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Wednesday 23 September 2009

Bend Me, Shake Me, Anyway You Want Me!

Well, I'm finally back at Bardies, on a gloriously sunny day, after a gruelling five day yoga retreat in the Haut Garonne. I ache in places I didn't know I had and, I can tell you, keeping my rear end and my excess kilos up in the air in 'down dog' position for minutes at a time was no mean feat for wimps like me. My arms and shoulders are still screaming for mercy and it's forty eight hours since I was last upside down! Despite my feeble attempts at going to the gym, by way of pre-preparation, I know for sure that I must focus on getting myself vaguely back in shape if I am going to enjoy my dotage without a zimmer frame.

'Hey, you hypocrite!' I hear you say, especially after my previous eulogy to the great Keith Floyd, and, of course, you are right. On the other hand, enjoying good food, good wine and living life to the full, and being vaguely fit, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I am certain that they compliment each other. After all, you can justify wolfing down more calories if you've been for a good hike around the Bethmale Valley or, even better, skied the pistes of Guzet Neige. The hills around here are not part of the Tour de France for nothing, which I have to admit is just one of the reasons why I haven't got on my bike to date! Things are about to change, although I have no intention of getting too carried away with this fitness lark. 'Peu a peu'.

For me, though, yoga is the ultimate form of exercise. It ticks all the boxes. Many years ago I did Iyenegar yoga, which involved a lot of polystyrene blocks and a great deal of time spent upside down in headstands. I was certainly supple and the meditative aspects of the classes helped get my head into the right space for dealing with hyperactive toddlers. Peace, calm and 'me-time' were a life saver. I only gave it up because I pulled a ligament trying to be over ambitious with my stretching on a bitterly cold winter's morning [the downside of the classes was that they were held in a de-consecrated church with virtually no heating].

These last few magical days have been a revelation. This time, I did Ashtanga Yoga which, if I'd known how hard it was when I started last Friday morning, I might have dipped out of. No pain without gain, as they say. You don't get a tea break, that's for sure. In fact, you don't get any breaks at all between moves, because it works on a continuum of sequences which you are supposed to master through constant repetition. In the 'Eighties', when we all battled to look like Jane Fonda, the trend was for aerobic classes. I can tell you first hand that Ashtanga Yoga is about as aerobic as it gets, and I was hiding at the back of the group!

You start with a sequence of moves known as 'sun salutations'. On my first morning I was pathetic, but I forced myself to do them despite having a bad back. When I first watched Katie, our lovely teacher with a beautifully supple figure to die for, I immediately thought 'no way!' Not being one to give up on things easily, I dutifully attempted to copy her fluid movements. I may have looked like a beached whale desperately trying to manoeuvre itself back into the ocean but I am proud to say that I slowly got the hang of it. I even, perversely, started to enjoy it. The really incredible thing was that it gradually made my back feel better though, obviously, not my arms or shoulders because of my weight.

Sun salutations are the most perfect sequence of exercises for a bad back and I don't know why chiropractors don't insist on them [perhaps they would if they didn't think they might get sued by clients unable to extricate themselves from some of the positions, which I guess is understandable!]. The idea is to do them every morning and I am determined to try my very best to continue with them 'toute seule'. I must make a note to keep Charlie, our Jack Russell out of the way because he's bound to see it as a new game, with potentially disastrous consequences for my health.

As we progressed, we continued with more complex sequences, some with greater success on my part than others. The early evening classes were my favourite. They were the 'ying' to the 'yang', soft meditative stretches designed to work on soft connective tissue, rather than muscle groups. I could happily have taken extra classes like these and felt fantastic after each one. Whereas half way through the frenetic activity of the morning class I was thinking, more often than not, about what I was going to have for breakfast, after the afternoon session I just felt an amazing sense of well-being and always had a spring in my step. I loved it and can't recommend Ashtanga yoga enough.

The retreat was held in the fabulous chateau of close friends near Aspet, a beautiful quaint little town nestling below the mountains. I am told that it has become much beloved by the English of late, although our friends bought their house in 1990, when most English people back then decamped instead to the Dordogne. Thai Ping and Giovanni, who own the house, have converted the top floor of one of their barns into a huge yoga studio, complete with Moroccan awnings and stunning views from the wide open windows over their magnificently landscaped and planted garden. Below was the pool, surrounded by stunning cobalt walls inlaid with mosaic. The house, originally built in 1792 by an unfortunate aristocrat who lost his head in the frenzy of the revolution, is to die for, full of fabulous things sourced from their many trips to Asia, as well as a fine collection of period pieces.

