Friday, 31 March 2017 to Thursday, 6 April 2017
I woke up this morning, still in a slumber, when I heard a soft chiming go… damn… damn… damn… damn, it sounded like a xylophone gently being prodded by soft mallets, over and over again, on the same bar. I was not about to go searching for the musician so decided to live with it. When Adri finally came to she said something to the effect of ”Oh listen , someone’s alarm is going off”. Yea, you guessed it, it was hers!

Now that I was awake I turned to the news and my worst fears were realized. Zuma had finally done what he intended to do for a long time; he fired Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. This is a dark, very very dark day for South Africa on so many levels. And of course the Rand plummeted to lows not seen for a while.

Feeling rather shell-shocked at this news I tried to drown out that constant hissing in my ears and continued reading. I came upon an article that announced that South Korea’s ex-president Park Geun-hye was arrested after being ousted because of her nefarious links to her puppet master, Choi Soon-sil. Read this article and replace Park Geun-hye with Zuma and Choi Soon-sil with Gupta (any member of that vile and tawdry puppet master family will do), and the story would be the same, except of course for the most important aspect, the ousting and arresting bit. If this was possible in South Korea then surely it must be possible in South Africa? We need to retire Zuma to allow South Africa to prosper, and believe me, prosper it will under new clean management.

When that hissing in my ears became unbearable I knew I needed some stress relief. We decided to take a walk to the Netto Supermarket to check whether they still had that special on their Haribo jelly sweets. There’s nothing like walking, shopping and jelly sweets to curtail stress levels and they promptly plummeted the moment I had a 600gm tub of Hairibo jelly sweet under each one of my armpits, heading for the checkout counter. We also made a pit stop at the Mr. Bricolage hardware store next door for a clothesline; we seem to have too much clothing for the available washing line at home.

On the way home we could not resist going into the local Carrefour which is much smaller than the hypermarket type one that we visited a week back, but larger than Monoprix, actually a perfect size for comfortable shopping. We were just checking it out, not intending to buy anything, but walked out with a bulging bag of goodies such as a pack of chicken cordon bleu pieces and a bag of frozen frites, a large bottle of cornichon (gherkin) with mini onions, Camembert cheese and…

Now the cheese in France is in one word, incredible. The choice is vast but for now we have been sticking to what we know, like Emmental, Brie, Camembert, blue cheese, Roquefort and so on. The specialty cheeses can be very expensive but the ones we have been chomping on have actually been pretty reasonably priced.

Oh yes, we also bought peanut butter, cacao and oats, the ingredients towards stemming Adri’s craving for oats cookies. The French don’t seem to be big on peanut butter and we found only a few tubs of Skippy. But funnily enough, hidden away behind some tubs of Skippy we found a product from France. Quite strangely, the peanut butter came in a tin rather than the expected bottle or plastic container. This was also a sugar free version which is exactly what Adri was looking for. When I finally managed to open that tin it was delicious, smooth, rich and creamy, just perfect. After a clashing and clanging match in the kitchen Adri came bearing gifts, chocolate and peanut butter cookies, or rather balls, deliciously reminiscent of those wonderful Leonidas Belgian chocolates we used to get in Brussels. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but they were delicious.

Saturday morning I saw a picture of Donald Trump in an article and it seriously reminded me of the cartoon character Johnny Bravo. In fact, the similarity does not end in the looks but extends to the bloated ego and chick chasing, watch the below clip and you’ll see what I mean. Heck, the Johnny Bravo cartoonist should get Johnny to do a Trump skit.

Today was scheduled to be cloudy and rainy at a fresh 14°C maximum, so we slept in, so much so that I missed the first game. Of course it was Saturday and therefore rugby day. I was waiting for the second game but it refused to start at the scheduled time. I checked the Supersport schedule again and again and each time I came up with the same answer, the game should have started. Exactly an hour later the game kicked off and that’s when I realized that daylight saving time must have kicked in. After a quick search I found that France put their clocks forward on 26 March at 02:00 by one hour to 03:00. This means that France is now on exactly the same time zone as SA which makes my interpreting the rugby schedule so much easier. I must remember to reverse this on 29 October.

