The House Husband

This place is beautiful. Of course it helps that the weather is just about perfect and it’s very quiet. Even so…this place is beautiful.

The owner's house, just across the drive from us

The beds are a bit weird, it has to be said and the whole place is a bit damp after a wet winter (we are the first of the season to use the place) but nothing that a jolly good airing won’t fix.

The shower is FANTASTIC! Powerful and hot and enclosed in a screen, exactly what one wants from a shower. This differs from the one at Mestre, which I considered was so awful it didn’t even warrant a mention…but let’s just say it dribbled, the shower head was about three feet off the ground and there was no curtain.

Today was all about doing very little, apart from going for a walk around the village and along part of a country walk. It’s a lovely village with a gorgeous old church.

Liorac-sur-Louyre

We popped into the Bar/Tabac/Restaurant in order to buy some water (Mirinda reckons it may have been the guy’s only sale of the day) and then set off on the yellow route which wound around the top of the village and then off into the countryside.

The countryside around here is absolutely alive with insects and small mammals, lizards and birds. As we walked along, we had a few, what I think were baton blue butterflies playing leapfrog with Mirinda’s runners. I think it was the bright cerise laces they were particularly attracted to.

At one stage she stopped, avoiding crushing some by a fraction of an inch and a quick yell from me. Her heel raised, two blue butterflies frolicked around it, not a care in the world but for each other. I tried to get a photograph but they were just too quick.

We walked for around three hours, returning exhausted and quite hungry. So, while I prepared a lovely, light and tasty French lunch, Mirinda jumped in the pool to cool off. She reckons this is possibly the best view she’s ever swum to.

Swimming in a wonderful background

Just to finish off this day of doing very little, here’s a short video of the house we’re staying in. It may not work very well because I don’t have the right software on my netbook but, hopefully, it’ll give you some idea.

Tomorrow we are going all prehistoric…

One of the odd things about France is how a lot of places are closed on Wednesdays. Even odder is how places that are supposed to be open on Wednesdays are inexplicably closed on a Wednesday. Like the Salon de The at Fontevraud.

Yesterday we had a lovely coffee and croissant there before going into the abbey. We figured breakfast this morning at Fontevraud would be the perfect way to start the day. We set off nice and early…yeah, right…we slept in and set off at about 10am. We pulled into the car park at Fontevraud at about 10:10am.

The Salon de The was closed. Inexplicably. The sign on the door claimed it was open. It was not. we walked back to the car and set off south, wondering how anyone made a living in France.

We drove on through the most beautiful countryside, on lovely smooth roads, arrow straight and with only a trickle of traffic. The perfect way to travel.

We wound up at a place called Mirabeau. We only stopped because we noticed a bar open on the main road and my need for a coffee was pretty obvious. We pulled into a side road and parked the car. As we opened the doors, we were assailed by a French woman, yelling at us in French. We looked around, worried we’d parked on her cat or something but there was no-one anywhere.

We walked across the road and she started again, followed by music. We looked up. A pair of speakers were fixed to the wall of the building behind us and her voice would come out of them at regular intervals. We had no idea what she was saying but figured the locals would be annoyed by it.

We realised that the centre of town was actually further down the road we’d parked on so we jumped back into the car and drove further down, to where the shops started.

We spotted a restaurant which looked a likely contender for breakfast (it was more like lunchtime by now) if we fancied cous cous but I noticed the people starting to move further down the road and decided to investigate.

Heading further into Mirabeau

All the way we were being continually harangued by either the woman or her strange choice of music as it bounced off the walls. Finally we arrived at the centre of town. Wednesday in Mirabeau is market day so a whole load of stalls selling fruit and veg, meat, cheese, bread and cakes and other produce you generally find at French markets were set up in what is generally, a car park.

There was also a bar/Tabac/PMU open on the square. We went in an inquired about food. The woman behind the counter suggested we visit the patisserie and get some bread. It’s important to remember that we are in deepest, darkest France where no-one but us speaks English and Mirinda’s French, though better than mine is still not what you’d call fluent.

So we wandered across the square and into a little patisserie in order to buy a croissant and a loaf of bread. The woman who runs this patisserie is insane. We asked for a croissant, an orange juice and a French loaf which was sitting by her till. Mirinda was holding the orange juice.

The woman said an amount which meant nothing to us and rung it up on her till where we could see it. I gave her some money. We were about to leave when Mirinda asked her what about the bread. The woman said something in French, almost bashing herself on the head in admonition. She also explained that she’d not charged for the bread. She rang up another amount which we then paid her.

Mirinda, making sure the woman had it all correct now, held up everything. The woman suddenly reacted at the orange juice. It seems she’d forgotten to include that as well. We paid for a third time before almost running out of the shop in case she charged us for the air.

