Rafle

When picking up the BH from the station in the early morning, after her trip to Normandy, I spied through the sheeting rain a row of blue-uniformed filth, national, railway, municipal and border. All of them packed rambo-sized sidearms and seemed to find elasticated trouser-bottoms tucked into Doc Martens the height of paramilitary chic.

It was another revenue raid, timed to coincide with the arrival of trainload after trainload of poorly paid workers and unpaid lycéens. They surrounded all possible exits (the handbook for the vélodrome d'hiv must still be used by our gardiens de la paix) and made everybody coming off the trains wait in the freezing downpour whilst they, in the dry, proceeded to check everybody's papers.

They were probably after fare-dodgers and illegal immigrants, perhaps the same thing in their eyes. The actual catch was socially more nuanced, with a fair few well-dressed followers of Marine Le Pen caught out too. The treatment meted out by the boys in blue was different, though, with anybody under twenty-five, or ever so slightly tanned, sent immediately, after being searched, to the paniers à salade, whereas the good ladies were asked politely whether they wished to pay with Carte Bleue or by cheque.

Deluge

The BH is in Normandy, seeing her Dad, and no doubt appreciating the peculiarly benign (for grass at least) climate of the Véxin. When she left yesterday, heading towards the drizzle and cold, it was sunshine as usual here. But this morning I was awakened not by sunbeams but by sullen thunder, and by the insistent, well actually frantic, drumming of rain on the roof. The rain has lashed down all day, with a violence unknown in Normandy. The lights have been on all day, too. Idem the heating.

Perhaps, when one's thoughts are with one who is in a different clime, the climate of imaginative adoption becomes one's own, and Antibes - in a peculiarly literal interpretation of the intentional fallacy - adopts the weather fronts and temperature gradients of the Seine Maritime.

Names

Names mean different things to different people. Our neighbour here in the rue des Cordiers is Mamo's restaurant, officially called le Michelangelo. At the moment it is being renovated by an army of assorted tradespeople. As it happens, the Michelangelo's interior is being tarted up by Boccace Décor and the electrical work is being carried out by Campanella Electricité. Means something to me, but does it mean the same thing for Mamo? At what price Plomberie Générale Gadda, Domotique Vico or Serrurerie Pirandello?

Dip in the Oggin

Just the briefest of blogs to say that today, 17th November, the weather was so nice, and the sea was so, so blue, that I decided to go for a swim. And very nice it was, too.

Miracle-Gro

Despite one or two interesting examples of ecclesiastic architecture, and a colourful pilgrimage of fisherfolk to the sanctuary of Our Lady of La Garoupe, Antibes does not strike us as a particularly religious place. A strange setting, therefore, for a very small 'miracle'.

The BH had gone into the penny bazaar on the Place Nationale. Her mission was to find a kitchen roll dispenser, and she found one, which meant queueing quite a while to pay. Meanwhile, Yours Truly was hanging out in the Place, loitering without intent.

I noticed somebody staring at one of the plane trees which cosy up incongruously to immense palm trees in the square. What was he looking at? I took a closer look.

Somebody had nailed, in the distant past, a small cruxifix to the tree, and the bark had begun to grow over the body, a living cross.

Kennst du das Land

OK, not oranges but lemons.

I've already waxed lyrical about the joys of Antibes autumn. This time it is closer to home. Some considerable time ago, before the summer, the BH bought me a lemon tree shrub (I'd been dying for one). We nursed it through the summer months and the autumnal downpours.

Well, finally, we have had the reward. Perfect lemons, used first of all in indescribably good quince jam and jelly, and secondly in a wonderful salmon and fennel recipe. The lemons were juicy, tasty and just exquisite.

Battue en cours

It's the start of the hunting season. Not the mushroom one, but the serious, bloodsoaked one with firearms and dogs. Yesterday we headed, on Armistice Day, which is a holiday in France, for the Tanneron, to walk the mimosa-covered hills.

When we got to the carpark at the beginning of the walk, we saw a lean, almost famished dog - very old fashioned looking - wandering in the woods. We thought nothing of it. Then we saw the sign: "Battue en cours".

It was an organised hunt for wild boar. The dangers were threefold, and none of them attractive, namely to be savaged by the dogs, charged and eviscerated by maddened wild boar, or gunned down by trigger-happy retards with big toys. We decided, without saying a word, and yet with perfect and instant agreement, to move on.

