Put a cork in it!

Some of you might remember my mentioning cork trees near Collioure, and just what a revelation it was to me see such things and to realise how sustainable they really how – it takes around five years from one bark harvest until the tree is ready to be harvested again.

Well, thanks to more of this lovely social media, we can all find out more about cork and why it's environmentally sound and sustainable here.

So proper corks are better than the plastic ones – and not just because they're easier to actually get off your corkscrew after you've pulled them.

And there's even a chance to win a trip to Portugal's oak cork forests next year – don't say I never give you anything!

Unexpected days in the kitchen

If you had told me, 10 years ago, that I would be happily spending a huge chunk of my weekend in the kitchen, you’d have been treated with a substantial dose of somewhat skeptical laughter.

After all, I remember with some embarrassment, the first meal that I ever cooked for The Other Half – re-formed, frozen lamb 'steaks', tinned potatoes and some other tinned veg. It's light years away.

Yet it’s 6.32pm as I write these words, and I’ve spent a great deal of the day involved with food – and certainly not because I have to.

The weather forecast for the weekend was for something like a final burst of summer. Well, it’s been mild and a little humid, but still cloudy. Not my idea of summer.

But after being sent home with what (fortunately) turned out to be a 24-hour bug on Thursday afternoon, I spent part of yesterday musing over fodder for the following days.

The weather was the complicating factor: once you’ve got in the mood for autumn, it’s not obviously easy to click back into lighter dishes. That said, though, big casseroles were clearly out.

In the event, for today I decided to do a leek and potato soup for lunch (there’s plenty left for tomorrow too). One little first to this: I seasoned using some celery salt from my friend George, which arrived the other day with two pots of spicy grape and apricot mustard, which I have yet to try.

With one outlet already established in Wigan – the delightful Coven café – this is a really new and exciting food venture.

I don’t know whether George would have imagined, 10 years ago, that he’d be making speciality tracklements now, any more than I’d have expected to have spent a day happily in the kitchen – and then be sitting down to write about it! C'est la vie, as the French say – although I don’t think that either of us would consider these as negative developments.

Anyway, for evening, I bought a bit of salmon from Vicki to poach in white wine, with bay leaves and peppercorns, to be served with crushed, roasted garlic potatoes on the side. The first ‘daring’ thing came with my decision to get some beetroot and try roasting that.

Used to pickled beetroot with salads, I’ve never really eaten them any other way. Unlike TV cook Nigella Lawson, who once did a whole half-hour programme on beetroot recipes wearing a white denim suit, I was rather scruffier – and I used latex gloves when I was peeling the beets.

Peeled, they were like red and pink marble; beautiful things. They were seasoned well and given a drizzle of olive oil, before being tucked up in foil and popped into my fab oven at around 170˚. Around 40 minutes later, the foil came off and they had another half an hour, until I could easily press a knife through them.

But the bulk of my kitchen time today was spent in making – or trying to make – a tarte tartin, a French upside-down apple tart.

I made my own pastry and left that in the fridge to cool.

Then it was onto the caramel, gently melting butter and caster sugar in a deep frying pan, while peeling, coring and quartering apples from the market.

Once the butter and sugar are fully melted, you place the apple quarters as tightly as possible in a layer around the pan, baste with the lovely liquid, and leave on a low heat for around 40 minutes.

After that, a layer of the pastry, to about 3mm thick, goes on top and the tarte goes in the oven for the same time again – or until the pastry is crisp and golden. Leave for five minutes and then carefully turn out.

Well, it rather collapsed – my pastry wasn’t thick enough. But one thing’s certain – it isn’t an insult to the taste buds! And after all, how could anything simply made from pastry, sugar, butter and apples be bad? And oh … the smell when it was cooking!

It is extraordinary, looking back a decade, that I really didn’t understand what a pleasure food could be; and what a pleasure preparing food is. Still – better late than never!