We sat on a bench eating our breakfast and watched the old people with their shopping baskets shuffle between stalls. Eventually we went over to the Bar/Tabac/PMU for a coffee. While Mirinda went to the loo, pushing through the scores of old men playing bingo, I managed to attract the attention of the strange man/woman bar person and ordered coffee. It tasted fantastic.

All the time we’d been in Mirabeau, the announcements and music didn’t stop. It was like being constantly on a South West Trains journey into Waterloo. It was very, very odd. Eventually we left, back to the car, bemused. It was a very strange place.

Our next stop wasn’t so strange.

When I worked out where we’d stop for lunch I’d used the tried and true method of roughly working out halfway and then picking a place I quite liked the name of. I did this a few days ago and came up with Angouleme. Things didn’t look too good as we followed the signs to the centre of town. Linda had a river quite close so we (sort of) moved in that direction.

We were sitting in traffic behind a temporary traffic light when I suggested we turn left, basically so we could turn around and head back to the grotty town centre we’d spotted as we quickly drove by. Running down the side of the street we’d pulled into was a big, modern building that looked a bit like an unoccupied single storey office block with car parking spaces outside. Mirinda parked and we hopped out.

The big building was a museum (to what we had to wait to learn because we didn’t know the French word helpfully written on the signs) and, while the back was all very modern and featureless, the front was built in 1845 and was all white and fancy and steeped in a mysterious history. The odd thing was the number of people around the place. Some were sitting on the benches running down one side of the big empty space in front of the museum entrance, others were wandering over a bridge directly in front of the museum entrance. It all looked quite popular and busy but it was impossible to know why.

We wandered over to the museum entrance and outside sat a small A-frame sign which had the words ‘panoramic brasserie’ on it with an arrow pointing over the bridge. It also had other words on it but we didn’t really understand them so we decided to follow the arrow and cross the bridge.

The bridge crosses the Charente River which runs through Angouleme. It straddles an island in the middle of the river which has had many uses but is now allowed to run wild and be a wonderful wild place for children to run around in and discover big metal cut outs of centurions, knights and fishermen. Standing, looking out at the island is a statue to Corto Maltese, the creation of writer Hugo Pratt.

Just gazing into the distance

We continued on across the (very long) bridge, pausing to look across at the Museum of Paper which stands on the site of a paper mill. Apparently, the production of paper is one of the things that Angouleme was known for and the museum is probably not as dull as it sounds. We were still looking for the brasserie so we didn’t investigate. Sadly, and as we’d expect, the signs had ceased so we headed for an extremely bizarre looking building and tried there.

Lots of mirrors

The building was another part of the museum across the river. A designer had decided to marry the old, existing building with a very modern exterior consisting mainly of mirrored windows and stairs that appeared to float in space. It was especially odd in the sunshine. We found the door and asked for the brasserie.

The very pleasant girl at reception told us that it was on the third floor but warned us that it closed at 3pm. Mirinda thanked her but, given it was a Wednesday and most things in France are shut on a Wednesday, informed her that it was only 1:30. The girl agreed, smiled and repeated that the brasserie was on the third floor. We entered the lift fully expecting the brasserie to be closed.

It wasn’t and we sat looking out over the panorama for which it is named, enjoying a strange tuna and egg brick (Mirinda) and a Captain Bicep burger (me). We left long before the 3pm closing time. Mirinda thinks the girl was making sure we knew that the normal four hour French lunch was out of the question. When we left she looked quite surprised we’d only been there for an hour.

At some stage (and I’m not sure when) we worked out that the museum was for comics and could be worth a visit one day in the future. What could also bear another visit would be the old centre of Angouleme which sits high up on a hill which we drove up and round on our way out of town. I’m betting it’s really beautiful and medieval up there. Maybe we’ll pop in on the way back…or maybe not.

It was then time for Linda to take us on the scenic route to the Dordogne. She seems to do this with monotonous regularity. The first part of a journey she insists on motorways but then, if we stop for a break it’s like she decides she’d rather fancy seeing a bit of the countryside and hits the small roads. While going the scenic route was very pleasant and made the drive interesting with plenty of silly signs, it did mean we found the hell that is the Riberac one way system.

I’m sure that the authorities that hold sway over Riberac regularly change the one way system in order to trap tourists in the depths of its streets. We spotted quite a few abandoned cars and lost souls somewhere in the middle. Linda was completely confused, trying to make us drive up streets the wrong way, constantly recalculating our route through. It was frightening.

Mirinda, however, remaining calm and refusing to listen to Linda, wove us through the tiny, fragmented lanes and eventually we emerged, reasonably unscathed, beyond the Riberac environs. We vowed never again to visit this hell hole.

One of the things that Linda quite prides herself on is her ability to work out when we’ll arrive somewhere. She displays it quite happily on her screen. We have no idea what it’s based on unless she knows how Mirinda drives and works out some sort of personal average but she’s pretty accurate.

