Emma's Spare Tyre Tummy Award Goes Gourmet in France

Canard - The first bite is with the eyes. Then you taste with your heart and enjoy with your soul. 

The French have many words to express culinary excellence. They have cordon bleu chefs and haute cuisine. My favourite term is La Gourmandise which kinda expresses a perfection of pleasure. It takes into account the ambiance and the sheer joy of tasting a wonderful meal. 

Monk fish - too good to eat, so you savour slowly

A few days ago I had lunch in the village of Taillebourg which lies alongside the beautiful Charente river. This was not the first time I had visited "L'Auberge des Glycines". You can check out my previous post here.

Between us we tasted duck, sea bass, filets de rouget, monk fish, souffle with grand marnier and on and on. We had a pichet of the house Bordeaux red which was as full and smooth as anything I've tasted anywhere.

An experience of beauty

Clearly the guys who run this place take pride in their work. It seems to me that they have a passion to provide an experience of beauty. They sure do succeed. 

Inside there's chocolate and caramel.....

My warmest thanks to "L'Auberge des Glycines". They top the list of Emma's Spare Tyre Tummy Awards.

P.S. They have the cutest boxer dog!

Je suis français, but you can call me Winston.

Elsewhere in life, we are now in Movember. I'm gearing up the machine to draw attention to myself - this time for a good cause as a 'Mo Sista'. The local press have just been on the phone. Oooh - let's hope we sell truck loads of the Movember anthology 'Let's Hear it For the Boys'.

Emma thinx: Take the male out of Female and you find the iron lady

Euro Politics - Twilight Of The Plods.

Stark choices on the horizon for Euro politics

My last  sortie onto these pages discussed the disconnection of regular folk from the elite controllers of modern ploditics. Since then there has been a Euro election. In France and Britain the public has voted for nationalistic parties. The following day, the suited supremos of the ruling elite had a Euro conference to decide what is wrong with these people. Why are these dim peasants not grateful? Did they not save them from the economic crisis that these sheep themselves had caused by seeking selfish trash like homes on credit? They only need credit because they're losers. Why aren't these morons rich? Everyone who comes to dinner is rich.  How can the spin doctors respond? How can their millionaire sophisticated clique hold on to the power and the lifestyle they deserve?

Politics grows no crops in itself. Fair markets are a balance of toil and need

The elite are so far removed from the lives of working class people that it is useless to highlight their struggles. Truck drivers and zero hour contract fast food workers are worthless schmucks - losers. Until now, few of them had ever voted. Few leaders know anyone real beyond their own domestic servants and chauffeurs.

I am committed to a true functioning Europe of peoples. I live between England and France. In France, I am French. It is their country, their traditions, their law. In England I am English for the same reasons. In Europe we are a union of respectful peoples, not a union of a political elite and their bureaucracies. We want our own identities. I am interesting in France because of my English cuisine and my accent. Why do we have to follow these wretched federalist ambitions of the elite? Why should a bus driver in England have to sell his possessions to afford a useless politically correct training regime demanded by clever- kid office boys in Brussels? Our supreme leaders may wonder what this about? You know - they just don't get it! They just don't get it. And the truth is they can't get it. 

I want a politics and passion for working peoples to float my boat 

I've put up some pictures from my home in France. Things grow. The sky is up. The soil is down. The hand of man confronts the sunset. Do we need a federalist Europe to love the difference?





Emma Thinx: Vive la Life. Live la vie.

Winter Postcard From Saint Savinien Sur Charente

Thank you, thank you - I am alive and I can see.

I'm home in France. My dear dear Charente Maritime - I love you. You are always here waiting for me. The neighbours kiss me. Your beauty washes down through stone into river and sky. I am so lucky in my life to be here with eyes to see and a mind to abandon to you. Truly I am in awe of this place. It is a watercolour picture of the heart with a smile of church bells.

Winter sun , your fine pen of stark beauty draws a summer in my heart

To infinity and beyond those French films of avenues and kisses.

I am pausing today from the ding dong of Shannon's Law and  blog tours. I took my camera for a walk to try to fix the atmospheric light of this winter's day. Spring is nibbling at the edges now.The bare trees still expose that truth of  Nature's skeleton. As any of my readers will know, I never hold back in talking openly about love and its worldly hit-man, sex. In a way, Winter is the truth of enduring love. It is the true uncompromising hardcore when all the dressing up, tease, promise and make-up is done.  If I'm being OTT Emma let me know. Here are a few shots I wanted to share.

Beauty on this scale is emotional. I'm not one of those posh Wordsworth guys who can express the intellectual power of Nature's beauty. Even so, I'm a human bean planted in this soil to grow.

Emma thinx:  Life grows. You are life. Life is you.

Saint Savinien Sur Charente - My Home.

A beauty of still water reflects a calm of timeless stone.

My problem in France is that I'm an Anglo-Saxon. I'm a pillager, not a villager. Every time I launch a raid on the Super U supermarché there's more and more plunder. Fruits of the sea lead on to Charentais melons, Boeuf Bourginon, sorbet-citron and cheese. Soft creamy morning light caresses while deep warm evening wines seduce. Oh if only I were a famous travel writer I could claim it was all research! As it is I'm a penniless recidivist hedonist bloggerist with no excuses.

Shine a light and I will follow

A couple of nights ago I trotted out with my camera to capture something of the mellow soft late summer joy of my town. Really, it's not a place - it's an emotion, a passion and the thrill of calm. I took some shots. Voila!

Soon my sense of guilt and over indulgence gave way to philosophical reflection. I have been working on a novel. My man

You rays me up..........

has been working on the leaking roof. Neighbours have stopped and shrugged at the unpredictability  of roof tiles, love and fate. Toasts have been drunk to all of them. The air is feathered with swallows. The raised brow of autumn patiently indulges the unacknowledged end of youth. Still the noon is warm. I close my eyes and bask with the lizards. 

God can be gaudy.

Emma Thinx: It takes a warm blooded creature to act in cold blood.  (Click here to tweet this!)