrival of the Covid 19 pandemic, the choir I used to sing with had been rehearsing this sublime piece by Mozart - Laudate Dominum (KV339) - but sadly Covid 19 shut everything down and we were never able to perform it in a concert*. The Laudate was a really satisfying piece to sing - the choir comes in at 2:45 in the recording below (needless to say this wasn't my choir!). Here's Barbara Hendricks first with the Laudate followed by Handel's Hallelujah Chorus:

* My memory's going! I bumped into one of the ladies from the choir yesterday and she said that we had performed the Laudate at the last concert that preceded the lockdown.. My memory's like a Swiss cheese!

27th November. In a broadcast to the nation on Tuesday evening, President Macron loosened the grip of the current lockdown, which will be replaced by a curfew from 15 December. He announced that the easing of restrictions would not take place overnight but in three phases until January 20th. He warned that its implementation will depend on the evolution of the epidemic.

Phase 1: The easing will begin on Saturday, November 28: the lockdown will remain in place, but the certificate that people currently use when they leave home, will allow people to travel 20 km from home instead of one, and for three hours instead of one*. He also lifted the constraints on Christmas shopping by reopening all so-called "non-essential" shops such as bookshops and clothing shops until 9 pm. Restaurants and bars, however, will remain closed.

* Nutty, our cocker spaniel, will be happy with this news as it means we can give him a good run on the beach!

Phase 2: The second stage is set for December 15th, the day on which "the confinement can be lifted" if health conditions permit. It will be replaced by a curfew from 9pm to 7am throughout the country, with an exception for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, when people will be free to travel. A 'truce' at the end of the year has also been agreed upon by several neighbouring countries, such as the United Kingdom, which on Tuesday authorised family reunions from 23 to 27 December, while Germany plans to limit the number of participants in family celebrations to ten people.

From December 15th, cinemas, theatres, and museums will be allowed to reopen, but gatherings and festive events will continue to be banned.

Phase 3: The third phase will begin on 20 January with the potential reopening of restaurants and sports halls. However, no date has been set for the bars and discotheques.

Vaccines: The vaccination, which will not be compulsory, will be able to start "in late December-early January" for "the most vulnerable people". France, together with the European Union, has "secured the number of doses" needed to secure the population, he said.

After the first vaccines became available at the end of December, a second generation of vaccine is expected in the spring.

More here.

25th November. Hard to believe but Chr****as is but a month away.. Normally, by this time, I'm just about all shopped-out - but with all the shops having been closed, the secret hiding place for presents on top of an old armoire has yet to be used.

Here's Joe Pass with his jazz guitar version of "Autumn Leaves" - New York magazine wrote of him that: "Joe Pass looks like somebody's uncle and plays guitar like nobody's business." (You can listen to more of his beautiful playing here)

21st November. We're definitely heading into winter down here. Yesterday, I put the all-weather cover over the table that stays out on the terrace and I raked up another pile of leaves from the red maple down the bottom of the garden. The plancha has already been greased and put away and the hortensia (hydrangea) shrubs / bushes (which is the right description?) have been pruned. The lawn is looking healthy and it's still growing.

I think we're just about ready for winter and the westerly gale-force winds that will soon be blowing in from the Bay of Biscay (known as the Golfe de Gascogne here). It will be interesting to see how the new west-facing garage door will stand up to the pounding. We'd replaced the original doors with a new set of wooden sliding doors about 10 years ago - but as they too were starting to fall apart, we replaced them a few weeks ago with a roller-type system (with another remote control to lose!).

Lit the wood-burner last night - and its comforting warm glow was very welcome. It's another indicator that winter's on its way. We seldom get snow here or even frost - but we do get storms in from the sea and they blow really hard. Over the years, we've gradually sealed off all the possible entry points so now, even when it blows, we're toasty warm.

20th November. As the dog-grooming service in town that we normally use is closed due to the current Covid restrictions, we took Nutty to Jardiland (a ginormous garden centre at Bassussarry) where a self-service dog washing facility has recently been installed inside the mammoth store. I'd like to say that he enjoyed the experience but while it was very convenient and practical for us, he made it clear that once was enough for him..

16th November. Here's something for late night listening - perhaps with a glass of something Scottish - John Coltrane with his "My Favorite Things" recorded in 1961:

And if we're talking about the wee small hours, if sleep is hard to find, when the mind insists on running through endless replays, when it seems your watch has stopped - there's nothing better than Chet Baker and his instrumental version of "My Funny Valentine". By the way, my patented late night shuffle around the dance floor was made for music like this!

15th November. With so many retail outlets being shut down, it's going to be harder than ever to find original Christmas presents this year - but if you love this part of south western France (and if not, why not?!) then you can't do much better than to browse Perry Taylor's site. He's a talented cartoonist living in the Gers - and the rural way of life there clearly inspires him. He has something for everyone on his site - all of which are related to life (and ducks!) in la France profonde. I'd be extremely surprised if you can't find that special something for your special someone from his well-observed and very funny collection.

13th November. Jean Castex, the French Prime Minister, gave a briefing on the Covid 19 situation yesterday evening. He said there were early signs of a tapering in the Covid-19 figures in France but that current lockdown measures, set to last until December 1, would remain in place.

Any loosening of restrictions after that date would be "strictly limited" to certain businesses and would exclude bars, restaurants and sports halls, Castex said. One in four deaths in France were now due to Covid-19. The number of people in hospital care for Covid-19 in France is now higher than during a previous peak in April. Castex told the news briefing that there were now more than 32,000 Covid patients in hospitals, adding that a new Covid-19 case was admitted to hospital every 30 seconds and one into intensive care every three minutes.

The government will impose further restrictions if the coronavirus outbreak worsens in the coming days but could also decide to loosen restrictions over the holidays if the situation warrants it.

France is two weeks into a new national lockdown that has hit the economy but some politicians are hoping that if the country's Covid-19 figures improve the country may be able to re-open major shops and businesses for Christmas.

Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said earlier Thursday that the economic boost provided by the crucial Christmas shopping season could be salvaged — provided people abide by the health restrictions until then.

"What I wish is that we can save December for retailers ... What will dictate the decision of the prime minister and of the president is the protection of the safety of the French population," Le Maire told BFM Business radio. "We could have a dynamic December" if the population sticks to current guidelines, he added.

(If hospitals down here in the South West are accepting patients in intensive care from elsewhere, I doubt now that my knee replacement surgery will go ahead as scheduled for early January.)

10th November. Day 13 - the 'confinement' continues..

Meanwhile, here are some views of Bayonne taken during summer here..

The video below really gives a good idea of the town behind those quirky riverside properties:

7th November. Yesterday we went to our local pharmacy for our annual flu jab.. In something of a "first" for me, I didn't feel a thing as the needle went in and I have no after-effects - no lump, no soreness, nada. It was one of the girls behind the counter who did it - and talking to her a few months ago, she told me that her pharmacist's training in France took 6 years.

Later in the day, we walked to the local hospital for an MRI scan of my right knee.. It was to ensure that the prosthetic replacement will be exactly the right size - and shouldn't need too much percussion adjustment with a ball peen hammer. I suspect though that my op planned for early January might well be postponed due to the second Covid wave..

En route to the hospital, we saw three more formations of cranes heading south - all more or less in vee formations - with their distinctive squawking.

5th November. About a year ago, I was outside in the garden with the dog at around 3am (when you've gotta go, you've gotta go) (him, not me) when I heard the flapping of hundreds (if not more) of wings as a ghostly formation of cranes flew overhead in the moonlight on their way to sunnier climes..

Last night I heard some raucous squawking from on high - and sure enough it was a mighty vee formation of cranes on their way south..

2nd November. This atmospheric piece is another favourite of mine: it's the 2nd Movement from Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 - close your eyes and let your mind soar..

We (finally) had a warm weekend here.. with temps in the low to mid twenties. So - leaves were raked up, the grass was mown, trees and bushes were pruned - after which all the garden detritus was whipped off to the nearby décheterie (waste/recycling centre) - having first remembered to complete and sign the latest form, duly timed and dated, required for excursions outwith the home - and to pick up a mask. I don't have a problem with these latest measures if they'll reduce the Covid infection rate. No-one knows how long this latest confinement will last.

I must say I have the utmost sympathy with the hundreds and thousands of small business owners who are constantly on the back foot - how can they plan for the future against a moving target.. do they order stocks for the festive season - and beyond - or not..? Bookshops have been closed yet wine shops are open. I think many small businesses will go to the wall - never to return - leaving us only with the online retail giants.

I've finally cracked - I've just ordered a tablet..

1st November. In another media feeding frenzy, legions of European chatterati are in the US right now waiting to tell us what the 'mood' of the American people is before, during and after Tuesday's Presidential election. It's worth bearing this advice in mind: "People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."

284. Especially when the October wind

2020-10-02T11:30:00.020+02:00

25th October. Here's Yuja Wang (a favourite of mine) with her interpretation of Rachmaninov's Prelude in G Minor, Op. 23, No. 5:

Here are some other great performances by her. I don't think I've ever heard a more beautiful interpretation of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus18 than hers (the second piece on the above link).

21st October. This evening, President Macron delivered a moving homage to Samuel Paty in the courtyard of the Sorbonne. Samuel Paty was the teacher who was foully murdered outside his school a few days ago. The President's words are worth reading.

14th October. We can usually still eat outside during October and sometimes on into November - but not this year. Threatening skies, intense showers that blow through, low temperatures - October feels more like mid-winter. On the plus side, The "vitrification"* work we had done on the stairs and the cellar has dried off - so we can sleep upstairs again.

* I think this means something different in French.

11th October. I like the originality of Glen Baxter's quirky old style cartoons:

7th October. The diary is filling up quickly with dates for various events.. The wooden stairs and the joists in the cellar have both needed treatment against woodworm - the stairs needed sanding first before they and the joists were treated with a toxic-smelling product. One of the outcomes was that we had to sleep downstairs as the product was still soaking into the stairs. Then next Monday, the stairs will be treated to what they call here a vitrification process.. so another restless night sleeping on the floor downstairs looms!

We're also looking at changing the car - and trying to find our way through the mass of information presented by the concessionaires. We have a few test drives awaiting us - the main aim being to assess whether there's enough leg room for me - and also to check on the compliance of the suspension over the sometimes bumpy roads here. Our current car seems to bump and jolt its way over the slightest deformations of the road surface. We're looking at a petrol-engined car as we don't do much driving. I'm more than happy to stay in this corner of France with only the occasional trip elsewhere!

Then after 10 years or so of various treatments to my knees, the scope for further treatment has reduced to zero and so I'm booked in for a replacement right knee in early January. First, I have to have 15 sessions of physio (3 per week for 5 weeks) to prepare my muscles for the surgery (to improve my recovery time) - then the "op" - after which I'll spend 4-5 days in hospital - before going to a centre for "re-education" (ie, more physio!) for 2-3 weeks. Madame seems to think I'll need a tablet of some kind to keep on top of my emails (and a couple of my blogs) - French daytime TV being just as dire as that in the UK.

Something to look forward to then!

3rd October. Driving rain and thunderstorms this morning.. I went out briefly to buy some logs - and returned soaked. Meanwhile, Nutty is waiting patiently for a gap in the rain for his morning walk. He's checked the garden over a few times but it's not the same.

2nd October. Never has Dylan Thomas' "Especially when the October wind" seemed more relevant.. Over the space of a handful of days, we moved from a "shorts and t-shirt" summer straight into mid-Autumn (and worse) without the respite usually offered by those golden days of September.

Before September was out, I seriously thought about lighting our wood burner but I was talked out of it. Great leathery leaves (a foot across) from platanes have been swirling and drifting down the avenue for days now - and burnished conkers abound under the chestnut trees and beech nuts are all over the pavements (sidewalks).

The wonderfully resonant sound of Gautier Capuçon's 300 year old cello that we heard during the concert at the Château de Baroja in August has been on my mind of late too. It was the first time I'd ever heard a solo cello live (so much more alive than a CD) and the clarity of that sound cut straight through all my mental baggage and registered directly with my emotions. It was something I'd not experienced before and I lost myself in the performance.

Max Bruch's Kol Nidre is arguably the finest piece ever written for a cello - and it's played here by arguably the cello's greatest virtuoso - Jacqueline du Pré, who contracted MS (of all things) and from which she died tragically young at the age of 42.

283. September morn..

2020-09-07T14:51:00.044+02:00

26th September. If you feel like dipping a toe gingerly into the music of the 1970s, try Nostalgie Best of 70s.

The new memorial up in the mountains to those of the WWII Comet Line is now complete - however, its official inauguration will take place at a future date to be specified - September 2021 would be the preferred option - but it all depends on COVID. Here it is with the descriptive plaque (in four languages: French, English, Spanish & Basque) fixed firmly in place:

If you're wondering why we chose a stone memorial in this format - it's because there are several wild cattle and horses (pottoks) loose up there in the hills and there's a shortage of trees and other suitable scratching posts.. This memorial should be safe from most of their depredations and also from those of today's souvenir hunters. (New for us: we put a QR code on the panel to link straight to our blog for more info)

25th September. Answers to questions that haven't been asked: What does "furlough" mean? Up until very recently, it was a word that wasn't in common usage in the UK. See here.

I came across this panorama of the Pyrenees in the vicinity of Saint-Étienne-de-Baïgorry.. It gives a superb feel for the high country to be found only 45 minutes inland from the coast here - you should be able to zoom into the image. More panoramas from elsewhere in France here.

24th September. I think there must be a mouse in the house. The deliciously moist fruit and nut cake that arrived from the Gers a couple of days ago is steadily reducing in size by the hour. Despite me being careful to maintain the wrapping in its original state, Madame seems to know (as if by magic) exactly how much cake is left and what its current rate of consumption is.. She's working on the "and who by"..

22nd September. One of the great guitar solos in pop music came up on the radio earlier - remember this? (fast forward to 1:30 and 2:54 to enjoy the late Tony Peluso's virtuosity).

We had a very pleasant surprise this morning - the postman arrived with an unexpected parcel for us - a large tupperware container holding a well-wrapped fruit & nut cake made by J (our friend from the Gers).. I'll be interviewing it with a coffee later on this morning once I've found my elasticated waist pants. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but as soon as I find out, I'll do more of it! It's really very kind of her - and it's greatly appreciated - especially so when its arrival was unexpected. Looking forward to mid-morning! 😋

20th September. Stepping outside this morning around 6am, for the first time I caught the first whiff of something that smelt of autumn.. a hint of decaying vegetation, leaves and wet grass.

18th September. C and J, our friends from the Gers, came over for a night stop at St-J-de-L on Wednesday evening. Yesterday, I took them high up into the hills via a favourite route - a tortuous single track lane that winds ever-higher and takes in some of the most spectacular views of the foothills of the near-Pyrenees. Yesterday, the country looked at its best with breathtaking views in all directions. September is a busy tourist month and sure enough, our meeting point - Espelette - was awash with 'silver' tourists and camping cars (camper vans in the UK).

We had a brief look at the centre of Espelette and, after a quick coffee, we took to the back country lanes. At one point, I stopped to show them a gem of a stone cottage (one that I've long admired) set in a wooded valley that would make for the perfect weekend retreat.

We continued climbing and eventually, after inching our way past groups of wild cattle and pottoks (wild horses) we broke out on top of a ridge (in Spain, just south of Gorospil Lepoa) and there we stopped. There were a couple of other cars there but considering this was still prime tourist season, it was refreshingly peaceful. C and J both remarked on the silence. This area sat astride one of the key routes used by evading Allied aircrew as they sought to cross into Spain in WWII - except they travelled by night in what must have been a nerve-jangling experience. We took a short walk via a narrow sheep track to a point of interest - the only point from where a legendary wartime 'safe house' (Xan Mihura sheltered 128 aircrew at Jauregiko Borda) in Spain could be seen far below (its small white end wall is just visible to the left of the base of the dead tree).

This stone memorial to the men and women of Comète was erected a few weeks ago - and a descriptive plaque will be fixed in place next week.

We returned to the cars and drove to Esteben Borda where we enjoyed a real Basque country lunch - soup, omelette with farm ham and home-made pork sausages, then some Brébis (sheep's milk cheese) served with the traditional accompaniment - local black cherry jam, before finishing with coffee.. All that, plus vin compris, for 17€. Here are some future sausages taking a load off!

