New home on the web for French Obsession

From now on, all future updates on my French Obsession can be found at my new Wordpress home: http://freshwordswriter.wordpress.com/french-obsession

Look forward to seeing you there.

Alright son?

I have at long last discovered something about living in Scotland that I think has the edge over our Mediterranean partners in the Auld Alliance.

This morning as I walked from my house heading for the coalface I found myself fast approaching a little old lady on the pavement. Like many little old ladies she was taking each step carefully and slowly, helped along by a stick to give her extra stability. Her progress was slow but steady.

In great contrast, my morning routine is typified by being in something of a rush. The often repeated snooze facility on my alarm clock ensures that I am commonly late before I even get out of bed, so the walk is more of a run most mornings – though I’ve never yet resorted to Steve Martin’s advice that skipping is as fast as running but does not make you look like you’re in a hurry; no, it just makes you look like an idiot.

This morning then, as I ate into the distance between myself and the little old lady I first though, crikey, I hope she doesn’t get a fright with me coming up so fast behind her. As the toe of my ancient oxford’s caught on a raised crack in the surface of the pavement though (don’t get me started about the state of our pavements and roads), my thoughts quickly turned to, crikey, I hope I don’t fall on top of her.

Lady luck was on my side though and I neither startled the poor soul, nor crushed her beneath my feeble ten and a half stone frame. Looking at me with her kindly face as I tried to regain my composure she said something that warmed my heart.

“Are you alright son?” she said.

Now just to be clear, while I was pleased that she asked if I was OK, I was over the moon that she called me “son”. I’m 43 years old! I can’t remember the last time someone called me son, though it was probably another old lady I was in danger of falling on top of.

In Scotland we have that rare facility which, like the meadow pipit, is a joy to behold at first hand; that ability to be so flippantly casual in our exchanges, but in a “I really care about whether you fall” way, rather than in the “ha, ha, look at that numpty take a tumble” way.

There is refreshing honesty that at its best measures up well against what can sometimes be the faux politesse of the French. Sure the French are supremely polite, their language demands it; but you can often be left wondering if they really care about whether you fall on your backside or not.

So although on balance I’d rather be sipping pastis and eating olives, it’s important to remember that every nation and community has an upside, however small.

Coming over all French

I’ve come over all French today. The Scottish heat wave that has seen us bask for the last few days in temperatures of over 25 Celsius has turned me all continental. Yesterday, for the first time in my memory of living in Glasgow we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner outside: and by outside I don’t mean crowding under a bus shelter to scoff our fish and chips.

Indeed yesterday we had the full Provencal experience. Croissants, cool fresh juice, and freshly brewed coffee to kick off the day; a mixed salad of bountiful provisions, with warm, crusty bread and a glass of chilled rosé for lunch; and a tender fillet of salmon baked with honey, lemon and ginger (and more chilled wine) to round things off. A little stroll into the main “place au centre ville” for a digestif is all that would have been required to make it a perfect day but given the lack of convivial café’s round our neck of the woods a quick brandy on patio stood in.

I must say that I just feel better. Better that it is not raining, that the wind isn’t howling round every corner, that the sun is proud and perky in the sky. The overall effect of this weather is to lighten my temperament and make me think happy thoughts – if I were a ten year old girl I’d be dreaming of kittens and puppies.

I’ve reached a conclusion this week that while all of the other things I admire about French life are valuable and essential it is that commodity, so unpredictable in the west of Scotland, of stable mild weather that delivers the magic bullet.

It can’t surely be the heat alone, or even the Vitamin D booster (as I’ve noted in previous posts), but I think it is something more complex. It is a rich cocktail of all those things that I hold dear – for even though the weather may bring me down, I aim to live my life in as continental a manner as possible. So perhaps it is the case when the sun shines it brings all these other factors together, the glue that binds to coin a phrase.

Either way, all I know is that this beautiful Mediterranean weather has me dreaming once more of olives and pastis, and of a shady veranda in front of a typical Provencal villa where I can jot down more of these thoughts, write possibly the first great Gallo/Scots crime novel and make a modest yet comfortable living with my family around me and the pain in my joints less pronounced.

Fill her up my good man.

In the small French Provencal village where I spent a fine fortnight some years back there is a tiny and quite fabulous wine shop. Each and every morning as I strolled au Centre Ville, en route to the boulangerie for the daily supply of freshly baked bread, I would nod politely to M. Gibet as he sat serenely outside his shop smoking one of those little cigars you get in tins whilst reading the morning paper. Beside him, lying dutifully at his feet sat Armand, as stout a poodle as you will ever have seen who's only evidence of life was the occasional yelp he made in his sleep as he dreamt, I suppose, of worrying French sheep.

Now back home, we have a strange impression of a French wine shop. Most who have never visited one would imagine it to be a fine establishment with majestically racked wines of all vintages and characteristics. A shopkeeper with a canvas apron as well would probably be high up there in the imagination. And there's no doubt that places like that do exist and very fine they are too. But M. Gibet's shop is a wonderful antidote to those chattering chardonnay classes who would have us drink only the right sort of wine at the right times and with the correct foods.

The great thing about M. Gibet's shop is that he will happily fill your empties at a fraction of the cost for the bottled article — and all he asks for is modest remuneration and that your bottles are clean (actually, I suppose all he really asks for is the money, it's up to you if you want to put fresh wine in dirty bottles). For inside his shop, its coolness enhanced by the basic render finish on the walls (very minimalist, very noughties!) lie 6 enormous plastic vats each with a small blackboard hanging from the kind of nozzle and hose affair you might see on an old fashioned petrol pump. And scribbled on each in that typical French cursive script is what serves for a label promising such transports of delight (in those glory pre-Euro days) as "Cote du Rhone, 11.5%, 12f/l" or "Cotes du Rhone 13.5%, 14f/l" and even (my personal favourite) the "Cotes du Rhone 15%, 17f/l". The signs do not even tell you if the wines are red or white – it is self evident through the translucence of the huge plastic vats.

When it comes to vintage though, it is important to remember that these are young wines. So young in fact that they are hardly out of nappies. Their vintages are measured in terms of months rather than years (ah yes, the October 1999, 15%, that was a great month!) but what they lack in maturity they make up for in youthful charm and vigour – as well as a frighteningly high alcohol content in some cases. These are wines for supping over a hearty plate of pasta; for those occasions (in our household at least) when we just want to slump down in front of the TV and not have to think, and what's more, not have to pay too much for a drink to make the programmes seem better than they actually are.

But the real beauty and pleasure comes when your bottle is down to its last drop. You don't throw it away, or set it aside for recycling in the big skip down at the supermarket sense, but simply give it a good rinse out, sterilise it if you must, then take it back along to the charming M. Gibet the following morning and say 'fill it up my good man' (along with the other dozen empties you have).

Believe me when I say life is so much simpler down there: bread is freshly bought each morning; local farmers sell their own produce at the local markets every week without fail — not for me those stupid little plastic containers with a few meagre sprigs of herbs which are strangely prevalent back here in Ecosse — and I don't have to stand in front of huge ranges of bonnes vins, trying to decide which of the 300 or so different varieties from the new world will satisfy my palette; just stick the nozzle into the bottle and pull the trigger.