was excellent, so why the queue? I speculated that this might be a tourist attraction, a rare opportunity to see a Frenchman working.
Soon we came to St Romain-sur-Gironde, a quaint old village, but I was struggling to find anything to say about it, and so asked Paul for his thoughts. ‘Quality gate rotting on the left, peeling paint on the shutters on the right. What is it with the French?’ There were a few nice gardens with roses, so we concluded this was yet another village taken over by the English. Paul then spotted a field of sunflowers surrounded by a fence, ‘clearly fenced-in, in case they run away!’
We came to the town of Mortagne. Lots of well-kept boats and yachts in the port, all very attractive. We stopped for a drink at the Bar Restaurant Glacier du Port, to have our customary beer and cup of tea. Paul again didn’t like the tea, and declared – not for the first time – that it would be a ‘bloody miracle’ if he were ever to find a cup of strong English breakfast tea in France.
Above the bar, Paul spotted some recently-painted shutters above a neon sign whose first few and last few letters only were still present. ‘Obviously the shutter painter stood on the neon sign to balance himself, and knocked some letters off. Tosseur!’
For some reason I explained the French law of inheritance to Paul. This law is said to account for the poor state of upkeep of some buildings and estates in France. Estates are divided equally between siblings, so individuals do not have a financial incentive to invest in properties, to keep them in a good condition. Paul, as usual, had a view on the matter, and recorded it.
‘I’m disagreeing with Michael on the French law of inheritance whereby the children all inherit equal shares, whether individuals have looked after their parents for 40 years or never even bothered to send them a postcard.
What should happen is that upon an estate owner’s death, the estate solicitor should call in a Polish builder – from Krakow, ideally – and get him to do any repair work required on the building, and decorate the interior with magnolia paint. Then the solicitor should bring in a shutter maker and painter from Corsica, and an English window cleaner from South London.
Only when these people have been paid should the estate be put up for sale, and the remaining money shared equally between the surviving children. This will sort out the problem of grimy looking buildings, bad shutters, and dirty windows.’
I always appreciate Paul’s clarity of thought on complex problems.
We drove into the resort of St George which looked very well-heeled, clean and pleasant. Paul tried to find something to moan about, but for once struggled. We had a drink in a café and as is often the case in France, the toilet had no wooden or plastic seat. This came as no surprise to me, but Paul was horrified and assumed it had been stolen.
FRIDAY 10 AUGUST
This was the day of the Médoc wine tour. We left the gite at around 6.30 a.m. and found the traffic very light. At about 7.00 a.m. we saw a sign indicating the direction to Toulouse. I pointed out the sign to Paul and remarked, ‘If you go that way, you’ll have nothing to lose!’ He replied, ‘Why’s that, then?’, saw the sign, and groaned.
The next sign that attracted our attention was a ‘1 in 6 gradient down’ sign. With his face pressed theatrically against the windscreen, Paul declared the sign helpful.
Maybe it was the grim outskirts of Bordeaux, but we found ourselves reflecting on moments in history when people might have said, ‘Cheer up, things could be worse!’ We finally attributed the line to the Mayor of Hiroshima, consoling a friend who had just had his bicycle stolen. 8.15 a.m. on August 6, 1945.
We arrived at the Tourist Office at about 7.30 a.m. We passed the café where we’d eaten lunch earlier in the week, where I’d told the waitress she was très belle. She was setting up some tables and when we passed by and said a breezy ‘Bonjour!’ she looked at us and flashed a million-dollar smile of recognition, before returning the greeting. I didn’t imagine she recalled us at all. That’s très belles femmes for you.
The Médoc is a very special region for lovers of fine red wine and I was greatly looking forward to the day. Paul doesn’t drink red wine so he was simply joining me for a day out, saying he’d appreciate the craft skills that went into winemaking, barrel making and the rest.
Napoleon III asked for a classification of the wines of the Médoc and in 1855 this was finished, based on the prices the wines had fetched over the previous 100 years or more. There have been a very small number of changes since 1855, and in general wines higher up the classification will cost more than those lower down. But there are exceptions and Château Lynch-Bages, which was to be the second estate we visited on this day, is one of them, selling for higher prices than most cinquièmes crus.
There were about 30 people on the tour bus, and our first visit was to Château D’Arsac in the Margaux commune. My prime recollection is of a hauntingly beautiful young tour guide, who spoke only French. She took us around the vineyard and explained various matters about the history and technicalities of winemaking at the estate. I’m sure I speak for most of the men on the tour when I say I didn’t take in everything she said, such was her beauty. Who am I kidding? We took nothing in.
A number of the men – myself included – managed to take a photograph of the young lady in the most improbable circumstances. In my own case, whilst she was talking in front of a large warehouse. She gave me a cool look but seemed satisfied when I smiled and uttered the unlikely phrase, ‘magnificent warehouse!’
Madamoiselle Toptotty then took us on a tour of the estate grounds, in which were some very unremarkable examples of modern sculpture. The worse they were, the more inclined Paul and I were to photograph them. But I loved one particular piece which Paul loathed with even more than his customary vigour. This was an enormously long iron girder which was resting against the château, and extended for some distance above it. ‘Looks like the fuckin’ builders forgot to take it away once they’d finished the fuckin’ roofing job’, he commented.
We tasted a glass of the wine. Well, I had two glasses, to be fair, because Paul didn’t drink his. We returned to the coach and resumed chatting to the pleasant couple who’d sat near us, an Italian man and his Australian-born wife, Anthea B. She had the most beautiful pale grey eyes, and was still a handsome woman of maybe 45 years of age. As a younger woman she must have been a Madamoiselle Toptotty in her own right.
I need now to relate an anecdote from the summer of 2005 or 2006. I was lunching at Mamma Mia’s, an excellent and long-established Italian restaurant in my adopted home town, the throbbing metropolis of Bedford. You must visit the place if you’re ever in the area. On this particular occasion, a hot day, the red wine was warm, maybe 23oC – 24oC. I asked Bruno, the proprietor of the restaurant, for an ice bucket to cool the bottle. He was clearly shocked at my request, and said with some feeling that red wine must be served at room temperature.
I explained to Bruno that this idea originated in France in the 19th century, when average dining room temperatures were unlikely to have been much above 16oC in the winter months, but he wouldn’t accept the point. I’ve had the same argument with a number of people over the years, and am now disinclined to enter into a discussion on the matter. It’s up there with religion and politics as a topic to avoid. But eventually Bruno relented and brought the ice bucket, with some theatrical head-shaking.
The reason for relating this anecdote is that when I asked Anthea B. after the tour if she’d enjoyed it, she said she had, apart from the wine being ‘cold’. Her Italian husband agreed, saying strong red wine should be served at 22oC – 24oC. Against my better judgment I argued the point and they clearly considered me