I dug in for the day of rugby, I had my Heinekens with ample barbeque crisps at the ready, I was armed to the teeth, literally. This is the way rugby was supposed to be watched, but of course, the biltong and braai with friends were still amiss.

It was 20:00 when we took a brisk walk down to the Iglise Saint Pierre for our second night of music at this particular venue. Tonight it was to be Russian classical music with Claire Perrotton on cello and Florian Chabbert on piano. The music once again was sublime, we thoroughly enjoyed the servings that were on offer and went home well fed with the most beautiful music still ringing in our ears.

After being thoroughly fed we settled down at home for a movie called Zodiac which IMDb describes as “In the late 1960s/early 1970s, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree.” And then I woke up with a warm glow… and then I realized it was not a glow, it was my mug of tea that had tipped over onto my stomach when my hand holding the mug became comatose as I did too. It was bound to happen someday, I guess, but never again. There was a flurry of activity with paper towels and otherwise, trying to clean up the mess before it spread further. The damage was done but controlled. We continued watching the movie, now wide awake. Then I woke up again, sans tea mug this time, when the end credits were rolling by, I think it was a great movie. Adri never woke up until morning.

After our midnight tea fiasco we slept like babes and Adri received coffee in bed at around 09:00. I received my second also in bed, it was a lazy Sunday morning.

There were still some clouds in the sky but the sun peered through and around them on occasion, but it was rather chilly outside. It was just past noon that we thought of taking a walk to Monoprix for some fresh veggies and such but realized it was too late, they close at 13:00 on a Sunday. We will have to make do with what we had in the house.

We bought smoked herring the other day and this was as good a time as any to try that for supper. I needed pasta so we checked the internet for that combination and found plenty recipes, of which Adri took the best parts and created her own. I loved it, Adri loathed it, she hated that there were so many little fish bones in there to contend with. She had a good point of course.

I tried to work all day but it being Sunday I was in no mood although I did manage to string a few words together. While the words were mostly failing me, I tried to schedule some sightseeing for us during the week. There are so many places one can get to from Séte for daytrips, either by taking a bus, the train, a combination of those or, as I discovered, using Bla Bla, no kidding. Bla Bla Car is a web site that acts like a lift club and you are invited along for the ride, essentially chipping in for the petrol, although a fixed price is given for each trip. I think this is a great way to travel; we will definitely explore this option sometime.

We re-watched Zodiac – which is based on a true story – as we probably only saw about 18 minutes of it in total last night, this time though I received no tea in bed. All in all the movie was not bad, but ended rather frustratingly, without  the serial killer being apprehended and brought to justice, in almost 50 years. What was the point of watching then!

The Iphone has a function called Bedtime which allows you to specify the times you generally want to go to bed and wake up. At those specified times it will give you a gentle reminder via your chosen alarm, mine is First Light, a rather gentle call to arms. I have not used this function in a while but today I set it for 23:00 and 08:30 respectively, we need to get our crap together and start doing some exercise early-ish in the morning!

Tuesday morning appeared and I could d no longer stand the silent accusatory looks that I have been receiving from the two yoga mats, especially the blue one. Truth be told, we have not done yoga for the longest time. If I stretch my memory out as far as it can go without straining it, I do believe our last yoga session was in Chiang Rai. And that would take us back to the early part of December last year, so nearly four months ago!

It was around 11:00 when I pulled those yogi’s out from under the table and as I unrolled them I could swear I heard a collective sigh of relief. Being rolled up like that for months on end cannot be easy. Just to get into the swing of things again we started off with a 30 minute session and boy, was that great! Life seems to be so much sweeter after a bit of exercise.

Today was a beautiful blue-sky day with a high of 20°C, just amazing. The weather app forecast that this will be the case for the whole week, but you know how fickle this app is.

I read a wonderfully insightful and beautifully written article by the Los Angeles Times titled Our Dishonest President about Trump. I have included an extract below, but do yourself a favour and read the full article.

“What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.”

I worked most of the afternoon but by 17:30 Adri was like a cat on a hot tin roof, that cat needed a walk. We moseyed on down into town, every time managing to find a new route, there are so many different little paths and alleyways one can try. The weather was amazing, the sun was out, the sky was blue, no leather jacket was required. People were swarming about town, going about their business, never seen the town this busy, it was wonderful.

