Profile for Christopher
Profile for Christopher
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Blog entries submitted by Christopher
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets the blues
NO, NOT really. Je plaisante, as the French say when they're only joking. But I have been a bit frustrated in trying out a new experience, trying to add something to the definitive Campbell's Diary Guide to the Complete French Experience.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes goes medieval . . .
In France - and elsewhere in Europe - every third weekend in September is designated les journées européennes du patrimoine, European Heritage Days. Our village throws itself into the spirit of things with enormous energy...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes groans in agony...
IT'S TARZAN time again, time to change into the old tigerskin loincloth, beat my chest, spit on the palms of my hands and swing myself up into the cherry tree, uttering strange jungle cries.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes (and Josephine) get to the Mairie on time . . .
IT VERY nearly didn't happen. It was touch and go, right up to the last moment...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes achieves his century . . .
A FEW days ago Lazare Ponticelli died at the age of 110, the last poilu, the last French infantryman to have served in the First World War...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes apologises to everyone for everything . . .
Two years ago we were in the throes of a presidential election. The first round of voting weeded out the mavericks and the no-hopers, and the second showed a close-run contest between the the willowy Ségolène Royal, and the pragmatic and tireless Nicolas Sarkozy.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes asks you to take his word for it . . .
YOU'VE GOT two minutes. Two minutes to write down all the French words you can think of that we use in ordinary everyday English speech. Nonsense, there are hundreds of them. You've got pencil, paper and watch? Right, head down and off you go.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes bangs on about baths, bikes, books and breaks into an old carol . . .
A RECENT French TV news item centred on the steps government ministers are taking to master, or at least improve their English. The movement seems to be led by Nicolas Sarkozy, erstwhile minister of finance and now president of the majority centre right party, the UMP, and probably France's, not to say Europe's, most up-and-coming politician.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes blinked and missed it, well, almost . . .
WAIT FOR for the helicopters, the word went round. When you hear them you know it's all going to start happening...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes blows up his horn . . .
The story behind the The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland) which is the oldest major work of French literature.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes blows with the prevailing wind . . .
I sometimes wonder about Frédéric Mistral. You've never heard of him? Nor had I, until I came to live in France.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes bottoms out. . .
We're so lucky to have an old railway line practically at the foot of our garden which someone had the bright idea of turning it into a footpath.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes breaks his fast . . .
I gave up long ago trying to penetrate to the heart of the French breakfast. At one time it seemed to me that if you crossed the Rubicon, burned your boats and came to live in France full-time, then you might as well go the whole hog with the French experience. Total immersion in French life would of course include breakfast.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes breathes a sigh of relief . . .
In my modest way I've always enjoyed driving my Peugeot 306 diesel, which, of all the cars I've ever had, has given the least trouble while proving the cheapest to run despite the incredibly high French motor insurance rates.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes bridges that gap . . .
I ASSOCIATE it in my mind with President Mitterand, but maybe it goes back beyond him to the days of Giscard d'Estaing: it's the principle known as désenclavement, the opening up of remote country. It was expressed in human terms as the notion that no settlement in mainland France should be more than 15 minutes' drive from a major road.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes buzzes about busily . . .
A Wednesday morning in early June. The sun rose about ten minutes ago. Just outside the window, always open on fine summer nights, there's some unusually busy buzzing going on.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes calls a spade a spade . . .
Aristide is giving an unsolicited lecture to Pascal, Jean, Enric and Pierre-Marie, a sort of Greek chorus, about the movements of the earth's tectonic plates. The African plate is moving north, trying to insert itself underneath the European plate. Like an elephant trying to get underneath the bedclothes, he says.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes calls time . . .
I WAS in the pub last week. A pause while the significance of this comes to a creamy head, like a well and lovingly drawn pint of best bitter...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes counts the days . . .
IMPOSSIBLE TO separate last month's competition winners, Eileen Hobson of England and Janice Linhares of New York, both of whom got the answers absolutely right simultaneously and very commendably managed to reduce the following spiel to about 4 lines of e-mail text.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes declines all responsibility . . .
BY THE time you read this you'll know the answer: did France vote oui or non for the European constitution?
