The Food of Love

William and I have our regular hit this morning which, as it turned out, was the best one we have ever had. The games are now getting very competitive and much more fun. It's a great start to the day.

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It's that time of the month again, when I collate the weather stats. I bet you're trembling with excitement! The average midday temperature for August was (wait for it) 29.2 C. To be expected, the second half was slightly cooler than the first half by a couple of degrees. We had 26 days of sunshine and everyday was hot. So there!

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I've just finished reading The Food of Love by Anthoney Capella. Food and sex all in one jolly romp. A good read - recommended.

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Barbecued Dorade again tonight followed by apricot crumble. OK, so only half of it helped the diet! Must try harder.

Weight transfer mystery

Off to see the optician this morning. Because I have diabetes, regular eye checks are important. Dr C is very thorough and puts me through the ropes. Part of the test involves dilating my pupils which makes driving in strong sunlight intolerable. The lovely Jan had agreed to accompany me and drove us back home. Yet another favour I owe her!

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In tennis terms, weight transfer generally refers to shifting one's weight from the back foot to the front foot. What I'm talking about is something much more mysterious. Like how come my watch, which I wear on my left wrist, is getting looser but my pants are getting tighter? How is the fat from my left wrist transferring to my stomach? One of life's little mysteries.

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Floyd leaves this afternoon, so guess what, I get another trip to the airport at Montpellier. Yippee! However, the upside is that on the way back I pass Domaine des Hospitaliers and buy a couple of boxes of their delicious oak aged merlot. Very reasonable at 5 euros a bottle. Next I pop into Domaine Costeplane because we have run out of rosé. Vincent is, as ever, very hospitable and lets me try his chardonnay which has been in the cuve for just 9 days. It was very sweet, almost like a cloudy pressed apple drink, and I would have been happy to drink it like that. Françoise, meanwhile, is preparing sanglier, wild boar, and very smelly it all was. The smell in the kitchen was almost overpowering. She described the taste as more like beef than pork, and a very strong beef taste at that. What was even more interesting was that Vincent had opened bottles of his 1993 and 1995 Cabernet Sauvignon which he was going to put into the pot with the sanglier. When I looked surprised, he said that the sanglier would need a good wine to bring out the flavour. One of the benefits of making your own wine, I suppose.

Too much driving

Take a look at this. It made me laugh out loud and would be very funny if it wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

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William couldn't make it this morning so I practised with the group for about half an hour which was more than enough for me. Two of our guests, Jane and Paul, like it here so much that they are going to stay a couple of more nights. I suspect that this had nothing to do with Jan's cooking and everything to do with my scintillating company. What do you think?

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The rest of the day was spent ferrying people around, finishing with yet another (the sixth consecutive) trip to the airport. Folks, I'm tired and I ain't doing nuttin until tomorrow at the earliest. Except for having a nice dinner and a couple of glasses of wine. Or more.

Tennis and a lot of bull

An early start to Quissac for croissants and various breads and also to get details of an abrivado that will entertain our guests this afternoon. We need to find one that starts at around 18.30 to fit in with the days tennis and eventually I find a poster for one in Asperes which is not too far away.

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Ronan, Francoise and the boys leave today and then we have a very quick turnaround because Robert and the children come in on the same flight. Can I just say that I'm as confused as you! Anyway it all went smoothly with everyone arriving as planned.

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The abrivado in Asperes was good fun. When we arrived we saw the tail end of an encierro. Now I'm not too sure about the encierro, inasmuch as it involves letting bulls run free in an enclosed area, whilst young and old men alike goad the bull into attacking them and then get out of the way at the last minute. Stupid. The abrivado on the other hand, involves Camargue cowboys shepherding bulls around a predetermined route which is more a matter of skill and less a bun fight with the animals. Anyway, all our guests enjoyed the spectacle and we came home to a delicious dinner featuring a new lamb recipe (Spiced Rubbed Leg of Lamb with Apricot Chutney and Chickpea, Tomato, Spinach Salad).

Now what am I going to do?

Kevin, Debbie and the children left this morning by car, aiming for an overnight stop in Rheims. Rheims is a town with a lot of history, and a beautiful cathedral, where the kings of France were crowned in ye olden times. Verily, it's well worth a visit. The Taylors are a really nice family and we are very sorry to see them go. What is even more upsetting is that I have lost a drinking partner. Kevin keeps me informed of their progress and they make very good time. We both anticipated heavy traffic because of the 'great return' this weekend but it turned out to be plain sailing. So there you go!