We went to Monoprix ostensibly for toothpaste, truth be told, we nearly forgot that item. All of a sudden we (read Adri) felt the urge to stock up on stuff like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, olives, red wine, white wine, salami, baguette and veggies. This spree was not planned so we had no shopping bags with us… another few were purchased. I’m afraid soon we’ll be running out of space to live in if we don’t discard the growing pile of bags in the house.

Once home we poured ourselves each big glass of red wine and settled down for more work, me with blogging, Adri with supper. Before long supper was served and consisted of a starter made up from the leftover pasta and sauce from last night with shavings of the most wonderful Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese on top. Then it was the main course of potato and leek soup with freshly baked baguette, laden with a thick blanket of creamy butter. It was so good.

After supper I was presented with dessert, vanilla ice cream we bought a few days ago and nearly forgot about. This ice cream has a very rich and intense vanilla taste and there seems to somehow also be a malty flavour in there… divine.

Tuesday we stayed in all day, there was much work to be done and by 17:00 I finally published the latest blog post. As a reward I opened a Heineken. I made myself very comfortable on the little steel chair which I placed outside on the little balcony where it just fits. With my Heineken placed on the floor by my feet, like a trusty old hound,

 

 

I scrolled through the news pages, only looking up from time to time to make sure the ocean was still there where I had last seen it between the buildings. Ah, life was so good.

And speaking about hounds… I mean beer, the selection available in the supermarkets here are not vast but they do normally stock Heineken – there is always Heineken – Kronenbourg 1664, Leffe Blonde and Brune, Grimbergen, Hoegaarden, Stella Artois, Carlsberg, and then a short selection of other minor brands. Thus, most of my favourite brands are covered, so all’s good.

As expected, wines are everywhere and the selection is rather impressive. And also as expected, I have not noticed many wines other than French, nothing from Italy, Spain, Chile, SA or anywhere else. And I guess, why would they stock those if the variety here is almost endless and delicious.

Wednesday I watched the Rand’s roller coaster ride, up and down, but mostly down, it really is disheartening, so I decided to stop monitoring xe.com, what was the point, the damage had been done. As I have said earlier, we need to retire Zuma.

I then turned to some normal news but there was nothing normal about it. Today there was a suspected chemical weapon attack in Syria, which is just terrible. Herewith an extract from that article “World leaders expressed shock and outrage Tuesday at reports of a suspected chemical attack in north-western Syria that killed scores of civilians, with one UK official suggesting the incident amounted to a war crime.” But that last part stuck in my throat “…the incident amounted to a war crime”. Why only this incident, why are all incidents of war not described as war crimes? For heaven’s sake, war is a crime, any war.

While we were visiting with Steve and Marina in Montenegro, a line of thinking that we have touched on before, was again raised. I have for as long as I can remember had a longing to ride on the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Vladivostok. The rest of the group was also keen on the idea and as Marina pointed out, the whole trip would be made so much easier with her onboard, her being Russian and all. Today I thought back on the discussion and double checked the visa requirements for SA should this trip materialise. I looked, and looked again, and thought something was amiss, but no, SA citizens no longer require a visa to visit Russia. This agreement came into effect just last week on 30 March 2017. I would dearly love to do that trip sometime, I really would…

Wednesday is market day in Séte and we really wanted to go but left it too late, the market closes promptly at 13:00 or thereabouts and when we arrived many stalls were already being dismantled. And that’s how we ended up at Monoprix, I needed beer. In order to balance the weight of those Heinekens on my left, Adri suggested that we buy a six-pack 1.5 litre water bottles as well, else my right hand would have nothing to do and might just get up to mischief. Adri mercifully agreed to carry the bag with the rest of the stuff. If I had not mentioned it before, please take note that home is uphill, not terribly steep, but up the hill nevertheless. The going was tough. They say that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going… the going was just tough…

A few days ago we bought gnocchi and I’ve been salivating at the thought of those little beauties sliding down my throat on a stream of either a Bolognaise or a three-cheese sauce. Today the Bolognaise sauce was victorious; we only had two cheeses in the fridge. Adri prepared a wonderful Bolognaise sauce in which these little gnocchi’s were dumped and by the joyous sounds emanating from that plate, they were having loads of fun. Maybe those joyous sounds came from me, either way, Adri did not mind.