14th September. Normally, this weekend just gone would have seen me and many others up in the mountains walking over the exact same routes used by Comet Line guides and the evading Allied aircrews as they attempted to cross the Pyrenees into Spain during WWII (more here). Given the heat that has hung heavy over us over the past few days like a blanket, I think we dodged a bullet there!

After a long hot afternoon yesterday, I took the dog down to the Plage des Cavaliers at Anglet for a well-deserved run.. We didn't stay too long as the heat was oppressive and there was no sea breeze to provide any respite. On the way home at 7.15pm, I notived that the car indicated that the outside air temperature was a stifling 37°C (98.6°F in Ye Olde half-timbered Fahrenheit) - and it felt like every single degree of it.

11th September. This French song from the 1960s has been bugging me for a few weeks. I keep hearing it on the radio but it's difficult to identify a song without knowing the singer or the title. I mistakenly thought it was Gilbert Bécaud - and I suspected 'Alouette' was in the title somewhere. Fortunately, the phone rang a few minutes ago before I forgot the tune - it was a friend of mine - I sang him the tune and he came up with the title "Alouette, Alouette". Here's Gilles Dreu with his 1968 hit - a real 60s sound - and don't blame me if the tune stays in your head all day!

7th September. I just caught a snatch of this piece (one of my father's favourites) on the radio and luckily the announcer gave its name: Chopin, Les Sylphides - Prelude in A major, Op. 28 No. 7:

We went to the Grande Plage at Biarritz yesterday morning with the intention of having a coffee at the Bleu Café - it's ideally situated for watching the surfers and general people watching. However, we were surprised to see that all its tables and chairs had been cleared away - I wonder if they've been closed down* for ignoring the Covid sanitary regulations - because normally they are open till later in the season.

* I later heard that that is indeed the case - along with another old favourite - Bar Jean.

In the end, we "installed ourselves" (as they say here) at Le Georges in Biarritz's Place Clemenceau..

I can't believe how quickly September has suddenly arrived upon us. However, all is not lost.. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that September in the Pays Basque is the best month of the year - the summer crowds having largely dispersed, the weather is settled - usually at around 25°C - and parking is easier. The odd shower or two revives the greenery and the misty blue mountains look their best under cloudless skies.

"Do you remember how we danced that night away

Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play

September morning still can make me feel that way."

- Neil Diamond and Gilbert Becaud

282. It's scientifically proven that ...

2020-08-03T08:50:00.009+02:00

... people who have more birthdays live longer.

31st August. I'm looking for some help - most UK online radio news stations make me want to put my foot through the radio - generally within the first minute of switching it on. For years, BBC Radio 4 was the benchmark but for a good few years it's been populated by 'personalities' - and it appears that we have to know their names. Does anyone 'out there' know of any online news stations other than BBC R4, TalkRADIO, Times Radio or LBC that offer intelligent news reporting but minus the blah..? If so, please let me know via the contact facility in the left hand column. Thanks in advance!

Here are a couple of old-style BBC station announcements that will take some of you back in time: here and here - before we had 'at the top of the hour'.. and self-absorbed promos like this.

The last two months - ie, the summer season - have flown by.. There appeared to be far more tourists than usual here - I heard that Biarritz received 20% more tourists than in previous years. For me though, September - the best month - is to come.

23rd August. I spotted an extremely rare car this morning en route to the beach - it was a Citroën Traction Avant Cabriolet in pale blue in exceptional condition.

20th August. Before we leave Gautier Capuçon to fade away in our wake, here he is up in the Swiss Alps with Le Cygne (The Swan) by Camille Saint-Saëns:

18th August. We went out this morning with the dog to walk around the Lac de Saint Pée sur Nivelle - an artificial lake with plenty of activities for the young - and the not-so-young.

After a really pleasant walk we ended up in need of a cold drink - so stopping off at "Bizi" restaurant (overlooking the lake) seemed a good idea. One thing predictably led to another and we found ourselves ordering two Caesar salads for lunch. They were delicious but, as they say here, incredibly copieuse (ie, generous servings). For those who prefer a picnic, the lakeside was well-supplied with tables in twos and threes.

17th August. We were out yesterday celebrating a major milestone birthday for Madame - and so we went to (another!) one of our favourite places - the Hotel Arraya at Sare - for lunch. Given that many French people appear to have taken their holidays in France this year - plus the fact it was over a Bank holiday (August 15th) weekend - the roads were understandably dense with traffic.

All the tables outside the hotel were occupied - but fortunately we'd reserved a table in their oh-so-traditional Basque dining room - leaving those diners outside to compete with the rumble of passing Harleys (ridden by aging boomers! <= interesting read).

The hotel also has a small giftshop featuring, among other things, distinctive hand-made leather goods from Laffargue, the long-established shop at Saint-Jean-de-Luz that's Numero Uno with Madame. Browsing the wines on display in the giftshop, I spotted a bottle of Irouléguy from Domaine Mourguy (right - mentioned a couple of posts ago). I'll open it when the weather cools down a little.

To say we were impressed by the Arraya would be an understatement - they have raised the bar by several notches. Given the surroundings, the views, the effervescent staff, the originality and quality of the cooking - Arraya has now whizzed straight to the top of our short list of favoured establishments in the local area. Congratulations to Jean-Baptiste Fagoaga and his friendly staff - and thank you for a superb lunch.

10th August. The police here have arrested a young man (16 years old) in connection with the forest fires at Pignada on 30th July. My question to you all is this: what do we do with him? I believe he was in care, and had been in a foster home and had demonstrated pyromania tendencies before - so it seems that he's a disturbed young man. More here.

9th August. Last night we went to an open air concert given by cellist Gautier Capuçon and Jérôme Ducros (piano) in the grounds of the Château de Baroja (right), Anglet. Five hundred free tickets were made available by Anglet Town Hall and so, with parking spaces at a premium, we decided to arrive early! Just as well - we managed to find two centre seats in the second row. What a night.. The concert started in daylight and as dusk fell, the soft lights of the château were switched on and it became a magical and highly memorable experience. Several times I found my hair standing on end (and it's nice to still be able to say that at my advanced age! 😏).

Capuçon's instrument is a Matteo Goffriller cello (left) - made in 1701 - which he has on loan. It had a resonance and a sonority that was clear from the start - especially in the lower register of the strings. Astonishing to think that this instrument is still capable of performing at the highest level 320 years after it was constructed. Or is it similar to the ship of Theseus perhaps?

I remember once seeing a programme about a luthier (a violin maker) - and how he selected the wood for his violins. He would tap the pieces of wood he was interested in and usually the sounds they gave off were dull clunks (technical term!). However, if the wood rang like a bell, that was the piece what he was looking for.. (more on this here)

This is a performance he gave from his home during the lock-down.

Gautier was also one of the judges on France 2's programme "Prodigies of the Year" - and here he is with Maxime, a young cellist:
Here's Maxime with John Williams theme from "Schindler's List..

And here are some photos of the concert - I must say that the staging of the concert was superb - it was filmed and projected in real time on to a large screen. (click to enlarge the images)

Château de Baroja

Gautier Capuçon

Gautier Capuçon and Jérôme Ducros

Photos: Ville d'Anglet - K.Pierret-Delage.

Well done to Jean-Michel Barate and his team from Anglet Town Hall - and many thanks - for the flawless organisation of the event.👍

8th August. I've posted this dazzling aerial view of Paris by Yann Arthus-Bertrand before - and I make no apologies for posting it again.

7th August. Here's an aerial view of the Pignada forest that was destroyed in the recent fires. While eleven houses were damaged and five were destroyed, no-one was hurt. The burnt patch (left of centre) is exactly where I've been taking Nutty for walks - and there were many tall maritime pines there:

6th August. An evening walk along the beach at the Plage des Cavaliers is called for - we went last night at 9pm and it was very refreshing compared to here (just 10 mins away).

At 6.30pm, our garden thermometer was still showing 37°.. too hot for me.

According to the evening news, it was 40°C in the shade at Biarritz today.

We made a lightning visit to Saint-Jean-de-Luz this morning for some urgent shopping. I don't think I've ever seen the town so crowded. It appears that many French are holidaying at home this year.

We had a visit from Eric (aka the Magic Carpenter) at 7.30 this morning.. The recent heat we've had here had caused some of our hefty wooden shutters to warp (they were designed to keep out the worst of the winter weather - not the sunshine!) to the point where it became impossible to close a few of them.

Our four-legged friend had me out of bed at 3.30am this morning for his usual nocturnal inspection of his territory - added to which we had the alarm set for 6.30am - I think Madame and I both had some sleep deficit to make good on this afternoon behind our newly adjusted shutters that can now be closed.

4th August. I forgot to mention that flat peaches are back in season again. We keep a dish of them in the fridge and they're ideal for breakfast!

We have a red maple down the garden and already it's started to shed its leaves.. I've also noticed conkers on the ground around the base of the numerous horse chestnut trees in the neighbourhood. This isn't usual on 4th August.. or is it? Is it due to lack of rainfall?

In the mid-1990s, I was fortunate to spend several years in Pordenone (Eng sub-titles available) in Friuli in north-east Italy. It was there that I discovered pappardelle all'uovo among other things.. This is ribbon pasta (about ¾ inch wide) made with eggs - and it was de-lic-ious!

I first came across it at the idyllic setting of the Ristorante Zaia, Polcenigo, where it was served with crab*. I spent more than a few enjoyable lunchtimes on this little terrace (left) over the cooling torrent of turquoise-blue water (from the nearby spring at Gorgazzo) while sitting in the shade of an overhead vine. Happy days..

Sadly, it appears that Zaia, as I knew it 25 years ago, is no longer in business. I see that the new owners have changed the name - along with the menu. A great shame - as its situation was perfect and the whole experience was always faultless. While I enjoyed the local Pinot Nero, it was also about the only ristorante I knew in that region that stocked French wine.

For my final visit there, I'd brought a large group with me and as we were leaving, Roberto (the maître d') - always impeccable in black tie - took my elbow and said, "Signore, next time you come with your wife, it's as my guest". Where else but Italy do you find a gesture like that?

* I'm trying to persuade Madame to make it like that one of these days.

Michelis Pappardelle all'uovo al bronzo (above right) is an Italian brand and this is what we had at lunchtime today - with garlicky mushrooms and chopped parsley. Highly recommended. (Question du Jour: Why al bronzo? Answer here)

My other discovery in the Friuli region was Prosciutto di San Daniele. As much as I like Jambon de Bayonne (and I like it a lot), I must be honest and elevate the local San Danieli prosciutto (right) to the top rank. Before returning to the UK, I'd pay a call to a local independent grocer and ask him for 400gms of prosciutto sliced wafer thin.

A final call would be to Vigneti Pittaro - a local wine producer - to collect a case of their excellent Cabernet. This quote - attributed to Omar Khayyam - appears on their website:

"Since the moon and planets appeared in the sky, no one has ever seen anything sweeter than the purest wine. I am full of amazement for the wine sellers, that those who can never buy better than what is sold "

3rd August. As of this morning, the wearing of masks (or "face-coverings" in BBC-speak) is now obligatory in many cities and towns in France, including Biarritz and Bayonne (more here). Tourists would be well-advised to ensure that they come prepared.

Today's special offer! If you're confined, in 'lock down' or simply stuck at home - why not relax with a coffee and take an early morning (6am) train ride in the cab of a regional train (ie not a TGV) from Bayonne to Tarbes and enjoy the scenery (the Pyrenees are on the right). You'll see how the house styles evolve as the train passes from the Pays Basque and heads into the Béarn:

2nd August. We were tempted to go to Biarritz for a coffee at the Bleu Café this morning - but we finally thought better of it. With it being the first weekend in August, Biarritz would be crowded with people and parking spaces would be like hen's teeth - so instead, we drove to Lac Marion for a walk with the pooch.

281. Braced for the invasion!

2020-07-06T10:07:00.049+02:00

31st July. This video sneaks in under the wire to make it into my July offering.. If you make it to the end without a single goosebump, contact your nearest medical practitioner asap. I have to say that it gives me the shivers.. plus it makes all the hair on my arms stand to attention! We've become so accustomed of late to hearing "The Star Spangled Banner" sung by warbling female singers (think Superbowl) that this beautiful rendition is a timely reminder of how it should be sung.. Well done to the Kentucky All State Choir! (Try setting the playback speed to 1.25 or 1.5)
Spectacular fires, fanned by strong winds and helped by the drought and the heat, swept through about 100 hectares (about 250 acres) of tinder-dry pine woods in the forest of Chiberta, Anglet, last night, forcing the evacuation of many homes. It broke out in the early evening and "is under control but it is complicated because we still have occasional flare-ups near the houses", according to Claude Olive, the mayor of Anglet.

The firefighters had to maintain "great vigilance all night long" in this wooded area of over 250 hectares located in the town centre, between the Adour and the Atlantic, and bordered in particular by a golf course and luxurious villas. At 3am this morning, a spokesperson for the prefecture said that the fire had destroyed 100 hectares of forest and damaged a total of 165 hectares, including partially affected urban areas. Seven houses were damaged by the fire, three of which were completely burned out. Canadair fire-fighting aircraft were brought in at the height of the fires to try and bring them under control as the twenty fire appliances that attended the fires had difficulty accessing the various sites.

29th July. Here's another of those minor differences between life here and elsewhere that I've been meaning to mention for some time. I've noticed that the deceased in French funerals are not transported, as you might have expected, in extended and enlarged limousines - but in windowed Ford Transit vans or Mercedes Vito vans. It's something that's always jarred with me - it seems a bit undignified to turn up in a vehicle that might otherwise have a ladder or two on its roof..

Things are warming up here. The forecast for tomorrow is for temperatures in the region of 39° - 41°C (depending on who you listen to).

For those of you watching in black and white, that's somewhere between 102° - 106°F. This is pith helmet weather!

27th July. I took the pooch for a long walk around Bayonne this morning before it became too hot. I passed by an estate agent that specialised in property sold by the Viager method.

It sounds a little ghoulish to the Anglo-Saxon ear at first - but the essentials are as follows: a deal is struck between the owner of a property (usually an elderly widow or a widower) and the potential buyer whereby the buyer agrees to pay the owner a capital sum agreed by both parties (known as the bouquet) plus a monthly figure. When the owner dies, the house/apartment becomes the property of the buyer.

Looking in the shop window this morning, the adverts for property to be sold by Viager specified the owner (a woman or a man) and their age. (for example H 81 ans - or Homme (Man) 81 years old) Full explanation of how it works here. Viagers are usually available as Viagers Occupés or Viagers Libres. Here are some examples of adverts for Viagers Occupés. (

26th July. We went for a walk around Lac de Mouriscot this morning - situated in the outer suburbs of Biarritz - and even at the height of the season there weren't many others there. It was very pleasant indeed to do a circuit of the lake..

25th July. It's whispered here that the French government may shortly decide to close the border with Spain. From a purely selfish point of view, that would be a real disaster as my stocks of Highland Dew are non-existent. So, at 5pm, I made a dirty dart for the border (and the ventas) and just over an hour later I was back home with enough liquid gold to see me safely through to ........ (insert month of choice here).

Just before I reached the village of Souraïde, the view across to the Pyrenees in the late afternoon sun was époustouflant (aka breathtaking) - as the blue hills and mountains stood out in sharp relief in the heat haze against the distant pale blue sky. I think it will be a long time before I tire of that view.

24th July. Chuck Berry had the happy knack of being able to write classic R&B songs - they seemed to flow effortlessly from his pen - that matched perfectly the mood of the moment, his distinctive style of guitar playing and his showmanship! Here's one of his tracks that sums up his style - and it was borrowed to great effect by Uma Thurman and a stoned John Travolta in Quentin Tarantino's highly rated "Pulp Fiction" (1994) - the music starts at 1:27..

23rd July. This great Ray Charles song seemed to fit the bill this evening - it was one of my father's favourites. I wish he could have been here - I know that he would have enjoyed sitting out on our terrace cooling down with one of these rhum drinks mentioned below.

As it was another hot and humid evening, and I had a thirst that could be photographed, I decided to make my version of a daiquiri.. I squeeze a few citrons verts (limes) into an old pewter pint tankard, to which I added a splash of cane syrup and a bigger splash of French white rhum from Martinique*, a good handful of ice cubes and finally topped up with some San Pellegrino.. Did it ever hit the spot..!