For instance, ever since Angouleme, she’d decided we’d arrive at Liorac-sur-Louyre at 4:53. This was very handy because the owner would be meeting us at 5pm (according to the email she’d be there at 5pm and if we were going to be later we’d have to ring her). Given the various things sent to halt our progress (the Riberac one way system, a mass of mad bicycle riders practising for the Tours de France, road works, etc) the time had fluctuated up and down by a few minutes but was pretty much consistent. And we would have arrived at the farmhouse on the dot of 5pm if only we’d not missed the farmhouse and become a bit lost.

The level of lostness was nothing compared to our attempt to find the supermarket later but even so, we had to drive for quite a distance before we could turn around and retrace our steps. Not that it mattered. The owners live about 50 yards away in the big house so would have been there regardless.

The place we’re staying in for the week is a converted pigeonnier (a place for pigeons to live in) and is in an amazing spot. Surrounded by beautiful countryside, high on a hill, it is heavenly. The owners gave us a thorough tour ending in how to access the Internet (yay!) before we set off in search of groceries for the week.

The view from the back door

I think we’re going to enjoy our week here…

After the best, uninterrupted sleep I can ever remember having, I woke to rain. I think it followed us from the north. It was just a gentle rain and the temperature hadn’t dropped.

The beds where we stayed were quite odd. Two, individual sleigh beds set very high. One is slightly bigger than a single and the other is slightly smaller than a double. They looked awfully uncomfortable at first glance but they are amazingly comfortable – at least mine was.

Today was all about Fontevraud, the main reason we had come here, as far as Mirinda was concerned. She has wanted to visit the Abbey for years so this was to be her day in France.

The abbey church from the front door

The abbey was built at the start of the 12th century and the order at Fontevraud was set up by a pretty clever chap called Robert d’Arbrissel. He was the son of a village priest and his concubine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The church only invented marriage as we know it in around 1200 and priests weren’t always celibate.

Robert was obviously going to be a priest when his father died (clearly a hereditary post rather than a true calling then) and he took part in a few bits of argy bargy under the bishop cum warrior Sylvestre de la Guerche. Eventually, however, he came over all discouraged and took to the forests to whip himself and generally do penance.

Typically, whenever someone decides to turn all hermit-like in a forest, it attracts a whole load of people who set up shrines and chapels and generally turn everything into a bit of a circus. So, Robert was a bit of a hit and attracted bigger and bigger crowds given as he was to preaching before the masses.

He would preach then set off again, wearing little but rags and the crowd would follow him. They would all be wearing hair shirts to show their penance and they would all sleep in the woods under the constant eye of god. This would have been just fine and dandy except for the fact that Robert didn’t segregate his followers (he probably wanted them all to piss off and let him have a bit of holy peace to commune with his god alone) and the church took a dim view of men and women being together in the service of god.

Robert, on the other hand, felt that, as part of his self-imposed penance, it was a good thing to share sleeping arrangements with women because it put temptation directly in his way. He extended this to going into brothels and preaching at the prostitutes. Clearly Robert was a shrewd man.

Eventually the church decided something had to be done about Robert and his modern ways so he was invited to a council at Poitiers which had been formed in order to pass judgement over the king for having slept with his cousin. Robert was asked his opinion. He said he agreed with the pope and, suddenly, all was forgiven.

The church, however wasn’t that easy. Robert had to end his wandering and set up a community into which all his hippies should go. He had no choice of place but, fortunately, the church let him have the valley of Fontevraud.

Things were particularly tough at the start because there was nothing there and everyone lived in huts. According to Geoffrey de Vendôme there was all manner of people living together: men and women, lay and priests, prostitutes and virgins, the disabled, lepers etc, etc. He even accused Robert of still sleeping with women. But, eventually, it flourished magnificently. Particularly after Gautier de Montsoreau (presumably from the Chateau we didn’t visit yesterday) decided to donate a whole load of useful things to them.

Lazarus Priory

Eventually the community was divided into four distinct areas. The Grand Moutier which was for virgins, the Moutier Saint-Jean which was for men in black robes who, it seems, did most of the manual labour, the Saint-Lazare Priory which was for lepers and, finally the La Madeleine priory which was for all women who were not virgins (widows, married woman, prostitutes, horse riders, etc). The was a sort of fifth area as well which was for the old and sick nuns but that was basically an extension added to the side of the Grand Moutier.

Robert, having set this all up, decided to go back to wandering around, whipping himself. Before he left he decided to do something which had profound consequences for the Abbey. He decided to put the Prioress, Hersende de Champagne in charge of everyone, including the men. This was extremely unusual given men were supposed to be in sole charge of women.

The ruckus caused by Robert’s decision was so great that he was forced to return to Fontevraud time and time again, just to sort out rebellions.

Eventually they just had to put up with it because Robert died. In typical church fashion, the powers that be decided that Robert’s dying wishes should be completely ignored and, instead of burying him in the mud like a peasant, deposited his earthly remains in the abbey church.