I was sleeping, dreaming, when the alarm – of the person that was hogging my dream – started chiming softly. “Why are you not silencing the damn thing?” I scolded in my dream. A bruise appeared on my ribcage at the same time that I felt a sharp pang in the same area, caused by Adri’s arrow like elbow. There were no words spoken. I switched off my alarm, it was just past 07:00. I drifted back into a hazy maze. A half hour or so later the coffee fumes lifted the mist that was still clouding my brain, Adri wanted the day to start, there was a lot to do.

At 09:35 we walked to the Gare de Séte train station and arrived there at 10:00, just in time for the train to our planned daytrip. I hit the ticket guy with a tentative “Deux Béziers” and he asked “Billet de retour?” and added “It is good for you, it is cheaper that way”. I nodded my agreement in English.

But then the ticket guy came up with an even better deal. You purchase a coupon called “Carte via liberte” for €10 (a special for April, it is normally €27.50) which is valid for one year and allows you various discounts. On train travel during the week you get 25% discount, weekends 50%, and during school holidays also 50%. And it just happened to be school holidays at the moment so we got the 50% off right away. The return tickets would have cost us €36; we paid €28, which included the €10 for the coupon. The coupon is valid for train travel in the immediate region of Languedoc-Roussillon and also to a number of destinations outside of this region, as long as the journey is initiated within the region. Very cool!

We boarded the train at 10:20 and 25 minutes and 40km later we arrived in Béziers. I did not have time to have breakfast this morning and was getting skraal om die middelrif (thin around the waste) but somehow Adri this morning still managed to prepare a baguette for me with Brie and mince. Across the road from the Gare de Béziers is the entrance to the park called Jardin du Plateau des Poétes which we turned into a diner and had breakfast right there, baguette and all.

After this substantial breakfast there were enough brain cells awake to start our day’s exploring. We walked uphill on Avenue Gambetta to the centre of town where we found a tourist information office. We scrounged a map and were promptly on our way to the Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire-et-Saint-Celse de Béziers following confusing signs via the narrowest of alleyways. We had to hurry as the church closes between 12:00 and 14:00, as does everything else in France, except for the restaurants of course. This is the time when the nation feeds.

As we entered the church at 11:35 the curator started switching off some of the lights, in no uncertain terms reminding you to hurry your ass up and get out of there. We were not intimidated; we stayed there until 12:00 enjoying the wonderful peace and tranquillity, the beautiful artworks and sculptures.

From the western side of the cathedral there is a wonderful view across the countryside and the River Orb below. I was busy taking in this sight when Adri commandeered me up with a wolf whistle, there was more to see. Next to the church you enter a beautiful courtyard and then go down a flight of stairs to emerge at the gardens called Cloítre du jardin des Evéques. From there you get a really good view of the Orb River as it brushes past Beziérs on its way to the Mediterranean.

We then walked back to the main town centre via a steep downhill winding road; we were in dire need of an Espresso. We walked along the beautiful streets and alleyways of Béziers with almost all shops closed for lunch. We happened upon the Eglise de la Madeleine which Adri dearly wanted to visit, but of course, it was now full on lunchtime and there was no way those doors were going to budge.

 

We found a lovely little restaurant called Le Balthus and sat ourselves down outside, right in the sun ready to receive its rays. These was an occasional cooler than cool breeze blowing but the sun, warm on our faces, kept us comfortable.

 

 

 

I asked whether they had wifi and the waitress presented me with an ashtray and a lighter. Not sure how I could get the pronunciation of wifi so wrong! Anyway, the espressos were superb.

 

 

 

We then proceeded to the Municipal Theatre of Béziers which looks down towards a long open promenade with large trees on either side, just beginning to show their summer envy. This promenade is sometimes referred to as the Paul Riquet Alley and two thirds down it you will find the statue of Paul Riquet, a native of Béziers. Riquet was the man responsible for building the Canal du Midi, one of the great engineering feats of the 17th century, but more about that later.

This promenade leads back into the northern part of the Jardin du Plateau des Poétes, where we had breakfast earlier today. This park is dedicated to French poets but since 1990 has also become a haven for birds and their watchers. Many birds can be observed here such as wrens, warblers, redstart, blue tits and great tits. I wasn’t so keen on seeing the blue tits, but I was sorry to have missed the great tits.

