Well, we’ve had plenty of snow, but the weather got warmer yesterday. Most resorts open properly on 11 Dec, although some had a few lifts open this weekend, but off-piste skiers will have been taking advantage of the heavy snowfalls in the big ski areas already.
The problem with doing this is that you have to be very knowledgeable about snow conditions and the likelihood of avalanches. Already one pair of off-piste skiers (in their 50s, so presumably quite experienced) has died in an avalanche in the Isère region, and it looks as if their own passage triggered the fall that buried them. Watch the video below to understand a bit more about avalanche conditions and how to predict them.
Looking at the beginning of that video, I can see the fractured slabs clearly, before the skier arrives. Did they fracture after the organisers had done their tests?
For centuries, oysters have been traditional fare during the Christmas season. In France, 70 percent of oysters are eaten at Christmas and New Year, and there is a historical reason for this.
People have eaten oysters in France since the time of Asterix and the Romans, but they were not farmed. By the 17th century their numbers were visibly decreasing, so a royal edict banned eating them except when there was an ‘r’ in the name of the month, to preserve the population. (Yes, that’s where the saying comes from – nothing to do with their being risky to eat in warm weather). Now, it’s a solidly-established tradition.
Native French oysters are flat (plates), which are still produced in parts of Brittany, but most of the ones sold in France are ‘cupped’ (creuses), a quarter of them coming from Normandy. Legend says that these were introduced to the south west of France when a Portuguese ship sank, and became more popular than the local ones. However, in the 1970s French oysters were nearly wiped out by disease, and producers now use a Japanese variety.
Normandy oysters are meaty, with a strong taste of the sea, because they are not brought into less salty claires to finish them before harvesting. They are gradually moved into shallower water, ending up high and dry at low tide. This makes them more muscular, and ensures that they stay tightly shut on their way to your table.
If you enjoy French oysters, make the most of them now. They take about 4 years to mature, and in recent years an unprecedented number of young ones have been dying for unknown reasons. They’ll be scarcer and more expensive soon.
French oyster tourism Sorry, I am not allowed to embed this video, but you really should watch it.
Meanwhile, it seems that a declining oyster population has had an environmental impact on Chesapeake Bay.
When I visited John Harries-Harris soon after he had taken over and renovated the village bar in Bonen, near Rennes, I spent an evening a few Km down the road at a Celtic evening in a little hall attached to another bar. It was fun, but a tiny affair compared with the week-long Festival Interceltique de Lorient, which takes place in August each year.
This event, Gouelioù Etrekeltiek An Oriant in the Breton language, has been held every year since it was founded by Polig Montjarret. It takes place in the heart of the city every August and features Celtic traditional music, classical, folk, jazz and rock music as well as dance, painting, sculpture, writing and other arts.
Take a look at these videos, then think about booking yourself in for 2011 – or sailing there in your own boat if she and you are up to the challenge.
OK. I’ve known Olly Lambourne since he was at school with my sons 20 years ago. My younger son Joce and his wife Zoë, complete with very young family, have spent several Facebook-filling snowboarding holidays at their chalets. Olly and Emma even drove down to visit us in our Limousin home a couple of summers ago.
Even without that connection, I would still be an enthusiastic champion of their business, Mountain Mavericks. They started off by managing catered chalets, but have gradually broadened their scope to include more of the associated activities. Young snowboarders (well, some of them are now in theor mid thirties) are their core clientele in winter, but they cater for all winter holidaymakers, with good food and top-class service their keynote.
They are based in Morzine, whose season opens this weekend - and there is snow.
They also do summer rentals for those who love the mountains at other end of the year.
The French met office site does seem to be a bit underpowered. More than once I’ve seen it default to a minimum-function site when severe weather strikes, so I got a bit worried today when I ended up on the “you don’t have cookies enabled” page. After trying on a couple more browsers, I got a useful error message – from the browser, not the site:
“redirection failure – this may be caused by not enabling cookies”
So the Meteo-France site was broken. Next trick was to look elsewhere for my weather forecast, on a US site called Weather Underground . That worked, and told me we were due for snow and cold weather, but nothing threatening. The worst was a wind chill temperature of -14°C at 04:00 on Monday.
Time to turn on the little electric radiators in the barn and the cellars, on frost stat setting. I don’t want any burst water pipes.
