We need to talk about .....Jane

Jane Birkin that is. Now 66, she took the stage by storm at the Cadogan Hall last night, a fab venue incidentally, and sang Serge. Again. This time with a Japanese band of four: piano, violin, trumpet and drums, that she'd picked up a couple of years ago while doing a concert there in aid of the tsunami. And it worked a treat. Jane looked fabulous, hands deep in the pockets of her men's black trousers, a simple white shirt unbuttoned low, sleeves rolled up for the job in hand, a tousled bob and red lipstick ....tres chic. And as luck would have it, I got to get up close and personal after the show and I can report that pillowy pout is all her own, Jane is devoid of Botox and fillers and far more beautiful for it.

To say that Gainsbourg is a god in France is an understatement. According to Jane he is now considered the greatest poet living, dead, or ever likely to be born. And so this tour was to  commemorate ...... the 20 years since Serge's death ..... any excuse it would seem. Some of his songs do rather effuse the boombangabang ever popular in foreign pop, with some interesting lyrics, but Jane brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the ditties, most of which come in around two and half minutes. If you get the chance go see her and have an excellent evening. As Serge might have said, SHEBAM ! POW ! BLOP ! WIZZ !

Top tip: we should all move to Paris where women of a certain age seem to be more appreciated.... if it's good enough for Birkin, Rampling and Faithfull.....

Ca va?

It’s always unexpectedly brilliant to make a new friend. I made a new friend when I was in Greece. She comes from Dublin but has lived in France for almost 20 years, teaching English Language and Literature, most of that time in Lille so she knows the place well and lives in a beautiful 16^th century apartment over-looking the Grand Place.

She invited me to come visit so I went. I took the Eurostar from St. Pancras Station and an hour and half later I had arrived for the Braderie de Lille, a sort of giant brocante, that takes place every year over a weekend. The streets around the centre ville effectively become the largest flea market in Europe and every restaurant, café, bar serves moules frits.

And it’s fabulous. Cobbled streets, good wine, baked goods and bargains……. What’s not to like? And it was all so French: people reading wine labels, women smoking and bread with everything. I did much mais non, mais oui, ca va and d’accord-ing unlike my usual trips to stay with another friend who lives in the depths of the French countryside, where we sort of live in a bubble ….. albeit a very beautiful-pink-wine-filled bubble. 

And oh the shopping! I only had a small valise with me because, due to my recent economic downturn, I had no intention in buying anything except a tube of Avibon which I learnt about from the utterly brilliant A Femme d'Un Certain Age  (fab for top tips) it's just like 8 Hour Cream...... However, I bought, amongst other things, a fist full of beautiful silk scarves including Nina Ricci, Armani and Carven for a fist full of Euros, a brand new, pink, angora sweater, sparkled with bugle-beads from a store masquerading as a mock Zadig & Voltaire, for a tenner, a huge, old, school map of Afrique du Nord et Sahara for a song and a bunch of saucisson enhanced with herb, nut, olive and fig …. a voila!! Had I had a much larger valise I might have brought back a gold framed mirror, ancient wooden trunks, a ton of French linen, bowls, plates, platters, a couple of decanters, a silver cocktail shaker, some farm implements, a milk churn and a couple of day beds. Who knows.

Top tip: the Eurostar …. quicker and more comfortable to get to Lille than Dorset…..

Merry Christmas everyone.......

As we hurtle towards 2012 I have taken a moment to stop and wonder .......2011 has not been a great year. More a year of loss than gain, of too much death and disappointment. But then I got to thinking and looking at pictures and actually there were a lot of other things that happened too.........

Like it snowed a lot......

and I went to France......

and I went to Argentina.......

and walked on a glacier in Patagonia......

and went for a drive in Salta.......

and stayed in a beautiful Finca........

and had a coffee in Buenos Aires.........

and saw Patti Smith sing.........

in Amsterdam........

and grew my own radishes...........

and went to France again..........

and hung around the pool...........

in the hot sun........

and got to write a lot.........

and ate homemade crumpets with jam and cream and a glass of Prosecco in Dorset......

and got these in the secret Santa.....

and finally learnt how to upload a picture on my blog........

And I thought, there's quite a lot to be thankful for really......... so Merry Christmas everyone.......

Top tip: count your blessings!!

Viva la difference........

The Autumn light in late September glows in south west France, picking out the orange, pink, red and plumb of flowers still in bloom. Fat figs hang heavy, striped and fit to burst. Amber coloured, quince-jellied drips blob the kitchen table, coffee-marked mugs and the French crumbs of broken bread finish breakfast. Outside, the hum and buzz of insects are warming to the late morning heat.

I read a book. I make more coffee. I read a magazine. I drink more coffee.

