September 2010 – For the fainthearted . . .

A holiday souvenir

Another stay in France comes to an end; an odd experience to be without our children, now at university and boarding school. The best holiday memories will always be with them; without their presence, one wonders about the purpose of the trip.

In the summer of 1999 we rented an old farmhouse in a hamlet deep in the French countryside. A triangle of towns gave options for shopping, restaurants and markets: Sainte Foy in the department of the Gironde to the north; Duras in Lot et Garonne to the south-west; …

Tha’s very welcome back

The television advertisement shows a young man carrying a tray filled with mugs of tea through a large, open-plan office. He stumbles and falls, and with an almighty crash the tray of tea hits the floor, mugs flying in all directions. Tea is spilt everywhere; a trickle from one cup runs through a crack in the floor, takes a circuitous route through under floor ducts, runs down a wall, before dripping into a closed cupboard in which the Tetley tea folk lie sleeping. The Tetley tea stirs them from their …

On being badly dressed

Walking through Biarritz, amongst elegantly dressed French people, there was an old, familiar feeling from times past; the sense of being unsophisticated and scruffy. Growing up I was the yokelest of the yokels, the hickest of the hicks. In Ireland, I think that would be the culchiest of the culchies.

Going to university in London when I was eighteen, I became very aware of being a rustic. I remember a very suave third year student showing us around the London School of Economics during Freshers Week. She had a purple …

Smoky memories

The smoking ban seems not so comprehensive in these regions. Eating lunch in a cafe in San Sebastian, smokers sat at the bar drinking espressos. A rich tobacco smell wafted across the room, a smell that recalled old Davey.

Davey had his first pipe of tobacco in 1902. He was eleven at the time. He and his friend sat behind a gate, sharing a clay pipe. Startled by Davey’s mother, they were caught red-handed. Davey’s mother said nothing, but took the pipe and threw it hard against the gatepost, smashing …

RTE’s greatest

Enjoying the quietness of south-west France, with the only annoyance being Bayonne losing 26-25 to Perpignan through conceding unnecessary penalties, the tranquility of a lazy Sunday was disrupted by reading a post by Seconds Out on Bock the Robber’s website.

RTE have been running a poll on who was the greatest Irish person. This began with a Top 40 last March, from which the exclusions are astonishing and many of the inclusions simply bizarre:

1. Bono (1960)
2. Dr. Noel Browne (1915 – 1997)
3. Michael Collins (1890 – 1922)…

Something lost

Watching Connacht play Ulster on BBC 2 Northern Ireland on a Saturday evening isn’t odd for someone living in Ireland – except that the television set is in a house in the south-western corner of France, in sight of the Pyrenees. It’s not even subscription television, a simple satellite dish and old Sky box, on which the subscription card has long expired, and the free to air channels are available to anyone who turns on the set. ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ might be lost on most French viewers, but to expatriates, …