These are a truly French biscuit. They’re made by LU, a company that goes back to 1846 and which today is owned by Nabisco, which in turn is owned by Kraft. But back then, in Nantes, it consisted of husband and wife team Jean-Romain Lefèvre and Pauline-Isabelle Utile. I bet you can see where LU comes from now!

Originally they made fancy biscuits which they packaged nicely and sold to be given as gifts. Over the years as the company passed down through the generations, it morphed into large-scale biscuit production.

LU had an astute eye for advertising, commissioning top artists of the day to paint pictures that they could use as publicity. One of the most famous of these is Firmin Bouisset’s Petit Écolier (little schoolboy), which he created in 1897. It’s a painting of his own son eating a petit beurre biscuit, made, of course, by LU.

However, it wasn’t until 1983 that the Petit Écolier biscuit arrived on the scene. This is a petit beurre biscuit topped by a slab of chocolate that has the famous painting moulded onto it. It comes in milk, white, dark and extra dark chocolate, all equally delicious. They’re a very popular after school nibble for hungry kids off the school bus. There are plenty of cheaper imitations of these biscuits, but none of them have the little schoolboy picture on.

Ruadhri had a couple today after we came back from playing and ice trucking on the frozen lake. (No school today since the school buses were all cancelled again because of the weather.) We used the sledge to haul wood across from Ragondin Island over to the far bank where we can collect it with the tractor. Here’s Ruadhri with a load.

We messed around too, taking it in turns to tow each other. Here’s Rors pulling me! He deserved his Petit Écoliers after that!

A slightly snowy scene

OK, Snow White first. The first proper snow of this winter has started to fall. It’s rather slushy snow and I can’t see it hanging round long, but at least it’s snow. Rors is delighted, the youngest cats are puzzled, since it’s the first they’ve seen, and the chickens are decidedly unimpressed. They don’t like snow. I’m not fussed either way. So long as I can get a top-up food shop this afternoon and Chris can get back safely from his pig-keeping course tonight, then I don’t mind being snowed in for a while after that. We’ve come to expect that here in Creuse, at least for a week or so each year.

Now the Seven Arts. It’s the annual BD (comic book) festival at Angoulême this week. This is a massive event. Bandes dessinées (or bédés) are big business in France, bringing in around 350 million euros to publishers every year. (I’ve written a bit more about this on my Books Are Cool blog here.)

BDs are reckoned to be the neuvième art (ninth art). I’d heard cinema referred to as the septième art (seventh art) a few times but not been interested enough to find out more I’m ashamed to say. However, now that there’s a ninth one, it’s definitely time.

Poster for BD festival

Étienne Souriau, a French philosopher and aesthete who lived from 1892 to 1979, came up with the idea of the Seven Arts in 1969. He wrote about it in his famous book La Correspondance des arts, Eléments d’esthétique comparée. So what are they?

1. Sculpture and architecture

2. Drawing

3. Painting

4. Music

5. Dance and pantomime

6. Writing

7. Cinema.

Seven seemed to him quite enough at the time, and it’s as good a number as any. It’s popular for groups of things after all – the seven seas, seven colours of the rainbow, seven wonders of the world, seven days of the week, for example, not forgetting the seven odd socks in Ruadhri’s drawer. But we’re now up to eleven arts. Sauriou’s list has been augmented with:

8. Television (including radio and photography)

9. BDs

10. Bizarrely video games and model railways are lumped together, and

11. Multimedia.

To become an official member of the list, a particular art form has to stand the test of time and be popular with the public. However, I haven’t managed to find out who the bureaucrat officially charged with keeping the art list up to date is. There’s bound to be one somewhere.

It’s an interesting idea to classify the arts, and exemplifies the French need to categorise everything, but doesn’t seem to serve much practical purpose other than to give me something to blog about!

And a final non-related photo. Here’s Rors being given his yellow-white belt at judo last night after passing his grading.

Now, you know how those 5 minute jobs never turn out to be 5 minute jobs? Today Chris wanted to charge up the Fiat’s battery. He’s heading off on a pig-keeping course tomorrow and will be away overnight and wanted to make sure my slightly unreliable car would be reliable enough to do the running around for a couple of days.

There used to be a handle there!

We went out to do the deed.

“Pop the hood,” says Chris.

So I felt for where I thought the handle was, but it wasn’t. Clearly I was having a premature senior moment, as they say. I got down on my knees outside on the gravel and hunted round the appropriate area of the car for the dratted thing.

By now, Chris was there, rolling his eyes and no doubt thinking unflattering thoughts about women in general and wives in particular.

But he couldn’t find it either. Anywhere. We looked at each other blankly. This was plain weird.