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Christopher Campbell-Howes discovers what makes the French so French
Le Parisien, a Paris daily, recently ran a survey asking A quoi rêvent les Français, what do the French dream of? You know the kind of thing: what people want from life, to what extent their ambitions have been realised, how far life has short-changed them, and so on...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes displays his primitive nature . . .
AN UNUSUAL and unexpected invitation arrived the other day, one that made us ponder deeply on our whole purpose here on this earth....
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Christopher Campbell-Howes does his bit for local wildlife . . .
WELL, WHAT would you have done?You'd have done what I did, wouldn't you? You'd have fetched the net and rescued the poor . . . but I'd best start at the beginning.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes does't come back empty handed . . .
I WAS splitting cherry logs when an unfamiliar car drew up nearer the house. A smartly-dressed woman got out, picked her way across a shallow ditch and peered closely at a rotten tree stump.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes drinks to the future of the Languedoc wine trade . . .
THERE'S A relentless chugging and puffing from our neighbour Hector's place down the lane. He's got a digger down there, pulling up all his vines, nearly four acres of them. Clearly a big decision has been made...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes drops a few crumbs . .
SUNDAY MORNING, early. Yawn, stretch, rub eyes, peer at watch in pink dawn light. 7 o'clock. Breathe in fresh morning air, a wonderful daily treat after weeks of stifling summer temperatures.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes enjoys testing times . . ..
WE SEEM to have been very popular just lately. No idea why. Three invitations at least. Well, one was more in the nature of an appointment card, so perhaps that doesn't count. Let's get this one out of the way first.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes exercises his democratic rights
THE FLAG'S flying outside the Mairie, the village town hall, flopping idly in the soft spring breeze. Sunning himself at the top of the steps is Jean-Claude, looking like a prosperous antiquarian taking a breather in the shop doorway and scanning the pavements for custom, and we're pleased to see him, because we know him well: he's a bass in my choir.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes explodes a poplar misconception . . .
WE CALLED him the Great Dane, or the Giant Swede, I can't remember which. He came out of the woods not long after I came to live in France, nearly twenty years ago.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes eyes up the Invisible Woman . . .
SO NICOLAS Sarkozy - known universally as 'Sarko' - got it in the end, becoming the 6th President of the 5th French Republic, defeating the willowy but really rather weedy and woolly Ségolène Royal by a substantial majority. I could have told you so...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes fails dismally . . .
FAILURE, I'M afraid. Signal, abject failure. Serves us right for being so cocksure, of course. We'll be back by teatime, we said. Nothing to it. Easy-peasy. A doddle. We'll call you from the top. Chill the champagne ready for our triumphant return, will you?
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Christopher Campbell-Howes feels his age . . .
IT'S THAT time again, the annual lunch given by the commune for all the seniors (and the senioras and senioritas, of course) in the village. We first qualified on grounds of age if not of decrepitude two years ago, so we went along with one or two other Brits.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes feels his age . . .
I don't know what scale you rate jokes on. I mean, you can rate restaurants with Michelin Guide stars (it would have to be a pretty stunning joke to merit a Michelin star) and grade Gîtes de France with épis, ears of corn, but when it comes to jokes there's no easy means of knowing whether you're likely to get your money's worth...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes fills his boot . . .
HOODS UP, heads down, shoulders hunched, hands deep in pockets against the tempest, Josephine and I butted our way a few mad March days ago into Tesco in Truro for a final stock-up of Brit goodies - and weather - before starting out for Plymouth and Brittany Ferries' Armorique back home.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes finds his sage (and onion) advice disregarded . . .
SOME MIGHT call it an amiable weakness, others might frown and mutter at this deplorable departure from received standards of civilisation. Personally I think it's probably a gentle glide into senility and second childhood that's at the heart of it...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes flavours his ice-cream with cynicism . . .
WE WERE away at the time, so we missed out on all the fun. Some bright spark had decided that the one thing our sometimes quite touristy village lacked was a memorial to, or at least some kind of recognition of pilgrims passing through the village on their traditional way to Santiago de Compostela in north-eastern Spain.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes flies the flag . . .