As we drove slowly off, I realised how close we were to the last eventuality, as behind the bushes on the side of the road, posted every thirty metres or so, there was a leering hunter in camouflage gear, with an incongruous orange cap on his head, and massive artillery trained onto the road we were driving down. Evidently the tarmac, in their eyes, was an ideal free-fire zone, where they could indulge in a little blamablamablama, as Steve Bell puts it, when drawing the Juki Imbrah. We accelerated and held our breath, with a prickly feeling down the backs of our necks. Exit from the fire-zone seemed to take for ages.

Our walk took place elsewhere, but with our eyes and ears ready for the slightest signs of further venery. The barking of domestic dogs, and the slam of car doors in the distance, carried on the calm air, made us jump.

Surface detail

Most of old Antibes consists of houses that have been modified many times. Beneath an apparently 18th century building, modernised by some Scandinavian second-homer, you can discern elements of a late medieval house. Walls, like palimpsests, carry the traces of previous windows, often of completely different dimensions, and at heights which indicate that even the internal floors have been changed at least twice.

Some of this tinkering is hidden by the ever-present plasterwork, but often neglect or shoddiness, or more recently a genuine desire to highlight ancient features, means that the pentimento shows through.

Amongst the buildings which have recently been done up is the Chapelle Saint-Bernardin, from the early 16th century, in a narrow street near us. The facade is gothic, despite the date, but what is more interesting is that the restorers have made visible the sculptures over the door. The chapel belonged to the confraternity of the Pénitents Blancs, a lay catholic self-help society whose principal purpose was to bury the dead. The sculptures show the penitents in their grisly uniforms, waiting to cart you off to the cemetery.

Back from market

Spring and summer are what make the reputation of resorts like Antibes, but if one is looking for gastronomic ecstasy, then autumn is the time to come, particularly if one's purse can stand up to the rigours of the pricing policy in the marché provençal.

Today, apart from cheese and honey, and enticingly misshapen tomatoes, we bought quinces, walnuts and almonds, and wonderful little local lemons, destined for salting to make citrons confits.

Season of mellow fruitfulness

Yesterday saw us brave the narrow, twisting road over the mountains to Collobrières. There isn't much to Collobrières town, apart from a nice medieval bridge and ducks on the river. The trip there, though, is spectacular, with the winding, single-track road snaking amongst impenetrable plantations of chestnut, cork-oak and mediterranean pine. The colours in autumn are indecently spectacular. We looked for mushrooms, getting hopelessly entangled in the undergrowth. Other pickers had found the local delicacy, sanguines, a kind of scarlet chanterelle. All we found were two parasol mushrooms (a large example above, standing a foot high from the ground) and a cèpe. We didn't dare eat them, as there is a similar-looking lepiota species which is deadly poison.

The real reason, as always, for going to Collobrières is the Confiserie Azuréenne, which makes marrons glacés and other chestnut-based, more-ish delicacies. Choosing one's poison is difficult, and probably impossible without a pause for reflection, aided by their ambrosial chestnut ice-cream. There is always a risk, with delicacies rarely consumed, that the memory has plumped up the recollection of goodness, and the retasting turns out to be a disappointment. Not so with Collobrières ice-cream. Words fail, or rather are smothered in a bouchée of total papillary delight.

The ice-cream set us on the right course for purchases (chestnut flour, marron glacé fragments, crème de marrons, and several kilos of ice-cream for the Xmas and New Year season), and made us feel we were in the right place at the right time, despite the absence of anywhere to eat or drink, and the dreich reminder of a steady drizzle down our necks.

On the way back, we stopped at a vineyard to sample their wares. Very dry rosés, lightish reds, available in bottles, bags, or whatever container you could bring along. There was one chap who filled a jerrycan with the rouge. He seemed to know what he was doing. We bought a selection, and headed home through the increasing mist, bearing gifts which certainly exceeded those of the three wise men when they were preparing Xmas.

Autumn at last

The weather has changed since coming back from Piedmont. The wind has freshened, and the leaves have been stripped from the trees, filling the streets with piles of potential compost. The unexpected bonus is that we can once more see the Alps from our windows. The other advantage is the free show of spectacular sunsets.