A pressie from Auntie

It was National Poetry Day yesterday – don't run away; I'm not going to foist any of my own efforts on you! The attentive might recall that I had Keats for 'O' and 'A' level at school and, Ode to Autumn apart, rather hated it.

I have no concrete memories of any other poets that we studied, although it can't just have been Keats in the course of eight years.

It was some years later that I found my way to poetry when I was introduced to the Mersey poets – Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten. I loved their work – particularly Henri.

More recently, I've expanded my poetry reading: I tried a collection of John Betjeman, which I found enjoyable, if full of snobbery and with an idea of a chocolate box England that existed for only a few people; it's no surprise that his poems are so popular.

Among my recent 'discoveries' have been Wendy Cope and Thom Gunn, both of whom I like for different reasons.

Tonight, though, I've been introduced to a 'new' poet, Christopher Reid, by the BBC.

Good old Auntie: after so much dross for so long, kowtowing to the market god, trying to feed us on a diet of 'reality TV' and the exploits of Z list celebrities, they gave us something of actual quality. The Song of Lunch is a dramatisation of Reid's poem of the same name, which was screened for National Poetry Day.

It tells the apparently simple tale of a middle-aged, failed writer who leaves work at a publishing company one afternoon for lunch with an old flame that he hasn't seen in 15 years. Needless to say, the reunion doesn't go quite the way he had hoped.

It's almost entirely told in his words, as an internal dialogue, in voluptuous language. But language is part of the man's problem: his fetishisation of it is one of the causes of his own emotional immaturity, as we discover, while all the time taking pleasure in the language ourselves.

Brilliantly performed by Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, it's funny and moving and rather tragic and as delicious as the lunch the reunited lovers are served, with a plethora of ideas and themes to feed the viewer's mind.

As director Greg Wise says on a BBC blog about the film: "I know Auntie gets a kicking a lot of the time, but all I can say is God bless public service broadcasting. I know no other broadcaster would have the vision, the bravery and the commitment to undertake a piece of work such as this, and for that the BBC should be praised."

I'm going to allow myself a 'Hear, hear!" at this juncture.

And thanks to The Other Half who pointed out that it was on. I love Rickman. I first saw him in the 1980s as Jacques in As You Like It at Stratford: in a rather muted production, when I was half ready to doze, he arrived on stage to give us the "All the world's a stage" speech. An unknown actor at the time, you could feel the entire audience sit up and pay attention. He's got such a wonderful voice, like dripping velvet.

One night some years ago, after attending a first night in London's West End (it might have been a production of Waiting for Godot with Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall), a friend and I were taken by fellow critics who had expenses accounts (and decent pay packets) to Joe Allen's restaurant in Covent Garden. Shortly after we'd been seated, Rickman came in with friends and sat at the table next to us, his back almost directly to mine.

I can't remember what he said, but listening to his voice was almost enough to induce an orgasm. And for some reason or other, I can't remember a thing about what I ate.

Anyway, catch The Song of Lunch on iPlayer if you haven't seen it thus far – although I'm sure it'll be repeated. And personally, I'm going to get hold of Reid's poem to read it too.

In the meantime, the theme of this year's National Poetry Day was apparently 'home'. Now I really can't think, off the top of my head, of any poem on that subject that I like (or even know).

So in the spirit of poetry in general, here's one that I do love – although its idea of home isn't what most people would first think of.

It's epic and romantic and it still gives me goosebumps every time I read it.