ON THE face of it, it was a very flattering invitation. They wanted me to go and read them an extract from one of my own books. "We're a ladies' cultural association," the organiser said. "Once a year we hold evenings dedicated to the literature of different nations. In previous years we've done Mexico and Algeria. Now we'd like to do England....
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Christopher Campbell-Howes forks out left, right and centre . . .
NEW YEAR'S Day - Euro Day - found us in Cordoba, in southern Spain, penniless.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets a little vitrified . . .
The voice on the telphone said Venez déjeuner, monsieur. Come for breakfast. We like to finish each job with a meal. It's just a little custom we have. Please join us. We'll expect you about 7.30. D'accord?....
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets fired up . . .
PICTURE THE scene: it's dark, the tramontane's howling and anyone with any sense is cosied in by the fireside and what am I doing?
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets nostalgic about school dinners . . .
IS DESERT Island Discs still on the go? You know, the radio programme where the guests are invited to list the music they'd take with them if they were in for a long stay on a desert island? Years ago I used to listen to it occasionally when it was hosted by a gentlemanly chap called Roy Plomley, and it's just one more of those things that have fallen into a post-moving-to-France limbo.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets out his deerstalker and magnifying glass . . .
Sunday night is nostalgia night here. Useless to resist. Despite all these years of expat life (Josephine 18, me coming up for 12), all these years of practically going native here in the south of France
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets the wind up . . .
WE'VE BEEN spending quite a lot of time recently in the village mairie. 'Mairie' doesn't translate into English very easily, because there's no exact equivalent. In large towns you can say Town Hall, but that's much too grand for a village of 600 souls like ours...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gets up off his knees, adjusts his dress and sings
THERE'S A very pretty church at St Florian, newly decorated, fresh, warm and welcoming, and you can't ask much more of a church than that. Under a curious French arrangement the building belongs to the state, and the priest is merely the tenant - with all a tenant's rights, of course, including the right to a makeover every now and again.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes gives timely warning. . .
HERE'S A a cautionary tale, one for expats and anyone thinking of moving to France.Having been an expat here in France for many years, Matthew Guthrie-Booth (a name tailor-made for sending those French people unable to get their teeth and lips round the English 'th' sound into complete panic) has got his telephone system well worked out.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes glances at the headlines . . .
For many in the village, Midi Libre is as vital a part of the morning programme as a bowl of coffee or chocolate first thing in the morning.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes goes Martini* . . .
TWENTY YEARS and more ago, long before I came to live in the village, part of the church roof fell in during Mass. No one was immediately beneath it at the time, no one was hurt although several were shaken...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes goes shopping for granite . . .
IF YOU'RE looking for material for kitchen worktops, granite is the answer. It has all the advantages: it resists great heat and cold, it's virtually indestructible, scratchproof and unstainable, it's decorative and lasts for ever. It's massively heavy and not cheap, but we'll let that pass.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes goes to market . . .
Wednesday morning. Time for a trip to the market in St Pons de Thomières, a dozen miles or so upstream at the head of the valley.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes goes up the wall . . .
IT'S ALL very hilly in this part of France, and any cultivable land has been wrested from the hillside by building up terraces. The terraces are broad or narrow according to the slope, and usually they're planted with olive or cherry trees, and a local speciality is chestnuts.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes has a touch of spring fever . . .
WE'RE IN the middle of building a new house at the moment, just up the lane from our present house, close enough for us to lean out of the window and see how the builders, who are all called Alain, are getting on.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes has his back to the wall . . .
A FEW weeks ago I was rehearsing a choir with the usual physical energy I try put into conducting, on the grounds that the more effort I make the more the singers will too, when I felt my back go. It was very disturbing...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes heads for the seaside
IT'S ONLY a few minutes from the Spanish border, but it doesn't strike you as a frontier village. In fact, it reinforces its Frenchness, gives itself a last shot of pure Gallicism before the language, colour, scenery and ambiance changes a couple of headlands further south.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes hears a sound of revelry by night . . .
ABOUT TEN years ago Josephine and I, sang for a few unsettled months as in a very largely French choir in the village. At one rehearsal the conductor put a new song in front of us, La Chanson des Adieux, The Song of Farewell, of which the words were unfamiliar but the tune was what we call Auld Lang Syne...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes hits the brakes . . .