* Rhum Blanc de Martinique La Mauny 50° BV (made from sugar cane juice). For those in the UK, this is probably a good substitute rhum.

One of the benefits of having my own blog is that I get to choose the music! Here's a piece I've long enjoyed - Rodrigo's Concerto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra. Enjoy the First Movement (Allegro con spirito) as it's played by Marcin Dylla with the Cracovia orchestra:

It's followed by Narciso Yepes with the famous Second Movement (Adagio) before we return to Marcin Dylla and the Third Movement (Allegro gentile). Narciso Yepes is famous for this haunting melody beloved of fledgling guitarists the world over and often heard on the streets of our big cities.

22nd July. An oppressively hot and sticky afternoon here with a temperature of 24° and humidity at 73% - although it feels much more humid than that with some rumblings of thunder and lightning up in the mountains this morning. Normally, we only open the bar at the weekend - but I feel the need for a cold attitude adjuster this evening - maybe a long G&T..

19th July. Here's a nice little video from an Aussie family visiting the area that shows, among other things, Bayonne's indoor market. Health warning: don't go in if you're feeling hungry!☺

17th July. We went up to Arcachon yesterday to meet up with our good friends N and A from Paris - and it soon became clear that many French people will be holidaying in France this year as we've never seen the town so busy. After finding our friends and after a quick sangria, we were able to find a restaurant with a table for four..

After lunch, we walked along the seafront that looked out over the bay of Arcachon - but the crowds of people (many from Bordeaux) made us realise how lucky we are to live here in less crowded surroundings.

Sometimes, memory works in unaccountable ways. These lines popped up in my head earlier (prompted by I don't know what) since first reading them many decades ago:

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon..

12th July. Here's an old Gilbert Bécaud song (from 1967 - the year that Madame and I met).. and the lyrics (Eng trans here) fit our story as though they were made to measure:

A tip for anyone planning a visit to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques this summer - give the busy beaches a break for a couple of days and head inland to the Cirque de Gavarnie - a spectacular natural phenomenon (its scale is deceptive - just bear in mind that the waterfall is higher than the Eiffel Tower). It's only 130 miles or so from the Atlantic coast. Words aren't adequate to describe it - but suffice to say, if you're in this part of the world, it merits a place high up on your must-see list.

Great bass drum crashes and rumblings in the heavens interleave with violent crackles as lightning flashes briefly illuminate the grey morning sky here in the Pays Basque. Not a day to be camping here - or to be walking up in the mountains! Here's a piece that fits what's happening outside:

(a comment below on a video of this piece on YouTube made me laugh - someone wrote: "I put this on every time my mother-in-law is visiting.")

10th July. Here's Alessandro Carbonare showing astonishing breath control with the clarinet solo from Rachmaninof's 2nd Symphony:

9th July. Down here in south west France, duck sits front and centre in the region's cooking - and it makes its contribution in many forms. The "Moulard"* duck is pre-eminent and for those of you wishing to know a little more about this key ingredient - look no further. Quite apart from the meat of the duck, Madame always keeps a supply of duck fat in the fridge and it adds an unmistakeable and distinctive zing to many dishes.

* Just realised that this is (perhaps) where the word mallard comes from!

In particular, one of the tastiest ways it can be used is, in my humble opinion, in making pommes de terre Sarladaise (English translation here) - thinly-sliced potatoes fried in duck fat until crisp, with the addition late on of garlic, parsley - and sprinkled with sea salt just prior to serving. It's a close run thing between this mouth-watering dish and steamed new potatoes from Noirmoutier with a knob of salted butter - but my money's on pommes de terre Sarladaise. It's too early to be talking about food!

The only comment I would make to the above would be to use sea salt instead of ordinary kitchen salt - and I would add some chopped garlic about 5 mins before the end. Drain on kitchen paper and serve with a green salad and a glass of Madiran..!

7th July. While a glass of cold rosé at lunchtime is still a good choice in the heat of a summer's day, you need to exercise a little caution when buying these days because the alcoholic strength of wine in general is climbing steadily and stealthily upwards. Time was when few wines - be they red, white or rosé - came in at 14° alcohol by volume (ABV) or more. 14°+ was historically the province of the wines of Gigondas - a powerful southern Rhône red - but today more and more wines are being produced north of 13½°. Someone recently offered us a bottle of Gigondas at 15°.. we're in fortified wine country here.

Today, I was out looking for a dry rosé from Provence when I came across one at 14°. This is serious stuff and would see me in an enforced snore-a-thon before the coffee arrived! That single degree or so extra can make all the difference. I started taking my reading glasses when out shopping for wine a few months ago as I noticed the trend for wine strengths to be climbing up. I managed to find one at 12° today which will be a saner choice. If you can't find a rosé at 12°, the trick is to add a couple of ice cubes to your glass - this will keep it cooler longer and water it down to a lower alcohol level.

I'm pretty sure that Vin de table (table wine) used to be sold at 9-10°. Once wine gets much above 14° - you really need to take things a lot slower when drinking it - otherwise you'll end up face down blowing bubbles in your main course - if you make it that far! Interestingly, in the US, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and Code of Federal Regulations define table wine as grape wine having an alcoholic strength of maximum 14% ABV. Wines between 14% and 24% ABV are known as dessert wine. It implies that wines in the US in that latter category attract more tax. Can anyone confirm that?

6th July. As first generation post-war baby boomers, we were lucky to have established ourselves here back in 2007. It had been clear to me for some time that the extreme south west of France would soon become a destination of choice (compared to the Côte d'Azur say) for newly-retired baby boomers from France (and elsewhere in Europe) seeking the sun and a more agreeable way of life than that offered further north.

Sure enough, we've watched as old buildings have been demolished to be replaced by glitzy new apartment blocks and, further inland, housing estates have sprung up tagged on to Basque villages. However, the area is still largely served by the same old infrastructure to cope with the influx of incomers. To add to the disconnect, the Town Halls here have seen fit to embrace green policies - nothing wrong with that surely? - except that the net result is that the increased level of traffic on the coast has been squeezed by two developments into less and less road space than ever before.

The first of these was the introduction of the all-electric Tram'bus. It was deemed necessary to create dedicated lanes for it so as to enable its proponents to claim with some legitimacy that it offered a speedy form of transportation. No prizes for guessing where the space for the Tram'bus lanes came from. They run at 10 minute intervals - so for 9 minutes and 50 secs its two lanes stand empty while shimmering queues of tailbacked cars wait alongside with their occupants fuming.

The second development to make inroads into road space previously occupied by vehicles is the push to encourage cycling. Again, in itself a praiseworthy initiative - but its implementation leaves much to be desired. To that end, yellow painted cycle lanes have appeared on several busy roads - and notices have just appeared giving cyclists priority at roundabouts. I can't help feeling that there's a tragedy or two waiting here.

The Netherlands has long had a multi-mode approach to urban transport - and there they chose to physically separate cars from bikes by giving cyclists their own dedicated lanes - not merely separated from traffic by yellow lines painted on the road.

On returning from the beach yesterday, I came across a mass cycle event as several hundred cyclists, divided into four groups, started from the banks of the Adour in response to an appeal by the Bizi and Txirind'Ola associations. They rode in temporary cycle lanes, in particular that of the Boulevard du BAB, which links Bayonne, Anglet and Biarritz. The objective was to demonstrate the viability of these "coronapists", as their detractors call them, so that they become permanent.

It's well known that the Pays Basque is a humid area (code for rain!) - so will these same cyclists be out cycling to work in the rain? I very much doubt it.

The fundamental problem is that the patterns of urban and suburban development we see today were laid down over the last 100 years based on the availability and freedom of individuals to own their own mode of transport - in most cases, that means a car. If it's decided that cars are no longer flavour of the month, we need to take a long look at how we should be thinking of living in the future. Slapping taxes on cars and/or fuel or constraining the roadspace they have is no substitute for a coherent long term strategy. What am I saying?!

5th July. It was obvious down at the beach this morning with Nutty (our cocker spaniel) that the annual migration of tourists has started. We live in a region that has largely escaped the Covid19 virus - whereas those arriving from the Paris region have been less fortunate. We're going to try and minimise our exposure to crowds over the summer season as much as we can. Did I hear someone say 'good luck with that..'!

Perhaps in anticipation of the arrival of those from outside the region, I spotted a group of some 12-15 people practising Kendo on the grassy field behind the Plage des Cavaliers beach at Anglet. Kendo is one of those peculiarly Japanese martial arts that I have no wish to encounter from the point of view of someone at the receiving end (here's why!).

280. Summer's here (almost)

2020-06-02T15:14:00.084+02:00

30th June. We were out this evening at Saint-Jean-de-Luz to celebrate the passing of a major marital milestone - and we'd booked a table outside at Zoko Moko - a chic restaurant discreetly tucked away in a quiet street away from the hullabaloo of the nearby Place Louis XIV.. Zoko Moko is not somewhere to go to if your fancy is for a large steak that overhangs the plate with a mountain of pommes frites balanced precariously all around.. (although there is a time and a place for that!). No, the cuisine is of a refinement rarely seen. To single one dish out - we had lotte (monk fish) at one stage - it had been roasted crisp on one side and yet the inside was perfection.

Terraced vines at the Domaine Mourguy, Ispoure

I must mention the red Irouléguy that I had - it was a name new to me - Domaine Mourguy - from Ispoure (outside Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port). This was liquid velvet on the tongue. I don't think it will be too long before we visit the farm. It left our usual Gorri d'Ansa Irouléguy in the shade. Domaine Mourguy is run by the brother and sister duo Pierre and Florence Mourguy at Ispoure.. congratulations to them! More on wines from the South West here (the name of Alain Brumont is one to remember for Madiran)

28th June. The village of Biriatou is often neglected by visitors to the Pays Basque - and even by some of those who have lived in the area all their lives. It's said that if you find yourself in Biriatou, you either live there - or you're lost. It sits high up on the bluffs overlooking the Bidassoa river that separates France from Spain - and while the village could be described as a ribbon development along the river for some 4km, its actual centre is the Pays Basque in microcosm.

In close proximity - all within a few yards - are all the elements necessary for a Basque village - a church (Saint-Martin), a Town Hall, a restaurant (Auberge Hiribarren*) and a fronton (for Pelote). It's a charming village with much to commend it.

* I'm pleased to be able to announce that the Auberge Hiribarren has re-opened under new management - and from all accounts it's better than ever (reviews here). Its central location couldn't be bettered and the views across the Bidassoa into Spain are exceptional.

26th June.. We were invited for lunch yesterday by our neighbours in Bayonne - but it wasn't here, it was to be at their other house in the country set high up in the hills, through the Pas du Roland, outside Itxassou, and then up and up on a winding single track lane (complete with hairpin bends). It finished here at their stunning Basque farmhouse - with views - as estate agents are wont to say - to die for. The house was in an idyllic position high up on a valley side with a 180° view of a slice of forested Basque mountainside - with one only other farm visible high in the distance at the end of the valley.

There were eight of us for lunch and we were sat outside in a small stone barn that had two walls removed so we had experience of eating al fresco - plus shelter if it rained.. They were such generous hosts - the bateau was well and truly pushed out.. I think we left at 5.30pm replete, with every nook and cranny filled, riding very low in the water with our thirsts totally assuaged - and still not hungry 18 hours later!

YES!

On Tuesday, R, a friend (a former Coldstreamer) from the Gers (just over 2 hours inland from here) came over with his two dogs. We'd met by chance at a small ceremony at the Cimetière des Anglais (more here) in 2019 and he and his wife had joined us for our annual Comet Line commemorative weekend later in the year. The small cemetery marked one of the two sites where an unnecessary night encounter had taken place (Napoleon having already abdicated) on 14th April 1814 between General Thouvenot's garrison of Bayonne and the Allied forces under the command of Lieutenant General John Hope, and in particular, the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards and 1st Battalion, 3rd Foot Guards. This night battle saw the kind of close quarter hand-to-hand fighting of the kind that doesn't bear thinking about. More here from the association "Bayonne 1814".

Maintenance of these two British military cemeteries (the oldest known to be in existence) is surprisingly provided by support from Regimental funds. I would have thought that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) should have been charged with that small task - but sadly its remit is confined to those "men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in the First and Second World Wars."

Rupert Brooke's poem - "The Soldier" - could have been written with these two small cemeteries in mind.

R and I had a good day out - after walking the dogs we went to the headland by the lighthouse at Biarritz and had a picnic lunch in some marginal shade under a hot sun! One glass of rosé each was all we could manage in the heat. Afterwards, we drove to the 2 cemetery sites to check on their condition. This is prime growing season for weeds - what with hot sun and rain showers.

19th June. Politicians love to pretend that someone or something really belongs to us if they tag it the Peoples' whatever. Curiously, this affectation started in the 1930s when Hitler caused the VW Beetle (or Bug in the US) to come into being via a colossal scam that rivalled one of Victor Lustig's.. (aka the man who sold the Eiffel Tower - twice!). The German public were exhorted to make monthly payments towards a new Beetle - which many did - but none were ever delivered to the public before WWII came along. Anyway, be that as it may, Volkswagen = People's Car.

Then there's the People's Republic of China. Not my flavour of the month right now. Wouldn't Republic of China been sufficient?

Princess Diana morphed swiftly into the People's Princess after her death in 1997 following a typically gushing tribute by Tony Blair, the then PM.

Instead of asking for a second Brexit Referendum in an attempt to reverse the Parliamentary logjam caused by the outcome of the first one, those asking for a second vote demanded a People's Vote. It implies that the "man in the street" could make a more enlightened decision than those paid to do so at Westminster - plus a People's Vote no longer sounds like a second referendum (if you are hard of thinking).

The latest example of this outbreak of cosiness comes from who else but the BBC with its podcast series entitled "Spitfire: The People's Plane". I wouldn't advise anyone with an interest in aviation to listen to this as it's tosh of the first water. Somehow the BBC has achieved the impossible - it's managed to turn the story of an inspirational aeroplane from solid gold into the purest of dross. The Spitfire made it into RAF service by the skin of its teeth (it had its detractors) - and then once in service, it outshone the more workmanlike Hurricane by its sheer presence and charisma.

In this podcast, the Spitfire pilots take a back seat to typists and the like as Tuppence Middleton (her name tells you everything about her you need to know!) explains repeatedly that it was the "best fighter in the world". At various points in WWII, it may have been - but there were several contenders for that title - chief of which was the R-R Merlin-powered P-51D Mustang. This aircraft was undoubtedly in a class of its own. The rate of technological advance - especially in aircraft performance - was staggering in WWII and it should be remembered that the Spitfire first flew in March 1936 whereas the P-51D arrived in theatre some 8 years later in Spring 1944.

If you know of any more People's Whatevers - please let me know.

Back to the Pays Basque! (who said "At last.."?)

17th June. Tomorrow, I'm off to a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of General de Gaulle's broadcast to France on 18th June 1940.

There's a new word that's come into common currency in the UK - particularly on BBC radio (home of political correctness) - and that's "nuanced". It seems that everything now is nuanced.. as it implies that their reporters have considered all the various shades of grey between the - gasp - black and white extremes. If only..

Iconic has had its time in the sun.. Surely the time has come for it finally to be put to sleep? (along with eponymous)

15th June. Yesterday we were out reasonably early to go down to the Grande Plage at Biarritz to have a ringside seat in front of the ocean. It seemed a long time since we'd been to the Bleu Café there - and thinking about it, we worked out it must have been about 8-9 months ago. The usual waiter was there and he recognised us even with our masks on..

Afterwards, we decided to find a restaurant for lunch - somewhere with a terrace preferably and I thought of the Auberge d'Achtal at Arcangues. We sat out of the sun under the platanes and had a rare average lunch. I'd ordered pipérade with jambon de Bayonne. Apart from being unrecognisable as a pipérade (Madame's is the benchmark), it was so salty that I couldn't eat it. Sadly, I can't see us returning there.