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As one family leaves then two more arrive for a few days of tennis. Dave and Liz fly in from Luton whilst Paul and Jane drive down. The major downside to all this is that it's raining today so there is little opportunity to get on court but at least it's good for the vines.

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It's Jane's birthday today so we all eat at Le Fourneau. The meal is, as usual, excellent and is rated by many as better than the restaurant in our village that closed down a few months ago. On balance I probably agree, but the food at the previous restaurant was slightly more imaginative and unusual. Without question, the ambiance is more congenial and spacious at Le Fourneau, so on balance I would say that I probably prefer it. Anyway, it's all a bit academic because one is open and one isn't! Bum.

Ouch, that hurts

Full of good intentions, because we are both overweight, Floyd and I agreed to have 'a hit' this morning. 'A hit' means hitting a lot of tennis balls in various patterns, backwards and forwards, hopefully without too much interruption, but the important thing is that it is good exercise and good fun. It's the only way that I enjoy exercising. That was this morning. This afternoon I start to have difficulty walking because I've pulled something at the top back of my leg and it hurts. This manifests itself first whilst we are waiting for Alison, Floyd's partner, at Montpellier airport.

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The roads are busy this weekend, it being the start of the return home from holiday for many French families and other nationalities who will be looking to get their children back for the start of the new school term. Rather than fight the motorway traffic, we pop into Montpellier for steak and frites at L'Entrecote, just off the Place de la Comedie. The beauty of the steak is that it is a very thin cut, always cooked to perfection and covered in the most delicious sauce. The recipe for the sauce is a secret, but Jan reckons it's a combination of butter, anchovies, parsley and maybe basil. It makes my mouth water just to think about it. Highly recommended.

Hurricane Floyd

We have lunch on the terrace with Ronan, Francoises and their two boys. We started at 1.00 pm and finish at 4.30 pm, now that's what I call a lunch.

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Floyd arrived tonight in advance of his tennis group who arrive on Saturday. Floyd is a tennis coach and friend who, apart from being a nice man, played Davis Cup for his country a few years back. He is an ardent Arsenal fan so he will get on well with Kevin. After picking him up in Montpellier, we stop off at L'Evasion in Sommieres for dinner with Kevin and his family. Floyd and Kevin (but mostly Floyd) talk non stop on matters football for about an hour and a half, boring the pants off some of our party. In the end I had to tell Floyd to shut up. Nicely of course. On the way back to the cars we pass a square that has been set up with a stage at one end and fifty tables, all en plein air, with about 200 people enjoying dinner and a show. It was quite spectacular with a very professional stage set up and professional entertainers to boot, and typical of how the French enjoy themselves at this time of the year.

Now that's what I call service

Kevin has still not emerged by 9.40am this morning, by which time I have played tennis for over an hour, sorted out the world's problems over a coffee with William and finished yesterday's blog.

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Jan finally gets her wish and we buy a new barbecue with a lid. Not a major event in the scheme of things, but we have now become a two barbecue household. However, what was quite interesting was that there was no instruction book with the barbecue (that's another story). It's a Weber, but because my experience of dealing with French companies is not too good, even with the offshoot companies of other nations, I decided to call the States and sort it out with them. I talked to a chap called Fred Nelson who could not have been more helpful and within 5 minutes he had emailed an instruction book and a set of recipe cards. Now that's what I call service. No nation does it better.

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In the evening we were invited to dinner by a an acquaintance in a neighbouring village. It turns out he is quite a famous potter, particularly in the UK. In the next village, Vic le Fesque, don't you just love that name, is another very well known artist. It seems we may have stumbled into an artistic stronghold by accident.

And then I waited

We made an early start this morning to go into Sommieres for my 3 monthly blood check and the girls, Jan, Gill, Katie and Tom (hard-luck Tom) went shopping. Now I know a bit about women and shopping because of an experience that I had when I was 18. It went like this.
Mother: "Alex can you pop me into Harrogate to pick something up?"
Me: "Yes, no problem."
We park on a yellow line up a sidestreet that I reckon will be OK with me in the car.
Me: "How long will you be?"
Mother: "20 minutes."
Me: "OK, but no longer because I'm on a yellow line."
Mother: "Don't worry, I only have to go to one shop.
So I sit and wait. 30 minutes pass, no mother. 1 hour passes, no mother. This is ridiculous, 90 minutes pass and no mother. I could go on but you'd only get as bored, as I did. Some of the things that went through my head were: Has she forgotten where I'm parked? Is she ill? Has she gone home? Is she waiting for me somewhere else? Should I go home and see if she's there?
Three hours later she turns up and guess what, it's my fault for getting angry. Does she apologise, does she see my point of view? What do you think? So when I say I've a bit of experience of these things, I hope you understand.
OK, back to this morning's shopping. We all get out of the car at 9.30 am, I establish that they have to look in two shops, so we set up a place to meet and I go in for a blood test (with no appointment). The girls and Tom (hard-luck Tom) take the 3 minute walk into town. I finish my tests, drive the car into town and park on a yellow line. I have breakfast, keeping a lookout for the police. 30 Minutes - nothing. I see a space and park the car. It must have been a reflex reaction because I paid for a 3 hour ticket. Another half hour passes so I walk into Sommieres and look in EVERY shop in the middle of town. Nothing. So I go back to the arranged meeting place and wait. At 11.00 am they all show up. Apologise, what do you think? Jan then pops off to pick something else up and is another 23 minutes. In the time it has taken these women to look in two shops, I have had a blood test, eaten breakfast, looked in every shop in Sommieres, read a newspaper from beginning to end and got thoroughly pissed off.

