The Food At The Bar Goes La Di Da

16th March
Shane has transformed our scruffy spit-and-sawdust café into a gastrodome, he's bought new white tablecloths and fine glassware, there are pretty candle holders on the tables and he has introduced a wine list. He is quite meticulous and sculpts all the tomatoes and carrots into roses which means that it takes a while for the food to actually make it to the table - but I mustn't be mean, he did serve an impressive meal to the pétanque club this weekend.

The pétanqueuers didn’t quite know what to make of this, they ordered their carafes of House Red as usual, peered suspiciously at the little towers of food on their plates and dipped fingers gingerly into the raspberry sauce that had been trickled around the edges of their plates, but by the end of the evening while Naughty Vera was running the selection process for who would be entertaining her later on, Shane was regaling a happy bunch of chaps with tall tales of how many Spanish prostitutes he could fit into his ski chalet.

Meanwhile on the filming lot...
We love timelapse filming, I’ve already gone on about it here. For spring we're filming flowers opening. This involves setting up stills cameras to take a series of photographs at regular intervals. We've now got beautiful dandelions opening in a nearby field - starting at dawn, the path of the sun is clearly marked by the shadows of the flowers as they open up. Daisies and celandines are really good too. We’ve also blacked out one of the sheds and placed branches of tightly shut blackthorn blossom in sugared water, these are lit constantly, cameras are left pointing at them and clicking away for a week or so until they’ve fully opened.

Tomorrow we rehouse the ants ...

Pussy Galore

8th March
My neighbour in the posh house down the road, Madame Bontette, has some New Best Friends, last night she invited The Director and me to a dinner party so we could meet them. The Director doesn’t like dinner parties so I made his excuses and went alone.

I’d already had a tour of the dining room at Chateau Bontette – a symphony of layered drapes in shades of tangerine and crushed raspberry, coloured glass chandeliers, crazy metal candle holders and statuettes of toga-clad women in extravagant poses. Knowing that Naughty Vera would be there and that Mme B has a taste for leather trousers and slutty shoes, I decided to lift my mood with an outfit that involved shiny crimson stiletto-heeled boots, fishnet tights, a psychedelic mini-dress and big jewellery. The NBFs turned out to be a surly old couple in suits, the hosts and other guests had, bizarrely, also opted for bank manager outfits.

A mutual dislike quickly became apparent between myself and the NBFs and awkward silence broke out, our attention wandered over to Naughty Vera who was flirting heavily with the man seated next to her, food and company disregarded, their chairs were turned 90 degrees from the table towards each other. Suddenly the Bontette’s very fluffy cat jumped up on Vera’s lap and they both set about stroking the animal with increasing fervour.

In another situation I’d have passed comment but in that strained atmosphere I left my mouth open and let M. Bontette launch into an animated dissertation about an asbestos problem at the local school.

Repas de Chasse

6th December
The Association of Hunters held their annual meal for the commune last week. Herisson hunts boar, he is short and stocky, ruddy-faced, very shy and keen on Vera. He asked her to accompany him to the meal but Vera is a minx and can’t decide whether to deter or encourage him, she felt that it would be best to say that she has already arranged to attend with me.

Vera came to my house first so we could arrive together at the Salle des Fetes then she found her French lover and sat with him and his family, their affair is a (not very secret) secret. I’m not sure how I ended up sitting next to the semi-comatose guy who spoke not one word all evening. Close by are some inebriated men and the adolescent daughter of one of them. The meal was relentless and lasted until 2.am, eaten under the full blaze of fluorescent lights so we could properly see the feast laid before us. The food came in mountainous quantities with interminable waits between courses; two fish courses followed by roast deer and bowlfuls of wild boar stew, the meal does not include vegetatables and ends with cheese, dessert (and a heart attack). At half time the old lady opposite has pulled up a couple of extra chairs, lain across them and is snoring, the drunk men are throwing food in each others drinks. The daughter is embarrassed by her father’s behaviour and I'm getting splattered in the crossfire, the two of us headed to another table - which just happened to be laden with frozen vodka sorbets.

Cat Update
I am being stalked from ground level now - still from a safe distance, they have realised that I am the source of multi-coloured fish-shaped biscuits.

Supper and A Lap Dancing Exhibition

26th October
The Director and two Camera Boys flew in from the UK last night. On the way back from the airport we decided to stop at the bar to see if we could enveigle a bit of supper out of Mrs Strange. It was getting late and most of the After-Pétanque diners had gone home except for Vera and the pétanque club captain who were snogging on the barstools. This surprised me a bit because it did look quite uncomfortable and also because he is French and Vera has recently been very scathing about the erotic talents of French men.*

Mrs Strange asked me to help her with the supper so that she could make sure that I’m keeping quiet about her departure in a few days. She tells me that she’s trying to persuade one of her sons to come back and take over.

*if anyone is interested in Vera’s preferences vis a vis Nationality of Lover, I haven’t had time to compile a comprehensive league table yet, but her Top Lover is a motorbike-riding German, his being a mendacious psychopath and married are considered negative factors however they are outweighed by two large positive factors.

Shopping With Vera

24th october
Vera and I have decided to try and become friends. We're a similar age, childless, both foreigners in France. Never mind the slightly bumpy start, we're bound to get on - aren't we? As a bonding exercise we arranged to go shopping together yesterday afternoon. My chic neighbour Mme Bontette has invited me to join a group outing to a dinner spectacle tonight, I have never been to such a thing. Mme B has said that I should ‘dress up’. I only have one ‘good dress’ and need some sort of jacket to wear with it.

Vera’s style icon is Doris Day and she loves malls. I agree to start our expedition in one of the shopping centres on the edge of town. I say that I’m looking for something fluffy. After she's held up some preppie cardies I suggest we go into town. I head us to les fripes (vintage clothes shops) and find a fake fur jacket. The jacket illustrated above is a bit tame. Imagine that I’d waylaid a yeti and decapitated it, then snipped the body off below the armpits to make myself a yeti bolero with sleeves - it’s more like that, very ‘rock chick’- great! I can see from Vera’s face that she's neither keen on it nor the fact I've dragged her into this kind of place. Undaunted I bagged it and we went for a drink where she told me some stories and I discovered that she is astonishingly promiscuous - the day then became a whole lot more entertaining.

I Get a Proper Job at Last

5th October
I went along to the bar to join the Saturday afternoon boule game which was unusually busy and found Mrs Strange in a flap about supper, she was booked out and shorthanded, I said I’d waitress that evening if she wanted.

The pétanque players are mainly retired people, the expats come with their spouses and the elderly Frenchmen come in their slippers and bring family members who are visiting for the weekend. There are a few single people; local men whose dental state and dress sense are possibly factors in perpetuating their single status. And there is Vera, a bubbly, flirty Dutch woman who likes to be the centre of attention, she has not spoken to me before, but today she fizzed up to me and demanded.
Who are you, do you have a husband – where is he???
I pointed out that it would be foolish to bring a husband along, given the man-hunting opportunities for me here.
Well don’t you hunt my man she warned me, turning on her heel.
I am intrigued – which one?

There were no clues that evening either as Vera sat with a group of women, the 'eligible’ men were all getting red and sweaty on their own table which I supplied with large of amounts of Ricard then large amounts of red wine then large amounts of beer containing shots of peach- or mint-flavoured syrup.

Have got Wednesdays hairdresser glue out of my hair which is now in plaits, I'm totally channelling those stein-carrying maidens you see at German beer fests