13th June. Louis de Funès was one of France's funniest comedians.. Here he is trying to teach a few gendarmes (one of whom is an officer) 'ow to spik Angliche:

10th June. I've mentioned the Place des Vosges here before as one of Paris's greatest hidden* attractions. If you haven't visited it, if it's still on your "to do" list, then one look at this video should be enough to convince you to go there. Before you do though, book a table for lunch or dinner (19.90€ for 2 course lunch or 33€ for 3 course dinner) at nearby Bofinger, the oldest brasserie in Paris. You can pay more and you can pay less - but I don't think it's possible to eat in such style at these prices anywhere else in Paris. (Dress accordingly.) The beauty of it is that after your lunch or your dinner, you can enjoy a leisurely stroll with your companion around the incomparable surroundings of the Place des Vosges.. only a couple of minutes away. A more romantic setting doesn't exist (in my view).

It's advisable to make a reservation and when booking a table, ask to be seated under the dome - it's by far the best place. If it's your first time there, ask to see the set menu and when the waiter returns to take your order, if you are choosing from the fixed price menu, make sure he knows. (there's more about Bofinger in the restaurant map in the left hand column) If you arrive late, without having reserved a table, don't be surprised if you find yourself seated upstairs.

* = hidden as in hidden in broad daylight.

7th June. I was down at the usual beach this morning with the hound and the car park was thick with cars.. and people changing into wetsuits. The surf community have their own social networks to alert each other of good surfing conditions - so once the essential order of business had been accomplished, we wandered down to the coastal path to see what was going on. I think there must have been 60 surfers in the water and the waves were of a height that I hadn't seen for months. Perhaps 3 metres high? Difficult to tell. There were groups of people on the beach warming up with the kind of movements associated with footballers..

.. and there were people arriving with surf boards on bicycles, motor scooters and I even saw a Renault Clio (a small car) with a surf board inside! And with all the windows closed too.

2nd June. Gary Larson is one of my favourite cartoonists - and here's why:

Very few makers of videos about Biarritz manage to escape the sea front - but here's one who starts with a relaxed stroll about the Place Clemenceau before moving down to the Plage de la Côte des Basques and continuing on to the Plage du Port Vieux - then on around the coast to the Rocher de la Vierge. The walkway to the statue is usually closed off when there's major storm brewing as the seas here can be quite spectacular. At 23:25, the golden expanse of the Grande Plage is revealed.. with the supremely elegant terracotta shape of the Hotel du Palais in the hazy distance. Our favourite café (Bleu Café) shows up at 27:56 - where you have a grandstand view of the waves. The viewpoint then walks around the seaward side of the Hotel du Palais to arrive at the Plage du Miramar. After which follows the jewel in the crown - a visit to the Hotel du Palais at 32:17.

As evening falls, the softly lit Hotel du Palais makes you believe that anything is possible. The tour resumes at the foot of the Rue Gambetta.. an area dotted with wine bars, cafés, restaurants, individual shops and the ever-present real estate agents - plus the indoor market - and Bar Jean.. another of our favourites. It appears that this was filmed during the last week of July as people - dressed in white and red and hot to trot - are boarding buses to travel to nearby Bayonne to take part in the Fêtes de Bayonne..

279. Into the unknown..

2020-05-02T07:34:00.080+02:00

31st May. Here's a short video that shows two of our favourite places to walk the dog now that we're free to roam further than 1 km from home: first, the coastal footpath heading south from Anglet towards Biarritz - and then the forest at Pignada..

When I was down with the pooch at the field behind the beach this morning, I spotted a group of people practising Tai Chi.. it all looked a bit "New Age" to me. Here's another group in the Jardin Publique, Bayonne.. Not sure my creaky old knees would allow me to do this anyway:

We continued the blitz on the garden this morning so that we'll be all ready for summer - Madame tried her steamer on some discoloured paint with no joy - before switching to the Kärcher pressure washer (under instruction!). I then brought out the hedge trimmer and gave a hedge a short back and sides..

We're now both soaked and covered in muddy back-splatter - but the garden and the terrace should be bone dry again in ½ hour and Nutty can be let out again to pester his lizards!

30th May. To spare you the tedium of having to read through all 279 posts here (!), I've included (at no charge!) an excellent review of the Pays Basque here..

An oldie (heard on the radio this morning) that's full of 60s optimism is Gilbert Bécaud's L'important c'est la rose (from 1967 - the year that Madame and I collided!).. Lyrics in Angliche here:

Here's a little-known factoid for the next time it goes quiet in the snug: did you know that Neil Diamond's 1980 single "Love on the Rocks" was co-written by Gilbert Bécaud? (his version here)

One event that, along with the arrival of the swallows, heralds the imminent start of summer (at last!) is the installation of our plancha on the terrace. It sits in the garage over winter, protected by a coating of grease, but today was the day of the annual dragging-out ceremony.. I don't know what it is but it seems to get heavier with each year that passes - and it was already heavy to start with! I cleaned off the winter dust and cobwebs - and wiped the wooden parts over with boiled linseed oil and now it looks like new again. I also oiled our teak garden chairs. I've not been able to find linseed oil here - I'm using a bottle (bought in England at least 12 years ago) that miraculously re-appeared in the garage last year - and it works a treat.

This is one that stays forever fresh - the incomparable Charles Aznavour with "La Bohème"..

We noticed a couple of evenings ago that the swallows were back - swooping, darting and chasing each other at breakneck speed around the roofs and chimneys with that so-distinctive twittering..

This classic Dire Straits song - "Romeo and Juliet" - has long been a favourite of mine..

Here's an astonishing piece of virtuosity by Laura Lāce, a young Latvian guitarist.. as she tackles Vivaldi's "Summer" in a way that no-one could ever have foreseen:

29th May. I was returning from the beach this morning with the hound - when I found myself behind an emergency plumber's white van. I was idly looking at it - half-thinking of other things - when the centime dropped and I suddenly realised that yes, the French do have a sense of humour. The name of the plumber's business was S.eau.S..

27th May. I took a ride along the Nive yesterday almost as far as Ustaritz. Its waters were a tempting bottle green and it looked especially inviting. There were quite a few sculling boats out on the water but without my specs I couldn't identify any of the scullers. Very pleasant indeed out there.

25th May. A few years ago, we were invited to dinner by the friend of a friend, the owner of a stunning Basque house perched on the clifftops just to the north of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. I doubt if its setting could be equalled - the house overlooked the restless expanse of the sea out to the west and north - with the only sound being the sea's rhythmic shushing as it lapped endlessly onto the property's private beach down below. (I should have worked harder at school!☺)

To the rear, there was an uninterrupted view of La Rhune, the emblematic mountain that dominates the Côte Basque with its familiar outline..

After dinner, I excused myself and stepped out on to the front terrace to watch the sun going down (I lit a cigarillo - yes, I smoked the odd one in those days) in that velvety windless dusk. What a stunning view.. I could get used to that!

24th May. Another walk through the Pignada woods with the pooch this morning. I was looking at the maritime pines - they have slim elegant trunks, often with no branches until at least a height of 20 metres (60ft) from the ground is reached. None of them grow straight up either - they all seem to grow 10° or more off the vertical but always in a different sense to their neighbours. At ground level, ferns were shooting up past 2 metres in height - with more to come. Even with the occasional jogger pounding through, it's still a remarkably peaceful place - although I did hear one jogger as she approached: she had earpieces in connected to a phone strapped to her arm - and she was in full auto-babble mode. I can't imagine anything worse. I'm afraid I'm not part of this mobile phone generation - I have one - but it gathers dust somewhere in the house.

By the way, the Jardin Publique (opposite the theatre in Biarritz) used to be home to some mighty trees - but sadly, many of the larger specimens were blown down during the big storm (Tempête Klaus) in 2009. It used to be one of the few places with guaranteed shade where you could find respite from the sometimes fierce summer heat. The loss of these great trees changed the whole character of the Jardin Publique for a few decades.

It's always nice to hear an outsider's view of your own town - so sit back and enjoy this stroll around Bayonne. Thanks to Arnie Jacobsen (a good Danish name by the sound of it) for this one!

22nd May. I've just discovered that all the time I've been making my favourite summer drink, without knowing it, I've been making a Daiquiri.. See what I wrote on 3rd May..

21st May. I took Nutty, our cocker spaniel, to the woods at nearby Pignada this morning - and what a pleasure it was to walk in silence beneath these tall trees under blue skies. For the past 2 months I'd been walking him around Bayonne - across one bridge over the Adour and then back home via a different bridge. It stayed within the limits (just!) set by the government (1km radius from home for a max of one hour) but having to repeat that same walk every day wasn't the most inspiring thing - but needs must.

I'd forgotten just how pleasant it was to walk in the Pignada woods - I really must take my camera there next time. There are many maritime pines that have grown to an immense height but I've yet to see any sign of the red squirrels that I'm lead to believe are native to this area.

14th May. Had my hair cut today while wearing a mask.. I didn't feel much like Zorro..

10th May. Biarritz enjoys a spectacular frontage onto the Atlantic - and understandably, most videos of the town show the same familiar seafront images. It's a pity because the architecture of the town is almost a time capsule of its celebrated past when, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the preferred destination for the crowned heads of old Europe - and the rich and famous. Many of its extravagant and oversized seaside properties were constructed in a variety of outlandish and fantastical styles (think Hollywood-sur-Mer) that could easily be used as a backdrop to a Rudolph Valentino film or an F Scott Fitzgerald novel.. It's hard to find a video of Biarritz that actually shows anything behind the seafront. This is the best I can come up with - start at 2.12:

I made this short video a few years ago that shows the breadth of architectural styles to be found in Biarritz.. (plus a few favourite places tagged on the end!)

A few days ago, the French PM announced a progressive relaxation of the confinement measures that came into force here in mid-March. Our reaction? As we're both retired, there's not the same imperative to rejoin society at large. There's also no vaccine on the horizon either - so as we're both in the 'at-risk' age group and Madame has ongoing health issues, we intend to carry on as we have been for the past 6-7 weeks. Many of our friends intend to do the same. I think the driving force behind the proposed relaxation measures is largely economic - but as we are no longer in the workforce, we're exempt from that. If people wish to start going out, seeing friends, having BBQs, street parties, and all the rest of it - they're at liberty to do so of course - but we won't.

6th May. Two hours to the north of us lies Arcachon - a prime seaside destination for the people of nearby Bordeaux.. Here it is during confinement..

And here's what Biarritz looked like a month ago under confinement.. Very odd to see all the hotspots so deserted:

5th May. What with the recent heat, interleaved with a few showers, the garden has been growing like crazy.. I've just spent half the afternoon up a wobbly ladder trying to cut back shrubs and bushes that were making a bid for freedom. I had to stop about ½ hour ago to cool down with a frosty San Miguel from the fridge in the garage. It's a tough job etc etc..

4th May. Temp was in the low thirties today and the forecast was convinced that a thunderstorm was due this evening - I didn't think it seemed likely - but just half an hour ago, we had a flashing night sky, followed by rumbles a-plenty and a good showering of rain.

3rd May. Forecast is for 33°C (91°F) here tomorrow..

Here's a reminder of our part of the world in happier times..

These split screen videos have become all the rage on YouTube since the world has been in lock-down. Here's one that resonates with me - Harrison Sheckler organised 300 people from 15 different countries to come together to participate in a beautiful virtual rendition of that great song "You'll Never Walk Alone" (paroles en français ici) from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "Carousel" (1956). Enjoy! (No extra charge for playing it twice!)

Harrison Sheckler - take a bow! I've lost track of how many times I've played this..

It was a day of 'firsts' today.. I wore my shorts for the first time this year (and yes, I did warn the neighbours), then we had lunch outside on the terrace for the first time, and it was so hot we needed the umbrella - another first - and finally, this evening, I made myself one my rhum specials for the first time this year: take a long glass, add a fat finger of white rhum from Martinique, then a finger of sugar cane syrup, the juice of a lime and then top it all up with cracked ice.. One glass is perfect.. a second would be disastrous! Four or five more months of this.. I mustn't weaken..!

1st May. As I approached the Place de la Liberté in front of the Town Hall (right) in Bayonne this morning I spotted about 10 people conducting a ritual "May Day manif" (demonstration) there. They were walking in a circle maybe 30 yards across and as I neared them I could hear the mumblings of their discontent. They really don't understand how lucky they are to live in such a blessed part of France - but that truth cuts no ice with these perpetual grumblers.

The community of Anglet sits between Bayonne and Biarritz and the three were recently merged together into an intercommunal structure (based on Biarritz and Bayonne) known as the agglomeration of the Pays Basque (consisting of 158 communes). Anglet is a convoluted tangle of streets with no clear pattern - all lined with the characteristic white-washed red-shuttered Basque houses. For a driver, it's a real challenge to acquire the mental road map but after 12 years, I think I've almost got it! Maybe..

Here's how the normally vibrant town of Anglet appeared during the Coronavirus confinement in April 2020:

I can't remember a time when we entered the month of May with such a sense of foreboding, unease and a lack of hope. Who would have thought that, just a few short months ago, many thousands of us would not be alive to greet the summer.

The world has changed - all that we knew is now history. For those of us who are retired, staying at home is do-able, without too much stress. However, for those who are still working, I think they're going to be experiencing a sea-change in the way their lives are organised in future. For some, they're going to find that their jobs have evaporated. This crisis has revealed so many dependencies and unforeseen links and I'm sure there are still some more earth-shuddering shocks to come. Given time, and if a reliable long term vaccine for the Covid19 virus can be developed, then I think the former order of things may be re-instated - but how much time are we talking about?

In the meantime, here's Oldarra, one of my favourite Basque choirs, with "Maitia Nun Zira":

278. April is the kindest month.*

2020-04-01T12:17:00.004+02:00

21st April. Although this painting - Nighthawks - of Edward Hopper's dates from 1942, it appears that we were practising social distancing even then:

Nighthawks (1942)

The light in Hopper's work is always interesting - it has a 'stagey' quality..

"House by the railroad" (1925)

One of his quotes: "Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."

By 1923, Hopper's slow climb finally produced a breakthrough. He re-encountered Josephine Nivison, an artist and former student of Robert Henri, during a summer painting trip in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They were opposites: she was short, open, gregarious, sociable, and liberal, while he was tall, secretive, shy, quiet, introspective, and conservative. They married a year later. She said of him, "Sometimes talking to Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well, except that it doesn't thump when it hits bottom." I'm not sure he would have thanked her for that.

18th April. A curious event - the Alarde de Fontarrabie - takes place on 8th September each year just over the border at Fontarrabie and it commemorates the lifting of the French siege of the town in 1638. We've still to make the visit!

The people express their delight in some strange, not to say bizarre, ways to our eyes.. see what you think - it starts below at 0:40.. (I shouldn't pass judgement - we have Morris Dancers!)
Here's how they celebrate it in nearby Irun - advance it to 2:15... and 9:45.. and finally 55:20 for firing several volleys from their guns..

"Tally Ho"

I've been following the progress of Leo Goolden, a young Brit boat builder on YouTube as he rescues "Tally Ho" (right), a classic (1910) wooden gaff cutter yacht (he paid $1 for it), and slowly brings it back to life in a painstaking restoration in the US.

Leo's a gifted craftsman with a work ethic to match and he accepts no compromise with his from-the-keel-up restoration. There seems to be nothing that defeats him or that he can't manage. I've been watching this series for well over a couple of years and I find it fascinating and enthralling in equal measure.

Each of his videos is generally about 15-20 minutes long and and if you just watch one episode each day, you'll soon catch up. He's based at Sequim, Washington State and there's a link to his first YouTube video in the left hand column here under the heading "Useful Links" - the link is called "Rebuilding Tally Ho". I think you'll find it addictive. Don't be tempted to skip ahead!

14th April. Sir Stirling Moss passed away on 12th April at the grand old age of 90.

Moss at the Karussell,
Nurburgring

It was often said of Stirling Moss that he was the greatest racing driver never to have won the Formula One World Championship. I once bumped into him in the paddock at Oulton Park and he graciously signed his autograph on the only piece of writing material I had on me - a Swan Vestas match box. For me and I suspect for many others, he would be squeezed into second place in the pantheon of all-time great racing drivers behind the legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio - but only by the smallest of margins. They both had that matchless ability to drive a car to its absolute limits while at the same time treating their fellow competitors with courtesy and respect. Driving others off the track, ramming them or carrying out other underhand tactics didn't feature in their driving styles. (No need to name names - we all know who we're talking about)

Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson en route to winning the 1955 Mille Miglia

Moss and Jenkinson set the all-time record for the Mille Miglia (yes, 1000 miles!) by winning it at an average speed of 99mph. It must be borne in mind that the event was staged on public roads that weren't closed. Moss said later that they were hitting speeds of 170-180mph (275-290km/h) in places. They finished 32 minutes ahead of a highly creditable performance by Fangio in second place, who drove unaccompanied.

