Tails From Provence

The Sharp End of being an Expat

We went for a hike with some new friends last Friday. We climbed to the top of La Contras, the western end of the Montagne de Lure. It was a tough climb for unfit people, but we did it.

Lynne was right – it’s a spiritual place up there. The Mistral had been blowing for three days and the air was crystal clear. We could see for miles and miles : the snowy tops of the Alps to the east, the craggy mountains of the Drôme stretching away to the north, the Luberon and Mont St Victoire to the south and the bare, stony top of Ventoux to the west.

I felt very close to God? Mother Nature? Whatever or whoever it is that makes the world tick. Which made it easier to accept the text I received fifteen minutes after we made it to the top; a text I’ve been dreading for the last year. Our friend Denis, who has been fighting cancer since December 2011, had finally slipped into a coma.

What to do, what to do… We were about to move into our new house – we were getting the key the very next day – and had a hectic week ahead of us as we moved our bits and pieces from the house in Les Granons. I’d flown back to Cork, just two weeks earlier, to see Denis when I heard he had taken a turn for the worse. I felt I’d said my goodbyes, but the LSH had not seen him for several months, and he wanted to attend the funeral if it was possible. It depends on when he finally passes, we agreed. We had to be sensible, there was the cost to consider… I had a quick look at flights that evening. Flights on Sunday and Monday were outlandishly expensive but the cost came down later in the week. Looking at it logically, we agreed that if he passed away later in the week, the LSH would fly back; if it was in the next day or two, neither of us could go.

Next morning, as we were doing the walkthrough of the new house with the estate agent, the phonecall came.

We blinked back the tears, continued to work with the estate agent and, when she left, sat down for the first time in our new home, red-eyed and sniffly. Now that it had happened, we were a lot less bullish about not going. One of us had to go, we agreed. He’d do it for either of us, we agreed. Hang the cost – we had a small amount of money put away in case we had unforeseen expenses with moving house. Whatever we need, we can do without it, we agreed. The LSH is a lot better at lugging boxes around than me, so I would go. So much for being sensible and logical!

So I went, knowing that I was lucky to be able to go and very glad to be there, but all the time wishing I’d been in Cork during the days leading up to his death. Not to be with him at the end, of course, that time belonged to his family. No, if I’d been there, I’d have spent hours with his other horsey friends, drinking endless cups of tea and reminiscing. We’d have swapped stories; made each other cry; made each other laugh. I could have visited Paddy, Denis’ horse, fed him carrots, put my arms around his neck and given him a hug just for being the best horse Denis could have asked for.

I regret not being there during the last few months of his illness, to visit him when he was in hospital, to distract him and make him laugh. To have had him drop in to us on his good days with a few scones for a chat and a cuppa like he’s done so many times before. To have had a few last rides together. To have watched a few more Munster games together. But we made our choice; we packed up and left twelve months ago and this is the price we have to pay. Forget your language problems, forget your cultural differences, forget your craving for a nice cup of tea. Without a doubt, the hardest part of being an expat is not being there when your friends and family need you.

Perhaps we are just unlucky, but Denis is the second of our nearest and dearest to pass away since we moved here last October. I really, really hope he is the last for a very long time.

November 6th, 2011- our last ride together

Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – Le Bistrot de Lagarde

Last year, when Anne and I were in the early days of Le Big Trek, we were due to ride through a village called Lagarde d’Apt (so called because there used to be a whole pile of missile silos there). We had heard whispers of a really good little restaurant there, and it crossed our minds that maybe, just maybe, we’d be able to tie the horses up and get a plate of food to eat outside while we watched them.

Imagine our disappointment when we found this :

A shabby old auberge, neglected and long-abandoned. Too bad, we agreed, as we ate our baguette and then continued down the empty three-lane highway which had suddenly materialised in front of us (that was for the missiles, too, it turns out).

This year, I learned that we had been ever so slightly in the wrong place. Le Bistrot de Lagarde was a mere kilometre away from where we had emerged from the woods, out onto that amazing road.

The LSH and I have been wanting to go there for ages, so when our friend Lynne called and asked if we’d like to join her and her visiting former colleagues from the US for lunch there, we jumped at the chance. We took the narrow, winding road from Rustrel towards the Plateau d’Albion and just as it opened out into that magnificent, straight three-line highway pictured above, we found the entrance to Le Bistrot de Lagarde.

A low-sized, sprawling building, with a lot of cars already parked beside it, it looked a lot more alive than that other old auberge.

We met Lynne & Co, introductions were made and we settled in for the long haul.

This place is expensive at night-time, we’ve been told, but it does a three course lunch for €18 or you can have four courses for €22. That said, there’s a hefty supplement for one or two items, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Our friends were already tucking into the wine but the waiter quickly brought some more, along with roasted pumpkin seeds, bread and prettily decorated butter – it had what looked like grated truffle on it, but it turned out to be dried olive. Nice though.

We talked and nibbled and talked and drank and told the waitress we weren’t ready to order yet and talked some more. Then we got down to the business at hand and turned our attention to the Menu du Jour.

Three of us ordered Salade de Lentilles (lentil salad), two ordered Velouté de Potimarron (Pumpkin soup) and one ordered Mousseline de Volaille (chicken mousse, but it came garnished with langoustines, those giant prawny things).

I was one of the lentil people. It was very good, the dressing was nice and sharp, and it came with a little green salad served on the side. It was served with a very thick vinaigrette, too, which was more like mayonnaise than vinaigrette, but to be honest I thought it didn’t need it, it was fine as it was.

It was great eating with these people. They’re really into their food, but in a “Wow, this is amazing, you’ve got to taste it!” way and soon the dishes were flying up and down the table as we all tried a bit of everything.

