Carpet burns...

About five years ago, we went on a two-week tour of France starting from Dieppe, where we visited a cousin of mine. She settled there in the early sixties after she'd met and married a French soldier who was serving in Algeria. At the time it was a very delicate case of sleeping with the enemy. I was too young to understand the repercussions.
She and her husband welcome us with open arms and we spent a couple of days with them before heading South.

My carefully planned itinerary included Bayeux as it happened to be on the way to Saint Malo, our next stop.
After a leisurely late lunch we decided to visit the world-famous Tapestry.

We made our way to a large darkened room wearing earphones to learn about Harold, William and the battle of Hastings. The commentary was in 14 languages so I picked the French version to see if the facts had been embellished.

The tapestry hung in a huge glass cabinet that stretched 70 m along a slow moving walkway allowing visitors time to admire the 58 panels.

TIME!
I looked at my watch and realised that time was not on our side.
Ahead of us lay a two-hour drive to Saint Malo. We needed to arrive in good time to get a decent hotel room. I hadn't bothered booking any in advance in case we changed our route.

Have you ever seen desperate people running for a train, a bus or a plane?
You've got the idea!

We started taking longer steps, just catching sight of a colourful blur as we flew past the ancient Tapestry and many puzzled tourists.

If anybody asks whether I've seen the Tapestry, I just nod vaguely.

Now from the comfort of my armchair, thanks to the marvel of Youtube and technological advances, I am able to enjoy what I missed a few years ago. Check it out.




One of PI's posts jogged my memory...

My first car...

At the tender age of 28!!!! A white Ford Cortina. An ex-taxi.

I was working at an Italian restaurant at the time and got to know many of the customers. One of them owned a local taxi firm and I regularly used it for our diners.
Cliff offered to let me have one of the taxis he was replacing, a ten-year old Cortina for a bargain £175! The valeting alone must have cost £30! When I went to pick it up, my beautiful white chariot was gleaming inside and out.
I sat for a few minutes while Cliff explained the controls.
It was a Concorde compared to the tinny tiny Micra in which I had learnt to drive and passed my test.
He then waved me goodbye as I chugged to a shy start.

My first exploratory trip was that same afternoon to a town ten miles away.

My wife sat in the passenger seat. In the back, next to our two-year old son, Adam, sat her aunt who had been invited to go shopping with us.

I set off with a Cheshire cat's smile on my face, looking out for a familiar face to blow the horn at.

A couple of miles down the road we came upon a traffic accident. A policeman was surveying the scene and, as it happened, so was I.

Suddenly my wife let out a chilling scream.

Startled, I looked ahead.
An oncoming car swerved out of the way onto the pavement to avoid me. I had been so captivated by the sight of the two inept drivers who had collided, that I had veered onto the wrong side of the road. I quickly slipped back in the right lane. The aunt's face was as white as a sheet. Adam was screaming. My wife gave me a killer stare that forecast many frosty days ahead.
A few seconds later a flashing blue light appeared in the mirror. I stopped the car and began shaking like a leaf.

The policeman who had been attending to the accident was fuming. So was one of the drivers who had just missed a head-on collision with my Cortina. He had followed the police car to add further oil to the fire and ensure the admonishment was severe.

"Are you here on holiday?" The policeman asked. After all, I had briefly driven on the wrong side of the road.

After sheepishly apologizing and confessing that it was my first sortie in my brand new Cortina he let me go not without a reprimand and a caution to be more careful in future.

A year and a £10-water pump later I sold the Cortina for £225! A net profit of £40!

Come on then, what was your first car?

Mama's food...

On the farm my mother made bread every other day on a charcoal burner and a terracotta platter.
She sat on a tiny stool, surrounded by all she needed. The dough balls covered with a cloth inside a large wooden bowl, caraway, sesame and poppy seeds and a jar of virgin olive oil.
As a young boy, I watched her prepare the bread and other dishes with great interest, always helping her shell peas, take the leaves off artichokes, peel potatoes, pick herbs, etc...

My favourite late morning snack, after helping my mother prepare food for seven people, was a fresh, juicy tomato sprinkled with salt and pepper and a chunk of warm bread dripping with butter churned by our own milkman.

