France, Brittatany, Summer 2011, Chapters 5 to 8

Liz and I worked a season for a UK holiday company in Brittany, France. To jazz up our reception area I wrote a series of "off line blogs" chronicling our days off. Meant to be a sanitised travelogue, of the sort you find in a in-flight magazine, it didn’t always turn out that way.

SUMMER 2011

Pete and Liz’s off line blog 5 

 

           This week we didn’t go anywhere special, it was a day of doing things……. Of haircuts and shopping and barbecuing.  

            Haircuts are part of life’s ritual. Some basic arithmetic tells us that we go to the barbers maybe 600 times during a 75 year lifespan. Most of these visits fade from the memory together with the rest of life’s regular trivia. But a few stick in the mind, for whatever reason, and getting a haircut outside of dear old England can end up a forever remembered event, like ones first kiss, or where we were the day Margaret Thatcher resigned.

            A haircut in Thailand which took over an hour because the girl was so intimidated by this farang (white foreigner), she cut hesitatingly every hair she should could find, those on the top of the head, on the nape of the neck and those which poke annoyingly out of ones cranial orifices. She rubbed in with masseur like vigour various emoluments, gave a little shoulder massage and only stopped when she ran out of ideas. Or a haircut in a Paris suburb in a salon more used to afro’s than the balding pate of an Englishman. At one point I was surrounded by beautiful black girls, some showing me a book of aspirational styles, other discussing the finer points of the forthcoming procedure. That’s one I won’t forget.

                   
               I remember a piece of a TV programme by Desmond Morris, he of body language fame, author of The Naked Ape and an expert on human non-verbal communication, when he said we put ourselves in potentially lethal situations based on trust and cultural expectation, and he cited a visit to the barbers, “you allow” he expounded “this man to put a cut throat razor to your neck, not something you would ordinarily let happen”. This came to mind in shop in an arcade in the back streets of Athens on a Saturday afternoon, every other shop was closed, and the area was deserted. We could have been the two last people on the planet.

Remarkable conversations take place from the chair, temporally imprisoned and immobile, you seek reassurance and a little conversational stimulation from the scissor jockey, who in turn is delighted to find a customer who wants to discuss more than the weather or the appalling state of the local roads. In Bristol, where we were running a pub, I nipped out for a quick trim, and as an opening gambit mentioned my involvement with the hostelry on the hill. He spent the entire haircut telling me how to swindle the brewery, in great detail. It was that sort of area. In Weymouth a little barber’s shop can be found at one end of a backstreet alley. It is open for no more than 2½ hours at a time and not at all on Mondays. That the proprietor and sole occupant has a military background is obvious from the reunion posters in his window. Sitting in his chair one day the conversation turned to his early days in the army. “I wanted to be in the parachute regiment, but I was too short” he said, “but then someone discovered I’d just qualified as a barber and I grew two inches overnight”. The conversation rambled on until he said, “I cut hair on the Falklands for a year”. This sounded suspiciously like the beginnings of a Monty Python sketch. He continued, “I was the only NCO with his own accommodation, they gave the flat above the Island’s barber’s shop”. Well, if I ever go on a TV quiz show and they ask me my claim to fame, I can say, “I’ve been shawn by the Falkland’s Barber”.

Haircuts for us blokes in France seem ludicrously expensive to me. Used to paying around £6 for a quick trim, I can’t seem to get away with much under €15 here. I went to the barbers in the Intermarché complex at Quimperlé. No complaints, fine workmanship or rather workladyship. It’s just I would prefer not have to help pay off the national trade deficit every time my few hairs need reformatting to confirm to socio-cultural expectations. But we had a lovely barbecue, and that’s makes everything well with the world.   

  

 

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Liz and Pete's Off-Line Blog 6
 

 

Well another day of rest, another day to get out and confirm our strengthening conviction that we have somehow landed up in a rather pleasant part of the world. The sun in shining, the forest glows green in the late morning light, the roads are empty, the windows down and the warm air whips in bringing with it the fragrances of a rural community, not all it must be reported, likely to get into an Airwick product.   

 

                   The plan is to meander coastward and take luncheon at Suroît, a restaurant previously visited and to which we have vowed to return. On the way we chance to pass through Moëlan-sur-Mer, where Tuesday is evidently Market day. A few minutes into our stroll it becomes evident that this is a bit of a find, the stalls stretch out into the distance, and we are regretting having stocked up at the local Carrefour for the week. If you are planning a visit here, ensure firstly that your larder is empty and secondly that you are hungry. There are good things to eat on sale and a myriad of fresh meat, fruit, vegetables and fish to be had. We came across a stall selling Vietnamese goodies, and we intend to become regular customers. Another sold twenty or more different types of sausages, dried, like chorizo or salami. Six of these delicious looking charcuteries can be had for €10 and we have adjusted our provisions budget accordingly. This might not quite be foodie nirvana but it’s pretty damn close.  