Ballade von den Seeräubern (Ballad of the Pirates)

Frantic with brandy from their plunder
Drenched in the blackness of the gale
Splintered by frost and stunned by thunder
Hemmed in the crows-nest, ghostly pale
Scorched by the sun through tattered shirt
(The winter sun kept them alive)
Amid starvation, sickness, dirt
So sang the remnant that survived:
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

No waving fields with gentle breezes
Or dockside bar with raucous band
No dance hall warm with gin and kisses
No gambling hall kept them on land.
They very quickly tired of fighting
By midnight girls began to pall:
Their rotten hulk seemed more inviting
That ship without a flag at all.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Riddled with rats, its bilges oozing
With pestilence and puke and piss
They swear by her when they're out boozing
And cherish her just as she is.
In storms they'll reckon their position
Lashed to the halyards by their hair:
They'd go to heaven on one condition -
That she can find a mooring there.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They loot their wine and belch with pleasure
While bales of silk and bars of gold
And precious stones and other treasure
Weigh down the rat-infested hold.
To grace their limbs, all hard and shrunken
Sacked junks yield vari-coloured stuffs
Till out their knives come in some drunken
Quarrel about a pair of cuffs.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They murder coldly and detachedly
Whatever comes across their path
They throttle gullets as relaxedly
As fling a rope up to the mast.
At wakes they fall upon the liquor
Then stagger overboard and drown
While the remainder give a snigger
And wave a toe as they go down.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Across a violet horizon
Caught in the ice by pale moonlight
On pitch-black nights when mist is rising
And half the ship is lost from sight
They lurk like wolves between the hatches
And murder for the fun of it
And sing to keep warm in their watches
Like children drumming as they sh1t.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They take their hairy bellies with them
To stuff with food on foreign ships
Then stretch them out in sweet oblivion
Athwart the foreign women's hips.
In gentle winds, in blue unbounded
Like noble beasts they graze and play
And often seven bulls have mounted
Some foreign girl they've made their prey.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Once you have danced till you're exhausted
And boozed until your belly sags
Though sun and moon unite their forces -
Your appetite for fighting flags.
Brilliant with stars, the night will shake them
While music plays in gentle ease
And wind will fill their sails and take them
To other undiscovered seas.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

But then upon an April evening
Without a star by which to steer
The placid ocean, softly heaving
Decides that they must disappear.
The boundless sky they love is hiding
The stars in smoke that shrouds their sight
While their beloved winds are sliding
The clouds towards the gentle light.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

At first they're fanned by playful breezes
Into the night they mustn't miss
The velvet sky smiles once, then closes
Its hatches on the black abyss.
Once more they feel the kindly ocean
Watching beside them on their way
The wind then lulls them with its motion
And kills them all by break of day.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Once more the final wave is tossing
The cursed vessel to the sky
When suddenly it clears, disclosing
The mighty reef on which they lie.
And, at last, a strange impression
While rigging screams and storm winds howl
Of voices hurtling to perdition
Yet once more singing, louder still:
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Bertolt Brecht, 1919

An ordinary Saturday night in Manchester

Saturday evening. After plodding around galleries and streets – the latter in preliminary search of photographic locations for a conference next June – I was knackered. Well, my feet certainly were. They’re rebelling against being shoved back into restrictive footwear after spending the overwhelming amount of the last five months in Birkenstocks or flip-flops.

So there I was, after a day spent thinking artistically. What to do for the evening? While I contemplated this – and gave my feet a break – I sat alongside the canal on Canal Street, outside Churchills, a diet Coke and ciggy at hand, watching the world go by.

For those who don’t know, Canal Street is at the heart of ‘The Village’ in Manchester; the centre of the city’s LGBT community and life.

Churchills is a spectacularly camp – it even hosts drag karaoke – and plays the sort of music that I enjoy (by way of an illustration, there was even Ute Lemper singing All That Jazz from Chicago on Saturday night).

There were Rugby League fans getting ready for that evening’s Grand Final, in noisy but robust good humour.

And then a large group of women arrived, in black t-shirts bearing the gold legend: ‘Lady Gail’s hen party Manchester’. They were, it became rapidly clear, from Liverpool. I hadn’t realised that there was that much hair bleach in the whole world.