Here's a wonderfully atmospheric Shell documentary film of the 1955 Belgian Grand Prix at the magnificent Spa Francorchamps circuit. It was from an age when public roads were often converted into temporary circuits with the addition of a few straw bales. The film covers the relaxed Saturday practice and then the Grand Prix itself (all 324 miles of it) on the Sunday in which Fangio, Moss and Kling were to drive the superlative Mercedes Benz W196 with its fuel-injected straight eight engine.
There's a refreshing absence of the commercialisation, marketing and media hype that regrettably infests the sport today. Spectators spectated - they didn't attire themselves in clone outfits from their preferred team. The drivers didn't sit in their cars in the pits during practice watching computer diagnostics or live TV coverage and there were no leggy umbrella girls on the grid. No team radios or telemetry from the cars to the pit wall either. The only driver aids back then were the steering wheel and the accelerator, clutch and brake pedals. No DRS or unnecessarily complex hybrid-engined cars..

Moss winning in characteristic style at Monaco in 1961

Races were won and lost where they should be - out on the track - not in the pit lane - unlike today where pit crews can routinely change all four tyres in less than 3 seconds - a laudable achievement - but is it racing? The teams didn't have ultra-lavish motor homes provided by sponsors - instead they were lodged in local garages - with the locals being treated to the sight and sound of thoroughbred racing cars being driven on public roads to and from the circuit. Drivers raced wearing polo shirts or, in Fangio's case - a T-shirt. And not one baseball cap to be seen! No carbon fibre wings to be broken in the rough and tumble of the first corner.. just aluminium bodywork that responded to the mechanic's hammer. Today's racing is faster - that's for sure - but is it any better?

Some time after Moss's career ending accident at Goodwood in 1962, he was asked what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He said, "I have no qualifications to do anything. As a teenager, before I started racing seriously, I’d done a couple of things in the hotel trade – night porter, working in the kitchens – but if you know nothing about anything, there are only two jobs available to you: estate agent or Member of Parliament."

Rather than read my inadequate efforts to describe his life and his exploits, what could be better than to listen to the great man himself - here's Stirling Moss talking about two of the greatest races he took part in - the 1955 Mille Miglia and the 1961 Monaco GP: Podcast 1 & Podcast 2. More tributes from the world of racing here and here..

Stirling Moss 1929 - 2020

Stirling - thank you for the way you always conducted yourself - with such inimitable style, grace and courage. RIP Stirling.

Now that the 100% electric Tram'bus is in service on the Côte Basque, it's time to have a look back at the earliest tramways that connected Bayonne with Biarritz. The first steam trams looked like they'd been assembled by someone in the dark - without the benefit of the instructions.. but, despite that - or perhaps because of it - they have an enormous charm all of their own.

(Thanks to Guy Lalanne, president of the Jakintza association, for this video)
13th April. Last night we watched Andrea Bocelli's solo performance from the Duomo, Milan, representing a message of love, healing and hope to Italy and the world via live coverage courtesy of YouTube. He sang Panis Angelicus (from “Messe Solennelle” Op. 12, FWV 61) César Franck; Ave Maria, CG 89a (arr. from Johann Sebastian Bach, “Prelude” no. 1, BWV 846) Charles-François Gounod; Sancta Maria (arr. from “Cavalleria Rusticana”, Intermezzo) Pietro Mascagni; Domine Deus (from “Petite Messe Solennelle”) Gioachino Antonio Rossini befoe finishing with Amazing Grace (John Newton). Programme here:

11th April. I took a couple of photos this morning during my hour-long walk with the pooch around Bayonne - looking south across the Adour to its confluence with the Nive.

The confluence of the Adour and the Nive at Bayonne

Once back home, I stitched the two photos together to form the composite image (above) with the help of a little-known Microsoft program - Image Composite Editor - which was simplicity itself to use. It's available in 32 or 64 bit versions - and did I mention it was free? Try it!

By the way, the old barge in the photo above is the Djébelle (right).. and it offers unique chambre d'hôte accommodation with, as they say, a view to die for.

Day 26 - the Lock-Down continues..

Here's a charming video of an off-season visit to Biarritz..

10th April. The Coronavirus pandemic is shaking our global society to its roots with untold thousands having been infected by the virus and thousands of those dying from it. This unseen killer affects so many human activities that we, up until now, have taken for granted - for example, we need to think hard about going outside into social situations that, prior to the outbreak, we wouldn't have thought twice about. I've been reading accounts of those unfortunates who have found themselves "intubated"* in Intensive Care Units where a simple involuntary action such as a cough can inhibit the fundamental ability to breathe - and that alone is enough to induce immediate panic in the patient..

* is there an uglier word in the English language than this?

Who would have thought just a few short months ago that the world as we know it was about to be stood on its head? The number of deaths in the World Trade Centre tragedy was appalling - but now each evening, we're being told the latest death toll - the cumulative figures are truly frightening.

There is some truth in this quote: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." (attributed to Josef Stalin) but, make no mistake, every death from Coronavirus is mourned by family, relatives and friends and the situation for them is made worse by the fact that the patients can't be visited either before and after death. To make matters worse, the funerals are dealt with expeditiously and without ceremony.

One of the lessons that may be learned after the pandemic is over is that we can no longer treat the world as a global village. The availability of mass air travel is certainly a key factor in facilitating the spread of infectious diseases, often resulting from insanitary food practices. I hesitate to point a finger at China - but until the pandemic, I had no idea what a "wet market" was. If you wish to find out more, take a look at YouTube if you must. Be warned - I'll say no more.

This next piece is from Melanie Phillips and it addresses the uncomfortable truths about the West's relationship with China:

The coronavirus pandemic is the direct outcome of appalling behaviour by the Chinese communist regime. Yesterday, the Commons foreign affairs committee reported that the fight against the virus has been hampered by China’s lies. The committee’s chairman, Tom Tugendhat, said China had “manipulated vital information about the virus in order to protect the regime’s image”.
Despite all this, it has been posing as a humanitarian superpower by sending medical supplies to desperate countries. Britain is accordingly importing from China ventilators and virus test kits. But will they work? Numerous countries have complained that the Chinese equipment is defective.
Before this crisis the government subscribed to the view that any threat China posed to the West was containable. Through doing business with it, the West might turn it into a regular player on the international stage.
If that was ever true, it certainly stopped after the accession of Xi Jinping as general secretary of the Chinese communist party and the country’s president.
For Xi’s aim is to make China the leading power in the world, and all its dealings are merely a means to that end. As Tugendhat says: “China is determined to create a new world order with itself at the top.”
So why has the West turned a blind eye to all this? According to Tugendhat, British and western attention was elsewhere: with the EU, or fighting Islamists in Afghanistan. Its eyes were off that particular ball.
And so it allowed its economies to become dependent on China.
Will the government emerge from this crisis determined that Britain should regain self-sufficiency and end its dependency on China? Or will it, deeming the scale of the challenge too enormous, take the lethal path of least resistance and short-term benefits just as before?
No one can yet say how this crisis will change Britain. But towards China, any pretence is now over.

Throughout all of this, it must always be borne in mind that while Western politics operate in multiples of 5 years (the length of most democratically-elected governments), the Chinese take a longer view - decades and multiples thereof.

Our thoughts go out to those who have lost a loved one due to this pandemic.

7th April. Are there any more worrying words to a wife than her husband wandering into the garden saying "I think I might do a bit of strimming.."?

5th April. Here's the Coleman Hawkins Quintet (with Oscar Peterson on piano) - for when the fire's burning low:

3rd April. One positive to emerge from the Coronavirus pandemic is that bull fights must surely be cancelled in Spain (and here in SW and S of France). Viva los toros!

Sad to hear of Bill Withers passing today. He left some great songs behind to remember him by, including, among others, this one (featured before here) and this. RIP Bill..

1st April. A Basque friend has often mentioned the "abandoned village" of Aritzakun, here between Bidarray (Pays Basque) and Elizondo (Navarre) in the beautiful Baztan valley and I've always been curious about it. Looking at the map, it's just 1½ km due south of the Col des Veaux, one of the places where escaping Allied airmen used to cross into Francoist Spain in WWII, led by their Basque guides (Comet Line). I really must go up there once this confinement has been lifted. Meanwhile, here's a video that shows how once a year, those born in the now-deserted village return to celebrate their roots - very important here. It was abandoned in the 1980s..

* April gets you out of your head and out working in the garden.

Marty Rubin

277. The first green shoots of Spring

2020-03-02T10:21:00.005+01:00

31st March. Finally, some good news.. On 24th March, the UK government announced it would turn the ExCeL Centre in London's Docklands area into a temporary hospital to cope with patients affected by Covid-19 and work began almost immediately.

Due to open this week, NHS Nightingale Hospital London will have between 4,000 and 5,000 beds. Congratulations to all concerned.. This project reminded me of the miracles that were achieved in WWII by people working for a common cause. It's sad that an emergency such as Coronavirus was required to bring us together. Of course, there will be no shortage of critics who will perform all manner of mental contortions to avoid praising any of this government's actions.

Story and pictures here and here.

30th March. Musicians from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in isolation at their homes play Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ - coordinated by Skype:

With so much bad news circulating, I thought I'd change the mood and show you a playlist of several short 30 second videos of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. This charming seaside resort and working fishing port was where we started looking for a property following our move to the Pays Basque in 2007. We'd first visited the resort in 1991 and we were smitten instantly (and we still are).

However, given the nature and layout of the town, it quickly became apparent that there was little hope that we'd be able to find what we were looking for in the town centre - and even if we had have done, it would have been outside our budget. Nevertheless, Saint-Jean-de-Luz remains a firm favourite with us and even now we count ourselves fortunate to be able to access it just a few minutes from home. These clips were filmed in April 2019.

29th March. There are so many funnies circulating now about Coronavirus (due to people having a lot of time on their hands). This is one that I particularly liked:

28th March. Stéphane Sénéchal, a professional opera singer, has been providing a free concert to his neighbours since Tuesday from the window of his apartment in Paris's 9th arrondissement. A gesture of comfort in this difficult period, especially for the elderly.

27th March. One very welcome side effect of the Coronavirus global pandemic is that drug addicts and users will have extreme difficulties in sourcing their supplies, given that many communities have been placed in lock down. Oh dear. How sad.

Back from an early morning shop at Grand Frais, Biarritz - whoever thought of the concept deserves a medal.. Much thought has clearly gone into the presentation of the produce - the shop is lit like a film set. I noticed this morning that, in addition to the spotlit displays, discreet clouds of water vapour were drifting over selected gleaming fruit and vegetables. This is nothing more than Food Porn! Everything is presented to maximum advantage and as I've said before, it really does make shopping pleasureable. The effect is more than skin deep though.. I watched the replenishment of the displays and it's clear that the produce is as fresh as can be. It all looks as though it was picked first thing this morning (although it might have been as long ago as yesterday afternoon!)

The shop opened at 9am (later than usual) and so we had to queue (yes, in France!☺) with a couple of metres spacing. Of course, that wasn't good enough for some shoppers with the queue-jumping gene who, ignoring the big queue for the main shop, joined a separate shorter queue for the shop's bakery and when the shutters were raised they somehow found themselves - by chance! - in the entrance to the main shop. There are always those who seek to gain advantage.. it's a trait of human nature that's to be found in every country - but here some have turned it into an art form. There was a time when behaviour like that would have had me mentally reaching for a baseball bat or a pump action shotgun (yes!) - but I've become more philosophical these days (I just give my knuckles a good clenching instead!).

26th March. I was woken early this morning by a couple of paws on the bed and some heavy breathing.. I can take a hint.. I let Nutty out in the garden and true to form, he scurried around to check on his lizards.. After he'd had his first hunt of the day for them - with him all a-quiver - we went back to bed. With the present restrictions in place, there's practically zero traffic using the avenue and so I thought I'd open the bedroom windows to let some fresh air in.

Two minutes later, just as I was heading for oblivion, it sounded as though the Bayonne & District Chapter of the Vespa & Lambretta Club (right) was holding an Open Day outside.. so out of bed again to close the windows. Back to bed.. Two minutes later, it felt like a sack of potatoes had landed on my feet - and wasn't going to move. (guess who?!) After that, sleep was impossible.

My mind started wandering and I recalled a Parisian friend we had here some 10 years ago - a good friend and yet someone with the unintentional (I hope) arrogance of one who lives in a nation's capital. I was watching him tapping away at his Blackberry (left) and so I asked him what he used it for. He replied that it was useful for noting the dates and times of expositions in Paris.. but (and this is where his bluntness took me by surprise) he said that one wouldn't be much use to me as there were no exhibitions here.

He came out with another zinger during that same visit. He regarded himself as an "intellectual" (a compliment in France) and one day he was searching for a word to complete a comment he wanted to make on a cultural subject - and I supplied the right answer. His reply? "Yes, but that's outside your sphere isn't it..". I've always been too polite to make, or reply to, comments like these.

I could have said that going to exhibitions is a passive activity and that I prefer doing things - rather than simply looking - but I didn't.

So, in reply to your unasked question, this is what kept me awake this morning! Strange, the things we remember.

25th March. As the weather warms up here and the lizards in the garden ease out of their hibernation, it's not gone unnoticed by Nutty, our cocker spaniel. He's on permanent lookout duty by the kitchen door with his view of the lizard border. He's become totally obsessed by them and as soon as I let him out, he darts straight there to stare intently at the tangled roots where they hide. They're quite safe though - their reactions are sharper than his.

Here's a video about the coastal towns here - to watch in full screen.. The Bayonne segment starts at 0:50..
We have 5 more weeks of confinement to look forward to here - and so I've been tackling jobs I've been putting off for a lo-o-o-ng time. I've been meaning to do some much-needed blog maintenance - repairing broken links, replacing videos that no longer play and replacing photos that no longer display. I started this mammoth task a few months ago and I'd been making slow progress as it seemed never-ending. However, this confinement triggered a fresh burst of energy and I finished restoring all 277 posts just a few minutes ago. May I make a plea - if you find a video that doesn't work, or a broken link or a missing image - I'd be grateful if you could draw my attention to it. Many thanks!

23rd March. The YouTube issue appears to have been resolved.

19th March. The conditions were just right on 15th February for the offshore reef between Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Hendaye to produce the celebrated "Belharra" wave. See what you think:

18th March. Come on, snap out of it! Being "confined to barracks" gives you the chance to watch escapist fantasies like this next video. For those with long memories, yes, it's a re-post from 7 years ago - but it's well worth it don't you think? If this doesn't ring your bell, float your boat or jangle your bangles, there's no hope for you! Best in full screen..

16th March. Some interesting statistics emerged from yesterday's vote in the local elections. Firstly, out of 32,138 registered voters (of which I was one), there were some 19,672 abstentions. I would imagine that the majority of those who stayed away did so due to fears about the Coronavirus. Secondly, when we arrived in Bayonne in 2007, its population was 44,498. In 2017, the population had risen by almost 20% to 51,228.

The World Health Organisation has published a great deal of useful information regarding Coronavirus (COVID19). It's available in the following languages: العربية, 中文, English, Français, Русский and Español.

15th March. We went for a walk this morning at the quaintly-named Milady beach at Ilbarritz, just to the south of Biarritz. We sat on a couple of rocks and watched the rise and fall of the ever-changing sea.. something we never tire of:

The answer to the world's insatiable appetite for energy lies there if only we knew how to exploit it. Looking at the turquoise green sea with its dazzlingly white breakers under a cloudless blue sky, it was hard to believe that all was not well with the world (that's Spain in the distance by the way).

There are a few short (about a minute each) videos here that show the coast at Biarritz. Well worth a look:

14th March. Earlier this evening, Edouard Philippe, the French Prime Minister, announced a package of measures designed to slow down the proliferation of the Coronavirus in France with the closure of restaurants, cafes, cinemas and nightclubs as well as other businesses deemed to be non-essential. It would not, Mr Philippe said, affect essential businesses such as food shops, chemists, banks, newsagents and petrol stations. Mr Philippe also asked people to reduce their travel, especially between towns.