Fast forward to 1154 and to Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine as they make a first visit to the abbey before leaving for England and their coronation. She would end her life at the abbey, serving it in their robes even though she was also running Aquitaine. I’m not going to go through the entire history of the Plantagent kings and queens because it’s far too diverse and tangled. Suffice it to say that Fontevraud was a very important place for the lot of them and some managed to be buried there.

Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud

But enough history…Fontevraud Abbey today is a wonderful monument to man’s ability at restoration. It’s amazing the way that the abbey’s use as a prison has been completely obliterated as if it never happened. The decision to restore the abbey didn’t take the prison into account and yet it once was said to be the worst prison in all of France. Genet wrote about the horrors of Fontevraud in his Miracle of the Rose. Still, we can still read about it even if the suffering of the individual prisoners has been scoured from the walls of the abbey.

With or without the prison, Fontevraud is an amazing place. Sitting in a beautiful valley, its restored stonework bright under the dullest of skies. It looks magnificent.

Our first taste of the abbey, however, was not the stonework but the English woman who sold us our tickets at the front desk. What a sour and miserable woman! Why was she English? Why was she so miserable? She didn’t even bother to smile, instead preferring to adopt a permanent scowl. Perhaps she born to a life of misery and woe and had just decided to share her shortcomings with the rest of humanity.

Once we’d managed to get passed Mrs Misery-Guts, we were confronted with this.

Fontevraud Abbey

The rain didn’t dampen our enjoyment as we huddled under our inadequate umbrellas, listening intently to our talking sticks.

My favourite bit (which is a pretty tough call because the place is amazingly amazing) was the sculpture in the cloister garden. It goes up and down and round and round like a roller coaster except for feet rather than wheels. It was closed because, I guess, because it was too wet, which is a shame because I’d have loved to wander around it.

The Big Dipper at Fontevraud

Actually the rain pretty much followed us around, stopping only when we eventually left. Typically, blue bits started to appear between the clouds as we drove back to the farmhouse.

I forgot to mention the soap. The farmhouse is joined onto a place where they hand make soap. The courtyard is extremely smelly though in a sort of overpoweringly nice way. There’s also a strange little museum which seems to be devoted to soap but, given everything is in French, I could be completely wrong. However, I like to think it’s a museum of soap and shall enquire no further.

After a lovely long rest back at the farmhouse (which included a guitar concert for an audience of one) we set off for a walk across lovely countryside, besides of fields of rape seed and wheat. We even found a strange, secluded dolmen!

The mysterious dolmen in a field of rape seed

The walk ended up taking us as far as Montsoreau where we decided to stop for a drink…except everything was shut. We then decided, after a little sit by the river, to walk back to the farmhouse.

I realise this post has gone on way longer than any blog post should but it would be terribly remiss of me if I didn’t mention our dinner tonight. The only place we could find open was the Unicorn Restaurant in Fontevraud. It was a wonderful find. I am so glad everything else was closed. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Anyone wanting to spend a bit on some brilliant food, the Unicorn in Fontevraud is fantastic.

We rather like the Hotel Chateaubriand but I’m not that keen on the way they organise their wifi. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased they have it and it’s free (actually, if they didn’t have it we’d stay somewhere else) but there’s one thing that is really, really stupid.

Like most places, they have a login and passcode to access the Internet, which is fair enough. They change these every day (given the format I assume the selection is completely random) which is very good. There is then a limit to when these details can be used. Again, this is an excellent idea.

It is possible to check-in at 3pm and the latest you can check out is midday so, something that I’m wondering is why the Internet codes work from midnight to midnight. What this means is that for someone staying one night, if they want to use the Internet in morning (say they need to check and address or a phone number or just an important email) they will need to go down to reception and get the new codes. This strikes me as just silly.

Anyway, apart from that little bit of strangeness, the hotel was very nice and we slept the sleep of the innocent and woke, first to sun and then to rain. The day doesn’t appear to be improving.

We had a lovely (as expected) breakfast In the Unicorn (discovering that fromage blanc isn’t actually white cheese, as one would expect, but extremely basic yoghurt) then went to the station to pick up our hire car, a little black Peugeot, whatever that means.

Why does it always take so long when you pick up a hire car? When I organised it, I supplied them with all the information they could possibly want but when we arrive, they then spend half an hour asking the same things. I find that quite annoying so you can imagine how much Mirinda enjoys it.

Anyway, we eventually managed to get the car, hooked up Linda and set off for Mestre, our halfway stop. It didn’t take long for us to realise two things about Linda. Firstly, she is a bloody good navigator which makes my holiday that much more enjoyable and, secondly, she has a weird way of pronouncing French names when there’s actually an English equivalent.

Take the word ‘avenue’. For humans, it’s the same in French and English but Linda seems to think it sounds something like a constant stream of bubbles coming out of a plastic straw. It’s like she’s trying to show off her French accent skills. Sadly she has none and, in fact, then has problems with her English. Very odd. Still, I’m not that bothered because she’s so good at what she does.

