Sartorial notes: part XXIV

At Dennis's funeral (qv) I felt elevated. To go with my only formal suit I wore my black shoes and they have heels. I teetered like a lady of the night.

My black shoes are at least twenty-five years old and cost a horrifying £45. I swore I would get full value at that price and so it is proving. The question is should I be cremated in them; since I hate my formal suit this seems unlikely. The shoes have been re-soled.

Since I retired I've worn heelless trainers. But fatness dictated a change of plan since I struggled tying the laces. Velcro seemed the answer and readers of Works Well (which preceded Tone Deaf) were full of reassurances. However they failed to mention a serious snag. As I slip my feet into the shoes, the Velcro is free to flap and attaches itself to other parts of the shoe's suede upper. More trouble for the fat man.

After a year on the five/two diet I have lost two stones (= 28 lb). En route from Tesco, my morning shadow seemed elegantly lithe. I am encouraged. As a flaneur (look it up) shabby shoes become me and laces are no longer a problem. My disintegrating trainers will do.

JOE'S NUDGE

Can this be poetry? It's included in The Poet's Tongue and therefore has Auden's and Garrett's approval.

One cannot help think
how much better it would have been
if Vronsky and Anna Karenin
had stood up for themselves, and seen
Russia across her crisis,
instead of leaving it to Lenin.

Aimed at literary snobs. But we all know who Vronsky was, don't we? Even without the give-away. "Across" adds a necessary syllable; should be "through". Clumsy.

D. H. Lawrence

Two Cockney sparr'ers

When Ivy died a couple of years ago I knew Dennis wouldn’t live long. They were our neighbours held together by hyphens, Dennis-and-Ivy, a human unit, sharing the same oral history, capable of making me laugh and laugh. Dennis died while we were on holiday and the funeral was on Monday.

John their son talked about the music, starting with Willie Nelson's elegiac Georgia On My Mind. "I didn't think much of country western," John admitted, but Dennis had persuaded him otherwise. With Peggy Lee's Things Are Swingin', also quiet, John had difficulty talking. He still held his handkerchief when I shook his hand. "Dennis’s Cockney mind was too quick for Herefordians," I said. John, who'd never met me, looked up through his tears. "It's funny, he always said they lacked a sense of humour." Maybe. My bet was Dennis's natural wit left them bobbing in his wake.

John's partner, Helen, read out a list: fine dad, played cricket, stubborn, a good union man. That last one made my gut stir. Dennis belonged to an era when unions meant something. I’d forgotten.

I recalled them coming over for Christmas drinks. Dennis was in minesweepers during the war; didn’t exaggerate or undersell what happened; didn’t need to. Funny nevertheless.

Ivy bowled (outdoors, on grass) with great skill, something Dennis took up when cricket and golf were beyond him. "Is he any good," I asked Ivy. She raised her hand and quacked her fingers like a duck's beak. He talked too much.

Never too much, Ivy. I've tried to recall Dennis’s stories but they were born out of character, place and a special form of language, enriched by a groany-wheezy East End accent. I’d risk betraying him. Never mind. He’s joined Ivy now but two bright lights have been  extinguished.

Conspicuous consumption?

Fish again, this time in Hereford not in Bouzigues.

On Monday we went downtown and, oh, the irony: that snappy foreign word "downtown" applied to hopelessly out-of-date, inefficient, broken-down Hereford - unknown to the rest of the UK, confused anyway with more fashionable Hertfordshire which is, of course, much closer to London.

We bought a salmon trout which weighed over a kilo. It cost £26. Does that sound a lot? In real money that's $42.57; would Americans (US or Canada) regard that as expensive? We did.

VR said it would do two meals for each of us, and it did. Salmon trout is rare. It's a sea-water fish and is greatly superior to both salmon and river trout. I'll brook no argument on this. Young people should regard the salmon trout as an aspirational dish (ie, to be eaten in their old age).

VR served it with asparagus and Jersey Royal new potatoes. She added chives to the mayonnaise. Look, we're old! We've arrived in the land of Aspiration. When in Rome...

JOE'S NUDGE
Am I allowed to cheat? To pick poems (From The Poet's Tongue) when I recognise their source? Only if there's a special point to be made.

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Reasons why. Blasphemy would be to ask what these symbolic phrases mean. If you know, fine. But pursuing them misses the point. The first sentence is one whole cadence, dwell on that. Dwell on this “family” of nouns. Dwell on the artful repetition. Textbook poetry.

Ecclesiastes

To be or, definitely, not to be

Missie, OS's 12-year-old Cairn, is staying with us while her mistress frolics in Glastonbury mud. Missie lacks aspiration.

Food is her only real impulse; as I prepare my brunch each step I take (there are many) is duplicated by Missie. Quickly followed by a step backwards when I change direction. Dance patterns are repeated across the kitchen floor, each terminated by a beseeching stare (see pic). Occasionally my foot accidentally gongs her head.

If the kitchen/hall door is open she sidles upstairs and audibly jumps on our bed. A short call retrieves her. If another dog passes the front door, she barks. And that's it.

She no longer begs to be taken for a walk. When we read or watch telly, she sleeps. When we sleep she sleeps. For long periods she is utterly forgotten. She's not much trouble but I worry about the meaning of her life and her lack of impingement. Also Missie is not even pretty.

JOE'S NUDGE
Drawing a bow at venture:

Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the small-pox, or chas'd old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use.

