In Normandy for

The Apple Harvest

Friday 6^th to Monday 9^th October 2000

Index

And finally setting pen to paper, the very first strokes determining the character of the finished thing. Quick and erratic. Or measured and stylized to the point of affectation.

The computer can aspire to the calligraphic, albeit not on usenet, but somehow refuses to sink to scrawl.

Today my rituals are different but no less obvious. While the machine in machine fashion takes in the letters and words with a regularity that I never achieved drawing pen across paper the act of writing still needs support. So there is the mug of poisonously strong, over sweetened coffee; a glass of Armagnac somewhat on the large side; the pack of cigarettes with their attendant paraphernalia.

250 words in (count 'em!) and still not nearly at the meat of the matter.

This weekend past, as some of you will know, I spent in Normandy with Grégoire. Something we'd settled on some time ago but which only became concrete a week before with my purchase of tickets and attempts to inveigle Graham into joining us - attempts that did not bear fruit, but another time.

The voyage never seems to have really begin for me until boarding ship at Portsmouth and actually seeing it cast off. Friday gifted us with brilliant sunshine that augured well for the weekend, perversely as it happened. There are no gods more capricious than those of air and storm. Zephyrs that beguile followed hard by Eulus' howling tempests. But on Friday even Zephyrus disdained to blow and the sea was proverbially flat leading me to regret the lack of even the tiniest swell that might demonstrate our travel over water. Words I was to rue a few days later.

The night sailing leaves one disembarked at a remarkably inhospitable hour of the morning while the early sailing is arduous to catch from London necessitating a 4 am train at Victoria, an improbable connection at Brighton and stops at all 26 stations betwixt there and Portsmouth which seems rather excessive. So much for a joined up transport policy. So it is that I usually elect to take the 14:45 ex Portsmouth and arrive in Le Havre around 21:30. A journey of five and a half hours plus a few minutes for disemarkation (and any mathematicians that notice a disparity recall that French clocks run an hour ahead of our own).

So we were met by the delightful Emmanuelle and given dinner and delivered safe to Greg's new apartment. There are moments when there a sensible choice and one less so. This was one of those when we decided to pay a visit to David and Dominic's new night club.

Saturday the weather turned. It was cold and it rained sporadically. Saturday was shopping day. FNAC for another dictionary, this the Hachette Oxford English French dictionary which, joy of joys, installs it's databases on your hard disc if you so wish so I may have it running and use the CD player for the OED at the same time. Le Monde and Liberation, neither of which I found time to read until Monday morning. With Emmanuelle's assistance and the inestimable advice of Mme Kretz a vinaigrier: that is to say an earthenware pot for vinegar making. Which leads me to ask if anyone knows where I might find a mother of vinegar?

Saturday too was the Giraffe. (Martin's woken up I see, although this Giraffe was considerably larger than two quarts). The Giraffe and her daughter might - at the most remarkable stretch of the imagination - be called puppets if such a word can encompass ten meter tall articulated beasts driven part by hydraulics and part by the effort of up to fifteen "puppeteers". Built on a frame of iron girders, supported and propelled by tractors these animals had outer casings of wood carved, fitted and articulated with remarkable detail. Asleep they snorted and grumbled through their dreams, their flanks heaving to mark the taking of each breath. Awake they gave voice to very giraffe like calls snaking their necks about, ears and eyes turning to examine all the little people (us) on the ground around them. While mother ate hay the infant gamboled about their enclosure, sometimes lifting her forelegs to stand on the fence and peer about. A pile of wing mirrors was explained as part of the normal diet for giant giraffes - although it was not specified if these had been thoughtfully provided from some scrap yard or actually taken from the cars of unfortunate Havrais during the Giraffes' preambulations. I would not have been at all astonished if the latter were indeed the case.

Eventually mama Giraffe grew bored with the beach and set off, her daughter skipping around her, for a tour of the town followed by a large lorry providing music and a crowd that, when we saw them again later, had grown immense. There is a story to these Giraffes, the as yet unmentioned Giant and his adoptive son, icebergs and giraffe hunts but I shall leave that for Greg to tell as I'm far from confident that I have the significant details.