SOME MONTHS ago (filled with shame, I didn't rant about it at the time but nursed my wounded amour propre privately in my bosom. I've got over it now, thank you for enquiring) an official-looking letter arrived for Josephine, postmarked Rennes in Brittany...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes holds his tongue, but manages an ice-cream all the same . . .
OFF TO Montpellier to the annual Book Fair. It's official title is La Comédie du Livre, and before anyone else comes up with ho-ho explanations of why it's got a name with overtones of farce...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is a martyr to his imagination . . .
THERE DOESN'T seem to have been any lessening of the popularity of beauty contests in France.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is attacked all all sides . . .
I WAS sitting quietly at our village mediaeval banquet discussing philosophy with my friend Jean-Claude when a bread pellet thrown from three or four tables away struck me on the shoulder.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is converted without much of a struggle . . .
Finding ourselves on our own, we went out for Christmas lunch, probably for the first time ever. Most of our favourite restaurants close during the winter, but our old friend Gilbert in the next village keeps the French gastronomic flag flying...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is disturbed by things that go bump in the night . . .
3am. What they call the wee sma' hours in Inverness and les petites heures here in the south of France. It's been one of those nights. The cats, Pinot and Merlot, won't settle.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is in at the start . . .
Montpellier. The big city. It's bitterly cold. We can see a huge bank of snow-laden cloud heading for us from the direction of Marseilles and the Camargue. We've already seen TV news pictures of Marseilles traffic brought to a halt by a couple of centimetres of slush.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is outwitted.
'SEVEN O'CLOCK sharp on the Esplanade' the maire said, when we happened to meet him in the village Tourist Office. What he actually said was à dix-neuf heures pile, at nineteen hours exact. Traps for the unwary here...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is pleasantly surprised . . .
THE TELEPHONE rings. I answer it, saying as I always do 'Oui? Allo?' A voice the other end says 'Monsieur. . . ?' followed by a long pause. I'm immediately suspicious.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is simultaneously thunderstruck and mussel-bound
THERE WAS time enough for an apéritif outside before the first distant thumps and rumbles of thunder came too close for comfort.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes is wary of senior moments . . .
A FEW summers ago some fairly elderly friends came to swim, and a little poolside chat revealed that Moïse, 68 and counting, was afraid of losing his memory.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes keeps his finger on the Entente Cordiale pulse . . .
The newish mother-and-daughter proprietors of the village shop tell us they'd like to begin stocking typical British products in time for Christmas. For some reason they think crackers will sell...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes keeps on working . . .
THE CLOCKS went back over the last weekend in October. I used to have a small problem remembering which way they went until an American taught me a simple mnemonic: Spring Forward, Fall Back. Very useful if you speak English, but not much cop in France, I'm afraid.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes kills 99% of all known germs . . .
. . . but that still leaves 1%. 'Bonne année! Meilleurs voeux!' the local French cry, approaching you with arms outstretched, overjoyed to plant three kisses on your cheek, left-right-left, or right-left-right; there's no set order. 'Happy New Year! Best wishes!'
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Christopher Campbell-Howes knows what's good for him . . .
THERE'S A mid-morning tap at the window. We look up from the milky instant coffee we've never quite abandoned in favour of the French mini-cups, hot and strong, and we're pleased to see our doctor, Agnès, with a large cardboard box in her arms.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes leafs through the dictionary of quotations . . .
"YOU'LL BE a man, my son" wrote Kipling at the end of "If", a poem which warms the heart of some as much as it really gets up the nose of others.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes looks back 60 years . .
A REMARKABLE document has come my way, and just in time for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes looks over his shoulder . . .
A DUTCH friend gave us some Roomboter Waffeltjies, or some such name, the other day. They're a sort of papal-strength wafer soaked, steeped, clarted in rum butter. I had one with my afternoon tea (a Lapsang Souchong-Russian Caravan mix) and felt the weight of it the rest of the day and well into the night.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes loses count . . .