She cooked Algerian tagines, French stews, Italian pastas or Spanish paellas, rarely remarking that many of them were some or other country’s national dish. For her it was just food, pure and simple.
She prepared our meals faithfully following recipes passed on from mother to daughter since the beginning of time.
As a family, we rarely ate out. My parents sometimes invited other relatives and friends for family meals. The hospitality was always returned within days.

Whenever my mother cooked a new dish, she often sent me over to a neighbour or an aunt with a small sample of her latest creation. The gesture was always reciprocated. In fact I was never let go without taking back a few spoonfuls of food in the hurriedly washed and dried dish.

Cooking took up all my mother's mornings. Well, that was before Papa brought her a brand new pressure cooker after we had moved to the town and the place came with a gas cooker.
From then on, my mother was a liberated woman. She had finally discovered Fast Food, long before I did. Under pressure, most dishes took less than half an hour to cook.

She ended up with so much time on her hands that she began doing volunteering work. Within weeks, she became the first female president of our town’s Red Crescent branch.

During my student days, while trying to recreate her delicious dishes, I often rang her all the way from England when I could not remember certain ingredients. The phone call regularly cost more than the food itself.



I took the photos below in Spain.
My favourite is the bottom one. Those cakes were just one delicious mouthful each. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.....























Back in July I loved Marrakesh so much that we're off there for a few days...


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Dawn to dusk...

Google's Picasa though not as professional as photoshop or other editing software is quite fun to quickly edit and play about with photos.

So I chose one of the photos I took on Sunday and played about with it to create a dawn to dusk feel.
I'm sure the old Masters will be spinning in their graves...




































My best time of day is dusk.
Sunsets seem to stir up melancholy and memories.
The long walks along various harbours around the Med and Africa, a cool drink in sleepy cafés, getting ready to hit the town after a long lunch and a short siesta ...

What is your best time of the day and why?

Another milestone... and counting down...

Countdown celebrated its 25th birthday this week.
I remember watching the first one. It was the first program when Channel 4 began broadcasting back in 1982.
A fourth television channel! Wow! All we had before then were BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.


Then Richard Whiteley unveiled this new, exciting, off-the-wall channel with one of my favourite television games.
I used to watch the original French version, Des Chiffres et Des Lettres (Original title!!) back in Algeria in black and white.

And I also watched the Greek version in the summer of '78 on the island of Evia, a place which is known to at least one more blogger, Quarsan in Zoe's hilarious book, My boyfriend is a Twat.

Pause my music selection and...
Check out why Countdowners loved the late Richard Whiteley so much.

Has any of you watched another version of this addictive program?





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Papa's Raising Sultans...

Vit has just written a post on family trees and illustrated how hard it is to unravel branches and roots, etc...
I really do admire all those people who spend long years in libraries and record offices, meticulously sifting through mindnumbing archives in an attempt to trace their ancestry.

The BBC's popular series "Who do you think you are?" prompted many viewers to begin their own dig.

A few months ago, when I phoned him to enquire about the price of eggs in Algeria and how he was keeping, Papa, in his infinite wisdom calmly claimed:
"We are descendants of the last Sultan of Granada, you know!"
I was truly taken aback. Papa does not drink and he is a very rational man. It usually takes him days to mull over an idea before saying anything.
He is the kind of guy who would spend hours and days trying to repair a watch, stowing it the bathroom cabinet for months "just in case" before finally admitting defeat and discarding it.

I put his fantastic claim down to his 86 years and tried to humour him.
"I am telling you it's true! Why don't you check on your computer?"
What is the world coming to? Papa has heard of computers!

As soon as I got off the phone, I Googled and found out that our family name and that of this Moorish Sultan are uncannily close but for a spelling variation.

It sounds absolutely outlandish but could Papa be right?
Come to think of it, didn't the Alhambra car park attendant direct me to a well shaded spot when I visited in February?

But perhaps I should keep quiet about this... While Googling I came across a fundamentalist website blaming the Sultan for the fall of Andalucia and the demise of the Moors...

Could this be my new abode?

























Papa is 87 on Saturday!


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Papa's colourful languages...

When I young, Papa often reeled the few German words he knew to coax into eating our meals: "Come on, Kartoffeln are good for you!"

