September has turned out to be another frantically busy month, with the pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago multiplying as the weather has cooled. Others have grabbed the chance of the last of the summer sun and a little guaranteed calm now that children have returned to school. 

Well it was supposed to cool in theory, but there was another heatwave which meant lots of early starts to give breakfast to the walkers, so that the day’s 20 kilometres plus trudge could be undertaken before the full heat of the day.  And then lots of rushing around to get ready for early arrivals; pilgrims who having been out on the road since before 7am arrive in desperate need of a shower and a lie down. Mix these with the city dwellers and Brits who are here to chill and who rise near noon for breakfast and retire around midnight and there’ve been some really long days.  But Bertie and me can grab 40 winks at will and I’ve scurried off to my bedroom for a quick nap whenever there’s been a chink of an opportunity, wishing like Bert I could just flop on the floor and sleep whenever someone is not talking to me.

It’s a good job I have such willing guests and no sooner do I hear the words, ‘Can I do anything to help?’ than the speaker is roped in.  Beware the glass of wine offered when you stop to chat to me as I am washing pans and glasses after dinner.  Before long, you’ll find yourself putting down the glass and picking up a tea towel.

It made me smile when returning from an airport run to collect friends, I found a guest, who was on day three of his stay and by then a veteran in the ways of Maison Lamothe, instructing an old school friend and her husband who’d just arrived on how to lay the table for supper and where to find everything.  

Some guests do everything the Maison Lamothe way and slavishly follow instructions; others want to add their own interpretation, or sometimes take charge so that even I’m not sure exactly where we are going and hope that at some stage during the evening food shall be put on the table.   I’ve learned to go with the flow, it takes you to places better than you could even imagine.  Well sometimes.

On the first evening of my Norman friend Françoise’s visit, we were offered an additional pair of hands by an over-enthusiastic lady who began by re-laying the table.

‘Forks and spoons should be placed face upwards,’ she stated, as she marched around the table rearranging everything, ‘That is the French way.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that is the way we do it in the UK.  But I’ve changed it since it has been pointed out by several French people that I should be doing it the other way. Fork prongs facing upwards being regarded as an aggressive gesture.’

‘Well, that’s wrong,’ she declared, ‘and I should know.  I have studied hospitality at college.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, deciding hence forth that I shall alternate with face-up and face-down cutlery, determined by which way the first item falls on the table when I place down a bundle of cutlery.  Think of that old game, Jack Straws. Then at least some of the time I will be doing it right.  Whatever that is.

Although I am still going with tea-spoons for pudding, à la Française, rather than dessert-spoons like the Brits.  Now I’m used to this, I prefer it.  It does make something yummy last twice as long.

 ‘Now then,’ my helper continued, ‘What’s next?’

Before I could answer, she was already instructing Françoise in a more effective way of peeling stripes into aubergine flesh.  A normally forthright Françoise complied.

‘Is that a salad-Niçoise,’ she asked pointing to my half-finished efforts. 

‘Yes. Kind of,’ I answered rather than specifying it was actually something I’d made up based on the contents of my fridge.

As she chopped tomatoes for another dish, her eyes darted from me to Françoise. We on the other hand daren’t meet each other’s eyes.  We had already just about managed to suppress one fit of giggles.

‘Where’s the anchovies?’

‘I don’t have any.’ I replied.  I can’t stand them, so I always forget to buy them.

‘Well it’s not a salad-Niçoise then.’

‘True,’ I replied, ‘What shall we call it instead?’

If you can’t serve a salad-Niçoise without anchovies, you definitely can’t serve a sausage without Dijon mustard.  As a staple supper dish at Maison Lamothe is sausages, which incidentally is Bertie’s absolute favourite, from local and celebrated charcuterie Maison Neels, the current mustard drought is a source of much concern.  Following a disastrous harvest of mustard seeds in Canada last year, French supermarket shelves have been devoid of Dijon mustard for most of this year.  Bizarrely 80% of all the mustard seeds used to make the world-famous French mustard are imported from Canada, rather than Dijon which has been renowned for growing mustard seeds since the middle-ages.

But we have this problem covered and guests gasp as after I place down the huge platter of roasted vegetables and sausages, I reappear with a jar of Maille mustard and spoon.  Dessert-spoon that is, not tea-spoon.  Everyone is free to help themselves to a healthy dollop.  I love the gasps.  It’s as if I’ve produced Beluga caviar.

‘How’ve you managed that?’ they enquire, but if you study the jar label close enough the answer is plain, Traditional Dijon Mustard it reads in English.

Yep, whilst some Brits like a drop of French mustard with their sausages, many more wouldn’t dream of anything but brown sauce.  And so, my dear school friend, who always comes here by car, and who was tasked last year with bringing out Ottolenghi staple ingredients like sumac, black treacle and tahini, this year emptied the laden supermarket shelves of Hastings and St Leonards of their French mustard.