"The best way to slow down the epidemic", he said, "is social distancing. I say this gravely - we must all together show greater discipline in the application of these measures."

However local elections due on Sunday would also still go ahead. he said. Religious buildings would remain open but gatherings and ceremonies should be postponed. France reported a sharp rise in cases on Saturday, from 3,661 to 4,499. It recorded 12 more deaths, bringing the toll to 79.

Elsewhere, I came across this chilling and horrifying assessment of the Coronavirus pandemic and a prediction of potential outcomes. I'm convinced that what we've seen so far is but the tip of the iceberg. Infection rates will increase exponentially from now on. There appears to be no solution to this pandemic other than a vaccine - and that has yet to be developed.

12th March. We're getting ready to batten down the hatches here - I think we've seen just the leading edge of the global Coronavirus pandemic - and who knows what the future will bring. Remember - get into the habit of washing your hands frequently while singing the anthem of your choice.☺ This is one I discovered by chance a few weeks ago. Here are a few more to choose from: here, here, here and here.

9th March. Just when you thought you could - maybe - predict the outcome of a match, the Guinness 6 Nations came up with a thriller from Murrayfield (Scotland's home) that is likely to change the outcome of this year's tournament.

First up though, Saturday saw Wales visiting Twickenham to play England in a match that I thought would be close - and my money was on Wales to snatch the win by <5 points. However, while it was close at the end of the 80 minutes, it finished with a narrow 33-30 win for England. Close but no cigar for the Welsh boys. Match report here.

Tuilagi was red-carded towards the end of the match for a 'no arms' tackle on George North - and Alun Wyn Jones' tackle was gripped by Joe Marler in an attempt - unseen by the ref - to provoke a retaliation from the Welsh captain that probably would have resulted in a red card for him (AWJ). Joe Marler is a somewhat bizarre individual but using whatever lies between his ears is not his strong point. The game does not need this.

The real story of the weekend came from north of the border at Murrayfield. A young French team had been writing its own headlines from the start of this year's tournament but I think that they travelled to Scotland with the mindset that they were in for a routine win. However, other teams (notably England) with the same mindset have gone to Murrayfield and found it to be the rock upon which their dreams foundered. Scotland were all over France yesterday like (as they say) "a cheap suit".. and France only managed to play their game in brief sequences.

Exhibit A

France proved the truth of the saying that "no plan survives first contact with the enemy". They were unfortunate to lose their hooker Camille Chat in the warm-up, to be followed shortly after by their lively fly half Romain Ntamack, who left the field following a knock to the head. They were also deprived of Cros for 10 minutes for a dangerous tackle on Grant Gilchrist – although Paul Willemse seemed to be the real culprit – then worse followed for them close to half-time, when Haouas was sent off for punching Man of the Match Jamie Ritchie in his face. Provocation or not, there can be no argument against his red card. Scotland went on to win 27-17 - a result that was thoroughly deserved! Stuart 'Ogg (as he's called on French TV) had his usual influential match and flanker Hamish Watson seemed to be ever-present in both attack and defence - he has a low centre of gravity and is difficult to knock off the ball - a real warrior! Match report here.

The upshot is that England has moved to top the table on 13 pts - with a slightly better points difference to France. What happens next is in the lap of the Gods.

6th March. I came across this next clip by accident - I don't know about you but I feel sick just watching it. It's over in Vancouver Island. See what you think:

Look at his earlier videos for more scary stuff! 200 feet up in an aeroplane is a much less scarier proposition than 200 feet up a tree - especially with a chain saw dangling off your wrist! Wild horses etc.

I was reminded of a trip I made years ago to Tofino and Ucluelet on Vancouver Island's west coast.

Here's Tofino:

.. and Ucluelet:

I'd be sorely tempted to move there if it wasn't for a few insoluble practicalities - plus the fact I'm firmly rooted here!

Much rumbling of thunder during the night accompanied by the sounds of rainwater running in the gutters. As we're only about 3-4km from the sea, the westerly gales of the last few days have also meant that the sound of crashing surf has been clearly audible here. I took the dog down to the coast a couple of times at the height of the gales and I don't want to imagine what life must have been like for anyone out at sea in the Bay of Biscay. The sea that I could see was seething - waves were breaking further out than usual - and the surface was a mass of whiteness with large banks of quivering wind-driven foam 2-3 feet high that had been blown high up onto the beach. There's no mistaking the sea here for the Mediterranean!

5th March. One of the 'benefits' of my having taken French citizenship is that I am now eligible to vote in the municipal elections which will take place here on 15th and 22nd March.

Another step forward: this morning I received my Carte Electorale which, together with my Carte Identité, is needed to vote here.

Meanwhile, President Macron has issued a reassuring statement regarding the status of British expats here in France. He said, "Dear British friends, you are leaving the EU but you are not leaving Europe. Nor are you becoming detached from France, nor the friendship of its people. The Channel has never managed to separate our destinies; Brexit will not do so, either."

Personally, I've yet to experience anything but a warm welcome from people here. I think the UK media must shoulder some of the blame for stirring up tensions where, in reality, none exist.

4th March. Some moody shots of Biarritz for you here filmed just before l'heure bleue (blue hour) or, as I'd call it, the "cocktail hour":

..speaking of which - I'm off to see a man about a dog.

3rd March. Coronavirus in France - info.

Looking for property in France with listings in English? See here and here. For listings in English in Pyrénées-Atlantiques - look here.

I heard on the news this morning that, prior to 2007, no high speed rail network existed anywhere in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and yet today - it has more high speed track than all of the other countries in the world - combined. Astonishing. And how many of their cities have you heard of?

It could be argued that the Chinese model of communism and capitalism is working better than Western capitalism. Unfortunately, the two party system prevalent in many western democracies is incapable of sustaining coherent long term strategies for the benefit of their peoples. It could only have been a Western politician who once said that "a week is a long time in politics". Yes - perhaps that statement is probably true for most everywhere - except for China, where they have traditionally taken the long view of events. There are many downsides to Chinese politics that would be unacceptable in the West - but there's no denying the remarkable results the PRC has produced.

Then there was the offer by the CRCC to build the proposed UK High Speed 2 (HS2) in only five years for less money and at faster speeds (260mph). As kids say today: "What's not to like?". What an embarrassment..

The internet revolutionised society with the number of social networks that proliferated in recent years. Political debate (discours in French) has fragmented in conjunction with the rise of special interest groups enabled by the internet. During the last 3½ years of UK politics (post-referendum and pre-Boris Johnson government), we saw how dissent within both main parties threatened to overturn the status quo and destroy party discipline. I'm not sure that Jack can ever be put back in his box. Future election success will go to the political party that dominates social media. It's worth noting that few of your correspondent's generation are active in this sphere and once we're gone, debate will be a thing of the past. The short tweet is the way ahead for the upcoming generations (whether we like it or not). President Trump was the first to learn this lesson.

I had to laugh yesterday morning listening to BBC Radio 4 - a report on the measures necessary to curb the spread of Coronavirus said that people should wash their hands thoroughly - but for how long? The UK's Health Secretary said members of the public should sing "God Save The Queen" as they wash their hands to try and combat Coronavirus. Normally, at times of national emergencies, civil servants isually add on the caveat that the public should be vigilant.. but against an invisible threat such as Coronavirus they clearly decided it was unnecessary. Still, the image of millions of Brits standing at their kitchen sinks warbling the national anthem while they wash their hands will take a long time to fade.

Those familiar with British politics will recognise straight off the bat that this suggestion went down like a lead balloon with Scots of a nationalist persuasion! According to this report, GSTQ is the English national anthem.. and so it goes.

Off to wash my hands with a song in my heart!

2nd March. A real blowy and blustery day today.. I might just take another trip to the coast to see what the sea is up to.

We were out in the car yesterday and noticed the first greening in the trees - Spring is on the way. Our garden is cranking itself up for another year of growth - aided and abetted by spring rains and warm weather. We saw 20°C yesterday.

I was down at the beach yesterday with Nutty, our cocker spaniel, and it was such a great day - a roaring sea with crashing Atlantic waves driven by a blustery wind from the west - and so I decided to walk along the coastal pathway (left) to "Le Rayon Vert" - a bar/restaurant (Edited to add in 2023: now closed) on the beach just outside Biarritz. If you click on the photo (right), a small yellow cross marks the northerly and southerly ends of the walk.

On arriving there, Le Rayon Vert was still closed for the winter so we turned around and set off back to the car to try and break one hour for the out-and-back walk. Tick VG!

This walk didn't seem to have made any kind of adverse impression on the dog at all! Once we got home, he started darting around the house with his bone. Me? Er yes.. different story.. I don't mind admitting that I was glad of a sit-down! ☺

276. The dawn of a new era

2020-02-03T22:20:00.005+01:00

29th February. Apologies for my absence of late because as some of you will be aware, we've been dealing with some health issues here.

I think we've just seen the future of food shopping - we visited Grand Frais at Biarritz this morning.. It's housed in a former Renault dealership - and whoever is behind it has captured the essence of old traditional food markets - and brought it bang up to date. The groaning self-service displays are lit by warm spotlights (shades of Hollywood) and everything looks so appealing (don't worry - I know when I'm being seduced!).

I've never seen such a range, variety and quality of food (freshest of fruit and vegetables - plus meat, fish and dairy products) as here. The word cornucopia sprung to my mind as we walked around - such an abundance of the finest quality products - and at competitive prices. It made shopping a genuine pleasure - and how often do you find yourself saying that? I can see that we'll be regulars here. A similar shop - Coeur de Frais - opened up at Bayonne a while ago (only visited it for the first time the other week) - it's the same concept - the freshest of fresh produce - but again, served in a self service environment.

We've also just heard that Philippe Lopez and Sylvie Lacroix have moved from one of our favourite restaurants - the Café du Musée at Bayonne to Urt, where they've taken over La Galupe, a renowned local restaurant on the banks of the Adour. Philippe has always been an inventive chef and his menus reflected what was in season at that moment. A visit to La Galupe must surely follow as night follows day! (Edited in 2023 to add: I believe Philippe and Sylvie have since departed - maybe their business model didn't survive Covid)

26th February. This haunting piano piece by Rachmaninoff - his Prelude in C Sharp Minor - was written when he was only 19..

Is it me or is not this piece more stirring when played on the organ? Here it is played by Loreto Aramendi, the main organist at Santa Maria del Coro, San Sebastian, Spain. Played like this it uses all the power of the pipe organ.

(Listening to the piano version, I suddenly realised this played an important part in that childhood favourite of millions of kids - myself included - in the 1950s - "Sparky's Magic Piano"..

19th February. I stumbled upon some early Dylan songs on YouTube earlier - and this album contains many of them.

15th February. I see that the UK is reportedly in talks with the Chinese over giving Beijing's state-owned railway builder a role in constructing the HS2 high-speed rail line.

While this would probably represent the most cost-effective solution, it's a shameful indictment of just how much of the UK's ability to manage and deliver large infrastructure projects has withered away. Once upon a time, the UK introduced railways to a waiting world - and now, after decades of neglect, managerial incompetence, adversarial industrial relations, under-investment, years of muddled strategic thinking and the inability of UK politicians of all persuasions to think beyond the here and now - we've arrived at the end game. Chickens have come home to roost. Sadly, and tragically for the UK, it appears that we no longer have the ability to build a high speed rail network. Note, we're not talking about manned space flight here - but merely trains that can run at high speed - safely - on purpose built track. It's yet another worrying straw in the wind - similar to the RMS Queen Mary 2 being built at Chantiers de l'Atlantique, Saint-Nazaire and the more recent disquiet over Huawei's potential involvement with 5G networks in the UK.

14th February. I heard a story on the radio earlier today that reminded me of something that happened to me fairly recently.

I was riding on a train in the Paris Metro (one of those ultra-quiet ones with the rubber tyres) and I was standing by one of the doors swaying with the motion when I felt someone's eyes on me.

I looked up and an elegant Parisienne (somewhere in her forties) sitting a few seats away from me was giving me one of 'those' looks with a single raised quizzical eyebrow. (gulp!)

Being a Brit, I turned away (as you do!) to look out of the window - but a few moments later I turned back to look at her and her smokey eyes were still fixed on me.

At moments like this, it's inevitable that all kinds of scenarios flash through your (OK, my!) head.. but then she stood up and walked over to me and asked, "Would you like my seat?"

Why? What else did you think she was going to say?

12th February. Just back from a quick trip to the Spanish supermarkets here and my world toppled when noticed that Glenmorangie 10 year old (aka my favourite dram that I've been drinking for 45+ years) (I know - I'm a slow drinker!) has rocketed up in price - it's now 42€/litre.. I was at a friend's the other night and he offered me a glass of Speyburn 10 year old Single Malt. I normally add a splash of water to lengthen the taste but I didn't.. Even so, it struck me as an interesting dram and I resolved to see if I could find it in Spain.

Wow - and there it was - and at 23.99€/litre (£20.14 at today's rate - shorely shome mishtake!), it's just over half the price of Glenmorangie. I'll be interviewing the bottle shortly.. It gets quite a good review here.

Well, I added some water to it - and it's clearly a Single Malt - but I'd have to say that it has fewer of those honeyed heathery notes of the sublime Glenmorangie - but then, it's not far off half the price. At £20 / litre I think it's excellent value for money. Madame is not so sure - but my question is how many drinkable Speyside Single Malts do you know at this price? Here's one I wouldn't thank you for - I'd say Speyburn is at least a step or two up from it. Judging by this review, the jury's still out on Speyburn. I'll have another go at it later in the week.

9th February. Here's a little treat for you - the 1964 Newport Folk Festival when Pete Seeger introduced a 23 year old Bob Dylan with his tour de force song "Hey Mr Tambourine Man" to a spellbound audience - a complex song that defies categorisation with its staggeringly rich imagery (starts at 1:14):

Here's Bob with the song from his "Bringing it all back home" album (1965).

8th February. Post-match addendum: Well, I'm happy to admit that I got the outcome of the Ireland v Wales match wrong. In the end, Ireland ran out convincing 24-14 winners (video highlights here). I'm happy with that because I freely admit to not being a fan of Welsh rugby and all the baggage that comes with it.

Calcutta Cup

In a windswept and rain-swept Murrayfield, England emerged victorious from a hard-fought 13-6 win against a well-motivated Scotland side in horrible conditions (video highlights here). It wasn't a match for the purists though but I suppose with a greasy ball and a swirling wind we were never going to see a festival of running rugby. I recorded the match but I can't imagine any circumstances that could possibly tempt me to watch it again - but well done England for a gritty performance - they were worthy winners of the Calcutta Cup played in appropriately monsoon-like conditions.

7th February. The Guinness 6 Nations Rugby Tournament kicks off again tomorrow with all four Home nations in action. Ireland welcome Wales to Dublin at 1415 GMT - my money's on Wales to win - after which at 1645 GMT Scotland will fancy their chances against an England XV that was strangely out of sorts against France last week. I think this will be a very close match and the Murrayfield effect is not to be under-estimated. Eddie Jones will have done very well if he comes away with the points.

I hope we're all allowed to be a little sentimental from time to time. Just as well - because I had Radio Nostalgie Best of 60s playing in the background this morning and Richard Anthony's version of "500 Miles" came on. I was once out in the American Mid-West when I heard the distant wail of a train whistle at night across the lonely prairie.. and it seemed like the most evocative sound I'd ever heard. (More here).

I remember Madame telling me years ago that this great song had been one of her favourites - so here it is:

Here's an earlier version of Hedy West's song by The Journeymen in 1961..

4th February. This song of Bill Withers reaches out to me at the moment.

3rd February. The rugby world was stood on its head yesterday when England (2nd in the recent Rugby World Cup) was taken to the cleaners in Paris in just about every department by a young but very capable French XV coached by Fabien Galthié, Raphaël Ibañez and Shaun Edwards. The match finished 24-17.