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Jan and I take Max for a walk into the fire swept hillside. It was very spooky and it was a little difficult to explain why, until Jan mentioned that all we could hear was the wind. Normally we would hear birdsong and the ubiquitous cigales chirping away. Very eerie.

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Kevin fancies a beer and so do I. We sit down at about 8.00 pm and start working our way through some lovely Fullers that he brought to France and some Leffe wheat beer bought here. At midnight, I give in and go to bed, because I have tennis at 8.00 am. Kevin says that he will get up to watch the tennis. Do you think he will get up? We shall see.

Wind, skiing and goats

It was just a bit too windy for tennis this morning so I called it off. It's hard enough trying to play with no wind but when it's gusting strongly there's no fun at all.

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Raymond, our friendly insurance agent called first thing to check that were all right and to see if we had any problems as a result of the fire on Friday. Wasn't that nice?

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Glyn pops round and we start to discuss skiing opportunities this winter. We looked at the internet site for Prat Peyrot, which is about an hour and a half away and where you can ski, from mid December to mid March. The conversation moves onto trying to decipher the French meaning of some of the words on the site. When I asked what I thought was a simple question, to be told: "that means downhill skiing." I looked perplexed. When I asked what is meant by downhill skiing, someone, not a million miles from my heart, continued to repeat, several times: "downhill skiing." Now I have to say that nothing irritates me more, when I express ignorance of something, than someone who continues to repeat the same phrase as if by repeating the phrase I would somehow be beaten into submission and hence see the light. It's at this point that I retaliated and made the somewhat obvious statement that pretty much all skiing is downhill, and that the last time I looked, uphill skiing went the way of the dinosaurs, it just never caught on. It's usually at this point that I am accused of being rude and a smart arse to boot. OK, so call me rude, but when I don't understand something, please take a little time to explain things a little more clearly, and don't just keep repeating the same word or phrase. If I didn't understand it the first time then there is little chance that I will understand it the twentieth. OK?

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And now, as if I haven't seen it all, a goat appears at the bottom gate. It has followed our new visitors. Max is understandably very excited, never having seen a goat before, and is jumping up and down and barking on one side of the fence, whilst the goat stands totally unperturbed on the other. They are nose to nose through the fence, smelling each other and seemingly both enjoying the experience. I have no idea where this goat came from but it looks cute and Becky (15) immediately decides that she wants one. Ronan offers to take the goat back and, grabbing hold of one of its horns, leads it back whence it came. This has been a very eventful few days in more ways than one.

It's Chardonnay time, but what about the watermelons

The vendage was due to start at 3.00 am this morning at Domain Costeplane. Vincent mentioned this as Kevin, Rose, Jan and I went for a quick tasting yesterday. He said that he had been due to start gathering the Chardonnay on Saturday, but he had worked until late damping down the fire on Friday night. When pressed about such an early start he said that he needed to work when the temperature was below 20 C or fermentation would begin, hence the early morning. He would stop before the daytime temperature reached 20 C. I hope it tastes as good as this year's unoaked chardonnay.

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Our watermelons are relatively small but something inside me says that they are ripe. How to find out? A google search gives us some pointers. Anyway, I bring one in and Jan cuts it open and - it's absolutely delicious; he said, taking a bow. Jan's comment was: "That's one of the best we've had this year, it's so juicy." I'm modestly blushing as I write this because, as you know, I'm not one to sing my own praises - much.

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This afternoon we threw a barbecue so that Kevin could meet up with his longtime friends Chris Ward and Bob Walder (above, left to right, Chris, Kevin and Bob). Chris brings Delphine, and Bob and Lynne bring Harry. It's nice to have everyone together and even Max will be delighted. Jan slaved over a cold stove all day and produced her famous salads (and spare ribs). I slaved over a hot barbecue for 15 minutes and produced, lamb steaks and sausages all cooked to perfection.

