Moo-ton Frothchilled

Posted on June 2, 2011 by emmacalin

Milk in France comes in bricks of UHT. Imagine my astonishment at encountering a fresh milk machine at the Carrefour hypermarché. You take a bottle from a dispenser and place it beneath a nozzle. A veritable champagne of milk is delivered whilst the machine moos in appreciation. It’s almost like being down on the farm. Gilles suggests replacing the metal spout with a soft rubber teat but I won’t go into his reasoning. As you will know by now, he is foreign.

Walking home through the allotments I met a very local French son of the soil guy wearing a T shirt labelled in English “Ethnic Support Council.” A Google boogie reveals this to be from Washington State USA. What unknown currents colour our lives?

Something fishy down at Intermarché

Posted on June 1, 2011 by emmacalin

Neighbours round for dinner. Quite a marathon with apéros, starters, saumon au riz, lemon pudding with custard and cheese. Le Monsieur loves to speak English and it is just possible to catch the odd word. After the kir, the white wine, the red wine and the cognac the concept of language seemed to slip away under the table and was probably eaten by their dog.

The salmon was labelled wild pink pacific but to me it tasted like tuna. Can this happen? Do they interbreed and form hybrids called Tumon or Salma. If they do, Intermarché are selling them. If this is a unique discovery I hope those Nobel prize guys are reading this.

Novel progress – well – let’s just say thinking shall we.

La vie is just a bowl of cerises

Posted on May 31, 2011 by emmacalin

What is it about cherries? That moist succulent flesh, that deep red lustre that is too beautiful to eat and too delicious to resist.

A neighbour came a while ago with a bucket of the sweetest ever fruit. Even when we have had no real rain for eight weeks, somehow Nature digs deep and offers us her joyful gallic shrug.

Away from Nature, Sat Naff and I found the bike shop. And did they have a spoke? Non! More gallic shrugs all round. It’s an old English bike with a basket I bought in London during my eco warrior intellectual look-alike phase. We’re rusting out together.

Sat Naff

Posted on May 30, 2011 by emmacalin

Just how many times in your life were you right on top of success, triumph, victory, smug superiority and finding that jar of harissa paste in the supermarket when…….wait for it…….you gave up?

Today I went to Saintes guided by my sat naff. My mission was to find a bicycle spoke. Now you may think this is not the kinda thing that ROMANTIC NOVELISTS and POETS do. Quite right – they don’t. Sat Naff knew even less than I did. Somewhere near an Ibis hotel and a roundabout on a Zone Industrielle in France there is a bike shop. It is still there……like a dream, like a gossamer web of desire, like a tender kiss of a bloody Greek God. And wherever it is- I couldn’t find it. And I GAVE UP.

Surprised by Joy

Posted on May 29, 2011 by emmacalin

So out came the sun and out came the bikes. We rode to Crazannes to see some wonderful stone carvings which local and international artists have created over the past ten years. I would have loved to post a photo but any publication is banned by les Lapidiales authorities. Well, if you’ve got it flaunt it I’ve always said. That’s how I pulled Gilles!

On the way home we rode into a wall of perfume at a spot named Allée des Tilleuls. That’s lime or linden in English. The heart shaped leaves connected these trees to Venus in days gone by. If you have a soul sensitive to warm air, blue sky and perfume the link is still there believe me.

Surprised by joy is a beautifully sad elegiac poem by Wordsworth – a big hero of mine. Check it out at: Surprised by Joy – poem

Temptation

Posted on May 27, 2011 by emmacalin

Last night we shared a bottle of Bordeaux wine and I DIDN’T REALLY share a box of Thornton’s chocs from the UK. Look – I’d had a tough day at the cutting edge of passion OK! Come and get me gravity. It was a sin but all things are relative.

Tomorrow I’m gonna get out the bike and ride it off. I promise.

Quelques Fleurs

Posted on May 26, 2011 by emmacalin

Nature has its seasons and we can but follow. Here in Charentes the infinity of greens begins to merge into a unity as the adolescence of Spring finds for now at least, that adult face in which it will live called Summer. Ladies, let’s not think of those wrinkles and that gravitational pull of time on our tender assets.

I often look to flowers for metaphors of love, sex and the cycle of being. I’ve added a poem called “Bluebells” to my website. It’s about those things that pass and that we cannot hold. Click here to go to my website, and select “My Poems” Emma’s Poetry

If you’ve any love of French or just its sound and music check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQGNpRnFNgM

Emma Undercover

The Words Behind The Woman