'SOMEWHERE HOLIDAY' Part 10 (last post - read now while offer lasts!...)

It was almost time to return home, and repeat our journey here, only in reverse (and hopefully with a little more direction). We should however finish with a few little vignettes from our trip, a small number of side-order memories that could never be considered main courses, but nonetheless contributed to the whole enjoyable experience.

There was the balmy Biarritz evening when, after a perfectly acceptable meal, we wandered along the coastal path and discovered the Old Port, packed with promenaders, families and the simply convivial, who were either eating, drinking or just imbibing the atmosphere, while a curious French version of a barbershop quartet warbled pleasantly away in the background. Behind this most sociable of scenes, the sun had long sloped off to bed, but had left behind a deep orange and purple glow along the horizon of the sea.

Within our last few days we also hopped on the ‘Petit Train’ of Biarritz, which is nothing more than a little motorised tourist train that does an ambling 30 minute inner circuit of Biarritz, complete with a passable English commentary. I confess, I get bored with commentaries, and satisfied myself with peering out at the multifarious-ness that is Biarritz and its buildings, replete with houses of the most grand and the most humble, leafy, almost soporific, squares, bustling shopping streets, and far calmer quaint little side roads. You wouldn’t say it was pretty or grand, and not necessarily impressive, but so many little bits of it are all of these, and that goes to make up a thoroughly interesting destination.

And on our last night, we sat down to an almost total fish meal (well, what else when you are sat on the edge of a sea so abundant with natural fruits), on an outside table, overlooking our favourite beach, and with a view out due west across the sea as the sun began to set. The food was splendid, the service was faultless, and although it got a touch chilly by desert, the whole setting as the clouds begun to draw in across the day glow sunset, like a stage curtain from the east, was almost magical. It even finished with a little French quirkiness, as we were politely accosted by a local photographer, the kind who make their money out of snapping hapless and gormless tourists, in the hope that they will purchase his ever-so-arty holiday snaps of you and your kin. This one knew without a word that we were English, and laid on his French charm so thick, it was hard not to resist. I even allowed him to take my children away to the beach just below the restaurant for what presumably was a particularly sickly shot of sisters in perfect harmony (Take it from me, this state does not exist in the Neale household). What made this even more different was that, not only was he disarmingly charming and pleasant, but he simply didn’t look like a weirdo child molester – you know the sort, virtually no hair, looking like he is in his mid fifties when he is probably mid forties, horrendous beer gut, dodgy tee shirt, beige slacks and trainers, and a definite dose of BO. Our suave French sophisticat looked like a young Sacha Distel, and could have just hopped off his yacht in Monaco. On second thoughts, perhaps we should be more afraid of him, at least you know where you are with a grotesque British slob. Still, our French David Bailey didn’t then get me in an arm lock until I bought his pictures, but merely proffered his card, in the hope that his charm and skills had been enough to persuade you to come down to his studio the next day. No, we didn’t go, before you ask.

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And yet there remains one more item, which will explain the title of this chapter.

Our vaguely local ‘supermarche’ had become almost a second home, and while I cannot claim that the behaviour of its clientele were any better than a British Tesco’s, the array of fresh and alluring produce was a revelation; there still seems no-one else on earth who can produce either bread or croissants like the French, while the display of cheeses covered every imaginable size, shape, colour and texture not to mention animal source and ways to consume (try Etorki – made from sheeps milk, and recommended to be consumed with sour cherry marmalade. You have to admire their imagination!) . On the other side of this mammoth presentation of the sublime seemed to be one of the ridiculous; a cornucopia of every fish and shellfish imaginable, and some that I could not possibly have imagined. Indeed, the peculiarity and grotesqueness of some looked to me like a pile of alien entrails, but I’m sure they tasted splendid (or possibly not. Some years ago, in a cavalier moment I once ordered andouilette from the menu of a small French restaurant on the Cote D’Azur. I came as close as I have ever come to vomiting while eating, they truly smelt and tasted of shit. They are in fact, a very French style tripe sausage – you have been warned).

I have to say the combination of these two displays constitutes a No Go zone for Sian; she cannot stand cheese, and is still the only person I have ever seen actually go green when we once walked through a very fragrant fish market in southern Spain. Fortunately, we rushed her out before she emptied her breakfast over the pavement.

But we digress, as it was immediately after we had purchased the normal pile of food that this final section of the story unfolded. Within the supermarket building, around the entrance to the store, were a number of small concessions, including a newsagents that we assumed sold stamps. The obligation to write cards to the usual friends and family suspects had finally prompted a flurry of inane scribbling, but these would not get very far through the French postal system without some stamps. Now, while I can still muster some O level French and (if I do say so myself) a more than passable accent, I still have to steel and prepare myself before launching into any conversation. This usually means constructing the sentence over and over again in my head, then pulling it apart, then analysing its content, deconstructing it, then reconstructing it so many times, it’s a wonder it doesn’t come out entirely back to front like some tortured anagram. Which it didn’t, but I had farted about so much in preparation, that I made the fatal mistake of using the opposite verb to the one I had intended. When I finally reached the head of the queue, confronted by a nonchalant looking proprietor, I blurted out
“ Est ce que vous achetez le timbre poste?”
His nonchalance dropped ever so slightly, and he gave me a look of vague pity and amusement, as if I had wandered up in a dirty raincoat and flashed a set of testicles that ranked somewhere between pathetic and sorrowful.
What I thought he said was “Non”, but by now I was drowning and lost, and looked beseechingly at Sharon.
“Vend” she said
What? I thought
Then it dawned on me – I had asked him if he bought stamps, rather than sold them. He was trying to tell me that I had used the wrong verb
I looked back at him
“Combien, Monsieur” he enquired, with as straight a face as he could muster, bearing in mind that my face was becoming a match for the beetroots in the adjacent food hall
“Cinq, s’il vous plais” I blurted, paid my money, took the stamps, swivelled on my heels and departed at a pace that turned yet more heads as I breezed out of the shop, and as far away from the scene of the fracas as possible.

In hindsight, they weren’t at all bothered that I had illicitly suggested that the shop keeper might be an under the counter stamp dealer, or that I had displayed beyond doubt that I was a complete pillock. While in Britain I might have expected some overt vilification, the French have a bit more class.

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I like south west France. It has great beaches that I have never, ever seen crowded; it has towns and villages on a truly human scale that to me are all the more interesting for that very fact; and it has the full spectrum of scenery and landscape within no more than an afternoons journey, from mountain to sea, from upland pasture to heathland and dunes. And it has that intrinsic quality of so many of the French - effortless beauty and style.

THE END