Where have you been all night?

The picture left gives you some idea of the damage. Part of the village is visible at the bottom right of the hill. The central part of the hill was burnt out and you may be able to see green vegetation on either side (click on the picture for a better view). A fire track is visible up the left hand ridge of the hill and near the bottom of the track you might be able to see a fire truck coming down. We could see fire tenders coming gingerly down the hills, all morning, their night's work done. Many firemen slept the night on the hills which are criss-crossed by many tracks, known as DFCI's, and they were built specifically so that fire tenders could get into the hills for such emergencies. They are also great for walks, but some of them are very steep, hence the vehicles descending very slowly. We slept soundly knowing that the pompiers were there, looking after us all night. We were told that a small fire started again at 2.30 am, but was quickly jumped on. Thank you, chaps. The helicopter continued to circle this morning and in the background you could see the charred, devastated hillsides. We toured the village, by car, to see that the fire had literally stopped at the boundary fence of all the houses to the west of the village. They must have been very scared. After a walk round the village, we realised that the field next door to us was also scorched and we were no more than 1 metre from the flames. What we hadn't appreciated was the random nature of the outbreak of fires. They happened in all kinds of small areas obviously started by sparks from the main fire being fanned by the wind. All this happened whilst we were safely in Montmirat. That was close! This is Alex Hampshire reporting from the middle of the blazing inferno, back to you in the studio!

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Tonight, for a change, we went out for dinner. Jill and Harry have lots of visitors, and invite us because they are gluttons for punishment. Each course was cooked by a different side of their family and jolly good it was too.

And back to our red hot bed

Ok, so it's about 4.30pm, I'm sitting sorting out some of these postings when Jan rushes in and says "quick come outside, we have a very big forest fire near the village." Boy, was she right, it was so near, you could hear the crackling of the flames and the wind was blowing straight towards us. Conceivably, our escape route by car could have been blocked by the fire if we didn't move quickly, so I evacuated the house and moved further down into the village to check things out from a position of relative safety. Not so, the fire really caught hold and started to encircle the village, the air became thick with choking smoke, so we beat a hasty retreat to the next village, Montmirat, where there is a bar/relais and from where we could see all the activity. We counted in total 30 fire engines which came from all directions and we later learnt that there were 150 firemen. They were obviously well drilled because within 30 minutes they had a command centre set up in a field nearby and a helicopter circled continuously feeding information back to the ground. Most impressive was the 9 Canadair fire fighting water planes (above - there are only 10 in France) that 'bombed' the area around the village, two Trackers and a Dash 8 that dropped chemical fire retardants. They wouldn't let us back into the village until late so we had dinner in the relais and waited whilst things calmed down a little. As we drove back to the village later that night, we could see the blue flashing lights of the fire tenders all over the hills around us. Scary, but also very exciting. Welcome home!

And yet more food

Breakfast is very expensive at 18 euros per person but we have to try it, seeing that we were too late yesterday. I anticipated fresh baked this and that and a cooked breakfast to order. It was frankly disappointing, not even fresh squeezed orange, and no better than any other hotel breakfast. Hmmm.

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It was cloudy so we set off for a little sight seeing. First stop was Bandol, the town that gives its name to the wine in this area. It’s a pretty little seaside town with palm trees, beaches and lots of people. Far too many for my taste. On to St Cyr-sur-mer, the 'mer' having retreated a few kilometres away, some time ago, and then up into the mountains and round by the Paul Ricard circuit, where they hold the French Grand Prix from time to time. The pretty little medieval hillside town of le Castellet was next, spoilt only by hoards of visitors who amazingly looked just like us. So it was back to the hotel, to write up these notes and chill by the now sunny pool. Unfortunately, the view around the pool was spoilt by a woman who insisted on sun bathing topless and, as time wore on, she was joined by a few more. Now tell me, how a man is supposed to concentrate on his book when he’s surrounded by so many pneumatic women? For a moment I couldn’t tell whether I was in the south of France or silicone valley.

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We ate in Le Petit Jardin again tonight because we realised that none of the other restaurants in town were going to come up to scratch. This was Jan’s choice and how right she was. The main restaurant in the hotel was our first choice but they hadn’t changed the menu and another mortgage wasn’t an option. Would we come back to this town? Yes definitely. Would we recommend this hotel and restaurant? Yes definitely, but bring quite a bit of cash. The food isn't cheap but it is superb.