It is one of the laws of nature that strawberries should ripen in time for Wimbledon. But despite their slow start, due to late snow, ours peaked in time for the World Cup. So, as the world’s best footballers kicked and fouled and collected yellow cards by the handful (I blame the humidity and extreme heat), we have been gorging ourselves on strawberries, cherries and ice cream.

But the last two weeks of May and the first week of June were wet. Very wet. This was a shame as first Leila and then Toby and his girl friend Stella visited during this period. It even snowed on the day I took Leila back to the airport. And this was May 30th. Another record was broken, apparently, for the coldest first day of June.

So, much of Leila’s holiday here was spent a) helping us to track down a new TV (as figures and scenery on our old one were reduced to lurid pink and turquoise) and b) lying on the sofa reading and watching the French Open Tennis on the new TV. All those French players you never see at Wimbledon! Fortunately Paris was enjoying better weather than us. It was galling to hear the Eurosport commentators complaining about the cold weather there. For while all we could see outside our windows was rain, on our screens we could see shafts of Parisian sunlight. What were they moaning about? Continue reading →

St Joseph’s day came and went on 19th March without the winter snow responding to the old adage by vanishing. However this first week in May (which marks the end of our fourth year living in Entre-deux-Eaux) has also provided two rather more reliable indicators that the long winter is finally over. Firstly, Farmer Duhaut’s cows are out grazing. Secondly, this weekend the Gérardmer heavy equipment team are out clearing the Route des Crêtes, along the ridge of the Vosges mountains.

As far as the first indicator is concerned, it is the cows of Farmer Duhaut not those of Farmer Vozelle that you have to observe. Like most of the farmers locally, Duhaut watches the weather forecasts and plans systematically. As the snow in our valley melted, he and his partner Olivier were out spraying muck over all his pastures. Then when rain was forecast they were out spreading fertilizer, which would need to be watered in. However even his best friends could not call Farmer Vozelle systematic. We have long been amused by the sight of the Vozelle cows going out in the summer heat to graze at midday and returning just before midnight by the light of the tractor headlights. It was not so funny seeing the poor beasts out in the field behind their stable in this winter’s thick snow, with not a blade of grass in sight. One April night at 11 pm, after a good meal out, we were returning along the road past his farm. Fortunately we were driving slowly, as his chickens are often out on the road (free range!). So we spotted the blue string tied tautly across the road between his farmhouse and stable. Beyond the blue string, cows loomed out of the dark field, plodding back to their shed for midnight. Behind them, flourishing a big stick strode dumpy Mme Vozelle. She was wearing a long dressing gown and her hair was pulled tight into enormous rollers. It was like encountering Ena Sharples in a French country lane. Continue reading →

The wine route on the other side the mountains in Alsace is always picturesque. Even in last week’s cold dampness, the rows of black stumps criss-crossing the slopes formed stark but attractive patterns broken by drifts of pale smoke from bonfires of pruned twigs. The February austerity held the promise of summer’s pale grape globes and autumn’s golden leaves. And not a tourist in sight!

We were making our way to a restaurant in the mediaeval walled village of Riquewihr. One of the many prosperous wine producing villages. We walked down its cobbled main street, looking for the evocatively named street of the seigneurial stables and the Grappe d’Or. Many restaurants are closed in February; this one was re-opening that lunch-time. We felt as if we’d intruded on a family setting. The chef’s baby was temporarily propped up on the bar; kitchen-hands were getting changed in the toilets; and the waitress had no record of our booking. However, there were plenty of tables free, and we were soon celebrating Roger’s birthday with Cremant d’Alsace (the Alsace sparkling wine) and perusing the menu.

The traditional Alsace food is hearty, doubtless to nourish the gnarled vineyard labourers. Platters heaped with cabbage and sausage, mounds of potatoes and salted pork. It’s curious that there are also many Michelin-starred restaurants in Alsace serving dainty portions of tastefully arranged food. However the Grappe d’Or was definitely a traditional restaurant (décor old beams, red tablecloths and vinicultural implements) and John chose choucroute for his main course (he said he always to have it once a year). Continue reading →