Before long, having claimed three tables just along from where I was sitting, two of the more senior members of the troupe got up to perform their version of a robot dance. When one of them bent over, she couldn’t get up and had to be pulled back up by her belt.

Everywhere, onlookers were in hysterics. Men crowded to the window of Queer, next door, and joined in the laughter. I was nearly crying.

They flitted in and out of Churchills for the next hour or so, quaffing heaven alone knows how much vodka and Coke, and occasionally partaking of the services of the drag queen DJ inside, taking to the stage for a spot of karaoke – some of which could (unfortunately) be heard outside in the street.

One of the street performers, wearing vast green curlers in her blonde hair, borrowed my lighter and explained that they’d arrived at 11am in the morning and not stopped drinking since. Their hotel rooms for the night were well stocked with, err, plenty of vodka. I hate to think what their heads will have felt like the following morning.

As dark drew in, I pottered down to Vanilla, an all-girl bar nearby. I say “all-girl”, but men are allowed.

It’s run by Mary, a sort of lesbian version of the tough northern barmaid with a heart of gold.

It’s on two tiny floors, with a dinky pool table downstairs – and unlike at least one other such establishment I have visited (in Amsterdam), it is not non-competitive pool.

“Non-competitive pool?” repeated Mary back to me, the first time I visited and decided to check first in case it was some sort of universal thing. “Non-competitive pool!”

Reassured, I stuck around. It was on one visit last year that I had my first taste of absinthe in Vanilla. On a remarkably quiet early Saturday evening this time around, I was adopted by five teenagers as a mascot.

Given that I was, by some margin, the oldest person in the establishment, they were tactful enough to nickname me ‘Mother’ instead of a rather older female relative that I might actually have been old enough to have been to any of them.

It appeared that they needed advice on relationships and careers, wanted to discuss politics and general and the nature of feminism in particular.

And they did assure me that ‘you’re never too old’ and that I have ‘beautiful eyes’.

I admit having felt just a teensy weensy little bit like a dirty old (middle aged) woman receiving such flirty attention. And even though I have never been a cradle-snatcher, I admit that, as I knocked back a shot of some very brightly coloured liquid and winked at a rather pretty tomboy, I was really rather enjoying myself.

Nights in northern cities can be darned good fun!

Lapping up Lowry

Think of Manchester and there are a number of things that spring to mind. The rain, for one – although contrary to popular belief, the city doesn’t actually have the highest rainfall in the country.

You might also think of football, of Coronation Street, of the vibrant music scene, from the misery of The Smiths to the cocky swagger of Oasis to Northern Soul, or the rather grim industrial architecture that, while largely gone, still characterises this area of the country where cotton was once king.

There are still vast mills around the canal in Ancoats; mills like the ones that pepper the Pennine valleys; like the ones in Lower Mossley that I saw every day of my life there, with the grey hills louring over them.

Derelict buildings run alongside one side of Piccadilly, clinging stubbornly on in the face of the bland developments beyond that will have been designed to be obsolete in 30 years: I’ve stood on a platform at the station, waiting for a train in the chilling air and watching as the moon rises over them; buildings with decayed teeth for windows; eyeless, with plant life springing from corners like unruly tufts of hair on grotesque faces.

And then if you think of the Manchester of that landscape, it is no great leap to thinking of the paintings of LS Lowry.

I’ve loved Lowry’s paintings for years: the ‘naïve’ style, those “matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs”. In the first flush of adulthood, large greeting card reproductions, framed in cheap plastic, adorned my first homes. But I had never actually seen the real McCoy.

So on this trip to Manchester, I was determined to rectify that with a visit to The Lowry, the arts centre that has been at the heart of the regeneration of the Salford Quays area of the city in the last decade.

Not only does Michael Wilford’s expressionist building house two theatres, it also holds the world’s biggest collection of work by Lowry at around 350 paints and drawings, with 100 on display.

It’s not very often that I’ve had the chance to see such a body of work by a single artist in one place and at one time. And there is a tremendous benefit to it.