That third line suggests the poet is male, except few males "dress all day". The quatrain is epigrammatic and not all epigrams are poetry, but "charm'd the small-pox" is poetry. We're expected to take a broader view than that defined by these two benefits - to sign up for wasting time, a non-activity beloved by those who write. Plumbers may not agree. The cry is by no means universal, in fact it's special pleading. But never mind, do you agree?

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

End of food; end of hol

Grandad doing his duty by Zach: Translating interminable soccer articles (about which he knows nothing) from L'Equipe colour mag.

Bella: Dressed to kill, obviously

At the end of the holiday the exotic food we acquired impulsively is eaten up. But the impulsive act cannot be entirely suppressed, A van equipped with a weedy loudspeaker tours the village and announces something which I do not catch. OS says to me, “Bella (her daughter) may not know French but she recognised the word for mussels.” And we're off on foot in the scorching heat.

The mussels will be stuffed (farcies). I look at the van's vast mussel container and try to guess how many I'll need for six people. Foolish speculation, simply ask the guy who's selling. “Two and a half  kilos,” he says. We lack parsley as does the village's tiny green-grocery. But you can't have everything. The mussels are being prepared as I write, garlic blowing its own trumpet.

SEASONAL Hot weather can cut the need for bulky food, bolognese sauce (qv) excepted. Soup fills the lunchtime bill – mainly vegetable, sold in waxed cartoons. But I made a mistake a couple of days ago. Savoyard soup, from the mountains, sounded OK but turns out to be invalid pap. Main constituents: potatoes and an unnamed cheese, the former dominating the latter. What remains will probably thicken something liquid. Or be chucked out.

BOUZIGUES A small port near Sète specialising in fish restaurants. Last year I had daurade (sea bream) and saw no reason to change my order. VR went for the menacingly named loup de mer (sea bass rather than sea wolf) and OS for lotte (monkfish). An odd phenomenon with fish; the portions may be small – certainly when compared with meat – but they are remarkably filling. Oysters to start with, of course; anything else wouldn't be cricket.

Darren: uncharacteristically grim. A rock of reliability: knows the garbage collection times, hands me a cool Leffi when I most need it.

A day at the races

Granddad, Dad (Darren) and future Seb Vettel

I'm bad at organising holidays. I tend to wander thoughtlessly, expecting holidayish things to happen. Mostly they don't.

An inadequate education left me lacking cultural depth. By happenstance, a word I first encountered in a James Bond novel, my luck changed on Wednesday. I was  wondering idly whence the k came in karting (Don't tell me; the desire died long ago.), we had a short chat and our whole group drove over to the immaculately maintained Circuit de Caussiniojouls. Five of  us willing to give karting a shot.

Not me, of course. Once I was forced into a ski-slalom and was appalled by the number of skiers who crashed out. I made finishing my priority and did finish – but last. As compensation the non-ski-ing Oz manager of the event gave me a mint humbug. Horrible humiliation.

At Caussiniojouls 1 m 25 cm grandson Zach was reckoned too small to race communally and drove his laps alone, under the stigma of a flapping flag. First he trundled, then speeded up. Entering the pits after his first stint he over-shot (“didn't brake hard enough”) and used the fence as a catch-all.

Daughter Occasional Speeder regularly drives me in my Skoda, does so with panache, but wasn't comfortable with the hairline sensitivity of the kart's steering. Granddaughter Bella, constantly exploring the rumble-strips, got progressively smoother and faster. But the two lads, OS's hubbie Darren and Bella's partner Daniel, became faster and more daring, overtaking and making a real race of it.

Coward Me and VR watched and were thrilled. Afterwards, as the heroes shouted out their excitement, the sense of adrenalin was palpable. Faces shone. Not exactly a cultural experience. Closer to  bonding, a word which I fear has always sickened me.

VR and Occasional Speeder happy as Larry

Dad as Pooh Bear according to OS

The missing link

 Very frustrating down in the Languedoc. The wi-fi link was lost and it wasn't just the Brigade of Animated Thumbs that ended up drinking gallons of rosé in compensation. I accumulated unsendable blogposts and unarticulated comments. Now I'm back I await photos that the smart-phone users took and I failed to.

At least I may write about something that cannot be photographed. As the weather grew hotter the Tramontana blew harder - a strong, dry cold wind from the northwest in lower Languedoc. It slams doors, roars and twangs, and once - oh, the shame - it blew a long-stemmed wine glass off the table. The Tramontana disturbs the psyche. A Victor Hugo character says Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne me rendra fou. (The wind coming over the mountain will drive me mad.)

But nothing deflected the soccer-mad members of our party from TV coverage of The World Cup. England arrived in Brazil full of justified pessimism. Played two, lost two; they're out of the competition which has weeks to go. I sat on the balcony in the dark with VR and OS (normally a fan but discontented for some reason) to be joined after twenty minutes by soccer maniac Zach. "Uruguay are just too good," he said. I'd have offered him rosé but he's only eight and had to make do with limonade avec un peu de grenadine.

It's all nonsense about subsisting on salads when it's hot. OS made a massive, elaborate bolognese sauce (to go with macaroni) and it was hugely appreciated. Cleaning the Le Creuset afterwards might have taken a lifetime if VR hadn’t discovered the miracle pot cleaner, Astonish. A truly well-equipped villa.