You’re probably all too busy with Christmas preparations to want to wade through the latest (much delayed) ramblings from Entre-deux-Eaux, so just save it for the bleak, wet days of January or even February, and in the meantime accept our very best wishes for a very happy Christmas!Here’s just a flavour of December over here: the weekends are filled with Christmas Markets, and the best ones are over in Alsace. So last Saturday, getting into the Christmas spirit, we crossed the snow capped Vosges to Barr. Its lower streets were overflowing with the colourful weekly vegetable and fruit market. We walked uphill past small shops selling bread, jewellery, garden implements, wine, houses and clothes. Outside the Town Hall we paused at a little wooden cabin and sniffed. Mulled wine. Not your coarse red wine with assorted bits of fruit floating disconsolately, but light, white, honeyed wine with thick slices of oranges wedged into the bottom of the cup! Swigging appreciatively, we plunged into the colourful hall, with its silk printed scarves, wooden dolls, home made soap, carved animals, sumptuous felt hats (round which elegant bird-like women were swooping, posing and preening in front of glittering mirrors), white and gold candles, flower paintings and displays of breads of all shapes and sizes. Slightly tipsy we emerged into the cold air clutching a large carved wooden duck. We’d started our Christmas shopping!

Last time we wrote, the summer weekend flea-markets and the summer weekday walks were drawing to an end, the winter lectures were about to start, but a long gap loomed before communal weekend activities like Christmas Markets. The very last flea-market we headed for, Uffheim, was a distant one, not far from the German and Swiss borders. And unfortunately it turned out to have been mis-advertised, being an antiques market, so way out of our price range. However, there was a small sign pointing towards a nearby Maginot Line blockhouse. It was a tiny pre-war defensive fortification, lovingly restored in recent years. It was, like many sites, closed for winter, but from on top of it the Black Forest and its blue mountains seemed very close and we savoured our unexpected non-flea-market discovery. Continue reading →

The first overnight frosts. A reminder that summer is passing, unrecorded.

Fleeting images of the vanishing summer: guidebooks on the bench beneath the apple tree; a burgundy brocade jacket; an alien stinkhorn; young mourners in black; chandeliers over a ghostly banquet; silent headstones in Hindi; jars of peach jam; the stack of apple-wood.

Yesterday was a day of nostalgia too. The last Friday summer walk of the Club Vosgien. The farewell handshakes and kisses were regretful. The companionship of summer was dissolving. Fridays this year had been particularly prone to rain. Macs and umbrellas had been much in evidence. (Yes, umbrellas. It’s perfectly respectable for serious walkers here to carry an umbrella. A silhouette of walkers on a rock on rainy day would look very Japanese – the cape macs and umbrellas shading into robes and parasols). The oldest walker, Auguste, had decided that, with his 90th birthday approaching, his days of toiling uphill were over, but most Fridays he would lurk near the car-park to greet us wistfully on our return. But the president of the group was back in action, after months of uncertainty after a heavy beam had fallen on his head. Each week he addressed the group, in a slow and careful voice, saying how pleased he was to be once more in our company. And each week the applause was warm and affectionate. Continue reading →

In a charity shop in Nottingham I found a guide book to the museums of Paris. After that, nothing would satisfy me, but to spend my birthday in the museums of Paris. In all our years of visiting and living in France, John and I had never made a joint trip to Paris. So we booked a charming sounding hotel in the Gobelins area, closed our blue shutters and drove off in early May across the rolling plains to Paris. We had a wonderful time looking at mediaeval art, Egyptian and Assyrian splendours, Impressionists in the railway station and Christofle silverware in the canal-side factory. Evenings in restaurants ranged from Georgian to Japanese. And our last morning concluded at the opening of an exhibition about the Jews of the Marais area and then with vegetarian fallafel wraps at a vibrant Israeli café.

Replete, we drove back across the rolling plains. The first sight of the blue mountains of the Vosges in the distance always tugs at my heart and makes me happy to be returning home. We drove into Entre-deux-Eaux, stopping at Danielle and Pierre Laine’s to collect our post. Unusually, they had no news of village life during our absence. On our windowsill we found a birthday Oleander from Nicola. Beyond the house, fragments of wood littered the road, and on the verge lay the shattered remains of our largest apple tree. Continue reading →

The Rosetta Stone was bound to cause trouble.

As the sparkling Christmas lights came down and falling snow created a siege mentality, our thoughts turned to Egypt and cruising along the Nile.

Until coming to France, we have never organised ourselves onto an organised tour group. A bit of snobbery perhaps, but also there’s more of a sense of discovery on your own. However, seeing Marrakech last year partially through French eyes (and stomachs!) had added to the entertainment. So when we got back to Entre-deux-Eaux after this Christmas in Nottingham and New Year in London, John investigated holidays in Egypt, flying from nearby Metz/Nancy airport. We ended up booking with last year’s French travel company.