Familiar with some of the most famous industrial landscapes, I had far less knowledge of Lowry’s other work. And being able to take the time to read the notes for each work, then step back and look again, has great rewards.

What I became particularly aware of was the ridiculousness of the assertion by disparaging members of the art establishment that Lowry’s work was, for instance, ‘sentimental’. It’s actually nothing of the sort – and that’s without even considering the painter’s own stated belief that there was no place for sentiment in art.

One of the most dominant themes in Lowry’s work is isolation: from buildings isolated in the middle of a landscape (both urban and rural) to something as expressionistic as the 1966 Self Portrait, which shows a single column standing up in the sea.

Then there are recurring motifs such as walls or fences where the gates are most frequently closed, blocking off the viewer from what is on the other side.

And then there are the dysfunctional relationships. One such picture shows a family group – possibly one that Lowry had encountered in his day job as a rent collector. The mother sits, with the father standing behind; they face in opposite directions. The children are arranged around them. There is no communication. This is the antithesis of Victorian sentimental ideas of family.

The Funeral Party from 1953 is a prime example, with the mourners lined up, not touching, not speaking. And at the end, one with his back to the others: Lowry claimed that this was because he was in disgrace for wearing boots and a red tie to the funeral (cue memories of Stanley Holloway reciting Brahn Boots: now that is sentimental!).

Reproduction doesn’t do many of the works any favours either. The Sea from 1963 really stunned me, but I’ve yet to see a reproduction that shows the strength of the contrast that gives it such power in reality.

Likewise, in Street Scene from 1935 (see the top of this post), the boldness of the colours – and particularly the blackness of the most distant terraces and the mill itself – are partly what draws you right into the picture.

But Lowry, while he initially trained with French Impressionist Pierre Adolphe Valette, was no Impressionist – although seeing some of Valette’s own works later, in the Manchester Art Gallery, you could see the influence of master on pupil. He was not a straightforward Expressionist either.

Indeed, Lowry belonged to no school but his own. He was at once a Victorian and a modern man: look at the paintings and you see a bridge between two such vastly changed worlds.

And of course, he painted the world of the working class – a world that ‘ordinary’ people recognised and appreciated.

The critical view was never completely one-sided, but it has certainly developed much more complexity in recent years. There are now those who suggest that, when the legacy of 20th-century British painting is fully assessed, Lowry will be viewed as more important than the likes of, say, David Hockney.

For Hockney has never created an entirely new visual language to express himself. And that is exactly what Lowry developed in order to depict his highly personal visions of a subject matter that few others touched.

I also took the time to have a look at Mister Sixties: Philip Townsend’s Portraits of a Decade, an exhibition of photographs, including portraits and street photography.

That and small amount of the Manchester Art Gallery that I explored (my feet were killing me by then) made it a wonderfully arty Saturday, with plenty to think about.

The Valette room was worth seeing on its own: it is remarkable to see an Impressionistic vision of Manchester. York Street Leading to Charles Street, from1913, is just one example: it could almost be Paris!

Impressionism can make the 'grim north' look almost romantic. And the Valette pencil study, Male Nude With a Cane, is different again and quite superb.

I could quite easily forget that the gallery also houses a collection of Pre-Raphelite works, which might well be one of my least favourite schools. Okay – beautifully crafted, but I dislike the subjects and particularly the portrayal of women, which could well be part of that Victorian fear of 'the fairer sex' and of female sexuality that reveals itself in a range of artistic works, including Bram Stoker's Dracula.

They seem to me to partly show women as a sort of Protestant, secular Madonna – they may be secular pictures, but they have a religiosity about them; a reverence for idealised women on pedestals.

Lowry was most definitely not sentimental!

And to cap the day off, at least the rain took a well-earned break, after falling heavily on Friday. It needed a break, before absolutely lashing down yesterday.