I’d planned our trip to include a stop in a place called Chateau Gontier but we decided to stop in a village just before it. The village was called Quelaines Saint Gault and was very sleepy. Actually it was totally asleep except for a boulongerie/patisserie the owner of which I’m certain forgot to lock her door.

We had a lovely break beside a pond, complete with ducks. As we sat eating our bread and missing cheese, a French woman approached with a child and an older woman who I assume was her mother. Mirinda was reading but I caught the mother’s eye and said “Bonjour” which she answered with a stream of rapid French.

I shrugged and said “Non parlez Francais” which is “No speak French” which she responded with “Parlez vous Anglais?” to which I said “Oui” and nodded vigorously. She then started speaking to me in rapid French again. Interesting response. I don’t think she was mad.

Opposite the pond, in a small area obviously reserved for it, sat a small travelling circus which would not be leaving any muddy reminders, given that it had been sited on gravel – note Waverley Park rangers. In the front of the small area set aside for such entertainments was a very odd looking, even Picasso-ish statue. It’s enough to give kids the screaming hab dabs. This is what it looked like but I have no idea what it means, who it is or why.

The plastic surgeon wasn't very good

After our rather odd lunch, we wandered back to the car, via the local church (of course), where I found a very telling stained glass window. I have often spouted off about the origins of Easter eggs and what they have to do with Jesus and, now, my questions are answered. Voila! Feast your eyes on the evidence that Jesus loved his boiled eggs in his own special egg cup.

This is my egg cup, so bugger off and get your own.

We eventually left the church, just in time to get wet from a sudden downpour, predicted quite strongly by the very black cloud that had been following us up the hill. This wasn’t the first deluge we’d been through on our drive south but it was almost our last.

As we drew closer to our target (the small Domaine Mestre just outside Fontevraud) the weather improved no end. The temperature shot up by 5° and the clouds scuddered away to visit lonely families in southern England.

The farmhouse in which we were staying was lovely, secluded and without phone signal or Internet connection of any kind. The latter is not exactly true. The lady on reception told Mirinda that I could plug my netbook into her office socket if I liked but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.

We settled in, rested up and then popped into Montsoreau for an extremely necessary coffee given I hadn’t had one for the last six hours and was feeling a bit dangerous.

Montsoreau sits on the bank of the Loire and has its own Chateau on a hill. It’s very cute.

The littlest chateau in the Loire

Montsoreau also has quite a few bars. We chose one and sat outside to enjoy our drinks to the accompaniment of traffic and a lovely view of the river.

We also walked all the way up to the Chateau to discover that it had closed five minutes before we arrived. We were philosophical. We hadn’t known it was there and had stumbled upon it accidentally. It’ll still be there for any future trips we’re never likely to take to Montsoreau so we can save it’s pleasures for later.

Something else we found which may be visited shortly was the Diana Merri, or something unsimilar, restaurant. It reminded Mirinda of the Merridiana in East Horsley which force fed us 15 tiramisu desserts because the waiter kept making mistakes.

But dinner for our first night was courtesy of our hosts at the farm. And what a meal! It was very big and featured many different dishes including a very nice cheese and lettuce dish. The meal was so good, it left us feeling full enough for eight so there was nothing for it but to retire for the night and dream about our day ahead.

Well, things looked a bit bleak at the Hotel Chateaubriand. OK, we turned up at about 9am but we didn’t expect the room to be ready. We wondered whether they could look after our luggage while we went off and wiled away the hours before 3pm which is when the room is supposed to be ready. The room wasn’t ready at 3pm and we sat in the comfortable lounge, waiting.

The quite pleasant lobby in the Hotel Chateaubriand

It was a bit difficult staying awake. The cabin on the ferry had been excellent (the porthole makes a huge difference) but the sleep was never very deep, punctuated as it was by strange sounds and the rise and fall of swell-y waves. Actually, the entire night, there seemed to be people walking up and down the steps which shared a common wall with our cabin and the entire day, we still felt the sway of the English Channel beneath our feet.

So, sitting in the lounge of the Hotel Chateaubriand, it was hard to stay awake. In fact, I’m pretty sure I dozed off a few times. We had already wandered around St Malo, had breakfast at the Unicorn (as usual), had a pretty awful lunch (not as usual), indulged in a hot chocolate and caramel drink and generally wasted time before we could have a little afternoon nap.

What made it worse was the fact that it was raining. One of those persistently light and regular rains that make sure you are damp without really being noticeably wet.

And I don’t know why the room wasn’t ready. The girl at reception said she didn’t know why. Naturally Mirinda blamed me. It was all very odd.

The best thing about our French holidays is that they don’t really start until the second day because we don’t think the day of travelling should be included in the itinerary. And we’ve extended this to include the first day, which we now spend in St Malo as a matter of course. This, of course, means that our holiday actually starts on the third day. However, this gets a bit confusing if the hotel doesn’t let us into our room so we can have an afternoon nap in comfort.