Katie Heller, from 'Tri Yoga', ran the course brilliantly and Thai Ping and I did the food. We ate so much, three meals a day, but it was all good healthy stuff and we only had a glass of wine each on the first and last nights. Honest! The cooking was more knackering than the yoga, but I did enjoy it. Pete Heller, Katie's husband generously cooked a fantastic butternut squash risotto on Saturday night. On Sunday, we drove over the border to Bossost for an exquisite lunch at 'El Portalet'. If you haven't been there yet, it's the best kept secret in the region. The restaurant is not flash but the food has shades of Heston Blumental in its staggering combinations of flavours. Excellent, and all for a 'prix fixe' of 25 euros a head.

On the same trip, we also managed to bag some great ceps and girolles from a man by the side of the road for 12 euros a kilo [none here yet because of the lack of serious rainfall] and stock up on duty free booze for 'Noel' in the huge hypermarket, where people behave like savages in pursuit of their hauls. After a serious lunch and a mega shop, we were all lined up in the yoga studio in our 'trackie bottoms' again by 6 o'clock, ready to roll. Keen or what? I tell you, this yoga lark really gets to you. Let's just hope I can keep it up! Bend me, shake me, anyway you want me..........!

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Adieu Keith Floyd, RIP

I really wasn't going to do another blog until I had planted out my smuggled buddlejas and penstemmons and severely contorted my middle aged body on a five day yoga course with my two best friends in their chateau neat St Gaudens. Having agreed to help provide the vittals [wheat, dairy and booze free, of course], food has been very much on my mind as I have waded through such illustrious publications as 'Dr Joshi's Holistic Detox' and 'Carol Vorderman's 28 day Detox Plan'. Still not sure what detoxing is, but I do so love playing around with new recipe ideas.

Then, this morning on the 10.00am news bulletin on Radio 4, the news came through that Keith Floyd, the original TV celebrity chef [if you discount the matronly and decidedly bossy Fanny Craddock!], had died. I was devestated and felt much the same overwhelming sense of sadness that I had felt when it was announced that first Bob Marley and then John Lennon were no longer with us. Only yesterday, in my local coffee shop, I was reading a hilariously funny extract from Keith Floyd's autobiography from a borrowed copy of the 'Daily Mail'. Remembering all those great programmes where it was obvious that everyone was totally plastered, I finally had it from the horse's mouth.

I knew that he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer but had thought that the prognosis would be reasonably good, despite his years of seriously 'going for it'. There was something so wonderfully reassuring about that permanently craggy old face that made us all feel reckless and carefree when it came down to the really important things in life. Food, wine and friends, thrown randomly together wherever one was in the world, provided his metier. He made us feel good about the good things, and bugger tomorrow. How different it all is today when, if you're female, you are made to think that if you have just half a glass of wine a week you are destined for a long slow death from breast cancer, or if you're male you will die of some complication from a sclerotic liver.

Ironically, just in case you're thinking 'QED', they say that he died from a heart attack. My guess is that the chemo drugs may have damaged his heart, but, of course, it is possible that the wanton self abuse of his life style was the principal reason. In any event, I don't know whether to be joyful for a life so well lived, or depressed because his death, if you'll excuse the awful pun, is yet another nail in the proverbial coffin for all of us 'bon vivants'. Personally, I don't want to be a dribbling, incontinent, brain dead 95 year old shut up in a lonely nursing home until I fall out of my wheelchair and keel over. Life is for living and as far as I am concerned I would rather have Keith Floyd as my mentor than some gym addicted Department of Health bureaucrat.

Friends of ours knew him in Bristol when he had his loss making restaurant. The restaurant was great, they told us, and the food was, as one would expect, fantastic. I was at a loss to understand how a restaurant owned and cooked in by the great Keith Floyd could have lost so much money. The answer was so simple, and a mark of the great man himself. Quite simply, the minute the bulk of his semi teetotal and dull customers left the restaurant, Keith would dive into the cellar and pull out sundry bottles of his favourite clarets and Burgundies for his 'chums' to taste and test.....and drink.....and drink. It was not unheard of for them to stagger out into the misty Bristol night air at 5 o'clock in the morning. He enjoyed himself so much, he never charged them.