The pumpkin soup was, for me, a surprising winner. It was creamy and soupy and smooth and delicious. Where did the beige colour come from? Who knows! Who cares! It was souperb!

Fish lovers declared the Mousseline de Volaille the winner, however. I tried a bit – too much fish and not enough chicken for me. This was one of the dishes for which there was a supplementary charge – it was €4 extra. Fine if you’re into that sort of thing…

Then it was time for the main courses. We turned out to be horrifically boring and five of us ordered steak. I guess we were all craving blood, especially seeing as four of us ordered them rare.

The steaks came with a Hollandaise sauce on the side, which again I thought was superfluous, polenta chips and a fried lettuce. Fried lettuce? Hmm, interesting… but surprisingly good, it was really buttery. The steaks themselves were excellent. Cooked exactly right, tender and tasty. Oh yes, and there was a €6 supplement for those of us who wanted to eat it. A 33% surcharge is a bit hefty and very quickly turns a good value lunch into an fairly expensive lunch, but they were top-quality steaks and worth paying extra.

The only non-steak main was duck. It looked quite humble but Mary, who had ordered it, was enraptured by it.

The LSH went for the four-course menu, so he was served a plate of cheese while the rest of us waited patiently.

Finally it was time for our desserts. I went for a biscuit cornet with Mara de Bois, which is a late fruiting variety of strawberry. It’s a hybrid between wild strawberries and the normal cultivated ones, it’s delicious and it’s a real treat at this time of the year.

Yum….

The other sweet choice for dessert was a chocolate creme brulée. This was served with light, lemony madeleines and chantilly. The LSH had this (I couldn’t taste it because of the chocolate) and said it was excellent, but I don’t know how anything could have been better than my strawberries!

By the time we had added on supplementary charges, coffees and wine, the total came to €35 a head. Hefty enough for lunch in this area, but a very classy meal.

Star Rating (out of 5) :

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮
Food : ✮✮✮✮✮
Value : ✮✮✮✮
Ambiance : ✮✮✮✮

Sorry for the prolonged silence and the lateness of this Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime. There’s a good reason.

Taking Stuff for Granted

I’m starting this post with an extract from CarrotTop, who brought up this subject last week :

When I was a horseless kid I wanted nothing else than to be part of the world that I would glimpse at ag shows or equestrian centres. Sometimes we’d drive past a horse show and I would wish I was there with my own float (a float is what they call a trailer Down Under) and pony, just milling about and brushing and talking and lugging water buckets.

It’s nearly 5 years since we bought LBH and I still get a huge kick out of the fact that my horses are a daily part of my life. I love it all, all of it. I especially get a perverse kind of pleasure from the daily grind stuff, like complaining about the price of feed, or fixing fences, or having a crappy ride, or when I have a really tiring day at work but I still have to drive out to the paddock to feed. I think it’s because I get to pretend that having horses is such a normal, obvious, take-it-for granted thing that I can whinge about it, but inside I know I’m the luckiest person in the world.

This stopped me in my tracks when I read it and brought me straight back to my yard in Cork one morning, almost twenty years ago. It was a nice day, the sun was shining and I’d finished all my jobs – horses were fed, stables and paddock were skipped out, yard was swept. The morning stretched out before me – I was free until 1.30pm when I would have to go and collect my daughters from school.

Will I ride, I wondered.

I had three horses to choose from – my own mare, Hally, or two well-schooled livery horses, whose owners had said they’d be delighted if I rode their horse any time. I stood in the yard, dithering over which horse I would ride and, in fact, whether I would ride at all.

Ah, sure I won’t bother, I decided.

I had stuff to do in the house – there’s always stuff to do in the house, isn’t there? I started to make my way down the short drive to the back door when I suddenly thought of a small girl who lived, breathed, ate and slept horses. She played for hours on her bedroom floor with her little plastic horses. She drew horses on every sheet of paper she could lay her hands on. Her bicycle was her pony, with string reins attached to the handlebars and she practised her rising trot and her jumping position every time she rode it. She relived every moment of her oh-so-scarce riding lessons over and over again. She built show-jumping courses for her friends in the front garden and knew all the rules, calling out “Four faults!” or “Eliminated” as they played show-jumping. She taught her pet dog how to lunge and how to do gymnastic jumping exercises. She had an incredible radar for detecting horses anywhere within a ten kilometre radius of her home and she would cycle off alone, on her imaginary pony, to visit these horses, feeding them carrots and apples that had been “liberated” from the kitchen cupboards. She dreamed that when she was grown-up, she would have a house with a small garden and a big field full of horses beside it.

If anyone had said to that little girl that she would one day be wondering “Which horse will I ride? The liver chestnut, the grey or the bay?” and she would then choose not to ride, she would never have believed it.

I looked at my house; I looked at my yard; I looked at my paddock. How lucky am I, I thought, that my dreams came true.

I rode two horses that morning.

So CarrotTop, thanks for the reminder – we are so incredibly lucky to have these creatures in our lives. The Dancing Donkey was trying to reassure me last week when I ~~moaned about~~ posted about all the reasons I haven’t been riding. She told me how she has finally learned not to feel guilty because her mare isn’t working to her full potential. Well, I’m damn sure my guys aren’t working to their full potential, either, but improving my horses is not my reason for riding (although it would be nice).

I have two fantastic, mannerly little horses. I just want to enjoy riding them, whether it’s in the arena or out on the trail. I want to do it for that little girl on her bedroom floor, I want to do it for my dear friend Denis who will never ride again and I want to do it for myself, because the day will surely come when I can’t do it anymore, either.

That’s why I was frustrated with all the roadblocks I met last week.