The beauty of familiarity is that you start to notice little differences. For instance, the Unicorn has been redecorated and is now all a bit pink and there seems to have been an influx of chocolate shops.

Strange chocolate bug creation

Still, the important things remain the same. The long, wet walk out to the lighthouse, the stroll around the rain lashed ramparts, the squelch across the low tide beach to the National Fortress…it’s lovely to know that some things never change.

The rather grim walk out to the lighthouse

You have to applaud the family that, against all odds and possibility of moaning and groaning, refused to give up trying to fly their kite on the beach. Dad would rush over, grab the kite and hold it high while eldest son wrestled with the controls. The kite would then take off like a propelled thing, the smaller kids running around like ants (we were watching from the ramparts and, to be fair, everything looked like ants). It could have been a lovely, sunny, beach-perfect day…except it seriously wasn’t.

And it's up, up and away...for a little bit

For lunch, Mirinda quite fancied fish and chips. I reminded her that we were in France and that a meal of fish and chips was something that is firmly entrenched in Britain (or former British colonies) rather than the home of fine dining. That was when we discovered that there was a beach-side place that served chips (frites) with everything. Well, everything except for fish.

There was the obvious mussels with chips, of course but there was also sausage and chips, egg, ham and chips, just chips…there was a lot of possible options except for fish…and Spam, I should add. This strikes me as a little odd for a couple of reasons. Firstly, a lot of Brits come here and the place sells chips anyway and, secondly, St Malo is a fishing port. I can understand the fact that they don’t do chips and Spam.

Still, we thought it novel that they did do chips with chicken nuggets. We’ve heard a lot about chicken nuggets but not really had any (I am ignoring the fact that I had some a number of years ago from Burger King when I was drunk because I really don’t remember them very well) so Mirinda thought it would make an interesting experience.

I really don’t know how people can eat them sober. They are pretty awful. I’m not even sure they were chicken. The chips were fine.

Speaking of new things (as I was a while ago), the ferry terminal at Portsmouth has undergone a complete change. While the building remains in the same place, it’s not actually the same building. It’s all very swish and clean and empty now.

The new Portsmouth ferry terminal from the, previously non-existent, second floor

I should add that we’re travelling at a non-busy time so the fact that there were a few of us on the ferry is not that surprising.

It looks a lot better than it used to and there’s now an upstairs where you can settle back and enjoy a Costas coffee. Except for the fact that Costas service is absolute crap and the franchise at the Portsmouth International ferry terminal is no exception. Actually it surpasses all other Costas I’ve ever been to. It was seriously awful.

Fortunately we didn’t have long before we could board the ferry. A lovely, hassle free trip through security and we were on the bus headed for the boat. About 15 minutes later, I’d found our room and dumped the luggage. This entire procedure took less time than it did for the Portsmouth franchise of Costas to make me a hot chocolate and a hazelnut latte.

We were travelling on the Bretagne (151m x 26m x 24,534 tonnes) and we had a lovely sit down meal at the ala carte/buffet restaurant, Les Abers. I discovered that Mirinda does not like my second favourite cheese, Liverot. We also discovered that this is a fantastic time to travel on the ferry. While the capacity is 2,056, I reckon there was about 50 of us on it.

And there’s definitely something to be said for a cabin with a porthole although I do wonder why it is deemed imperative to close the shutter during the night. I can understand the light pollution thing when the occupant is awake and typing or reading or playing with a strange guitar tuning app on their iPhone but at night, when the occupant is asleep…well, really. Because of this, I didn’t close our shutter. All night.

Still tied up at Portsmouth

We managed to get into the room by 4pm and Mirinda took about three and a half minutes to fall asleep.

In the 1820s, Mrs Henry Keary went for a walk. She wandered up a ‘shabby little bye road‘ and mounted a stile which gave her access to a deer park. It was a big, up and over stile. She was so impressed, she wrote about it in her diary as soon as she returned home. This is the first known written record of this particular stile and it’s in Farnham Park. Mrs K went on to say it was in a pretty sad state.

After the installation of a turnstile in 1881, following the purchase of a bit more land, rather than removing the stile, for some reason, it was retained. Subsequently, it has gradually rotted away over the years. The deer park also changed. The resident deer herd was removed and access to the park was changed, making the stile redundant. But no-one took the stile away. It stood like an old but slightly sad reminder of a bygone age when such things were necessary.

This is what it looked like in May 2011 when they upgraded the path

The only times the stile seems to get used are when it snows and the wood is less slippery than the path and when kids just feel the strange urge to climb steps rather than walk up a slope. Though, to be fair, I have heard many a parent warning their kids off it because it ‘looks dangerous.’

Why am I talking about this? Well, a couple of weeks ago, it vanished and was replaced by a big empty space. I’m not sure why but I felt a great loss. Apart from anything else, I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to what has been a permanent part of the park.