Since all else had failed, it was time to read the instructions. I got out the car manual. A very vague picture showed where the handle was meant to be. We finally hunted down the spot – and it was exactly where I’d first groped for the handle. There was now just a hole.

More trim removed - poor old car

The last time the bonnet had been seen open was when I’d collected the Fiat from the auto-contrôle centre. My car gets light usage so I hadn’t needed to go under the hood to top anything up since then. Now, the handle was there when the car went in for its test since we’d used it the day before. I’m guessing it wasn’t there when it came out. We suspect Monsieur was a bit heavy handed with my ageing car and pulled it off. I occasionally knock or pull things off the cars but I always own up, and I didn’t do it in this case. After 25 years of marriage I know how to get round Chris so he doesn’t stay mad for long! So I didn’t do it and neither of my two shiftless eldest kids have yet learnt to drive (short pause while I tear my hair out) so it wasn’t them. And I don’t think animals were involved.

It had to be Monsieur so it was presumably guilt that made him pass my car! I just wish he’d told us he’d had the mishap. We’d have understood that it was an accident. It would have meant that we could have got it fixed in a relaxed fashion and not in the rain. Gallic sigh.

Recharging at last

Anyway, we were stuck. We needed to open the bonnet but it looked like an impossible task. So we resorted to the Internet. Thanks to ShadyDude and a few other similarly named folks on some dodgy car-breaking-into websites, we got hints on what to do and finally got the bonnet open by alternative means. It involved Chris having to peel away yet more of the plastic trim inside my car (there’s not all that much left any more) and using pliers to move the mechanism that Heavy Handed CT guy had broken the handle off. But we did it, the battery is charged and my beloved little Stilo is back on the road.

I do like that car – it’s small, sleek, slightly scuffed and shabby since it’s seen better days and only prone to the occasional breakdown. It’s me in car form!

So Les Fragnes is finally in full winter mode. The lakes have almost completely frozen over, well behind schedule. Most years I do my Christmas Eve end-to-end, death-defying walk on the big lake, but not in 2011.

The duck pond, recently refilled by November’s rain after drying out in the summer, was completely frozen …

… until Ruadhri got to work on it!

Rors seems to have been programmed since birth to break any ice he comes into contact with.

And the water butts were iced up, this one able to withstand Roly Poly’s considerable weight!

There was a heavy frost this morning. These crazy daffodils came up far too early. I hope they’ll survive the cold OK.

Our wood supply is holding up well, thank goodness.

The llamas, alpacas and sheep don’t even notice the cold. In fact, it’s their favourite kind of weather. The chickens aren’t so happy with it, but are coping. And we’ve tucked the guinea pigs up nice and warmly in their cages with bubble wrap round the sides and old coats over the top to keep the draughts out. Bunny, who roams free, seems to have hunkered down in the hay barn for the moment.

I don’t mind the cold. I prefer it to the wet, dismal (i.e. Irish) weather that we’ve had to now. Of course, if it stays like this for another six weeks and the pipes start freezing I may change my tune! At the moment it’s possible to break the ice on the animals’ water buckets and butts, but give it a few more subzero days and they’ll be solid. It’ll be in and out with a kettleful of boiling water than.

But for the time being, I like winter.

Cantal (15) is one of the three départements that make up the Auvergne (the other two are Allier (03) and Puy de Dôme (63)). It’s one of my favourite parts of France. We had a great holiday near St Flour when Rors was a toddler, and the other two about 9 and 11 or so. We were staying in the most spartan gîte we’d ever come across. It had electricity and running water but those were pretty much the only modern conveniences! There wasn’t a kettle or a tin opener or any cups bigger than thimbles. We hit the hypermarché to put that to rights. It was a rather gloomy old house with a menacing stuffed squirrel on a shelf as you went upstairs.

St Flour

We met some great people. The Cantalais are very friendly. Chris and Benj had gone fishing so I took the two little ones for a bike ride. It was blazing sunshine when we set out but a thunderstorm loomed out of nowhere so we took shelter in a village shop, since we were in flimsy cotton clothes and it was lashing. I asked the assistant if it was OK for us to hang around there until the deluge stopped. But it went on and on and on, so the shopkeeper offered to run us home and said we could put our bikes in the storeroom to keep them safe till we came back for them. And she was as good as her word.

There was an elderly farming couple in the tiny hamlet of Farges, where the gîte was. They made cheese and invited us down to watch the process one afternoon. Then another time Madam la Fermière arrived on the doorstep with all the ingredients to show me how to make the perfect truffade, Cantal style without ham but with extra cholesterol. It was delicious. So although the landscape is bleak and rugged, I always think of Cantal as a warm place.