I can’t vouch for the whole of France, but in my home Region of the Limousin, wood is abundant and cheap compared with the UK. I have no hesitation in specifying really massive wooden beams in oak or chestnut for house renovations, and in my little cottage with a decent-sized woodburning stove I have not yet needed to fetch the oil-filled elctric radiators in from their summer storage in the barn.
In this part of France, people are even beginning to install stoves that are fired with a continuous feed of wood granules. Not as cheap as buying logs, but you don’t have to be around (or get up in the night) to keep a good fire going.
There are plenty of things – such as emulsion paint – that are outrageously expensive here compared with the UK, but not firewood. This autumn, I paid about 48 euros a cubic metre, but a friend in Dorset tells me he paid 140 pounds a cubic yard – that’s 3 times what I pay. Sounds as if it’s more a luxury than an economy to run a woodburner in England.
Shanties were the work songs of the days of square-rigged ships. You would never hear sailors singing them in dockside pubs ashore.
Those days are long gone, so something had to be done to preserve them. In the English-speaking countries, Stan Hugill dedicated his life to collecting and recording them, but thye are a minority interest. The groups who sing shanties do so in pubs and folk clubs, and make amateur or small-label recordings adn YouTube videos.
In France, one man turned them into a popular music theme with a following on a par with that of Johnny Halliday. Can you imagine a UK or US concert featuring an ageing shanty singer that attracted audiences on a par with a Mick Jagger concert?
There are videos of Hugues Aufray siging his trademark halliard shanty Santiano in different venues and at different stages of his career, but take a look at this one. The audience are roaring out the song, and he’s just contributing enough to keep up the excitement at fever pitch.
There is a short French TV interview on YouTube, where a young girl asks when he’s going to give up. He reacts with horror at the attitude of the current generation. “If you think so little of your job that you’re already thinking about retirement… just jack it in now!” I agree wholeheartedly.
If you’d like to hear about another way shanties are being kept alive, take a look at Anime Shanties on New Freebooters.
Marin Marais was a noted viol player and composer who lived in Paris from 1656 to 1728. I’m sure everyone knows who James (now Sir James) Galway is. Michala Petri is new to me, but I’ll be listening to more of her work.
Anyone who has either played a recorder or listened to their kids doing so may have guessed that it was capable of a lot more in the right hands. Michala Petri’s are those hands. She is Danish, and has made dozens of recordings since her debut in 1969, some with her guitarist and lutenist husband Lars Hannibal. Perhaps it helps that she started to play the recorder at the age of 3.
Just for good measure, here’s a virtuoso picw recorded in sumptuous surrounidngs with Lars Hannibal:
Professional volcanologists will tell you that they are at much greater risk of death and injury from associated activities like flying in helicopters than they are from the direct effects of a volcanic eruption. However, among the direct hazards by far the most dangerous is pyroclastic flow.
Pyroclastic flow is rather like an avalanche, with two important differences:
You can’t see it hanging there waiting to happen. It oozes out of the crater, then spills down the slope. For a long time, small flows may run down gullies, but a sudden increase in flow is like a bursting dam but an order of magnitude faster – the flow spreads outwards without warning.
You don’t have to be in it to get killed. It is hot. The Mount St Helens flow was a relatively cool 350°C – only just enough to melt lead – but the Mount Pelee flow reached 1075°C – less than 10 degrees below the melting point of copper. You can’t stand very close without getting fried.
The French are noted for volcanologists. Haroun Tezieff combined volcanology with a small but significant amount of caving, and died in Paris in 1998. The daring husband and wife team of Muarice and Katia Kraft weren’t so lucky. Take a look at this account of Japan’s worst volcanic disaster.
The current furore over the EU deciding to push Ireland into accepting a Euro bailout has caused many pundits to proclaim the imminent death of the Euro, or very serious consequences for the EU. The feeling is that the bailout will trigger the collapse of Portugal, Greece and Spain, resulting in a need for more funds than are available.
These same pundits claim that it would be better for these countries to drop out and return to their local currencies, which they could then devalue. Effectively, this would mean them defaulting on their debts to the EU, which is why the EU is fighting to keep them in. Meanwhile, life is hard and getting harder for their citizens – even the entrepreneurs and big business men, whose access to funding is drying up.
I have no idea where it will end. Even the short-term advantage to me of a better exchange rate for my sterling pension soon won’t mean anything as prices go up. Batten down the hatches.