During the Second World War, after the Allied landings in North Africa, our quiet town was swamped with foreign soldiers. Being close to the Tunisian border, our local French military hospital housed injured soldiers and among them a few Germans and Italians. One of these, Papa recalled, was a Wehrmacht soldier who had been wounded around Bizerte and brought back as prisoner of war.
Fritz spent months convalescing in Papa's ward and a cautious friendship developed between them. Papa found a stray kitten to keep Fritz company. He sometimes gave him fruit and vegetables from our farm.
Papa also tried to teach him a little French and in turn tried to learn a few German words. They sadly lost touch with each other after Fritz was moved to a secure prison camp.

Then the American GI's came through our town on their way to Tunisia and Sicily. The locals often reminisce about these giant soldiers who doled out chewing gum and chocolate bars to the cheering swarms of children who followed the jeeps bare feet across town.

A few years ago Papa came over to visit me in the UK after my mother passed away. He spent most of his time alone in the garden, probably thinking of my mother.
But one day, after lunch, as we sat at the dining table while my wife prepared the coffee, Papa scratched his head and tried to remember the few English words he had picked up during the war.

"Ha mucha dates?"
"Ha mucha oranges?” He mumbled in a funny Texan accent.
He explained that the GI's had often stopped to buy fresh produce from his fruiterer friend.

He sat there scratching his head, screwing his face, trying to dredge up buried memories. All of a sudden his eyes lit up "I know how to say "Go away" in American, you know!"

Before I could stop him he shouted: "Fuck off!" just as Karen walked into the dining room.

Two worlds...as one...

Having at last landed back from my Moroccan daydreams, I have already started planning my next trip to Marrakesh.
My first visit, as I have commented in my last posts, was a revelation.
You see, I grew up in a similar era and atmosphere as Marrakesh is in today.
A great mix of Arabic, French, Islam, foreign teachers, hippy travellers, tolerance, a sense of freedom as a student in the late sixties and early seventies. Life was easy.
Then Algeria lost its way. Corruption and kleptocracy ruled. Fundamentalism found a vacuum. It began exploiting youth unhappiness. The government sold out on secularism. Centuries of traditions were lost forever. And a reign of fear began. Around 200,000 people were massacred in an unprecedented period of violence between 1993 and 2003.
I did not go to Algeria for 15 years and when I went it was a foreign country to the one I left in the early seventies. Though things have slowly begun to improve, scars will take a long time to heal.

In Marrakesh I truly found my old country.
The old traditions are cherished and displayed with pride, while modernity is embraced and encouraged.
Marrakesh is what I would have loved my country to have developed into. But never say never...

Tiny miracles...

What is it that makes us want to cage birds?


For a time Papa kept budgies, bred them and often gifted them to friends and relatives. The birds were his pride and joy. Their cages were like Arabian palaces with the latest in birdbaths, feeders and perches. If you saw this hardened war veteran on his knees, poking his finger between the bars to be gently pecked, cooing like a baby to his feathered progeniture, awaiting a response and imagining one...

At night he brought them off the balcony into the warmth of the bathroom.
Every morning before work he wedged fresh lettuce leaves between the rails, changed the water and delicately blew away the empty husks from the seed trays.

One morning, Papa walked into the bathroom and awoke us with a heartbreaking wail.
All his beloved budgies lay dead at the bottom of the cages.
The cause, we later found out, was a bottle of antiseptic that had fallen out of the medicine cabinet during the night and smashed on the tiled floor, unleashing its deadly fumes on the helpless creatures.

Papa cleaned out the cages and gave them away. He never kept budgies again.

When I went to see him last year, Papa had acquired a couple of canaries which he knew by name.
Every evening he let them out their cage to fly freely around the room. They soared and fluttered until their tiny wings could no longer keep them up and then they came to land on this shoulder or outstretched hand.
Papa looked at me and winked, meaning:
"Son, you've just witnessed a "miracle".



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The Rainbow Garden...

Last week a school governor phoned me to ask if I could open a school garden.

I was about to suggest she should contact a locksmith when she explained that the head of her local infants school had this marvellous idea of turning part of the school field into a garden. She enrolled the help of pupils' parents, grandparents and local firms to create it.

The school governor, a regular in our restaurants, explained that the idea of the garden was to promote healthy eating through direct student participation.

"If the children see how vegetables are grown, they may try them. We even sold a few radishes at last week's assembly." She announced proudly.

