When I woke the next morning, I showered, dressed and went out onto the veranda. Soon I was tucking into fresh baguette, butter, marmalade, coffee and fresh orange juice. When I say fresh orange juice, it was actually diluted frozen concentrate from Florida, which was about as close to fresh as you could get in those days, unless you had access to your own personal orange tree. The garden had many interesting plants and shrubs, including some fruit trees, but there were no oranges.
It was about 8:00am the sun was bright, it was not yet hot, though warm enough for the early morning dew to be evaporating to create a thin heat haze. The Mediterranean Sea twinkled sapphire blue in the distance.
After breakfast the rather youthful gardener and less youthful cleaner arrived. I was delegated as linguist and spent half an hour with the gardener, being told about the plants, and in particular to make sure we were all careful not to prick ourselves on the arrow roots. These large grey, green fleshy plants appeared to be some kind of cactus, but each broad spear like leaf had a sharp purple coloured point, which was hard and apart from being able to make a nasty cut or gash also apparently contained some unpleasant poison.
Back inside the villa I observed a couple of things that looked like black worms making their way across the white living room wall. I carefully removed one to discover it had hundreds of tiny legs. Father told me it was a millipede.
On our first day in the south, still tired from the long journey of the previous days, we did very little. In the morning we made a short shopping trip into Grasse for some fresh produce from outdoor market stalls. After watching some locals playing boules in a tree shaded car park we were bought a set of water filled, brightly coloured plastic boules from a small toy shop. When we got back to the villa we set about our own game. Once bored of that we tried to catch some of the numerous cicadas which were making their distinctive noise all over the garden. The cigadas are rather like large grass hoppers, but have wings which enable them to glide through the air once they have launched themselves with their powerful legs. Some of the cicadas had red wings, others blue ones.
I spotted a smallish beetle lying on it’s back, struggling to right itself. Feeling like a good Samaritan, I gently flipped it back onto it’s legs. It attempted to walk, but had the co-ordination of a teetotaller who had unwittingly drunk a bottle of 80% Vodka. A few seconds later it was on it’s back again, struggling furiously. After several failed attempts to help it, I decided to give it a chance to find it’s wings. I carried to the edge of the veranda, behind which was a vertical drop of more than 20 feet, followed by steeply sloping mountainside. I launched the unbalanced insect far out and was gratified to see it find it’s wings and start to fly. The way it buzzed up and down in undulating flight, I could almost imagine the joy it was feeling at it’s new found sense of balance. Seconds later though, a swooping starling plucked the hapless insect out of the air mid flight. The last I saw of my beetle friend, was a couple of wiggling legs protruding from the sides of the bird’s beak. So much for good deeds.
In the afternoon we explored the steeply sloping pine forest on the mountainside behind the villa. The forest floor was, as you might expect covered in brown and decaying pine needles. There were also some nice pine cones, which we collected. Not far from the villa we found the mouth of a cave, but it was very dark inside and since we did not have a torch, we did not explore it further.
Near the cave on the forest floor we came across a large white puff ball mushroom. When I say large, it was about the size of a large loaf of supermarket bread. This was gently lifted from it’s home and added to our bounty of pine cones.
In the evening once darkness had fallen we spotted fireflies darting through the night air. We captured some of these and incarcerated them in an empty jam jar. Eventually we had about twenty, but although our firefly lamp was lovely to look at, there was not quite enough light to read a book by. So the lid was removed and the little dots of light dispersed themselves back into the garden.
Breakfast the next morning was almost English style. Eggs, bacon and fried bread. Except we didn’t have fried bread. Instead the puff ball mushroom that we had collected the previous day, had been washed and cut into slices, just like a loaf of bread. These slices were then fried and served with the eggs and bacon. The texture was interesting, being more spongy than normal button mushrooms. Of course there was a mushroom flavour, albeit a very mild one.
That day and during those which followed we visited various seaside destinations including Cannes, Nice, Antibes and Monaco. We usually spent a few hours on the beach where we also ate our picnic lunches.
Even in those days the summer traffic could be heavy and short journeys were no fun in a car with no air-conditioning.
One day we discovered a nice beach at Juan les-Pins, which was to become our favourite. As well as sand there were some rocks, which made snorkelling more interesting. Anyone who discovered this beach tended to return day after day and we soon made friends with other similarly aged teenagers. One regular visitor was a rather slim, tanned looking Frenchman who must have been in his late forties or early fifties. He wore what in those days were considered to be very brief swimming trunks, in which he housed what could easily have been mistaken for a banana. My parents christened him ‘Cucumber Joe’.
Juan Les Pins – Mid 1960s
I donned my face mask and snorkel and swam over to the rocky area. Under a seaweed festooned overhang I spotted my first octopus. It was not quite like the one in 20,000 leagues under the sea, this one being only about nine inches from the top of it’s head to the tips of it’s tentacles. But despite it’s diminutive size I did not go too near it, in case it had a much larger, protective mother lurking nearby. I found this underwater world fascinating, but even in the warm Mediterranean water, I eventually began to feel cold, so I returned to the beach to dry out and warm up.
Soon after that, father returned to the shore with a black spikey sea urchin. Watching our cautious inspection of the prickly animal, Cucumber Joe who had been sunning himself nearby, wandered over and asked what our intentions were for the urchin.