Anyway, to the cheese.

Now a quick test. Can you remember from last Tuesday which family of cheeses Cantal falls into? It’s group 4, pressed cheeses or fromages à pâte pressée. Cantal is a very old cheese and dates back to the Gauls. Henri de La Ferté-Senneterre, a marshall from the Auvergne, introduced the cheese to Louis XIV, or possibly the other way round, and that’s what made it famous. There are two types – Cantal fermier which is made from raw milk, lait cru, and Cantal laitier, the mass market version made from pasteurised milk. The milk in either form comes from Salers cows, but only when they’re being fed on hay. When the cows are grazing on grass in the summer months, then their milk is turned into Salers cheese. Now I bet you didn’t know that, did you! And Salers cows really know how to do horns.

The hard cheese is made into one foot wide cyclinders and aged for anything between 1 to 6 months. It gets a different label according to how long it has aged, namely: Cantal jeune (aged 1-2 months), Cantal entre-deux or Cantal doré (aged 2-6 months), and Cantal vieux (aged more than 6 months). Apparently a lump of Cantal vieux will keep for eighteen months!

Tastewise it reminds me very much of Cheddar. It gets stronger as it gets older, so the Cantal jeune is very milky and creamy, whereas the indestructible Cantal vieux is described as ‘vigorous’. I’m not one for strong cheese so I’ve tended to steer clear of it, but plenty of people do enjoy it. It has a 45% fat content and makes good fondues and gratins.  But I love a chunk with baguette and chutney, and it goes very nicely with fruit cake too.

So another interesting and tasty cheese to try.

It’s a winner though, and most years raises upwards of 3.5 million euros. The money is put to excellent use. Altogether, over the years 6,650 child and adolescent-centred projects in 615 hospitals in 443 towns have been funded by the cash raised this way, including providing equipment, doing up and redecorating numerous wards, playrooms and nurseries, and establishing daycare centres and also 50 maisons des adolescents – places where troubled teenagers can find a sympathetic ear.

The foundation’s president is Bernadette Chirac who has bravely been promoting the event on TV and radio these last few days. Inevitably she’s faced questioned on her husband’s activities (he was recently handed a 2 years suspended prison sentence for misdemeanors arising in the early 1990s when he was Maire of Paris, in case you hadn’t heard), but she’s managed to stay focused on promoting Pièces Jaunes. Good for her, it must have been tough.

There are two high-profile parrains (sponsors/promoters) – singer and comedienne Lorie and footballer Christian Karembeu. Their job is to help publicise the campaign and get the kids on board.

There’s a website here and it has some fun pages for kids here.

As we know, cigarette cartons have health warnings, but the Pièces Jaunes money box goes one better and carries a morality warning, informing its owner that they are not to ask for money on the street! However, I imagine every year some overenthusiastic youngsters are to be found brandishing them at strangers. What harm.

I love crafts so I’m always excited to try something new in the make and do line. For my latest venture I’ve gone French and seen what I can create with paper napkins (serviettes). This craft, not surprisingly, is known as serviettage.

Now, French people love their napkins. No matter how small, every little general store will have some pretty ones tucked away somewhere. Back in Ireland you could only ever get plain ones, and often they were only rolled out on special occasions. But all year round in France you can find a huge variety of fancy napkins. And the reason is mainly because of their role in brico (make and do), and not because les français are particularly messy eaters.

Skilful serviettagistes can create fantastic, delicate examples of découpage (cutting out) using napkins. See the examples on this website for example.

But anyone can have a go at being creative with 3-ply paper products. I was inspired by these napkin-adorned Christmas decorations that I picked up at Nouzerines Marché de Noël in 2010. (As you see, it’s take me a little while to work my way round to actually wielding glue and paper.)

So, let’s get started. You need napkins, obviously, and also a PVA type glue, paintbrush and something to decorate. I’ve gone with large tin cans which will become plant holders. However, large shells, small glass jars, wooden bangles, notebooks – you can choose pretty much anything and everything to decorate.

Here’s the glue I’m using, although I’m not convinced it’s the optimum stuff. I’m mixing it with an equal amount of water. (Do you get the pun in the name? Quelyd = Quelle idée (what a great idea!) pronunciation wise.) It’s not often you come across witty glue!

I scrubbed and dried my tins out and then cut up the serviettes into small, unevenly shaped pieces. I sloshed a good coating of my glue mix over a small area of the tin, laid on a piece of napkin and then coated that with more glue mix.