Our cruise ship from Aswan to Luxor and back to Aswan was Cheops III. It was a mass of dark polished wood and dark red carpeting. At quaysides we docked parallel to other parked boats, through which we walked to reach land. The reception areas of these boats were sparkling, marbled and chandeliered. The queue for the ladies (on the return flight) pronounced our boat vastly inferior, and certainly not up to its five star ranking. “It would only be two star at most in France”, they agreed. They were also piqued because the crew did not speak very good French (we had found their English much better). Continue reading →

It proved surprisingly difficult to find any fireworks. With friends arriving from Nottingham on November 5th, an appropriate welcome had originally seemed to be a party, fireworks, bonfire and Guy Fawkes. We checked with our local retired fireman He looked a bit startled at the prospect of his English neighbours burning effigies of Catholic plotters, but said that letting off fireworks in the middle of the country would not be a problem for cows or neighbours. However, local stores were less obliging. They contained stacks of seasonal scary halloween masks, plastic pumpkins, inflatable santas and tinsel, but no fireworks until nearer New Year. Our meagre bonfire ingredients were also sodden from weeks of rain. So we concluded that a large indoor dinner would be more enjoyable, even if a bit sedate.

John therefore made dinner preparations and we set out to pick up Sue, Alistair and their son Oliver from Basle airport. On the way back we lingered in one of our favourite gabled Alsace villages, Eguisheim – patisseries in the salon de thé, followed by wine tasting amid gigantic oak barrels in sixteenth century vaults. We got back to messages from Nicola and Dorinda: in a fit of depression at the U.S. election results, Nicola had made a substantial effigy of George W. Bush out of straw from Dorinda and Roger’s hayloft; then her retired-patisserie-making friends had told her of a tiny magic shop opposite their former patisserie (alas, now a hairdresser’s). Amid the magical tricks the shopkeeper did indeed have fireworks, which he was so delighted to sell out-of-season (even to the anti-Catholic foreigners) that he threw in a large squat mystery freebie. Whilst his family recovered from their 4 am start, Alistair scouted round for good (but not too good) wood to burn and constructed a platform and stake support for George W. Continue reading →

The season of mellow fruitfulness lasted for about 5 days. Now we are back to low cloud and incessant rain. It must be time for tranquil recollection of those few precious days of sunshine and a newsletter.

St Die really comes to life during its annual Festival International de Geographie, referred to affectionately by locals as le FIG. All the cafes and restaurants, after setting out their tables out on the pavements, propose a special geographical menu. The colleges, social centres, museum, library, and cathedral and cloisters all fling wide their doors for lectures and exhibitions. A curving row of wooden booths sprouts underneath the spreading white “wings” of the Tower of Liberty. Soon they are stacked with sausages, cheeses, wines patisseries, honey, jam, and coffees. Flags of the world festoon the Hotel de Ville and the main streets. Cars with the FIG logo dart between venues. Elegant ladies in colourful flowing FIG shirts welcome and inform. Lecturers, identifiable by large lapel badges and an air of self-importance, stride around the streets, bookshops and cafes. The forestry rangers re-create a (very small) forest by the Cathedral fountain, serve different forest soups each day (chestnut, pumpkin, garlic and ginger) from a huge cauldron suspended from three poles, play a forest game with young children, and display two rather sad forestry ponies (who obviously aren’t taken in by the re-created forest in the midst of paving slabs and traffic). And up in the Cloisters are tents with more foods of the world. Continue reading →

This time last summer we were bemoaning the intense heat of the canicule which we had been enduring. But this year we are just so pleased to be enjoying September sunshine after a mostly overcast and wet August. Many wet days have been passed browsing nostalgic childhood books (which Helen has been steadily adding to on trips to the UK), genealogical databases like Ancestry (which John has used to confirm and expand his family tree) and donated glossy “Period Living” and “Country Living” magazines (what we could have done with our old farmhouse if only we’d abandoned the scruffy, utilitarian farmhouse image and employed a landscape gardener and trendy architect!)

We are, however, looking slightly more landscaped than last year, due to the purchase (at long last!) of a new, petrol-powered mower (not the sit-on that Helen hankered after, as various bits of our ground are too bumpy and with too many obstacles to make such a beast worthwhile). So John has extended the regular field mowing into the orchard. Unfortunately the old stumps and new suckers provided frequent obstacles and a fatal blow by a hidden tree stump soon bent the crankshaft. Quotes for repairs were astronomical – we could almost have invested in a new one! Fortunately a consultation over beers with Pierre Laine, proved useful. Before the beer he couldn’t think of any current repairers (all his generation of artisans having recently retired), but by the end of a glass he recalled a workshop in a small village nearby. Within 3 days our mower was repaired for about a third of the price we’d been previously quoted in St Dié, and the mower (and John) were back at work in the orchard. Continue reading →