The plan had been to return it to the sea, but at his request it was gifted to him. He then sat down and started plucking out the black spikes one by one. As soon as a spike was plucked, he sucked it’s blunt end, before discarding it on the sand. I still have no idea what sea urchin spikes taste like, because we didn’t find anymore, but I have a strong suspicion that sea urchin spikes are a powerful aphrodisiac.
Sadly when we returned to Juan Les Pins a few years later, we couldn’t locate this beach. Where we thought it had been there was now a Marina. Of course it could just have been down to mother’s map reading skills.
About midway through our holiday we were all suffering from peeling skin, due to too much sun. It was decided we should spend a couple of days exploring inland, giving beach life a rest.
Not far from Grasse are the Gorges du Loup. This is a stunningly picturesque area, the Gorges being cut deeply into the mountains. Here we stopped at a restaurant near a waterfall, which specialised in serving fresh trout. The trout were served grilled with almonds, boiled new potatoes and haricots vert, quite plain but very delicious, especially with the few sips of white wine, which our parents allowed us. The only disappointment with this little excursion was our failure to spot any wolves.
Of course we could not stay in Grasse without visiting a perfume factory or two such as Molinard. Galimard or Fragonard. The smell in these places was unexpectedly disgusting.
As we toured the factories, the production process was explained. Fresh flowers were laid out on large trays of rendered animal fat, which absorbed the scent from the petals. The flowers were changed daily. In some cases this went on for weeks, in other cases for years.
The duration of this part of the production and the rarity of the flowers used, was the main criteria which dictated how expensive the resulting perfume would be. The foul smell, it was explained, was on account of so much fat, which ranged in odour from being merely rancid, to being totally fetid for the more costly perfumes.
Eventually the fat was dissolved in heated alcohol and most of the fragrance was transferred. The scent-laden alcohol was then separated from the fat to become the main ingredient for the perfumes.
The separated fat, which still contained some residual scent, was then apparently used for making soap. Either my concentration must have lapsed for a few minutes or a few trade secrets were withheld, because I’m sure this must be only part of the process. I can’t really see how rubbing scented fat into ones skin, would be a particularly cleansing experience.
Apart from the trout with almonds and the puff ball mentioned earlier, this holiday was not particularly rich in culinary high points. Of course the baguettes and associated charcuteries and cheeses we took on our picnics and ate at the villa, were always delicious.
One meal was particularly memorable by being unmemorable as far as the food was concerned. The venue was the roadside terrace restaurant attached to a hotel in Grasse. We ordered salad, bifteck, red wine and Vichy water.
While waiting for the food to arrive we witnessed a traffic fracas at a nearby road junction. An old Citroen had broken down at the intersection and was blocking other cars. The owner was having no luck getting his car to start. Eventually a gendarme approached him. I’ve no idea what he said to the gendarme, but it cannot have been very polite. Within a few seconds the gendarme had pulled out his gun and ordered the driver out of his car. The driver then single handed pushed the car over the junction to a parking bay, at gunpoint. After witnessing that, it took me many years not to quake in my shoes every time I saw a gendarme.
The salad and the bifteck eventually arrived. Frankly it was visually disappointing. The salad consisted of a few sliced, none too ripe tomatoes and some chopped onion. The bifteck was very thin and from it’s texture and lack of fat, led us to suspect it might have been horse rather than beef. The food’s bland appearance accurately represented it’s taste.
The meal was rounded off with a rather tired, spongy crème caramel. However the after dinner coffee was great.
Two days before leaving Grasse for our return journey to England, we decided to drive over the nearby border into Italy, just so we could say we’d been there.
At the border we showed our passports and then drove just a few hundred meters to Ventimiglia, where we stopped for lunch. Here we ate spaghetti Bolognaise and drank Chianti wine before driving the few hundred metres back to France.
During our holiday we had discovered that our plastic boules could double up as very effective water bombs. If lobbed from a great height onto the concrete veranda of the villa, they would burst showering all nearby with their watery contents. Unfortunately they could only be used once for this purpose and thereafter were not effective as boules. It did not take long for the whole set to be destroyed.
Before our departure, the parents parted with a thick wad of notes of various denominations of francs, for a proper metal set of boules. These were bought from a hardware shop in Grasse and were packed into the car along with the food provisions for the journey home.
In the hope of cutting the journey time we planned to skirt round the edge of the Alps. First we headed west to Avignon, where we stopped on the bridge and sung ‘Sur le pont d’……..’. It was during this stop that Dick’s old thumbnail decided it was time for he and it to part company. He watched it wistfully as it tumbled into the river Rhone.
Some hours later we encountered heavy traffic at Lyon which slowed our progress and it was early evening by the time we approached Macon. Enthusiasm for pitching the tent and again eating mother’s calor gas fare was very low.
We turned off the main road and soon found an old farmhouse which offered accommodation and a meal for a reasonable price. They had vacancies and after cleaning ourselves up in our bedrooms, we soon found ourselves sitting out on a pleasant lawn, at one of about half a dozen tables, each of which sported a Martini parasol.
A couple of other tourist families occupied nearby tables and we settled down to a relaxing drink and meal. The meal itself was real farmer’s fare. The most surprising dish was a tureen of soup, which looked like it was hot creamy milk with pieces of torn up baguette floating in it. It was visually rather unappetizing. However it turned out to be delicious and was subtly flavoured with garlic and onion.
The next morning after breakfast we departed early. Apart from stopping to fill up with petrol and take a couple of comfort breaks, we pressed on. We eventually reached Dunkirk in the late evening, but in time to catch the last ferry back to Dover.
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