The young head welcomed me with a cup of tea and a tour of the school.

Once the children were lined up in front of the garden, alongside two dozen or so parents and grandparents and the mayor, the head welcomed everyone and then introduced me, suggesting I say a few words.

I am not one for speeches, unless I am talking about food or wine but on this occasion it all came easily.

"I am honoured that you have invited me to open your beautiful garden. You should all be proud to have come up with this fantastic idea. Now that you can see how vegetables are grown I am certain that you will enjoy eating them. "Yeah, right! It took my son 18 years before he tried a tiny bit of broccoli..."
When I was 5 or 6 my mother grew radishes from a bag of seeds. They were delicious. Nowadays, whenever I buy radishes from Asda, I remember our farm and the great times I had growing up there.

I am sure some of you think that chips come out of the freezer but you'll be surprised to know that they come from potatoes similar to the ones you are growing.

Once your garden is producing lots of vegetables you may even end up supplying my restaurants, you know! "They'll have to compete on quality and price!"

A couple of years ago I opened a cake shop for a friend and my reward was a few cream cakes. I'm wondering how many pounds of potatoes I should charge you!"

The kids laughed but I could see their brains working out my fee in radishes.

I cut the ribbon, the pupils sang a hymn and the priest from the adjoining church named and blessed the Rainbow Garden. We posed for the local paper's photographer.

Another cup of tea, a scone then I drove home with a smile...

Fame at last!!!

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Wild life...

A few years ago, Papa was driving me to the airport in his old Citroën to catch a plane to Algiers and then England.
At 75 he still drove very adeptly, having spent most of his working life on the road as an ambulance driver. He was doing around 100 km per hour on a familiar road, listening to an imam reciting Koranic verses and nonchalantly giving me a wink each time he expertly avoided a head-on collision with an oncoming juggernaut.
The road to the airport is full of twists and turns, dips and humps but Papa kept pointing out the scenery.
“Have you got pine forests like this in England?”
“Wild flowers like these?”
“Can you smell the wild spearmint, eh? Do you have spearmint in England?”

All of a sudden a black shape jumped in front of the car. Papa slammed the brakes. Screech...Too late... Thump!!!

“Bismillah! In the name of God! Why? Why?”
I asked Papa what it was.
“Khanzeer!”
“A pig? I haven’t seen a pig since the French left Algeria in 1962!”
“A wild pig, I mean! A boar!”

We got out of the car and in front of it lay a baby wild boar. No sign of life or blood.
Papa checked his dented front bumper and cursed Satan.
“This must be a bad omen. I’m not sure you should get on that plane!”
I dismissed the episode as a simple accident but he went on mumbling.

“Qu’est-ce qui c'est passé?” A voice enquired. I turned round and recognised a French lecturer who taught at the local college. He had parked his car behind Papa’s and got out to see what happened.

“Papa a tué un marcassin!” Papa has killed a baby boar.
“I did not!” Papa shouted. “The bloody thing jumped in front of me!”

A second teacher got out of the car. The two picked up the animal, placed it in their car boot and drove off with the broadest of smiles.

My brother came to pick me up at Algiers airport. When I recounted the accident, he smiled and said: “Those French guys will probably be having a feast this evening!”

Any funny accidents or supersititions?

Photo: TrekEarth Laurent Vidalin.

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Memories...

Today, a friend of mine sent me the above photo.

It was taken when we were eight years old, which in old money makes it forty-six years ago!!

Being the inquisitive kind, I am sitting third from the right, leaning forward trying to fathom out how the camera worked.

Most of the kids in the class were French but for 7 of us. Well, it is not scritcly true because, Algeria at the time was considered another département français, so we too were "French".

The only difference was that our ancestors were Algerians and the others Europeans, mainly French.

It was taken during the Algerian war of independence from France which ended in July 1962. In the seven years it raged, one and half million people lost their lives and many were left maimed. Papa, who is now 86 suffered a great deal. He was arrested in 1956 for supporting the freedom fighters, sent to various concentration camps on the edge of the Sahara, then exiled from our home département for three years.

A school photo should bring back happy memories. The friend who sent me this one lives near Marseille (France).

Despite the hard times, all I can really remember is a totally idyllic childhood thanks to a wonderful mother.