And so on and so forth, until the whole tin was covered. Ideally it will have a shiny veneer when the glue dries, but it has to be said my first effort didn’t, which is why I think I may have the incorrect colle (glue). However, it looks very pretty and will brighten up the house in a suitably French way.

It’s a quick and easy craft, and a relatively low budget one, that you really can’t go wrong with. I found it very relaxing and it gave me a real sense of achievement when I’d finished, even though my efforts were on the humble side.

I thoroughly recommend it.

My current project drying

This site gives you the complete know-how in French. English ones here.

I thought I’d leave you with a poem. I haven’t written many new year poems, in fact, only one which I wrote for 2000 and which has the millennium bug as its theme. Anyway, twelve years later, here it is again. Enjoy!

New Year Millennium Bugs

Midnight bells rang

With a mighty clang,

The crowd all gave a shout.

So no one saw

The start of the war

As the bugs came crawling out.

Some were big

And some were tiny

Some were dull

And some were shiny.

They licked their lips

And ate the chips

(Computer chips I mean),

Computers died

To every side —

It was a ghastly scene.

Some were fat

And some were thin

Some looked grumpy

While some wore a grin.

So all about

The lights went out,

Everything stopped working.

People were scared

And unprepared

For this menace that was lurking.

Some had sisters

And some had brothers,

Some looked evil

And so did the others!

No-one knew

Quite what to do,

They were panicking and stumbling,

While all around

There came the sound

Of civilisation crumbling.

Some had big teeth,

Some had small,

Quite a lot had

No teeth at all.

“I told you so!

Did you listen? No!”

Someone was heard to shriek.

“I warned that bugs

Would come like thugs.

And it’s happening as I speak.”

Some were blue

And some were black.

Some had no front

And some had no back.

“Let’s make a stand

And save our land

Before it’s all destroyed.

I have a plan

So if you can

Help me get it deployed.”

Some were stripey

And some had spots,

Some just a few

But others lots.

“My research shows

That bugs like those

Shrivel up in salty water.

So lay lines of PCs

That reach to the sea

And we’ll save our sons and daughters.”

Some were ugly

Some were cute

But every one

Was a nasty brute.

The trap was laid

And everyone prayed

That this crazy idea was right.

Now they had to wait.

Would the bugs take the bait?

They held their breath all night.

Some moved slowly

On their bellies

A couple splashed

Around in wellies.

The light of dawn

Lit up the morn

With a lovely shade of peach.

A fine sight met the eyes —

No, not the sunrise —

All the bugs were on the beach!

Some were smooth

And some were crinkly,

Some were very, 

Very wrinkly.

Their evil work done

The warmth of the sun

Made the bugs all go to sleep.

As they snored and sighed

The incoming tide

Upon them began to creep.

Some were bristly

Some were bald

And all of them just

A few hours old.

At the touch of the sea

Each buggy body

Suddenly shrivelled and vanished,

As the last disappeared

The crowd all cheered.

The Millennium bugs had been banished!

Some had whimpered

Some had sighed

Some had popped

As they had died.

But in a PC

Very far from the sea

Two bugs were waking late.

They happened to be

A he and a she —

Now that doesn’t sound too great.

He was cunning

She was mean,

He was hungry,

She was lean.

They looked for their others,

Friends, sisters and brothers,

But sadly couldn’t see any of ‘em.

“No matter,” they said,

“We’ll have babies instead

And wait till the next millennium!”

The résidences were decidedly unfestive. There was just this notice up from the caretakers wishing everyone a happy Christmas. Could try harder, I think!

We left him unpacking and busily texting friends to see who was around and headed into Limoges. The Christmas markets were advertised as still going on, and both of us were keen to do some ice-skating. I’d seen the rink when we’d walked into the city on the day we picked Benj up.

I got us a bit lost getting to the Place de la République, but eventually we found it. Our detour did at least mean that we passed these three Christmas ragondins (coypus) outside a bar. Well, that’s what I think they were!

The ice rink was nice and quiet, so we hurried over. There was only one counter where a guy was handing out skates, so I went over to pay him to hire some. “C’est gratuit,” he told me. Mega!

We put our skates on and wobbled across the rubber matting to the ice. I launched first. Now Caiti and I are both nifty little skaters, but today something was wrong. I was making the right skating motions, but all that was happening was that my feet were slipping to the side and I was only inching forward.

I was puzzled. It was the same puzzlement I felt the time I dropped one-year-old Rors into the swimming pool, without first inserting the floats into the special compartments in his Polyotter swimsuit. I just couldn’t understand why he plummeted to the bottom of the pool instead of bobbing around on the surface waiting for me to slip into the water beside him. Luckily I realised what the problem was very quickly and was able to retrieve my beloved infant before anything drastic happened. He was surprised but none the worse for wear!