A DAMP January morning, mild but overcast, exactly suitable for a funeral. The marin's blowing, the wind that rolls inland from the Mediterranean bearing gifts of low pressure and blankets of heavy grey cloud that blot out the mountains behind us...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes loses his grip on reality . . .
DOWN TO the mairie for a Sunday morning meeting of the CEPDOL, an acronym so convoluted that all I can tell you about it is that the C stands for Comité. It's the village amenities committee.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes meets the neighbour from hell . . .
ONE OF the problems of living as we do in a steep-sided valley - maybe you've never had this experience? - is that the longer you live there the more reluctant you are to leave it. You wallow more and more in splendid isolation. It becomes harder and harder to believe that life, especially intelligent life, exists beyond the hills.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes misses out on the afters . . .
IN 1700 Louis XIV, the Sun King, had a bit of a windfall: the throne of Spain and all the Spanish overseas possessions fell into his lap, a tidy little legacy from the childless King of Spain.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes operates strictly for the birds . . .
ON OUR rare trips to the United Kingdom we try to leave space in the car for goodies unobtainable here in the south of France, things like Marmite, digestive biscuits, porridge oats
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Christopher Campbell-Howes pleads not guilty . . .
WHO STOLE baby Jesus? Well, it certainly wasn't me, although I was one of the last to see him there, lying in the straw - real straw, nothing but the best for our village, you understand - surrounded by Mary and Joseph, oxen, asses, sheep and all the other personages you might expect.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes pokes about in the undergrowth. . .
RUSTLE, RUSTLE. There's something there, throwing its tiny weight about in the long grass by the steps that lead up to the vegetable garden. A lizard? A mouse? A cricket? A cicada, even?
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Christopher Campbell-Howes promotes the Entente Cordiale . . .
Our département, the Hérault, is one of the most favoured by immigrants. Something like 80,000 each year. And now there's one more. Or sort of. I'll explain.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes pulls rank . . .
MAJOR SUCKER for pomp and circumstance here, I'm afraid. July 14th – la fête nationale, the anniversary of the 1789 revolutionary mob breaking into the Bastille, the Paris prison/fortress symbolic of royalist rule
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Christopher Campbell-Howes pushes the boat out . . .
I'M AFRAID my first thoughts on arriving at the hotel Bleu Marine in St Raphaël weren't very charitable. There was such an incredible noise, like a surreal fairground or railway station music.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes puts his hard hat on . . .
WE'VE GOT the builders in just now. They'd been booked in for months to repair some rotten woodwork in the eaves.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes puts on the ritz . . .
THE AMIABLE William actually managed the top hat, white tie and tails straight out of the Cole Porter song, not to mention evening cape, white silk scarf, silver-mounted stick and - wait for it - spats, for which the French is demi-guêtres, something I'm sure you've always wanted to know.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes reaches for the Ambre Solaire . . .
HERE'S SUMMER upon us, like a long-awaited favourite guest. Hooray. We've waited so long for this. We can sleep with the windows open, get the main work done in those delectable hours between dawn and coffee-time, flop out round the pool in the afternoon
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Christopher Campbell-Howes reads the political auguries . . .
THERE'S AN unexpected duel going on inside our letter-box. You wouldn't have thought it, just looking at it from the outside, but inside its placid green exterior there's goodness knows what Gallic mayhem and brouhaha going on . . .
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Christopher Campbell-Howes recruits for his choir . . .
I WAS writing last month about a bank robbery in a village not far away that succeeded brilliantly because the villains took the precaution of chaining up the gates of the local gendarmerie before they set about their night's work.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes reflects on the Last Judgement . . .
HATS OFF - chapeau! as they say here - to Cynthia St Clair, doyenne of Campbell's Diary buffs and veteran competition winner, who correctly identified the missing link between the Midi city of Albi and the 19th Century cabaret artiste Aristide Bruant and a Parisian dancer nicknamed La Goulue.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes reveals some cases of mistaken identity . . .
SCENE: Montpellier, super-sophisticate among Mediterranean cities. Only Venice and Barcelona offer any challenge.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes rings in the New Year . . .
THE HALLMARK of our village, so instantly recognisable so that you might expect to find the sign ™ beside every picture of it, is the medieval bell tower...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes scans the dawn horizon . . .