England coach Eddie Jones made a rod for his own back by announcing prior to the game that England was going to visit "severe brutality" on the French - an ill-advised statement that to this armchair coach at least would serve only to inspire les Bleus. England were minus the Vunipola Bros and they also lost Manu Tuilagi after 15 minutes. It has to be said that England were woeful while France played a fluent aggressive match with creativity, quick line speed and safe handling. After the initial French onslaught, England looked shocked, clueless and a leaderless rabble - and it was only thanks to some individual brilliance by Jonny May that they were able to register some points - points that, in my opinion, flattered them. The normally reliable Owen Farrell had a rare off-day - perhaps as a result of a big 'hit' earlier that seemed to distract him.

Two French players stood out (but there were more) - Charles Ollivon, a powerful 1m99 (6ft6") flanker from nearby Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle who scored two tries and Antoine Dupont, who sparkled at No 9. I think the Wales v France match on 22nd February will play a major part in deciding where the title finishes up.

1st February. Yes, while I might be many miles away from England down here in the Pays Basque, even from this distance I can sense there's been a tangible lifting of the mood among the majority of the population of the UK. Of course, there are those who continue to re-visit old battlegrounds with their tired old arguments that we've had to endure during the last 3½ years but soon even they will come to recognise that the banging sound they can hear is coming from the stable door after the Brexit horse has bolted for good from the EU stable.

275. The Hindsight Year

2020-01-02T16:29:00.006+01:00

31st January. The thermometer on the terrace (in the shade) was registering a very welcome 19°C late this afternoon. I've just been reminded that it's "Chandeleur" on Sunday - in other words, crêpes-a-go-go! This means break out the fat boy pants!

One unfortunate result of our coughing and spluttering this past week has been the unavoidable cancellation of our long-awaited visit to our friends in Biarritz for ze Crunch! Always an entertaining day, full of laughter, comments, enlightenment and the pleasures of the table - but sadly, not this year.

Tonight sees the culmination of 3½ years of political battling, obfuscation, foot-dragging and the use of any and every Parliamentary tactic (aided and abetted by a shamelessly partisan Speaker) designed to slow down and/or halt the democratic process resulting from the seismic outcome of the 2016 Referendum. At last, the country - prompted by the electorate - has democratically (that word again) chosen the path of self-determination instead of settling for the slow managed decline into insignificance preferred by many from the metropolitan political and media "elite". The preferred option of this elite for our country was for it to exist as a premium fare-paying passenger on the undemocratic EU gravy train that is heading for an idealistic dream of being a global power on a par with the US - but minus the fundamental democratic processes, checks and balances that underpin that Great Democracy. The impeachment case that currently beleaguers Donald Trump is evidence enough that even the president is accountable to the people and his actions are not above the scrutiny of the law. I hold no brief either for or against the incumbent - but this is exactly as it should be.

The world as imagined by John Lennon works fine in a pop song but watching the nation states of Europe subjugate themselves and the freedom of their citizens to this bureaucratic regime (run in Brussels by unelected opportunist political pygmies) in exchange for a few pieces of silver has been an unedifying spectacle. God help them.

If you read nothing else about Brexit, I would urge you to read this powerful piece by Melanie Phillips.. it says everything that needs to be said on this day of days.

This great hymn "Jerusalem" (based on a poem by William Blake) encapsulates what many of us think about our homeland - and it needs no introduction.. (it always sends a shiver through me)

As Martin Luther King Jr said, "Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last."

Montauzer

28th January. The annual rugbyfest that is the 6 Nations tournament kicks off this weekend. First up on Saturday, it's Wales v Italy followed by Ireland v Scotland - then on Sunday, we're off to Biarritz to watch France v England with A & V, our French friends - always an enjoyable occasion regardless of the outcome! Hopefully, it will be him shouting at the TV - not me.

Had a special treat yesterday lunchtime - Madame caught me by surprise when she presented me with some truffled boudins blancs - served with sautéed apple - fresh from Montauzer's new premises smack bang in the centre of Bayonne (above). This was a major mmmm moment! (whatever I did to deserve this, I'm going to keep doing it - once I know what it was!)

27th January. The lunchtime news today led off with a report on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We're supposed to forgive and forget - but I feel unable to. I don't see how either are possible.

No choir practice for me tonight - I've somehow managed to pick up a bug over the past few days and my voice is not much more than a croak - plus there's are all the usual joint pains - and I'm coughing for Britain. Dr Glenmorangie's Patent Restorative has so far been unable to make an impact on any of my symptoms - we've had Whisky Macs and hot toddies but to no avail - so I guess I'll just have to keep trying.

24th January. Is the cold getting to you? Joints getting a bit stiff? Problems wid de articulamations? Here's the late, great Miriam Makeba with her global 1967 hit, "Pata Pata".. she'll soon have your feet tapping again!

21st January. Spotted in French Entrée magazine: "A study of data that has taken two years to compile has named the best – and worst – places to live in France. The Villes et villages où il fait bon vivre association assessed eight key areas: education, shops and services, health, sports and leisure, solidarity, quality of life, and transport. The 34,841 municipalities of France were ranked based on data provided by the National Statistics Office and, controversially, did not take residents’ views into account.

The winner of the coveted top spot of the category for towns or cities with more than 2000 inhabitants was Annecy, in the Haute-Savoie, closely followed by Bayonne, La Rochelle, Angers and Le Mans. In this category, Biarritz, Anglet and Pau also scored highly.

In the category for locations with fewer than 2000 inhabitants the top three were Peltre, Guéthary and Martinvast." Look up your village/town here.

I have to say that Annecy is a genuinely beautiful town set on a spectacular lake - we visited it a while back - but Bayonne is in the warm South! - and it's far more affordable - and it's a real living working community.. as opposed to Annecy which, without wishing to be unkind, had something of the feel of a retirement home.

It could be argued that those conducting the survey should have included climate, the job market and the property market as factors. One downside to Bayonne is the high humidity - and the Côte Basque is notoriously difficult from an employment perspective.

Still no reply or even an acknowledgement from Bill Wiggin MP to my email of 7th January proposing that the UK offers assistance to the Australian government to combat the fires raging throughout the country.

Haggis, clampit tatties & bashed neeps
(decode extra!)

This week will see the slaughter of thousands of innocent haggis in readiness for this coming Saturday when Burns Night (video here) will be celebrated throughout the length and breadth of Scotland as well as by all those exiled Scots around the world wishin' they were hame. This is also one occasion when this particular Sassenach wishes that he could be north of the border to enjoy this most über-Scottish of celebrations.

For those who curl their lips at the idea of eating this Caledonian delicacy, let me simply say that it is truly de-lic-ious - and it tastes even better when accompanied by a dram or several of mountain dew - aka the Great Scottish Blended or Single Malt Restorative Compound (ye ken fit I'm talkin' aboot!). On a winter's night, what could be better?

Make no mistake - it has to be Scotch whisky. Would you consider buying a bottle of Polish claret, a Mexican Rolex or a pair of Chinese Levis? Of course you wouldn't. Yes, there are now several distillers around the world offering up their products and calling them Whisky - or Single Malt Whisky (here are but two examples - here and here) but trust me, we're talking chalk and cheese here. Buy a bottle to offer to your friends - saving the genuine article for yourself. I've tried both of the examples above and I can honestly say that they're not even close.

I remember one enjoyable Burns Night aeons ago when whisky was served before, during and after the meal. The funny thing was, the next day I suffered no noticeable battle damage - none whatsoever. For me, it's fatal to mix whisky with wine.

I was down at the beach a day or two ago early in the morning to give Nutty his morning run and it was a bracing 1°C..!

I'm honoured and privileged to have been invited to the Château Vieux in Bayonne this coming Thursday for the Galette des Rois ceremony. The Château Vieux is situated in the heart of Bayonne and it's currently the Mess of the 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment (1er RPIMa) as well as housing the personal quarters of its Officer Commanding. I was there last year and there were a few lantern-jawed paras present who looked straight out of Central Casting! (think "Rambeau"!)

19th January. We went out to a concert yesterday evening to see David Krakauer and the Chamber Orchestra of Nouvelle Aquitaine at the Quintaou Theatre, Anglet. David Krakauer is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation. To be absolutely honest, we both preferred the playing of the clarinetist in the orchestra to that of the soloist.

This is how the piece should be played (the adagio starts at 12.33) - with the clarinetist showing the instrument's capability to produce that wonderfully liquid tone. I'm no expert but to both of us, the soloist last night had the instrument shrieking in a way that didn't do justice to this great piece.

Still, we both enjoyed the experience of live music.. I've become so used to listening to music either from CDs or via YouTube these days that the difference was really remarkable.. particularly in the strings. I think YouTube recordings capture only the centre part of the frequency bandwidth required to give a faithful rendition of the sound. The experience made us both want to attend more concerts.

Meanwhile, here's one of my favourite Simon and Garfunkel tracks..

15th January. Still waiting for a response (or even an acknowledgement) from Bill Wiggin, my MP, to my proposal that the UK takes the initiative in helping to provide whatever aid the Australian Govt deems necessary. Whichever way you look at it, this is a major catastrophe.

12th January. I offer this to you all as a freebie! - in full knowledge that it might not be your cup of tea.. It's Nostalgie Best of 60s - it's a good mix of great French and English songs from the 60s. You'll probably have to disable your ad-blockers to access the site from this link.

10th January. No reply as yet from my MP.

8th January. This is a beautiful contemplative piece from J S Bach - his Adagio in D Minor, BWV 974 - played here on a harpsichord by Olga Pashchenko:

Here's the Adagio played on the piano by a binman (garbage disposal operative?) in a Russian street before the piano is taken away to help the police with their enquiries. Or something.

7th January. Given the extent of the Australian bush fires that have been - and still are - sweeping the country, I asked myself the other day why hasn't there been a coordinated international effort to try and bring these fires under control and bring assistance of all kinds to the community? Here in Europe there are countries - like France for example - that possess numerous firefighting aircraft (like these Canadairs) - and I remember seeing similar but more capacious aircraft in service in the US. From a practical perspective, it would be a simple matter to deploy jet-powered water bombers (like some shown here) to this distant region. It's also the northern hemisphere winter so there can be little or no requirement for them here.

Is it that Australia needs to ask for help from the international community first? This image below shows that Australia is a huge country. Surely we could and should all be doing more to help our friends down under? If the much bandied-about term "Global Village" is to mean anything, this ongoing human tragedy and ecological disaster surely demands a world-wide response.

Email your representatives / MPs / Congressmen / Deputies and demand action! I've emailed my MP and I'll publish his response here if/when he replies.

Here's a video that originated from ABC Australia Central Coast that (Warning!) shows some harrowing, even apocalyptic, scenes.. It's hard to watch:
2nd January 2020. Here's a look at the Pyrenees as seen from the air - it's a video with a Spanish commentary - but it has some truly spectacular footage. Our part of the world comes in at 13:40..

Happy New Year! I can't believe we're already 20 years on from the Millennium. Remember all the media uncertainty and hype about Y2K and what might happen if all our computers went on the fritz?

My ears pricked up when I heard this playing on the radio earlier today - "Sheep may safely graze" by J S Bach - a piece that's long been a favourite of mine. Here, it's sung beautifully by the University of Redlands choir, California, directed by Mr J William Jones way back in 1957. Here are the lyrics as transcribed by me:

Sheep may safely graze and pasture

In a watchful shepherd's sight.
Sheep may safely graze and pasture (Repeat)
In a watchful shepherd's sight. (Repeat)

Those who rule, with wisdom guiding,

Bring to hearts a peace abiding,
Bless a land with joy made bright.

Those who rule, with wisdom guiding,
Bring to hearts a peace abiding,
Peace abiding, peace abiding,

Bless a land with joy made bright.

I've not been able to make out the final verse. If anyone does know the final verse as sung below, I'd be grateful you could send it to me via the Comments facility at the end of this post.. Alternatively, email me via the contact address in the left hand column. Many thanks.

It's a benchmark performance and the Redlands choir is simply the perfect blend of voices, singing with conviction. I've listened to it more times than I care to admit to! I wonder how many of them are still with us? Enjoy!

If the YouTube player above is intermittent, - try this direct link to the source video.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir can always be relied on to provide a wonderfully polished performance and while they don't disappoint here, I just prefer the version above.

Here's the same piece - but this time it's performed / rendered / mangled (you decide) on the Moog synthesiser. From the image of Herr Bach that appears early in the video, you could be excused for thinking that he'd been overdoing the Bolivian Marching Powder!

274. December again..!

2019-12-04T10:21:00.009+01:00

31st December (aka Saint-Sylvestre here). I just noticed that France play England in Paris on 2nd February in the first weekend of the 2020 6 Nations rugby tournament. Not long to wait then this year!

Here we are again - as the closing hours of 2019 tick away. For many, it's an occasion for letting rip one last time before the New Year presents itself with bills to be paid (or to be tucked behind the clock on the mantelpiece!).

We're off out this evening - to Restaurant Larralde, Ascain - as they've put together an interesting-looking menu for this evening. This means that I'll have to limit myself to a couple of glasses of wine during the course of the evening - but this is honestly no longer the hardship that it might once have been a few years ago. I'll be quite happy with a glass of Jurançon doux (the wines of Domaine Cauhapé are a current favourite) and one of velvety Irouléguy Gorri d'Ansa (right).. We're taking a friend who would otherwise be on her own.

For others, this time of the year is often a difficult hurdle to surmount, especially for those who have lost a loved one during the previous 12 months and before. Each New Year is a reminder of loss and it marks a further distancing from the passing of a loved one - and for those out there for whom this applies, try and seek comfort in the bosom of your friends and/or relatives. Tomorrow is a new day and life continues afresh - if not exactly as before. Remember that quote: "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.."

I was out early this this morning to the bakers in town before Ali Baba (& friends) sweep through and hoover up everything out on display. (I remember this scene from childhood a long time ago)

Coming back, the whitewashed Basque houses glowed yellow in the slanting rays of the early morning sun.

30th December. It was a crisp 2°C this morning.. but at least we had cloudless blue skies.

Boudins blancs with sauté'd apple

I forgot to mention that Madame made our favourite boudin blanc aux pommes for lunch yesterday. These were the truffled boudins blancs from Montauzer in town.. but as they're a seasonal dish that appears only during the Christmas season, perhaps that's why they don't feature on the website. If you are tempted to try them, whatever you do, don't buy them from a supermarket - find a good charcutier who makes his own.

Verdict? They were absolutely de-lic-ious! (my mouth's still watering with the memory!)

29th December. This morning I took the pooch to the coast for a run and according to the car it was 3°C (37°F).. When I got down to the beach there were some quite big breakers rolling in - and here's the thing - the sea must have been warmer than the air above it as steam fog (or sea smoke) was forming and rolling off the waves in billowing clouds.. I've seen it once before here on the river Nive - but this was the first time I'd seen this phenomenon at sea.

As 2019 rumbles on towards its end, it's maybe time to review the past 12 months - or maybe not! Whenever I turn on the TV or the radio, or open a newspaper, the first thing that catches my eye are the inevitable lists of the 10/50/100 Best Whatevers (pick from Teams, Cars, Books etc etc) from the last decade, or yet another reminder of those who have shuffled off to pastures new in another world - most of these last being 'celebrities' I've never heard of!

To spare you from having to read yet another list, let's look instead at one or two highlights. The political uncertainty of the last 3½ years since the Brexit referendum had been a constant reminder to me of the potential fragility of my position here. I decided to find a solution that could mitigate any downside of Brexit from a personal perspective - and so I applied for French citizenship.

I think the single event that pleased me the most in the last 12 months came when I learned that my application for French citizenship had finally been approved. This means that my position here is now secure, regardless of what happens on the Brexit front, especially if the UK leaves the EU on WTO terms, ie, "No Deal" - as I think it will. (Here's a brief guide to WTO terms).

One of the side benefits of my being a bona fide French citizen (albeit one with dual nationality) is that I can now vote here. I duly applied at the Town Hall to be added to the registered list of voters. It's not an automatic process - for some reason, my request had to be approved by the Mayor of Bayonne. However, all's well that ends well as he did approve it - so now I can vote in elections here.

Does my newly acquired French ID card mean that I won't ever return to live in the Independent Coastal State (as the EU now likes to characterise the UK) that lies across the English Channel from Calais? I can think of few scenarios that could force me to do so - but one possible scenario might be if the value of the £ sterling vs the Euro were to plummet to a point where it became financially unsustainable to continue to live here.

