Whistle-Stop

This last weekend, a whistle-stop trip to London.  Anita discovered that the Kensington Miniatures fair was on and we had no guests, so off we went.  Two days, filled.  For Anita, the minis fair, and for me a visit to my favourite flute shop on Saturday afternoon, then together, the new Star Trek film, and a Chinese dinner in Soho's Chinatown.  On the Sunday, a visit to the Harry Potter film studios and an Indian dinner at Chutney Mary's.  Then home on Monday.

When we used to live in Staines we'd visit the West End from time to time, and we'd usually eat at Yung's restaurant on Wardour Street.  No atmosphere but great food, always full of orientals. Occasionally we'd try somewhere else but always end up asking ourselves "why didn't we just go to Yung's?"  Yung's was gone.  Our disappointment was tempered by that fact that the random one we chose instead was also excellent, the fried squid in particular being the best I can remember having ever eaten.  Not that my memory is on top form these days.

I have to say that I'm a fan of Harry Potter, or perhaps more accurately, I'm a fan, through her books, of J.K. Rowling.  I don't begrudge her her wealth one little bit, and despite the cries from the left for "less inequality", I just have the feeling that if she was less wealthy, we'd all be a bit poorer for it.  I was a bit ambivalent about visiting the exhibition, but it was superbly done, well-pitched towards children without patronising the adults.  You could see the creativity, enthusiasm and energy that went into making the films, and I came away pondering the observation of Khalil Gibran, that "work is love made visible".  Quite moving, in the end, to have it demonstrated.

I first came to understand how wine can complement a meal when I had lunch at the museum restaurant at the Quai d'Orsay.  I don't normally drink wine at lunchtime, but had a glass of their recommended wine with a spiced chicken.  It was a perfect match in a way that is hard to describe and that I didn't know could be done.  I'm now always trying to achieve this sort of match for our customers, and Chutney Mary's were offering a "taster menu" with matching wines for each dish.  A "must".  Fabulous, even if it was using some New World wines that you can't get in France.  I won't claim it as a business expense though; there is no way you could serve food like that to the average French family - far too spicy.

Economy

I don't see the point in spending 75 quid on a nice terracotta rhubarb-forcing cloche, because I'm not going to consume 75 quid's worth of rhubarb before I die.  I might as well buy it (the rhubarb) in a supermarket.  For the same reason, I am reluctant to spend 20 quid on polythene cloches for lettuce that doesn't cost very much.

Down at the local garden centre, they were flogging plastic cones for protecting tomato plants.  Shaped from a sheet of plastic and curved into a cone they were 18 euros for three.  Give me a break.

But I do need to plant out some tender plants.  I have augergines growing from seed, and tomatoes that will need to go out soon and that will need some protection.  So I resolved to make some little frames around which I can wrap some bubble-wrap to keep the cold away.

Here are the frames, made from a square of wood and 4 steel rods used for concrete reinforcement.  It cost me 6 euros for the three.  And here they are, protecting my newly-planted aubergines.  Such elegance, style, panache!

Marketing yawn

There are three key ideas that enchant the French at the moment: socialism (often expressed as solidarité), green consumerism (éco, for écologique) and organic foods (bio).  Politicians' antennae are, of course, exquisitely tuned to detect what they can get away with without causing a revolution.  The CSG is a tax you pay on all your income, over and above income and capital gains taxes, introduced as a "temporary" measure in 1990.  The "S" stands for sociale.  The ISF is the wealth tax; the "S" in this case stands for solidarité.

A hare-brained scheme to hike the electricity prices for those who "overconsume" was prompted by the fact that the electricity distribution network here is full to overloaded, but was announced as an ecological measure.  And so on.

There is a holiday campsite near us, recently opened and based around disused lime kilns and their associated limestone quarries now filled with water.  It calls itself echologia, presumably to make us think it's eco-friendly, rather than (say) that the lakes are filled with E. Coli.  They were having some kind of open weekend, with hot-air ballon rides (not eco-friendly at all) and radio-controlled model aircraft  (also not eco-friendly).  We went to take a look.

So, it's a holiday campsite built around disused lime kilns and lakes.  It's been nicely renovated in parts, and the log cabins beside the lakes (and those actually floating on the lakes) look attractive if you want a basic holiday in the country.  There are yourts and teepees in a field that you can rent if you prefer.  Onsite there is also a restaurant by a lake, a shop and snack bar.

The concessions to ecology seemed to be in the dry public toilets (they didn't smell like I feared they might, but don't look down) and in a wet sewage treatment system using reed beds.  There is a marked path around the site with various informative notices telling us about the wild creatures that live there but that you can't see. They tell us that the collared grass snake is a protected species, but the common hedgehog is apparently very protected (must be the spines).  I did actually learn that another local grass snake is a constrictor, which I would never have guessed, so the pedagogical aspect wasn't entirely wasted.  The views of the lakes were quite spectacular (though if one swims in this one shown, one apparently risks death by hydrocution - a heart attack brought on by sudden immersion in cold water) and the river, where it runs throught the commercial zone, is nicely managed.