IN MANY years of writing for this most amiable of websites I've covered so many aspects of living in France with pieces about the food and wine, local restaurants, French politics and history and television, goings-on in our village, local fauna and flora, and of course the wonderful farrago and farce that often results from conducting everything in French.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes scents something fishy . . .
SUMMER AND winter, early every Wednesday and Friday evening we're interrupted in whatever we're doing by a mighty noise from somewhere down in the village, a monstrous wave of gibberish, and there's no excuse for missing M. Maigre, the travelling fishmonger!
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Christopher Campbell-Howes scrums down . . .
AS IF having ringside seats for the Tour de France as it flashed through the village a few weeks ago wasn't enough, the rugby fever sweeping through France, host nation for the World Cup, caught us up unresisting in its onward drive for the touch-line.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes sees in the New Year to the letter . . .
A is for the Association des commerçants, the village shopkeepers' association. Every New Year's Eve they lay on a dinner/dance. It's possibly the smartest social occasion in the village social year. Wow. We made up a foursome and went along. Even at our age dressing up to go out late on a winter's night is still an adventure.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes sets the Entente Cordiale to music . . .
GATWICK AIRPORT, North Terminal, Thursday afternoon: Josephine and I are waiting at the arrivals barrier. Near us taxi drivers are holding up recognition placards saying things like 'Mr Twelvetrees' and 'Memsahib Fashions', so we quickly make one inscribed 'Les Jeudistes'...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes shakes out a seasonal selection . . .
IT'S ALL the letter S this month.Slim, Slow, Sly, Scarface? Shorty, Scratch, Sad? Stan, Smith, Smog, Smoking? I could go on.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes shouts 'House!' . . .
THE OTHER Josephine appeared with A Bisto de Nas, a book by sombody called Bernard Vavassori. You'll probably recognise that A Bisto de Nas isn't French, and you might have a job deciding what language it is, if it isn't something to with gravy browning. In fact it is a dialect of French, the one spoken round Toulouse.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes signs up with the Buskers' union
AH, WHAT a dream! Abandon everything, stuff your pocket with a few quid/greenbacks, hard-earned washing dishes or pulling pints in the student union bar or on the Christmas post round, trust to Providence and P & O ferries and set off, guitar strapped to your back and lift-hitching thumb poised to cadge a ride off anyone heading for the deep South. Busking round the Continent.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes sings for his figgy pudding . . .
IT ALL took place in the greatest secrecy, hammerings and sawings behind closed doors, assemblage by night behind thick screens, so that nobody would know what the new village crèche – Christmas crib – would look like.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes sings of lavs and lavender . . .
I'D BETTER state right at the outset that this piece is very seriously flawed, because most of it's about an event that I didn't go to, have never been to and would rather have all my teeth pulled than be seen dead at or associating with its palsied aficionados. So if you want a more reasoned, balanced and unprejudiced account you'd better go somewhere else...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes slides under the eiderdown . . .
IT'S ALWAYS a pleasure to head over the hills and far away for Montpellier, the big city, to gulp down draughts from the deep well of urbanitis...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes spends an afternoon in Brittany . . .
As you were! About turn! Oh dear, oh dear! But I'd better put this into French. Can't have you leaving this column saying you haven't learnt anything neat and zingy to zap into your French conversation classes or to impress your French neighbours...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes spurns the Grecian 2000 . . .
This postcard arrived in our letter-box the other day. I looked at it briefly, wondering who'd sent us this little poem, and why he - or she - thought we might enjoy it. I turned it over to see who the poetic sender was...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes strolls down the village street . . .
You can always tell when it's going to happen. Notices appear tacked to the trees down the street, lashed to lamp-posts or stuck to the official notice boards scattered about the village.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes swaps Napoleon for Bonnie Prince Charlie . . .
Late afternoon in mid-June under a blue Languedoc sky in a quiet village are gathered a group mostly of elderly men, some with military procession flags, highly embroidered, standing besides a flagpole and a sort of altar beside a stand of bamboo, and an inscribed enamel plaque on a stand.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes takes a deep breath and swallows hard . . .