We walked on, passing under the train tracks and emerged at the southern part of Béziers and came to a dead-end right at the Canal du Midi, a sight for our by now sore eyes, it really is beautiful to behold. The canal is a 240-kilometre-long artificial waterway that links the southern coast of France via Toulouse to the greater canal/river system that runs across to the Bay of Biscay.

We ambled along the canal for mere metres when we came upon the lock that brings boats from a lower level of the canal to the level – probably about 10 metres higher – of the Quai du Port Neuf. And just as luck would have it, there was a boat ready to go up, and the process was as follows. The boat manoeuvres into the area between the two gates of the lock and is then tied up on the one side to hold it steady and in place. The lock behind the boat then closes and water is let into the lock area. As the water level starts to rise of course the boat rises with it. When the level inside the lock reaches the same level as the canal, the gates are opened and the skipper and boat goes on their way.

There is always a lot of trepidation from a skipper going through a lock, it is probably never easy and many things can go wrong. The skipper of this boat was particularly unlucky in that the wind started blowing rather strongly just as he exited the narrow lock area. The boat veered from starboard to port and trying to control the steering he probably overcompensated and a sickening screech was heard as the hull scratched against the cement wall where the fenders gave way due to the pressure. “Ouch!” was all I could think of to say.

We watched the same boat go up another level on the other side of Quai du Port Neuf, thankfully without any incident this time. People generally love watching this spectacle and all around people were clamouring to watch the process, rather fascinating.

And by the way, please read Eric’s blog post called It’s All Down Hill From Here! which details his experience with locks in Canada a few years back aboard his yacht Northern Whisper.

We then took a walk further along the canal and came upon the Orb Aqueduct, where the Canal du Midi flows unimpeded over the River Orb, seemingly on stilts. What a wonderful sight to see. We walked across the aqueduct and on for a while still but decided to make a u-turn, Adri was tired and my feet were hurting. Another kilometre or two on that journey would have brought us to the Fonserannes Locks, which consists of eight lock but is now operated only as a 6-rise and allows boats to be raised a height of 21.5 m in a distance of 300m.

Over the years many friends have expressed their wish to rent a barge on the Canal du Midi and sail upon her waters. Maybe the time for such an adventure had come!

It was now getting late and we were growing hungry but first things first, Adri needed to rest and I needed to get some weight off my feet. As we passed through the “tit” park of earlier we bought a lovely patch of green real estate under the shade of an old tree and rested these weary old bodies and bones for a while.

On Paul Riquet Alley we found a lovely little Turkish restaurant where we ordered two plates of different types of kebab meat and a beer. The beer did not arrive, the restaurant was Halaal, so I changed my order to a Coke, which of course they had. The food was amazing and came with kebab beef with salad and chips and bread and… Man, this was delicious. There was an older Moroccan gentleman at the table next to us and you may wonder how we knew he was Moroccan? He told us so. He struck up a conversation when he heard us speak English, his English was great, and what an interesting chap he turned out to be. As he finished his meal he left us in silence to savour the last morsels of ours.

We boarded the train after 20:00, it was a long day, and I was ready to chill for the next 30 minutes or so, but that was not my destiny. No sooner had the train left the station when the child on the seat across the aisle put up a sterling soprano performance of La Traviata. Needles to say, we moved to another carriage.

No sooner had we resettled when somebody farted. It was not me, this time it was also not Adri. I held my breath 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… The paint started peeling off the interior walls… the windows started to crumble… I desperately needed to breathe… I dared not. Something had to give. I gave Adri a nudge and when there was no reaction, I assumed she had already passed on. I gave her another shove, this time off her seat and into the aisle, man, I had to get outta there, with or without her. Adri came to and at a soft jog down the aisle we reached the next carriage and fresh air. I could not help but think that whoever let that obnoxious gas escape into the confines of the carriage is sick, literally or mentally, but either way, he had to seek medical attention… and I mean fast!

For a moment there I was starting to worry that we were going to run out of carriages to escape to but fortunately the rest of the journey was uneventful. We got home exhausted but happy, it was a truly great day!

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