francofiled

Author's note: This article was first posted as 24 hours in Saint Émilion on www.cerclefrancaisdebelfast.org in August 2020.  It is a follow up to a post that appeared ten years earlier on francofiled in August 2010.  Click here for the previous post entitled Saint Émilion - Message in a bottle.  The plan to spend a night in the medieval town of Saint-Émilion was uncorked some years back. Nearly two decades ago we had been in the town and purchased a special bottle from the 1981 vintage of  Château Franc-Pourret  to commemorate our wedding year.  The idea, still not realised, was to crack it open at a special anniversary. It was on checking its current status for drinkability that we noted that the Château offered the opportunity to stay in the heart of the  vignoble  in highly rated  chambre d'hôte  accommodation.  The plan developed its aroma when last September, we arranged to spend a few weeks in France starting in Bordeaux bef...

It was a rare afternoon out with friends. Cafés and restaurants had started to reopen after stringent lockdown measures and safety precautions were much in evidence. The waiting staff at our lunch spot wore masks and were getting used to a new way of meeting, greeting and presenting our food. We didn't stay long indoors however and instead made our way to a nearby open air terrace which was situated beside a bus stop. A farewell glass of wine before heading home? Who knows when we'll get out again. Turns out it was a very public glass of wine.  That bus stop was a busy place with passengers pulling off or putting on masks as buses arrived or departed and others waiting for theirs. You know how people say they love to sit at a pavement café in Paris or other big city and watch passers-by? Well this time it was the other way round, the passers-by and passengers were people watching us! The wine we had chosen was a 2016 Louis Latour Pinot Noir from the Domaine de Valmoissine in th...

  La Fête des Pères and an after dinner browse with Julia Child's My Life in France.  There's a celebratory taste of another indomitable spirit, that special cognac - the 1738 from Rémy Martin.  Music in the background too, French of course as it's also La Fête de la Musique in France and there's a lovely playlist working its magic. Life's simple pleasures à la française.  Bonne Fête !

My little battered Clairefontaine  carnet definitely stood the test of time but now all of its pages are used up. It was a delight to use as the pen just seemed to glide over its weight of paper with virtually no "bleedthrough" of ink. Bleedthrough? That means that each of the 96 pages, made from 48 sheets of doubled and stapled paper, could be fully used with no ghosting of writing showing through from the other side of the page.  I hate it when that happens; I like each new page to be pristine. Douceur de l'écriture  - Papier velouté - are the marketing descriptions for the product and the paper does have that soft, velvety touch that makes writing a pleasure especially with a fountain pen. Looking through it now and checking the items noted there the thing that strikes me is just how serviceable it was - contact details, numbers and emails; flight references and booking codes; quotes and books to read; meeting plans, agenda and follow-ups; vocabulary items ...

Smile! Yes this puzzle brings back a memory and makes me smile. I did it once before - although that's not strictly true as in a sense I didn't quite complete it, someone else did. It was back in 1974 and I was living then in Vierzon, renting a room from a propriétaire on the outskirts of the town. There wasn't much to do in the evenings and one way of passing the time I decided was to tackle a jigsaw.  A good sized one mind you, at least 1000 pieces. Thanks to the local librairie I was able to to get a puzzle of La Joconde, Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and it turned out to be a labour of love. I hadn't at that stage seen the original in the Louvre and when I did it struck me as smaller than I expected.  All the same I got to know those brush strokes fairly well and the background?  Well there's a lot of detail there too.  Jigsaws are a great way to appreciate a work of art. And as for the smile?  Getting there. My efforts with the puzzle were ...

Quand mon verre est vide, je le plains, Quand mon verre est plein, je le vide.     Raoul PONCHON I have always loved this simple jeu de mots , word play. Literally it means that when my glass is empty I feel sorry about that. When it's full, I empty it. Within moderation of course.

There are reports that domestic abuse in France has risen by almost one third in these times of confinement. Sadly, that is probably the case in other countries. Stop. For good! Love doesn't equal death. l’amour n’égale pas la mort