Mixing food and art

Autumn, as we've said more than once, has it's own beauty and richness.

Having spent a rather subdued second half of the summer photographically speaking – although that’s partly because I didn’t want to sit inside at my computer, processing pictures, when I could be sitting outside in the garden – I had started thinking in that direction as autumn approached.

What I was particularly considering was my ongoing ‘food porn’ project. This beach almost accidentally back in the spring, with an experiment that turned out to be rather good.

Some of the subsequent pictures have been single items – almost food ‘portraits’ – some have been more complex arrangements. All are photographed against completely black backgrounds, which adds a really rich quality to even the simplest subject.

The first – the experiment – was a group of red peppers, including the odd chili.

Now, I don’t have a studio or any ‘proper’ lighting. For this, I used a small table lamp that I bought for something like £8 in Lidl some years ago. The basic background was a black t-shirt. The result was amazing.

You can click on the picture to see a larger version of it.

One of the things that has surprised me is that I find it easy to 'style' the shots: it never takes long to set things up. It makes you wonder what 'food stylists' get paid ...

After another couple of efforts, I tried something a little bit more ambitious – and I even felt the inclination of giving this ne a proper title: Homage to Mrs David

The only major technical difference here was adding some flash, which I bounced off the ceiling.

The processing takes a while – mostly because I have to ensure that the background is completely black and featureless. So in some ways, perhaps this is more a question of 'making an image' as some photographers describe their work. But the subjects themselves need very little work.

And it's remarkable how well the basic idea can work even with insanely simple subjects.

Take eggs – indeed, take these eggs. It's difficult to think of anything much more straightforward – and how often do you really look at an egg, before cracking it, and see the beauty in it?

In this particular picture, there are the curves and the warm colours and obviously the contrast between the shadow and light.

So what have I planned for the autumn? Well, it's the obvious chance to picture the ingredients for a really warming stew. All those root vegetables – lovely parsnips and onions and carrots. And I find myself thinking I'll have to haul out a rather old and rather battered earthenware pot from the back of the cupboard for such a shoot: it'll add something to any picture.

But in the meantime, here's a little something I prepared last weekend.

Again, it is a really simple composition, but given the detail of the little torn-edged box they come in, there's little I needed to add. I did slightly tweak the position of the mushroom at the top in the picture, simply because I wanted to be able to really capture the beautiful texture, but nothing beyond that. And again in terms of the processing, a little general clarity in Lightroom (which is a lovely piece of software) and then just spending the time to ensure that the background is uniform.

So simple, indeed, that I almost start feeling like a bit of a charlatan!

Joie de vivre at the chateau

Visiting new places has a thrill all of its own. But there are also pleasures to returning to somewhere that you’ve been before; to learning more about it, experiencing more, growing to know it more.

On previous visits to Collioure, we’ve never really come away with any musical impressions. But this trip produced more than one musical experience.

The first came courtesy of Hot Club de Torderes – or at least, three of their full line-up of six.

Lola Lesné (clarinet and vocals), Jacques-Emmanuel Ricard (guitar and vocals) and Victor Badze (guitar and mandoline) were playing at the market on our middle Wednesday.

After standing around to listen for a while, I picked up a CD for €10. They play an enjoyable mix of “jazz/latin/swing” and the disc has been our dining music since our return.

You can find out more at their myspace site, here.

But on our last day, as the holiday seemed to be tapering toward a slightly gloomy anti-climax, we headed up to the chateau, having seen adverts for a day of Catalan music and fun.

We had little idea of what to expect and assumed that it was pretty much an end-of-summer party.

Well, it was to an extent. The event – Els Ben Parits – was also organised in conjunction with Les Restaurants du Coeur, a regional charity as a fundraiser.