Red, white and chequered with quails eggs, cheeses ripe and firm, tomatoes rich and deep, bread from which a whole meal can be made, potted shrimps: pink-brown and buttery; lunch on the terrace is shaded by plump, black grapes that hang low over the view of fields freshly harvested. The silence broken only by the squawking of force-fed geese and rutting-bulls or the the whine of le facteur's moped, buzzing through the twisted lanes to deliver a fine new pair of Crocs with a fancy-Nubuck-finish, going-out Crocs.

Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose..........

Top tip: keep your mind agile and alert..... learn a new language.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day???

Well hopefully not if you live in England......... a bit of a damp squib? Dull? Unreliable? Even my tomatoes...my first grown and of which I had such high hopes, such ambitions: the salads, sauces, soups....resolutely won't go red.

As we wave good-bye to August and the sticky fingers of lollies licked too slowly, strawberry-stained mouths and sand-between-our-toes...or not......and tip-toe out of the rock-pools, hang-up our shrimping nets once more, and step away from the 99s, there is still the hope, a desperate, clinging, collective wish...... it could be an Indian summer. Nothing, incidentally to do with India who enjoy their summer in the same months as we do, albeit a good deal warmer. No, the hope of hot'n'sunny September days hangs heavy in the air and I imagine that is why I've been invited to Regent's Park open-air theatre tonight and also to a party-in-a-garden and a BBQ too. We are taking a picnic and a good deal of wine and blankets and wet-weather-kit-just-in case.....

And just in case the sun doesn't shine through September I'm off to France for a few days where there will be a higher chance of less rain and a guarantee of free-flowing pink wine and I shall walk and talk and eat outside before coming in for the winter.

Last night I had an extraordinary dream about an ex-boyfriend....very vivid and quite disturbing.....where I apparently expressed thoughts and feelings quite untrue of me and more akin to him.....what does it all mean I wonder? Don't eat toasted cheese for supper perhaps?

Top tip: whether rain or sun, go see The Gaurd, hilarious and Brendan Gleeson is sublime.

French without tears.......

I lay on a lounger, canopied by twisted vines, knotted through with climbing roses, my bare legs and pale toes warmed by the hot autumn sunshine; I am in France, enjoying the last of the pink wine ......... not now of course, now I'm back home, swaddled in winter woollies, playing catch-up with the sky plus (oh the anxiety of trying to get through Mad Men and Downton Abbey before they roll round again......). But, for a few days, I was away.

'Do you like chestnuts?' asked my friend.

'Yes I do,' I said, 'I love them.'

I had decided some time out was needed. So, armed with a ludicrously cheep return flight to Rodez (honestly, it cost more to get to Stanstead and back.....) I'd packed my ryan-air-sized-suitcase and wheeled off to the Aveyron, in south central France, to stay with an old friend and her young family.

'Right then, lets walk up the track and get some,' she said, 'kids....'

Entente cordial reigns supreme in this multi-cultural home, made-up as it is of a German, two from Vietnam, two from Mali and a Brit..... all abroad. Really, it's like visiting the UN. I stuffed first my pockets and then the children's, with the shiny, fallen chestnuts and we trudged back to the house: an old stone farmhouse, beautifully restored over the many years they have lived there, with the creative eye of a real artist.

'Do you not prick the nuts first?' I asked.

'No,' said my friend, 'I don't think so.'

And so we sat in the heavenly kitchen, hand-painted, patterned walls, strung with chandeliers and the kids' artistic endeavours, listening to the sound of exploding marrons, buried deep beneath the embers of the range. And drank the pink wine.

It wasn't a long trip and I have never visited so late in the year before, but a change, as they say, is as good as a rest. We picked the last of the red tomatoes and yellow courgettes from the vegetable patch, all part of the beautiful garden, it's winding paths and stone steps leading to hidden treasures buried amongst the flora and fauna (gardening: an unknown skill my friend developed after leaving London 20-odd years ago, with enormous success) and we ate soft cheeses and ripe figs sitting in the sunshine. This is an area silenced but for the sound of rutting bulls and the squawk of force-fed geese, this is peace and quite on a grand scale, no roads rage or sirens whale, just the occasional whine of a moped and the bark of a distant dog. And the crunch of gravel under foot as more pink wine is brought to the table.

I ate thick slabs of moist date and walnut cake, baked with the walnuts collected by the children, and stirred the quince jam made with the quinces that hung heavily from the tree close to where we sat and ate, which would fall suddenly with a thud; their heady, perfumed scent still haunts my nostrils. I slept soundly in a large, attic room with a small, single window, waking every morning to a view of butterscotch-coloured cornfields and undulating, French-green, countryside, studded with ex-pats. It was good. Could I live there? Without my sofa cinema, theatre, openings, private views? No, not right now. But I can still eat, drink, play........

Top-tip: go see 'The Social Network', so, so entertaining and absolutely why I've never done Facebook.......