That evening we were invited to dine at the home of a colleague of Greg's which was fun but involved a lot of drink and once again being very late. Les aperitifs lasting hours, the pace of dinner civilised and the quantities of both munificent. Thence in the not so small hours to Greg's family's country home in Vieux Port.

Sunday morning not only dawned without disturbing me most of the family and friends were up and out at the apple harvest before I emerged to stumble to the kitchen and the by now familiar means of coffee making. I did manage to be on hand to help collect the crop of one tree; a procedure that involves hitting the tree until the apples fall out and then picking them up from sheets spread below the branches. However my presence was noted by Mme Kretz who gently pointed out that if I did not hie myself hastily to the kitchen fifteen wet and hungry people would soon be asking pointed questions about the whereabouts of lunch. It is immensely gratifying to be asked to cook but also very daunting. The more so to be told that the lamb was Hugette's lamb and that Hugette herself would be there to partake of whatever I made of it; all quite intimidating. Simple isn't infallible but it's a damned sight less risky than attempting something sophisticated that's would inevitably go wrong and be all the more obvious in the doing. So braised lamb with garlic and rosemary plus thyme and sage for good measure. Greg, I take to heart you comment about fatty lamb. It did indeed still have an amount of fat on it when it came to table. But ask your mother how big her second biggest stew pan is for it was more than half full of fat drawn off the meat juices before I made the sauce. I hope that simple worked, at least everyone was complimentary.

While the lamb was braising Greg got up and the rain stopped.

After rain one hopes for blue skies but those were to make only a brief appearance much later in the afternoon. For that hour the sky remained obdurately grey but there is sometimes a truth to the cliché that rain washes the air. For all the cloud above and the impossibility of telling the direction of the sun there was a pellucid quality to the atmosphere that made the distant more clearly visible than I have ever seen in that place before. Perhaps it was less than idyllic to first note this through seeing the petrochemical works past the next meander of the Seine which always before has been at least partially obscured by mist or heat haze but the effect was true also for the lines of plane trees marking the roads of Seine-Maritime on the horizon beyond the north shore of the river and the sharp shapes of the pine trees on the hills behind us. Not only the large and distant but also the small was made vivid by some magic. The silver and green of sage. The whorls of miniature leaves on the thyme plants. The contrasting greens and greys where the tractor has pressed the lawn flat, the tracks glistening as if two snails on a scale even larger than the previous day's giraffes had crossed the grounds in careful parallel paths. My camera was in my ruck-sack but it stayed there for I had an inescapable conviction that none of this could be captured in pixels.

Lunch and a lazy afternoon. Brief splashes of sun and an equally short but torrential downpour. In ones and twos, threes and fours family and friends dispersed buoyed, I hope, by M Kretz's pronouncement that there would after all be enough apples, just, to make cider this year.

The last planned event of the weekend was another dinner. This time as the guests of the lovely Bruno and Dominic back in Le Havre and in the company of Olivier. Not too late as three had to work in the morning but still it was past midnight before we finished.

Monday morning I filled the last of my shopping list with a visit to the tabac, made a breakfast on pain au chocolat and finally read Saturday's papers. Bruno came to collect me and we went to meet Greg for lunch in town. Then a coffee in a Museum with views over the harbour mouth showing grey and choppy waters through the rain. From there Bruno delivered me safely and in good time at the Gare Maritime to catch the boat home. Storm hit and grew stronger throughout the crossing until we finally made the shelter of the Solent which is how I came to regret my words about flat seas. That was the closest I have come to mal de mer for many years.

Outward voyages are full of anticipation. A crescendo that peaks on arrival. Return voyages however evoke contradictory feelings. They start with the sadness of leave taking and poignant glances over the shoulder at that and those which one leaves behind. But at some point, sooner or later while one travels the sadness is ameliorated by the relief of homecoming, the expectation of familiar comforts. Just as I don't feel that the journey starts until aboard ship so too it's ending is marked when I'm home and able to close my door on the world.