Who was it who wrote: "This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Independent Coastal State"..? Here's the original. In classifying the UK as an Independent Coastal State, the EU has succeeded* in removing the magic from the title of Bill Bryson's first great book!

* Only here in this blog! I did it just to emphasise the EU's sterile vocabulary and lack of imagination - remembering that it was this particular small Independent Coastal State (supported by the Commonwealth and the Dominions) that stood resolutely alone in 1940 until the United States entered the war in December 1941. The Anglosphere Allies enabled freedom and democracy to be re-established in continental Europe. I know it's unfashionable and perhaps insensitive of me to remind people of this inconvenient fact - but it does need re-stating from time to time.

If you haven't read Bill's valedictory review of the island that had been his home for some 10 years, I would urge you to do so. It's a very, very funny book indeed.

25th December. Our very best wishes to all of you out there.. I hope this is a happy time for you with family and friends - but just remember that, if they're in short supply, tomorrow's another day. (Maybe Dr Glenmorangie can make a house call!)

22nd December. Another noisy night here on the Côte Basque with strong winds and rain lashing down all night. We have a weatherproof cover on the table outside - hope it's still there! Gusts of 140km/h (85mph) with 9 metre (30ft) high waves..

20th December. On the lunchtime news today there was a report that a maximum wind speed of 207km/h (128mph) had been recorded during the night at Irati.. I went to sleep last night to the various sounds of shutters rattling, the roof creaking, wind whistling and howling around the house etc etc before falling into my usual coma! For some reason, these sounds kept Madame awake!

The weather forecast for Saturday does not augur well for the mass release of thousands of Japanese lanterns planned for tomorrow evening - strong winds and heavy rain are forecast. Great pity as last year's event was a real triumph. (we didn't attend - thinking that we'd go to the one planned for 21st instead). I suspect tomorrow's release will be cancelled or postponed.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of the mother of one of our Basque mountain guides for an association I'm involved with - she was 97. The funeral was held in the church of Saint-Etienne in the beautiful village of Espelette. While waiting outside, I was talking to an elderly Basque gentleman and he happened to mention the village of Villefranque. I told him that we'd stayed in a gîte there for five months upon our arrival in the Pays Basque in 2007. It turned out that the owner and propriétaire of the gîte - Mr D - was his brother-in-law! Small world.

The church was packed and the service was all in Basque. As is the custom here, all the Basque hymns were sung with a gusto unknown in England - especially for those of us brought up in the Church of England tradition (I was its sole representative!). What could be better than to leave this world to the sound of these ancient songs, sung with such force and passion? It must be a great comfort to the family.

Afterwards, I was invited to join the extended family at a restaurant in the hills for the traditional post-funeral meal. The communal spirit was quite remarkable.. and it's one of the reasons I love the people here.

18th December. This morning we drove to Peyrehorade (about 45 mins away) to meet up with a friend to look at the Christmas market.

Walking through the crowds, it was clear that we were in la France profonde heartland! As is usual with these markets, there was an optimist who was trying to sell mattresses (there's always one!). I've never understood this.. It seems that "going to the mattresses" means literally that in the Pays Basque! (maybe we've misunderstood "The Godfather" all these years!) I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that a mattress is the last thing I'm thinking of when I visit a market. (I must be missing something!)

The real reason for our trip to Peyrehorade was to pay a long-awaited visit to "Au Bon Coin aux Pieds de Cochon". This unpretentious restaurant is something of an institution in the area - it serves authentic regional food cooked in the traditional manner.

pièce du boucher

la grande dégustation..

One of the items on the à la carte menu was something called La Grande Dégustation (left). It comprised almost all of my personal nightmare dishes - all on one plate! There was tripe, a calf's head with sauce gribiche* and a pig's trotter. A portion of andouillette would have completed the nightmare for me. Like the mattress, how many people leave home thinking "I fancy tripe, a calf's head (with sauce gribiche) and a pig's trotter for lunch"! We safely avoided la grande dégustation and instead ordered a pièce du boucher - an un-named cut of beef (above) while our friend chose an omelette au cèpes.

* this was said to be one of the late President Jacques Chirac's favourite dishes.

Looking around the busy dining room while we waited, locals were tucking into prodigious quantities of food and the room resounded with many animated conversations in the unmistakable twang of the south west. I'd like to return someday and try some of the other dishes. Here's what someone else thought of it (in French).

16th December. How many more chocolate shops can a small town of 40,000 support? Two new ones have opened in Bayonne (however, there may be more that your scribe is unaware of).

Perhaps the better-placed of the two is Puyodebat (opposite Monoprix at the intersection of Rue de la Monnaie and Rue Orbe..). The shop, a former jewellers, has been re-styled and really looks ultra-chic with some spectacular-looking chocolate products.

The other new kid on the block is Chocolat Pascal that has taken over the former shop of Montauzer (at the intersection of Rue de la Salie and Rue du Pilori).

We stopped off for a hot chocolate (5*!) at Kalaka Café.. Highly recommended.

15th December. As today was sunny with blue skies, we headed off to Biarritz that dazzled us in the bright sunshine. We had a good walk along the sea front on the Grande Plage that was protected by a barrier of sandbags. Imagine a row of sturdy canvas bags full of sand, each about 4 feet x 4 x 4, all ratchet-strapped together - and you've got it. In previous years, the sea has come up onto the promenade and smashed a few windows.. This solution looks capable of withstanding most of what winter might throw at it. Unfortunately, the Bleu Café (our favourite) was closed up for winter so we found a table at Le Georges, a café in the Place Clémenceau.

14th December. Into town straight after lunch and the outside terraces of the restaurants and cafés were full of people! The temperature was 18°C.. not bad for just before Christmas..

The centre of Bayonne (particularly near the rivers) will be at risk of further flooding today if this video (filmed yesterday) is anything to go by:
This (below) was the Nive at Bayonne this morning - at low tide - and the level is still dangerously high.. but it takes more than floodwater to stop the Basques from singing (see 1:06):
Villages further inland look set to be troubled by rising floodwaters - though not, at the time of writing, on the same scale as was seen recently in south east France:
Fortunately, we're on higher ground so zero flood risk - but, with Christmas looming, my sympathies are with those who are faced with rising waters.

13th December. Listening to Classic FM earlier, I'm sure I heard the presenter announce the next piece of music as coming from Wagner's Rinse Cycle..

Just back from town on a last-minute shopping expedition for a few odds and ends to top up Madame's Christmas stocking. As we walked back on a very blowy morning, we faced a prolonged headwind that felt like at least 80km/h (50mph) that made Nutty's long ears stand out horizontally. I was convinced that they were actually producing lift!

Following the outcome of the UK election, at last we have a government with a substantial majority that will, after the log-jam at Westminster that's dominated politics since June 2016, enable the country to move on with the #1 issue on the agenda. There are many issues with the Withdrawal Agreement that is essentially the one that Theresa May negotiated - minus the Irish backstop - but that's all for the future. This result completely changes the political dynamic in the House of Commons and opens the door to further progress. That's all I'm going to say.

11th December. We had blue skies and sunshine at midday and we'd hoped that perhaps we'd seen the last of the squalls out of the Bay of Biscay - but earlier this evening once again we heard heavy rain lashing against the shutters and the sound of water running in the gutters. Even the dog limits his time outside to the bare minimum required!

"The World's Gone Mad" Department: German banks have now started charging retail customers for their savings. Now I'm a self-confessed financial pygmy but for the life of me I cannot understand why, given that, anyone would want to deposit money in a savings account in a German bank. There must be some hidden warning implicit in this but I haven't the economic insight to say what it could be. Will this policy trigger a rush towards gold? Has the ECB started printing money - aka quantitative easing (QE)? Here's the Bank of England's take on QE - and the ECB's guide to it. They make it all sound so benign.

This Peter, Paul and Mary song (1969) came up on the radio earlier and it took me straight back to 1967 when Madame and I met - and before long, we were conducting a long distance relationship.

It was a bittersweet time for us as it seemed that we were forever waiting at airports or windswept railway stations to either meet each other or to say goodbye till next time. And when we were together, the time flew by.

Then there were the postal strikes and expensive international phone calls. If only we'd had email, Skype, VoIP phones*, the Eurostar train or Ryanair back then - but we didn't. This song captures that period.

* We pay about 7€/month for our VoIP phone - and that gives us unlimited phone calls throughout Europe and North America.

9th December. I've just noticed that there will be another spectacular mass release of Japanese lanterns in Bayonne on Saturday evening, 21st December. We went to last year's event and it was a great evening! If you are planning on coming, it's highly likely that the drifting smells from foodstands will give you an appetite. In that case, it's probably a good idea to book a table somewhere in advance for afterwards. I think the police estimated that there were 50,000 people present in 2018. Just to remind you, this was 2018:
Some wild winds during the night and looking outside now there are only a very few leaves left hanging on. I could hear the muted roar of the sea in the distance when I let Nutty out. Might just swing by the beach later on for a look.. it's always an impressive sight.

8th December. Struggling to find a Christmas present for a father/husband/son/brother/cousin? My father once gave me a copy of Eric Newby's first book - "The Last Grain Race" - and I think I wore the print off the pages by reading it so many times! I lent it to someone (forgotten who) years ago - and it was never returned. I bought a second copy a decade or two ago - and the same thing happened. I've just downloaded another copy onto my Kindle - it should be safe there.

"One hand for yourself and
one hand for the ship.."

Eric was 18 years old when, in 1938, he signed on as an apprentice on "Moshulu", a Finnish 4 masted barque working the South Australian grain trade. He was the only native speaker of English on the ship - the rest were largely Scandinavian (Swedish or Finnish) - with a sprinkling of other nationalities. He has a terrific ear for dialogue and the book fizzes with laughter and acute discomfiture in equal measure. The characters he describes live on years after my first reading of the book - as well as the tensions that built up between the Captain, the Mates and the crew and how they were resolved - sometimes explosively. He's at his best when describing the sensation of being "op the rigging" and out on a spar in the middle of the night in a storm-tossed Southern Ocean:

At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the noise was an unearthly scream. Above me was the naked topgallant yard and above that again the royal to which I presently climbed ... the high whistle of the wind through the halliards sheaf, and above all the pale blue illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance.

Eric joined the ship as a boy - and left it a man. He appears to have been ravenously hungry, cold, wet, exhausted, and yet exhilarated all at the same time. The next meal assumed an importance for the crew that's difficult for us to comprehend today. Ironically, "Moshulu" is now a floating restaurant - moored at Philadelphia..

This short video gives some idea of what life was like on board one of these ocean-going windjammers:

I defy anyone not to enjoy this book - even if you've never sailed a boat or been higher than the top deck of the Clapham omnibus! This is one book I can recommend unreservedly.

7th December. There's a new word in town - curated - and it's one I've been aware of reading for the past few months without it really registering on my cringe-ometer. I see the NY Times spotted it 10 years ago - a decade before it popped up on my radar. What does it mean? Simply means that objects in a collection that have been "curated" have been specially selected by 'one who knows'. In other words, it's more media tosh. You won't be reading it here.

4th December. Earlier today, I came across a curated list (aaargghh! See above..) of 30 things to love about life in France - the author gets most of them spot-on. See if you agree. My comments in red:

1. Café culture and people watching, it's a way of life in France.

2. Croissants: flaky, buttery, sweet and soft, the perfect start to the day.

3. Cheese: Camembert, Brie, Comté, Epoisses, Munster, Tomme - even Vieux Boulogne, officially the smelliest cheese in the world. + Brillat-Savarin & Vacherin Mont d'Or

4. Cakes that look like jewels and taste like heaven made by master craftsmen.

5. Eiffel Tower: meant to last for just 20 years, the 130-year-old Eiffel Tower is one of the most photographed sites in the world.

6. Wine: red, white, rosé and even yellow wine from the Jura region. There is a wine to suit all.

7. Banks where you get to speak to a real person.

8. I love that French bookshops are still going strong. Nothing wrong with buying books online but there's something reassuring about seeing books on shelves.

9. Champagne, of course.

10. Crêpes: thin, sweet and crispy or savoury galettes from Brittany, what's not to love?

11. Paris. As in point five.

12. Brocantes, vide-greniers, marchés aux puces: flea markets are a national obsession and a cultural connection for visitors.

13. Two-hour lunch breaks being normal!

14. French language: croquer la vie à pleines dents literally means 'bite into life with all your teeth' but really it means, 'To embrace life to the fullest.'

15. Baguettes: Tucked under your arm, sticking out of a basket, nibbling the end, smothered with butter - a taste of France.

16. The French passion for heritage and deep-rooted support for the arts.

17. Christmas Eve dinner lasting until 5am.

18. Community spirit in country villages.

19. Work-life balance - key to the good life in France.

20. Street markets being a way of life, ensuring local producers are supported and people can buy fresh, seasonal, local produce.

21. Shops that close at lunchtime and on Sundays, and are not open all night long.

22. Bastille Day or le Quatorze Juillet as the French call it: fun, food and fireworks.

23. Politesse (politeness): saying bonjour when you walk into a shop, doctor's waiting room, shaking hands with everyone in the local bar.

24. French philosophy: Mangez bien, riez souvent, aimez beaucoup. It means eat well, laugh often, love abundantly... I think we all agree with that then!

25. Supermarkets that have an aisle dedicated to local produce.

26. La mairie (town hall) - the one-stop shop for all your questions about life in your village or town.

27. Beautiful châteaux.

28. Architecture: Baroque, Hausmannian, Le Corbusier, Auguste Perrett, French Renaissance, Gothic, Romanesque, Gallo-Roman, Beaux Arts, Belle Epoque and more…

29. Family values.

30. French people. It can take a while to make French friends, but once you do, it's for life.

A friend has just suggested: Modern and clean trains that run on time that get to useful destinations by reasonable routes at sensible prices. Agree 100%.

If you have your own reasons to love life here, don't be shy - send them in to me! (via the contact form in the left hand column - or add a comment at the foot of this post) I'll add them to the list (no names!).

In talking to people here who went on school trips to England years ago, it appears that just as I have an aversion to andouillette and tête de veau (calf's head), there seems to be one thing, above all, that many French people remember with horror - and that's jelly! (jello in the US). I must admit that I haven't had any for years - but when I was a child, it was very popular.. With some tinned fruit (pears, pineapple or peaches) and a swirl of evaporated milk, there was always room for seconds! (this was the 1950s remember)

However, on a scale of 1-10, jelly for me doesn't get even close to the real horrors that are andouillette and tête de veau (both of these are solidly in projectile-vomiting territory). I've tried both andouillette and tête de veau once (you have to) but wild horses etc etc. I guess it all depends what you are used to. Naturally there's an association for andouillette. If I was forced - at gunpoint - to have to choose to eat one or the other, I think tête de veau would just shade it - by a millimetre or two. It would have to be a big gun though! If I'm honest, I'd rather go hungry. I don't care what anyone says - for me, these two dishes are the stuff of nightmares.

Next come the marginal dishes. There are several dishes in France that I've never been hungry enough to try: snails.. (and yes, I know the garlic and parsley butter is delicious); tripe - regardless of how it's been cooked; whelks (bulots here). Ris de veau (sweetbreads or pancreas) teeters on the brink (I tried this once - couldn't finish it). I've never had the opportunity to try a pied de cochon (pig's trotter). There are probably one or two more out there that I can't remember just at the moment - but, in extremis, I could - just - imagine eating something in this group.. maybe. Perhaps - when there's a 'k' in the month.

To try some of these specialities, you must pay Au Pied de Cochon (right) a visit. It's open 24 hours/day.. so it's perfect for night owls (and owlettes!). Their onion soup au gratin is legendary.. I had this once in the 60s at about 4am.. You'll see an eclectic and eccentric mix of characters there too.. (menu here) I've added it to the map in the left hand column.

On the other hand, there are some/many specialities here that I really do enjoy: duck gizzards (gésiers de canard); foie gras (social suicide in some quarters to admit to this), calves' liver, frogs legs, oysters, mussels. I'll think of some more.

1st December. Fingers crossed that December will be drier than the month just gone.

We've been talking about a trip up to Paris - not sure if it will be this month or next year in the Spring - but just writing that has made my mind up!