Such generosity of spirit is uplifting and, in my book, is what life is all about. What else is there? Answers on a postcard please! Rien! I have just pulled out of my bookshelf an old copy of his definitive 1987 'Floyd on France', which was, at the time, south west London's answer to Elizabeth David and Julia Child. It is all so simple that us baby boomers, desperate to impress at our 'dinner parties' could knock off the real thing with none of the guesswork required for the lengthy tomes of ED and JC et al. We learnt to cook, thanks to him. He always said that everything that he cooked was courtesy of Elizabeth David but, in reality, he communicated to us the real essence of her work with none of the experimental pitfalls.

When we went to live in Madrid in 1992, with a hyperactive one year old in tow, we were able to sample the delights of Spanish food from his 'Floyd on Spain' book without having to stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning in the local Madrileno restaurants. I think that we pretty well cooked our way through the whole of his book on Spain, a bit like Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child et al's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. It was easier for us because Floydy had written the recipes. If you haven't seen 'Julie and Julia' yet, by the way, you must. Meryl Streep was a brilliant Julia Child although, as I watched the movie, I realised that I had never ever seen her in the true flesh. Before Floyd, there were just books, not people. Julia Child was a great personality but, unlike Floyd, us Brits never saw her. The Americans did, of course.

So, adieu then, to a master. The world will not be the same without him. I mourn not just the man, but a way of life in retreat. It was great while it lasted and now it's Dr Joshi's holistic detox [my arse!]. So long, Keith, and thanks for all the fish!

Sunday 13 September 2009

Bardies 10:10

I do not know where the first fortnight of September has gone - lost in a flurry of sewing on nametapes, getting shoes fitted and endless washing machine cycles. C'est la vie des Mamans! Here I am, finalement, with a few sweaty and tired moments to spare in front of my computer on the evening before my 18 year old heads off back to college. My original intention was to get this blog up on the 2nd or 3rd September in response to the 'Guardian's' launch of its 10:10 campaign.

For those of you who don't read 'The Guardian' on line, their campaign was launched at the Tate Modern on 1st September 2009, with the aim of asking individuals, businesses and organisations of all kinds to try to cut their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Not much, you might think, especially from the clean air of the Ariege, but if tens of thousands of people are fired up [sorry, no pun intended!] with enthusiasm for the project then the impact of our collective action becomes significant. Being a natural ditherer, I always think that the toughest bit of any course of action is the first tentative step. The great thing about this project is that you don't have to don a hair shirt in the process.

Ironically, the people that I know who are the most committed to reducing their carbon emissions live in the Ariege and have the lowest carbon footprint to start with. Karl, our plumber, drives an electric car and knows everything there is to know about reed beds and solar panels. We have talked many times about installing a 'pompe a chaleur' for heating, a brilliant idea if only the cost weren't as high as a brand new BMW! For so many of us, the costs of all this wonderful new technology remain totally prohibitive. The will is there, but the bank manager isn't.

Instead, for now, we have to look at other options. We have already put thermostats on all our radiators [not cheap!] and installed woodburners, which blew the whole of last year's budget, and some more. We are privileged to have masses of woodland so, as we just utilise the dead trees which are carbon neutral, we are able to heat the house in autumn and spring without resorting to a small mortgage to turn on the oil fired central heating. In January and February, though, we have to bite the proverbial bullet and kiss euro bills goodbye in the smoke. Not good for the environment, and not good for our peace of mind. No wonder our friend Jim, in the Gers, takes off for Brazil for the winter!

As we did both of these things before 1st September, I can hardly boast them as part of our 10:10 commitment. Likewise, our loft insulation, which we put in three years ago when we were feeling rather more flush and had run out of salad bowls to put under the leaks in the roof. Thank goodness we did repair the roof when we did, otherwise I dread to think what chaos would have greeted us back in January when the 'tempete' hit. As it was, we still lost a number of pantiles but the 'flexituile' held the water at bay and we were spared the need to repair rain sodden ceilings.

We have to now look at simpler measures to reduce our consumption by a further 10%. Travel is obviously the number one target and I promise I am working on it. I have signed up to the special offers on the SNCF website, but getting to Paris by train 'sous la manche' is still incredibly expensive and you can't really drag lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and hedge cutters in tow, not to mention recalcitrant teenagers. We have, however, taken advantage of the car scrappage scheme to buy a more fuel efficient diesel car which will take the four of us, and the dog, more comfortably and all together. Hopefully, the plaintive moans of cramped children buried beneath mountains of surplus luggage and boxes of books, will be a thing of the past [as indeed should their demands to fly home on their own, in comfort, on Easyjet!].