On then to the left bank of Doëlan and Le Suroît, closed Wednesday’s. Full of locals enjoying an al Fresco “dejeuner” (lunch) we joined them and were not disappointed. Liz had the Salad Chèvre, goats cheese on toast served warm on a huge pile of greenery just to confirm her recollection that this was indeed the king of salads and Peter went for the tuna steak served with a timbale of rice and of course green beans and a garlic mayo which would probably count as ordnance in some parts of the world. Home then, and Peter made plans to sleep in the spare bedroom. The menu included Moules in a variety of forms, fresh grilled sardines, langoustines as well as steaks and salads.  There is a children’s menu too in case you want to share this find with your offspring.

It seems that French Cuisine, in spite of the proliferation of Macdonald’s and supermarket cafeterias (avoid) is alive and having a whale of a time.
 

Liz and Pete’s Seventh Blog

 



Various Teas, Infusions, Cakes and Pastries

This Tuesday we thought we would pop over to Concarneau to have a look at the old city, as recommended by several customers. This we did by way of the market at Moëlan-sur-Mer, where we bought spices, 6 saucisson for €10 and some sun dried tomatoes, not a haul that does justice to the wealth of produce on sale but we had no cold bag and intended to stay out for the day. In Concarneau weakened by our intense shopping and the enormous distance travelled we were in urgent need of a coffee, which readers of previous blogs will know is a feature of our days out. We parked opposite the ramparts and made a beeline for the nearest café, which advertised cakes. Unfortunately despite the promises they had none and we made do with pain tartine et confiture, bread, butter and jam, frankly disappointing. We wondered across the bridge leading to the walled city and as we turned the corner the street of a thousand souvenir shops hove into view. The first two shops we passed sold ice cream and if marked for presentation would score 11/10. It didn’t taste half bad either. The old city is packed with galleries, restaurants, clothes and gift shops where for example, a fair sized model of a three masted sailing ship could be yours for €89. It is also home to Musée de Pêche, The Museum of Fishing. We didn’t venture in but if you have an interest in that sort of thing it might well float your boat. We passed on the tempting offer of a pirate’s raft, pirate not included and wondered how many pine lighthouses we could get back to England where they wood go down a storm.

We read with interest the story of a canon, parked just outside the Governor’s Tower. If the notice board is to be believed, the ship on which this and many similar pieces of artillery were billeted sank in a feat of misnavigation. In an attempt to save the vessel the cannons were thrown over the side. The board suggests, in my view anyway, that there was some surprise amongst those doing the chucking that these heavy pieces of iron sank to the seabed. That might not, of course, be a fair report of what actually happened but the mists of time, an editor’s blue pencil, and some over cropping of historical actualitie leave the visitor wondering why it is necessary to report that several tons of metal plunged into Davy Jones Locker. It feels a bit like being astonished when rain plummets from up to down. The good Burghers of Concarneau have provided us with a comedy moment, why put up truly interesting and meaty stuff when you can report that gravity sucks?  But this is a moan, over frankly a rather trivial point, not unlike the customer of a London theatre who wrote to the management complaining a comma missing from a foyer poster had so ruined her evening she was compelled to demand a refund.  

 

 

            Concarneau is charming, there are some good things on sale and the restaurants look appetising and busy. If this is your kettle of fish the plaice is worth a few hours of your time, and it is really not very far away, half an hour, 40 minutes at the most should crack the journey.  Good souveniring.   

           

 

Liz and Pete’s Off-Line Blog 8

Well another day off and no plan. Having no plans means, if I may quote Spike Milligan, that nothing can go wrong. So in anticipation of an incident free day we set out in a randomly chosen direction, which turned out to take us into Vannes. We ended up parking near the quayside and wandered along the selection of mandatory water front cafés and bistros, peppered in this city, with kebab stalls suggesting that a university must be near. We sat in the Place Gambetta, drank our coffees and watched the day go by. Gambetta it seems was a man of politics active in the later part of the 19^th century; at least that’s what I think the sign said. Just off the Place, which should be pronounced, plass, is a street of interesting looking shops where if you happen to want to buy a diving mask with integral high definition camera you can. Lovers of high fashion will have a field day with the various clothes shops and any handbags bought can be filled with souvenirs from the adjacent boutiques. We could have ridden the road train around the city and explored deeper into Vanne’s charms but instead

 

 we struck out again, following the estuary, through Senne, which had a lovely port and ended in Port Anna, a small harbour consisting of not very much at all, an isolated food stall and fishermen going about their daily life. And that was the meanderings of the day over, a whiz round a big Carrefour with scales that could recognise veg. and some tempting fish, to whose charms we succumbed and so ended the day BBQ’ing some mackerel. Mr Milligan was right, no plans, no problems. 

 

 

 

The plaice for a good fishy tale.

 

 

 With this purchase, pirates included