Not that anyone was using that as an excuse to rake in the cash. Admission was €10 and you had a stamp on your wrist so that you could come and go as you wanted (it was something like a 10-hour event). We bought souvenir plastic cups with lanyards to hang around your neck – after that, a portion of food was €1 and a half of beer was €2, although the latter was reduced when the man serving it decided that it was getting a little flat.

The food was extraordinary – slabs of bread with tomato on them (a local speciality) and topped with huge anchovies. Massive boxes were repeatedly carried in, full of pissadadiere , the regions own version of a Provencal, pizza-like dish with a doughy base, a covering of tomato and then a diagonal design of anchovies, with some carefully placed black olives; more slabs of bread with local sausages …

You can do fast food without it being junk.

And you can raise money without ripping people off and economically excluding many.

With food and drink, we perched ourselves on a staircase with a decent view of the stage.

After a wait, we were introduced to L’Agram – one ebay seller describes an early album of theirs as “French-Occitan-folk-psych-prog”, which is a genre I can’t say I’ve come across before.

A sizeable outfit with three singers: one, a middle-aged man with a shock of white hair; then a delightfully curvaceous younger woman and a bird of a woman, of indeterminate age, who has bags of energy, dresses in wonderfully eccentric fashion and reminds me of a sort of cross between Su Pollard and Terrence Stamp in drag in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

All had their individual turn at the mic as well as taking singing together on some songs. But it was the latter who most strongly struck me.

In France, chanson simply means ‘song’. In the UK, we tend to think of it as a specific genre, with Piaf as the apotheosis of the style.

My birdlike singer, with her red trilby and her red glasses, can perform just such songs, wonderfully, with an earthy, robust quality.

But my favourite song from their set, which had The Other Half in stitches, was about making aioli, complete with actions to illustrate the stirring required. What a way to celebrate a wonderful regional delicacy!

As the group emerged from the back of the stage after their set, I managed to speak to the birdlike singer and ask if they had any CDs. She didn’t seem sure, so she led me to the front row of the raked seating that had been erected in front of the stage. There, I was introduced to another woman, to who I asked the same question. Helpfully, given my poor French, she could speak English.

She then brought three more women into the conversation. They were utterly fascinated that someone from London would want local music. Which in turn became a four-way conversation about exactly what, of L’Agram’s repertoire, constituted ‘traditional’ local music.

Eventually, the decided that they could get together two CDs and would send them to me. They found paper and a pen for me to write down my address, but refused payment, saying I could send that when the CDs arrive.

They were friendly and helpful – and it didn’t appear to occur to them to be suspicious that someone might not send any cash. Their generosity of spirit was wonderful. I’m looking forward to any post from France – but I know perfectly well that it might take some time.

The next act was Les Madeleines, described on the event leaflet as “ambiance guinguette”. Now ambiance means in French pretty much what it means in English, while guinguette is apparently a small café where live music is played.

Trust the French to have one word to say all that!

Also a large group, they turned out to be a sort of anarchic jazz punk combo, with occasional bits of politics thrown in, led by another small woman with insane amounts of energy and a mad accordionist.

Bonkers. Completely bonkers. And utterly fabulous. For their second song, the woman invited people to dance a sardane, a Catalan dance, where people join in circles. There are proper steps, and it traditionally goes from a sedate pace to a frenetic one. We’d first seen it danced earlier in this stay, when we saw some sort of party taking place in the open.

This was a bit different and turned into something a little closer to a conga, followed by a hokey cokey. Dust kicked up by scores of dancing feet; laughter and an intoxicating sense of community. And the energy; the boisterous good spirits; the sheer joie de vivre ... It was infectious and completely life-affirming.

Where other acts had left the stage when their set time was over, Les Madeleines ignored the gestures of the MC (who looked like a despairing Sgt Bilko) and set off on a crazy, musical whirlwind of an encore that lasted something like 15 minutes and left us feeling delightedly breathless.

And there was no sense of anti-climax left in sight.

To get a bit of the flavour, you can find Les Madeleines on myspace too, by clicking here.