There are eco-friendly killing systems that you can try out (costs extra), but the goats are not to be used as targets.  I think they're there for cheese-making.  Or maybe goat-breeding.

As a place to holiday?  I imagine the log cabins are comfortable, but the yourts and teepees are stuck in the middle of a field; not very isoltaed or sheltered. You're not allowed camp fires to cook by your teepee or yourt, the restaurant on site is not cheap, and it's a good 15 minute drive to the nearest McDonald's.

For all I am criticising the place, it was a pleasant afternoon out.  The track around the installation is well-laid out and offers a quiet walk of a couple of kilometers with fantastic views of the lakes and river running through.

Research and development

Anita runs a great cuisine here; our guests are usually delighted with what we serve.  We have tried all sorts of dishes during our time in England, and we learn a lot from eating at other restaurants.  It's a great way of finding new presentation techniques and ideas for recipes or combinations of dishes: we frequently incorporate discoveries into our menu.

I didn't really believe that we would be able to offset the cost of dining out as a business expense, but I asked our accountant anyway, more as a joke than anything else.  But yes, he assured us, dining out could be accepted as a business expense, within reasonable limits, of course.

So today we had lunch at a very nice restaurant just west of Laval, run by a couple who, we discovered, live not far from us.  Very nice it was too.  We made sure to choose different dishes, and we came away with some ideas for things to try.  The view from their terrace over the adjacent lake was fantastic; I imagine it would be fabulous to eat outside in summer but the weather kept us indoors today.

I must remember to ask if we can claim accommodation away as a business expense, evaluating the competition.

Yes! We have no spring onions

You can't buy spring onions in France.  The nearest thing they do is "petits oignons" which have small white onions on the end of green stalks.  They approximate to spring onions, but if you want the real thing you have to grow it yourself.

There is a little patch of garden between the house and the gite that I have been using for herbs and kitchen supplies.  In the picture there is Parsley (self-seeded and hence all over the place), two Thyme plants (a third one that I had elsewhere died over Winter), three Angelica plants and Sorrel.   I have also planted spring onions, Coriander and Chervil.

I am starting to wish that I hadn't dedicated the rest of the bed to flowers, but perhaps keeping the veg a bit hidden from guests is a good idea.   And here's a free picture of a bag of mixed flower bulbs I bought last Autumn.

No chance!

I happened to be listening to Sting's Ten Summoners' Tales recently, my favourite track from which is "The Shape of my Heart".  It discusses the hidden worlds of probability and chance that underpin our daily lives, and I can never hear it without musing on the strange fact that things happen that have no chance of happening.

Mathematical probability discusses the chances of certain events happening at some time in the future, and since it's therefore essentially about fortune telling, perhaps it's not surprising that it's sometimes treated distainfully.  "Something either happens or it doesn't", "probability is irrelevant", and so on.  But it has useful applications, such as telling a company how little it can charge you for life insurance whilst there being a good chance of it still being in business should it have to pay out.

Mathematicians assign a probability between zero (no chance) and one (certainty) that an event will happen under specified circumstances.  And when an event has zero probability, they say it "almost never happens".  Why "almost never" rather than "never"?  They're hedging their bets.

If we imagine a line of length 1, the points along it represent all possible numbers between 0 and 1.  If we then take a random number between 0 and 1, this will correspond to a point somewhere along this line.  The probability our random number lies between 0 and 0.5 (halfway along the line) is 0.5, as is the probability that our number lies between 0.5 and 1.  In general, the probability that our random number lies in the interval between two points A and B that lie on the line (with A less than B) is B-A, i.e. the length of the line from A to B.

We can make the distance between A and B as small as we like, and ultimately, when B=A we don't have a length of line, we just have a point.  The probability that our random number is exactly equal to A is then A-A or zero.  (If you like, there is an infinity of points along a line of length 1, so the probability that our random number is equal to a specific point, is one in infinity, or zero)

So now we take our line of length 1, bend it into a circle, and pivot a spinning pointer in the middle.  When our pointer comes to rest, it will point at a specific number.  The probability, when we spun the pointer, that it stopped exactly at this number, was zero, but none the less it stopped there.  So an event with zero probability has actually happened.

Things happen that have no chance of happening.  Which is why predicting the future is a dodgy business.

As a corollary, in practical terms, you have no chance of winning the lottery, even though someone wins it most weeks.

Busy

The first guests of the season have arrived at the gîte; so the priority is on looking after them, cleaning the place up, then preparing it for the next group.

But the garden is going great guns, and the cold Spring and recent warm weather have resulted in a riot of colour as the daffs, tulips, anemones de Caen and other Spring flowers are all out at the same time.

On the shrubby side of things, Forsythia, Mahonia, Peach and Rosemary are out in flower.  The Rosemary not only attracts the bees, but I can never smell it without thinking about what it adds to garlic and lamb.

And last but not least, where would we be without Pansies adding their cheer to the mix?