Anyway, it was another of those ‘what the heck’s happening’ moments. Surely I hadn’t forgotten how to skate in the space of a year, or become so decrepit that I no longer had the strength to do it? I glanced at Caiti who was frowning in a perplexed way. We floundered over to the railing and compared experiences. Neither of us could stop our feet from sliding sideways all the time. And then Caiti spotted that we weren’t skating on ice. We were skating on cold plastic.

Can you see the squares?

It’s true! It was an artificial skating rink, and sadly it was hopeless. Possibly if we’d had top notch skates rather than poor old battered communal ones we might have managed to swish semi-gracefully across the ice. But we didn’t. We battled against the odds for half an hour before we gave up, very disappointed. Win some, lose some. We’ll have to hit the proper ice rink in Limoges some time.

Caiti struggling

Anyway, we’d worked up an appetite for chips and we had nice, rosy cheeks so it wasn’t all bad! This pigeon had his lunch next to us.

All the Christmassy market stalls had gone, which was a shame since I’d been planning a long, slow browse around them with Caiti, who loves to shop. So we got back to Benj’s flat rather earlier than planned. We went through the Jardin d’Orsaywhere the largest amphitheatre in Gaul used to stand.

We said our goodbyes to Benj and left the big city behind for the time being. But we’ll be back before too much longer I imagine.

It took us five hours to do it. Be impressed! But luckily I’d made a hearty picnic to keep us going.

We had plenty of noms on the way round!

Caiti, who is a Noz addict (that’s a chain of discount stores in France) had brought along some self-heating hot chocolate. I took a pic of the pot after we got home. It actually seemed to contain more heating chemicals in the bottom of the pot than chocolate to heat up in the top, but it was very welcome and warming on a cold, winter’s day. Sadly I fear it is horrendously un-ecofriendly, even if it’s ingenious.

We made some mistakes in our cache hunting to start with, but to be fair, a lot of the clues were tree-related and the caches were largely hidden in and around a forest! Also, one of the caches wasn’t where it should have been, and as you can seen, has been well chewed by something small and furry who had also taken it for quite a long drag!

However, we Daggs are nothing if not determined so we stuck with the programme and it all came together. Even if it hadn’t, we’d have enjoyed ourselves since we love the Bois du Lassoux where the activity was based. We’ve trekked the llamas there in the past, but haven’t been for quite a while. The kids love the zipwire. Here are the two eldest having a go, first Ben …

… and then Caits.

Rors was still feeling a little travel sick after the windy drive to the Bois and didn’t fancy trying it out this time round.

I love this suspension bridge. It takes one car at a time, but even when a person walks over it, it vibrates and rumbles.

For the first time we visited the Chapelle de Ste Radegonde. (We call her St Ragondin – we have an ongoing battle with ragondins (coypus) in our lakes.) This is a beautiful medieval chapel set on a hillside above what’s now a reservoir. It, and a small graveyard, are all that’s left of a village, le Châtillon d’Entraigues, which was established in the eleventh century and inhabited until the 1800s.

Ste Radegonde is the patron saint of anything to do with running water, tempests and shipwrecks. Legend has it that when there’s a thunderstorm you should run to her chapel and ring the bell, and that will make the storm abate. I’m sure it’s good advice, but it’s a bit far from Nouzerines! Pilgrims to the chapel also believed that they could see if things were going to go well or otherwise for them by the way the light played on the face of the Saint’s statue.

The statue isn’t there any more but there is this intriguing wooden sculpture.

Ste Radegonde’s chapel is well worth a visit. It’s in a stunning location and is a fascinating building.

Back to our geocaching. The final cache contained a log to sign – but again, we had no pen. Duh. I’d had one in the car ready to put in the rucksack, but where it went to, heaven knows. So we’ll have to redo the trail sometime and sign it. There were a few items to select from as a momento. We took one and replaced it, as is the custom. We also took this. It’s a geocoin, or travel bug. It moves from cache to cache with the mission to travel around Europe. This one is ‘snixx’ and has the ambition of making it to Australia. So, we have two weeks in which to move snixx to another cache for someone else to find and move on. We’ve decided we’d better head southwards for our next geocaching session tomorrow to get snixx going in the right direction! Everyone who finds it in logs this info in on the geocache.com website. That’s where you find all the info on where the various caches are, register ones you’ve introduced, sign up your own geocaching team – we’re team Llamagems –  and find out all about geocaching.

Caiti takes five

We’ll be investing in a couple of geocoins to put in caches we create for other geocachers to move around Europe. I think it’s a brilliant idea.