Well, as if running out of excuses, I think I have at last found the perfect spot to write those four books on four quite different subjects.
Imagine, just a quiet Brittany country lane outside your door that only runs a few hundred yards to a farm and the great ten mile forest of Hardonnais. Across the road is my large fishing lake stocked with Brochet, 2 feet long or more, gurt Tench, great Crucean and Mirror Carp and many others? The field behind, tucked between forest and wood that will take a twin, for sure, Mike’s sideways and the farmer is already looking after hunters for the locals as the Breton hunt, great curly horns and all ,meet right here.
Now the house is just post war with an enormous ‘cave’ beneath to store the wine and cider still (alambique et distillerie) or four cars, if you are that way inclined. The outhouses hide further accommodation for at least six or eight for fishing/shooting/fox hunting holidays and a cider press, a bit dilapidated. A job for Dad, next time he’s out here. Of course there is a well of water tasting like nectar, a pigeon loft, numerous apple trees, large garden, ancient old trees on all sides and the ancient bread oven, all on its own, in the field.
Down the road is a steady supply of pork and beef from a ‘Porc Blanc de Ouest’ prize winning herd, wild boar and deer from the forest, all sorts of vegetables from the farms around with an auberge on all points of the compass, varying from the strictly local culinary delights, to the Breton array of fish and crustacea, the coast being only forty minutes away. But what is this breed of cattle doing, living here, so far from the Switzerland, if not winning nearly all the prizes in Europe?
Lunch at Madeleine Hotel for 9.5 Euros, including an hors d’oeuvre of fish pate, a scrumptious steak, cooked French style, to follow then with a wide selection of cheeses, gave little room left for my bottle of wine, all included and a pudding of apple tart from just under the grill. I finished off with the standard black coffee, a French cigar and chatted with the locals who seemed to know, already, Wales played rugby.
Ah yes, ‘Le Rugby’. I just had to be down to the Irish Pub at Langourla to support Wales’s chance to get ‘that damned illusive Grand Slam’. Then, if that was not noisy enough, it was drinks with the neighbours and then off to ‘Couscous’ in the village hall where there must have been nearly two hundred locals with kids running round and under the dinner tables, singing, dancing (properly) and enjoying the company over a glass or two. Back to the Irish Night where I was caught on camera wearing the WRONG HAT, in between the dances. 2 am and it is time for home to a small ‘calva’ and my lovely log fire ‘incerre’ in the cottage.
But enough of this, it is time my pre flight diet came into force of abstinence as the flying, from now on, is going to be a damned sight harder than the little doodle around the Antipodes.