I have come to the conclusion that the old ways are the best and, inspired by my visits to old, cold, draughty National Trust houses, I am determined to take a leaf out of their previous owners' books. Firstly, curtains. If big, heavy interlined curtains were good enough to keep the heat in Scottish castles in the depths of a Hebridean winter, then they must do the trick down in the Ariege. The poles are in place ready and waiting for the recently scrounged haul from my mother-in-law. She always knew that those muddy brown and sludge green curtains deserved a fate better than the local Scout troop's jumble sale! They may not be the height of interior design chic but if the choice is freezing your arse off, who cares?

Secondly, hot water bottles. Right up until she died, my darling old mum used to put two hot water bottles in my bed in winter whenever I went to stay with her. In my book, they are the ultimate token of love. To go to the trouble of filling a hot water bottle and putting it into someone else's bed is the test of true generosity of spirit. There is nothing in this world like that warm tingly feeling that takes over your body when you climb into a bed so warmed. And, unlike an electricity guzzling electric blanket, the heat stays with you until you blissfully fall into a deep sleep. OK, so the downside is the shock cold contact with an icy bag of rubber first thing in the morning, but, hey, there is no gain without pain!

Thirdly, I am going to disconnect the beautiful old French taps that fill our lovingly resourced period cast iron baths. I was in seventh heaven when I found our two French rolltop baths in Frome ten years ago. Not only had they not been spoilt by having been re-enamelled, they were complete with their original leaky taps. A good scrub and a lick of Farrow and Ball's 'Pidgeon' oil eggshell later, they looked like new and were perfect for our purposes. My bargain buys proved a bit of a disaster a few months later, though, when I had to have the floors reinforced with RSJ's to take their weight. Now, in comparison with showers, their respective water consumption is a 'No! No!'. It's such a shame, but serious times need serious measures. They'll still look good, even if the only way to fill one is with a bucket!

My fourth measure concerns lightbulbs. Because Bardies is so old, we tracked down old 19th century French light fittings and chandeliers, which we had converted. It may not be long before they are lit by a single lightbulb. We already use the new energy efficient bulbs where possible but, being blind as a bat at short range, the long lasting bulbs seem so dim to me. I simply cannot read with them. Can anyone, I wonder? What I don't understand is why a total ban on the old ones seems not to have spurred the manufacturers into producing suitable replacements. Torches and candles may be a short term answer but it would be nice to know that the future wasn't going to be totally dim. 'The lights are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime' was never so apt.

I was pleased to see that EDF have taken the initiative of sending a graph of one's household electricity consumption on each bill, with a comparative one from the corresponding period from the previous year. I am very pleased to see that ours was significantly reduced, largely, I suspect, because the children had spent less time with us. They are hopeless and I am rapidly turning into a fishwife in pursuit of them when they leave lights and the TV on every time that they leave a room. A minor electric shock administered anonymously every time they walk out of a room might do the trick, rather like one of Pavlov's dogs. We, like most people in the Ariege, never leave anything on standby for the purely selfish reason that a storm can roll in overnight and wipe your computer or blow up your television set.

Of course, there is always room for more saving. I am going to use everything in the deep freeze by September each year [always good to delve deep and find things that you put away for a rainy day way back in 2001, or whenever!] and turn it off for the winter, as well as the fridges. I am also going to hide the supplementary electric radiators for emergencies only. It is amazing how quickly one adapts to temperature reductions, especially if it happens slowly. We certainly didn't have central heating when I was growing up, and the house awaiting slum clearance that I lived in at university was so cold that my washing froze in the bathroom. I seem to recall many nights going to sleep in my coat, but that may have been down to too many beers in 'The Buttery'! My mum used to buy me sheepskin lined boots long before 'Ugg' made them fashionable and, even now, I still wear them to ward off the foot-numbing cold of our unsympathetic 'tomettes'.

At the end of the day [sorry for the cliche, but one day it may be!] these measures are as nothing compared with the threat that is before us. We are really not very good at looking into the future, especially the bleak and barren one that so many Africans, South Americans and Australians will face if we don't get our act together soon. I cannot possibly pretend that I am anything other than a hypocrite, an environmentally part-time, self indulgent, gas guzzling, water consuming, heat loving individual, whose actions, alongside tens of thousands, or indeed millions, of others, continually damage our precious world. I wish that I could wave a wand, so that it would all go away and we could get back to the serious business of simply enjoying ourselves. I can't, and neither, sadly, can you. We are all on the same long, hard journey and the sooner each of us takes those first few steps towards a world that our grandchildren can inherit, the easier our shared journey will become. 10:10 is a start, but only a start. Bon chance!