The hotel website promised a mid-February escapade romantique...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes takes a philosophical turn . . .
WE'RE IN Essex, having flown in from Carcassonne for a long weekend. We're staying for a few nights in a bed-and-breakfast. When we arrive for breakfast, there's a fellow-guest already tucking into the full English.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes takes his pick . . .
WHEN WE built our new house here in the Languedoc about six years ago we had first to demolish a cherry orchard. We had mixed feelings about this, because they were handsome trees, arranged in parallel groves on a north-facing slope.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes takes stock, twelve years on . . .
PEOPLE SOMETIMES ask what brought us to sell up in the UK and move to the south of France.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes tells a cautionary tale . . .
THINKING OF buying a house in France? A lot of people do and most manage to turn the experience into something pretty exciting. Some even write books about it.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes thinks he will overcome, some day . . .
THERE'S A first time for everything, of course. Catching measles, eating oysters or spinach, riding a bike without stabilisers, baking an uncollapsed sponge, your first unassisted length of the pool, uttering a virgin merci or bonjour on your first visit to France, not to mention some of life's richer passionate eyes-closed dynamite experiences.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes tries to keep time . . .
PLACE: The village. One of France's most beautiful. It's official. As you drive into the village there are plaques reading Un des Plus Beaux Villages de France. There are only 143 others in all France.....
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Christopher Campbell-Howes trifles with champagne . . .
I'M NOT much of a betting man, but I contacted - on line - London bookmakers William Hill the other day. I wanted to find out what odds they were giving on the French presidential elections, in which first round votes are being cast even as I type this.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes tucks in . . .
IT TAKES extra helpings of courage and ingenuity to convert an old Citroën garage into a restaurant. For many years M. Planès had run his repair shop in a solidly built and capacious shed, the sort of thing the French call un hangar, with a garage yard alongside complete with inspection pit.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes turns over some old chestnuts . . .
We were just watching what they called the 'enthronement' of some new Chevaliers on the steps of the mairie – you never know what village life is going to throw up next
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Christopher Campbell-Howes turns the clock back . . .
The Ullapudlians, if that's the word for someone who comes from Ullapool, are back!
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Christopher Campbell-Howes turns the clock back . . .
WE'VE GOT a street map of Paris all over the kitchen table this morning. No, we're not going there, except maybe in our imagination. We're looking excitedly for certain streets.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes waits for the full moon . . .
HAVE YOU ever had your hair cut in a foreign country? For some, particularly women, it's a daunting thought. If you're a woman who cherishes your crowning glory then the thought of surrendering yourself while on holiday to the local Mr Teasy-Weasy must be quite frightening.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes waves a stern finger . . .
WE'VE DECIDED to build a new house. No, we're fairly comfortable where we are, thanks, but our present place is built into such a slope, like most houses in this very up-and-down area, that we spend all day going from one level to another.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes wishes he'd never mentioned it . . .
I SHOULDN'T have mentioned it, of course. Just tempting providence. Any public hint that I was building a wall carried the seeds of its collapse. In my beginning is my end. I suppose that's true of any human project, really.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes wonders for whom the bell tolls . . .
Our village, Olargues, is officially classified Un des Plus Beaux Villages de France, which I suppose I'd better get 2011 off to a charitable start by translating for those still overcome by festive season torpor as One of the Most Beautiful Villages of France.
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Christopher Campbell-Howes wonders if his brother is his sister * . . .
Translation? What do you mean, translation? You don't need a translation. You're perfectly capable of doing it on your own...
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Christopher Campbell-Howes writes up his nature notes . . .
LA CIGALE ayant chanté Tout l'Esté Se trouva fort dépourveuë Quand la Bize fut venuë
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Christopher Campbell-Howes' African adventure, by proxy . . .
Marie-Ange, serious contender for the title of busiest woman in the village, rang up the other day to tell us about a film to be shown a couple of days later. On no account were we to miss it, she said. It was a truly remarkable record of the village expedition to Africa
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Christopher Campbell-Howes' siesta is interrupted . . .
Service d'été, they call it, summer timetable. It comes in about May and lasts until la rentrée in early September, when summer holidays end and the schools go back.