It was then, as I stood in silent mourning, that I spotted an announcement declaring the stiles fate. It had become far too decrepit and so had to be removed. Given it served no useful purpose, this seemed fine. But that was not to be the end of the story for our stile. The notice went on to inform the idle reader that a brand new oak stile would be put in its place.

This brand new oak stile was put up yesterday and I saw it this morning. I have to say, it looks very different and, once the notice has been taken down, will be quite odd for anyone who doesn’t know why it’s there at all.

Wonder how long before it gets dirty...

I’m pretty sure that today marked the first time I’ve had to research an Australian. I could be wrong but I don’t remember having to do another so I’m going to live under the assumption that I’m right and go on from there.

It was a photograph. A photograph of a face I knew very well. His was the face on the back of the old $20 note – the paper ones not the new plastic ones which aren’t really new any more but newer than the paper ones which are no more. He was the man with the box kites, the father of aviation in Australia…even though he was originally from Greenwich and never felt completely Australian although he spent almost his entire life there. He is a name I remember from school. He was Lawrence Hargrave.

Although I created a record for Lawrence and researched him quite thoroughly, it’s not him I wanted to talk about. No, it was the guy who took the photograph. His name was Charles Kerry.

Charles was born in 1857 at Bobundra Station in the Monaro region of New South Wales. He ended up in Sydney where he figured he’d quite like to take up photography. He fell in with a chap by the name of Lamartiniere and, for a while, they worked well together. Then Lamartiniere convinced Charles to come into partnership with him. All he had to do was to buy in to the business with a small amount.

Charles went for it and very soon afterwards Lamartiniere went on the lam with all the dosh! But this didn’t phase Charles Kerry. He simply renamed the company and turned it into one of the biggest and best known photographic studios in Australia.

Not only was he a great businessman but he was also a fantastic photographer, making and selling those great carte-de-visite postcards that were all the rage in the late 19th century. And he brought the vision of Australia to the rest of the world as well as at home. He even went so far as to sell albums of high-quality pictures of the countryside to anyone, anywhere.

He was made official photographer to the governor general at one stage and even invented the first, very quick developing service by racing back to his studio between rounds of a big boxing match and putting the photos in his shop window.

By 1913, however, he decided to retire from the business and left it in the hands of the completely incapable hands of a relative who completely destroyed it in three years. Charles, on the other hand, in retirement decided to take up mining (as you do). He spent a lot of time in Malaya and Siam (as it was) and kept up the mining malarkey until his death.

One of the things I most liked about Charles was how he just hated getting bored. In 1897, for instance, he just took a group of mates and climbed Mt Kosciusko. This resulted in the opening up of skiing in the Snowy Mountains and there’s even a ski run named after him.

And he died as suddenly as he lived, dropping dead in his house in Neutral Bay in 1928.

Charles Kerry, a total Australian

And something I’ve just discovered, apparently Sir Frank Packer named his son ‘Kerry’ after him.

Every month, the rangers post a list of activities on the park notice boards. This morning I spotted the new one for May. Under the heading ‘Mud’ they explained that the circus coincided with the wettest April on record resulting in muddy devastation.

The notice went on to report that extensive work would be carried out to return it to something that resembles what it looked like before, rather than the huge slurry pit it resembles at present. In order to achieve this, a temporary fence is going to be erected around the area as they work on it.

This is great but the best news is that the circus is going to pay for it. Well done, Gerry Cottle! Given it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, as such, it’s a lovely thing to do. Mind you, it, more or less, ensures they can come back next year, I assume.

Meanwhile back at the house I had to perform some essential maintenance on the blog. I hate going through the updates so I put them off as long as possible however, today I discovered that if I didn’t upgrade to the latest version, I’d lose some functionality from plugins I have loaded.

So I went through the trauma of backing up, deleting and reloading. It all went smoothly enough and now the entire administrative area looks entirely different. Still, my plugins all work and I can rest calmly knowing it’s the latest and the greatest it can be.

Not the greatest is our burn bin. It’s sprung a leak. Or rather, it has developed a whopping great hole in the side, spilling ashes everywhere.

Looking into hell

Looks like we’ll need a new one soon. Which is what I’ve been thinking about the home page of our site. So I made a big change. I quite like it.

Stephen Hendry retired from International snooker competitions yesterday. He was knocked out of the world championship at the Crucible by Steven Maguire, a fellow Scot and he made the announcement almost straight away.

This small event probably doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things but Hendry has been around for as long as I can remember snooker. Though I was always firmly in the Jimmy White camp – mainly because, like me, he wore an earring – Hendry was always there, with his own brand of methodical cuemanship. He was always a force to be reckoned with.

He is the youngest player to ever win the world title (aged 21) and ended up winning it seven times, throughout a career that included every major tournament in the snooker playing world.