With Burgundy farmers having upped their mustard seed production in recent months, we are promised that things will be back to normal by early next year.  In the meantime, our little horde will keep our guests happy and yes Bertie, sausages can stay on the menu.

The French do not understand the British fetish for brown sauce which I will often proffer for them to try. As for English mustard, don’t go there. I produce my bottle of HP which can be bought, albeit at a price, in all local supermarkets; it along with Heinz baked beans, tomato soup, McVities digestive biscuits and Rose’s lime marmalade being the staple items which can be guaranteed to be found in the British section of the Foods from Around the World aisle.  I don’t know anybody that eats Rose’s lime marmalade, though they must exist I guess.  Anyway back to brown sauce tasting.  Having screwed up their faces and declared that it is not for them, they are drawn to two things on the bottle, the drawing of the Houses of Parliament and the royal warrant.

Least said about UK politicians.  Well politicians in general.  The French are no keener on their lot, than the Brits are on theirs.  And on all matters, just like the UK, they seem to be split firmly down the middle.  Fervently believing that their own view is the correct view.  The royal warrant, is a different matter altogether. 

‘Does the Queen eat this?’ they ask, in disbelief that she too could have a penchant for something so disgusting.

The French loved our Queen and the reaction to her death at the beginning of the month was overwhelming.  On the night she died, my guests who watched the announcement on TV with me, wondered if I might want them to cook supper and friends and neighbours all texted me their condolences, as if I had lost a member of my own family.  Some were a little bemused by the extent and length of the official national mourning and funeral which was discussed and debated at length on French TV, and of course in the present economic climate, the cost.

On the day of the funeral itself I had a full house – I had even had to sacrifice my own bedroom to accommodate Françoise and watching the events on pause/play did little to add to the solemnity of the occasion in between attending to chores and everyone’s needs. My sister kept ringing to ask my opinion on something I was yet to see and my guests kept asking complicated constitutional questions that would tax me even were I discussing them in English rather than my idiosyncratic French.

But for me it was one of the few times in the six years since I moved here, that I felt a little homesick for the UK and incredibly proud that she was my Queen.  I loved listening to all the little stories on the TV and radio of chance meetings, funny encounters and general kindnesses.  I have no story myself.  I never met her and only caught a glimpse of her once, as she sped past in a car.  I was a 6 year-old school girl who with my class mates had waited by the side of a roundabout in pouring rain for what seemed like hours.  As the entourage appeared we began to cheer and wave our streamers made from red, white and blue crepe paper, just like we had practiced in our classroom.  This time sadly they did not flutter and cascade, but hung limply, sticking to our hands and faces leaving behind streaks of red and blue dye.

If she was disappointed at our performance, her smile did not betray her true feelings.  Unlike our sodden faces who had been expecting crowns, diamonds and furs, not a middle-aged woman in a pastel-coloured hat and coat, that my grandma would’ve called a costume.  I could’ve seen her again on my 16^th birthday, when she visited Mansfield to open the library, but elected instead to go to the pictures with my sister to see Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in a Star is Born.  Apart from the usherettes, we were the only people in the cinema.

So no sweet little anecdote about me and the Queen.  But I did have an encounter with someone else who sadly departed this month.  Coolio.  Yes unbelievably as I was walking down Great Marlborough Street in central London having spent yet another lunch hour browsing aimlessly through my favourite shop, Liberty, I spied him sitting on the steps of the Courthouse Hotel. 

Once the Magistrates Court where Oscar Wilde, Christine Keeler, John Lennon, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Johnny Rotten all faced charges, it’s now a really posh 5- star hotel.  It was just after Coolio had appeared on Celebrity Big Brother, and having been addicted to watching his relationship with Verne Troyer from the Austin Powers films, it was one of those, don’t I know him moments. 

‘Hello Coolio,’ I said before I could check myself.

‘Hello ma’am,’ he said, the epitome of politeness.

‘I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t think my children would ever forgive me if I didn’t say hello to you.’  They obviously couldn’t be consulted on this point, although I know in reality what they would’ve said.

And so we chatted. He asked me where I was going.  Where did I work.  What did I do.  And I probably told him lots of inane things like how my son who at the time of its release had been 5 years old, had played Gangsta’s paradise over and over again in his bedroom, interspersed with his Smurfs and Madness tapes.

‘So why are you all alone?’ I asked, ‘Don’t you have an entourage or something?’

He laughed. ‘I needed a smoke.’ And he held up a cigarette between his finger and thumb and fished the packet from his pocket, offering me one.

‘Given up,’ I said proudly, ‘And it’s no smoking in there right?’

He nodded his head. I laughed. 

‘It’s the rules,’ he replied. 

Told him to enjoy and we said goodbye.

Aw gangster rapper, straight out of Compton he might have been, but on that day he was a perfect gentleman and his mother would have been proud.  Rest in peace Coolio.