He’ll be missed on the international circuit. Not just by the fans but also by his fellow competitors because word has it he’s also a very nice chap. Nothing shows this more than during his final match when he shared a little chat with his opponent, something that very rarely happens.

Stephen Hendry managed to finish in great style by scoring a maximum 147 break during his previous match, a feat I was lucky enough to see. It seemed a fitting way to end a shining career.

Thank you, Stephen, for many hours of enjoyment and inspiration and, in part, for making snooker what it is today. You may be missed but you’ll never be forgotten.

A great snooker star

In other news…I had my weekly lunch date with Mirinda today. We met at the flat and went for a lovely stroll (albeit under steely grey skies) around the Mill Quay.

We spotted a few birds, including this duck with the rather odd bill decoration. Is this some sort of strange bird piercing?

Does my bill look big in this?

We also saw a preening cormorant but he refused to spread his wings out for me. He was on the Tern Float, in the opposite corner to the coot on the nest I photographed a few weeks ago. The coot was still there, by the way.

You lookin' at me?

After the usual lovely lunch at our Lebanese restaurant, we walked back to the flat before I made the long journey home.

Ever since hearing about staddle stones, Mirinda has wanted one (or three). They are an early medieval invention, principally for keeping vermin out of granaries. And they look like mushrooms.

No-one knows who invented them (the word ‘staddle’ is derived from the Old English word stathol, meaning a foundation or trunk of a tree) but I like to think of a farmer, sitting beneath an apple tree, munching on an apple which had just fallen onto his head, watching helplessly as rats invaded his grain shed. Let’s call him Ned.

While idly considering the possibility of inventing the sniper rifle, Ned was distracted by the sight of a small rat trying to climb up a mushroom. He laughed at its inability to get on top, the rounded edge preventing it from getting any purchase.

Suddenly he stopped laughing. He threw the half eaten apple away as he was struck with a Newton-like revelation. All he had to do was built his shed on the top of lots of mushrooms and his rat problem would be over. As the mushroom he’d been watching collapsed under the weight of the rat, which then danced all over it in triumph, he knew his idea was very, very silly. Mushrooms just weren’t strong enough to support his grain store.

But old Ned wasn’t one to be so easily deterred. And then the pivotal moment came when his brain made the necessary calculations. He reasoned that if a mushroom was made of…well, mushroom…it wouldn’t be strong enough but if it was made of rock…well, that was another thing entirely!

Quite coincidentally, his brother, Ted, was a stone mason who lived about eight miles away (the usual distance equating to a country mile as anyone who’s watched Lark Rise to Candleford would know) so he quickly grabbed his coat and set off to see him.

At first Ted thought his brother had suddenly been touched by a witch. Stone mushrooms, indeed! What devil induced madness was this? But, as the brothers sat beneath an entirely different apple tree, watching a bunch of entirely different rats eat through his grain ration for the entire winter, he gradually realised the sense of Ned’s idea. They smiled with anticipation as they finished eating the apples which had fallen on their heads.

Realising the gravity of the situation, they set to work almost immediately (I’m pretty sure they’d have downed a couple of ales first, given they didn’t drink the water) with Ned designing and Ted carving.

Very soon, they had a prototype which they tested on Ted’s son Fred’s pet rat called Jed, trying to induce it to climb the giant mushroom upon which they’d placed a slab of very good and smelly cheese. Poor Jed went unfed that night. And this is no small thing because rats are actually quite clever. It’s a little known fact that the first grain store was actually designed by a rat, who was very well respected in her neighbourhood. Fortunately she died long before Ned’s mushroom idea took hold.

And took hold it did! Of course there was the usual cries of witchcraft when everyone realised that Ned was the only person who had bread but over a few ales down the local, Ned explained his ingenious idea.

Soon stone mushrooms were springing up everywhere in the countryside. After a very short time, sheds without staddle stones were considered de rigeur and looked down on. It crept into the local dialect with such advertising slogans as

Give the rats the paddle!
Get yourself a staddle!

Sadly the patent system had yet to be invented so poor Ned didn’t manage to make any money out of his idea (though Ted was inundated with orders, which kept him in food and beer for many years and Fred, carrying on his father’s business, made enough money to go on a World Discovery Tour for the under 30′s) but I like to think of him, still sitting beneath his apple tree, smiling with benign pleasure as the rats stared, baffled, at the sight of his giant mushrooms.

And now, many, many generations later, we now have three of them. This might seem odd, given that grain stores generally have four sides, but our three will never feel the weight of a shed on their domed heads. These days, staddle stones tend to be used as garden decorations and that is what ours are for.

One of three staddle stones

Mirinda asked for them for her birthday this year from Bob & Claire. They arrived this morning and, though not that big, they are rather heavy. It’s handy that I have a wheelbarrow, is all I can say.

Two of three staddle stones

I think they look quite good. In order to test them, I put some grain on one but the birds ate it all…D’Oh!