Generations Lost

A pretty single country girl yesterday

I have to admit I am a bit of a 'Towny' but only because I like nice restaurants, good coffee and meeting the odd pretty girl that doesn't wear her teeth upside down and point at planes. Being single in the countryside is a real bummer. The country ideal would indeed be ideal if the previous statement could apply. The thing is though, I thought I had found such a place. The definition of what I was after is basically a nice 1970's style upbringing for my children, you know when everything was safe and everyone was nice, polite and innocent, well it was from my eyes at the time walking home from school. Obviously I would want better TV than the 70's and home grown food rather than the 1970's frozen food revolution i.e the napalm filled deep fried pancakes that still show the burn marks 40 years later. Basically innocent life and innocent food and no I am not turning into a hippy and neither have I become a happy clapper.

Our Provencal alfresco dining room

As I say, I had thought I had found such an idealistic place that reminded me of that childhood innocence a few years ago and upped sticks and moved out of Chelsea and started living the dream in the South of France. Every day when I stumbled through the small meadow in front of the house trying to avoiding the killer thistles that can eat small children, there were completely different wild flowers and butterflies none of which I have ever seen before. It was jolly nice. Put it this way Kew Garden's would wet themselves if they went there, nothing fancy but rather interesting. If exotic rare butterflies and wild flowers were edible, every restaurateur would be here (they probably are in France because they are funny that way).

Mirabelle Plums in a deadly attack posture!

Anyway we had a few acres that hadn't been touched in a while and in the grounds amongst all the scrub, snakes and tigers were thickets of spikey fruit trees mainly different varieties, I found out, of miniature plums called mirabelles. These maybe small but they are very tasty. The thing is that my local shop down the hill 10 minutes walk away had the same trees outside with the same fruit growing but only riper. No doubt because in previous generations the land was probably part of the same farm. The only difference is that nobody and I mean nobody touched the beautiful red cherry-like berries that hung from them. But why? and this is the main point of today's rant. In previous days, people would have climbed over spikey hedges and would happily risk getting eaten by the farmer's dog to get at and eat this tasty fruit but not now. Nowadays the fruit just hangs there getting overly ripe waiting for the magpies to scoff the lot and drop the digested remains on your garden furniture. The reason for this, one assumes, is that nobody recognises them as tasty food anymore. They don't have a Waitrose 'best before date' stamped on them and so people may think that these bright red juicy berries are poisonous and so are just for the birds! We have been brain washed!

Gerard showing me around the garden in Provence

I do have to admit that I did stand and stare at our baby plums for a few days without touching them on our trees until I received the expert advice of a wondering/trespassing old bugger who appeared as if by magic like the 1970's shop keeper in Mr Benn to tell me that they were edible and delicious. It was only after the 4th week of seeing this chap wondering around did I find out that he actually came with the house and was the care taker called Gerard and lived in the little gate house at the end of the driveway. It took me a while to understand him at first as I struggled with his particular type of yokel accent, I think it was based on French but wasn't entirely sure. He waved his hands a lot and his broken English was better than my broken French but I just about managed to decipher his advice which was revolutionary. He pointed out so many things that are useful including all sorts of companion plants that serve various purposes for the crop plants that now appeared fairly wild all over the place. I also learnt that he had four bee hives dotted around my land with a million bees who simply love the wild flowers and made the best honey in the world because of it. 

Everything had a meaning now, gone were the plans of clearing all of the scrub and snake pits. Now that I understood what the land now meant and that the bulldozers won't be coming in as planned to make room for recognisable orchards and things because they are already here. They just needed tidying up a bit, well quite a lot really. All of the things that were growing don't appear in their current form in supermarkets but they taste so much better. There are actually more than one type of apple and just because a plum is the same size as rabbit plums it doesn't mean that they should be ignored. All of a sudden the wild meadow would remain and kept wild for all those delicious butterflies.

Another picture of my plums

So why do we automatically think something is poisonous? A smallish berry that is red is dangerous, why? I am glad I met the old bugger because now I can be righteous about why people ignore good food. It was a eureka moment for this particular townie and Gerard knew it. He was pleased too and when the old bugger presented me with a handful of mushrooms found in the wooded part of the land, he said the restaurants in London would be very excited by its beautiful pink flesh. I smiled and thanked him as I love mushrooms. How did they taste? I have no idea as I binned them when I went inside, they could have been poisonous!! I knew that my transformation wasn't complete and still wanted the Waitrose wrapping and name of what it was I was going to eat. Why is it when old people give you strange fruit you think yes and if they offer strange mushrooms you think no. As I said I am a Towny but I am keen to learn, though with mushrooms I need a second opinion from someone with lots of teeth. Perhaps my ex wife could try them! 

The issue is that we very quickly forget about things in the space of only one generation as in what is good for us. Small delicious berries that aren't sold in supermarkets are automatically deemed dangerous. The people that know don't get asked because we rely on supermarkets to tell us what is good. Lets get these old buggers out and let them tell us what is edible from their childhood, tell us about the range of different apples or plums there are. It may even be nice to talk to them anyway, make sure they test the mushrooms first in front of you though, just in case.

Can't Paint for Toffee But My Brother and Two Uncles are Art Dealers

One of Van Gogh's famous impressions

This is not just about the most celebrated ginger in the world (apart from Ed Sheeran obviously) but it is about art in general. Why do people continue to pay over the odds for some art that quite frankly if your six year old nephew had painted it you would be concerned that they have special needs?

Why isn't a copy of a masterpiece the same value as the original? Why are people who copy works of art frowned upon, surely they have similar painting ability? Surely you stare and admire the picture itself and not the letter of provenance.

What creates the value? I am pretty sure that many collectors create the value itself rather than the original artists? It appears to be clever marketing and the creation of perceived value. If one collector suddenly pays a million quid for the work of a new artist the rest of their work is worth something and all of a sudden the complete collection is worth more than the original outset. I think its all about creating a bubble and offloading the profit before that bubble bursts, similar to the subprime mortgage or dare I say it bitcoin. I am sure Tracy Emin's bed is very comfortable but was it really worth £2.5m for the bragging rights of owning it? What's it worth now I wonder or has the maid washed the sheets and made the bed?

Turning Roads (A51 probably) into fields

Don't get me going on Cezanne either. I do admire the way that he very cleverly painted out the A51 and the massive Carrefour in some of his pictures but that doesn't mean people should pay over the odds for Aix en Provence's finest pictures. Interesting that his equally famous best friend from school Emile Zola never really gets a mention  in Aix though he does get the enviable accolade of having a bottle of cheap rose named after him. Cubism is obviously more powerful than the pen in Provence.

My Ex-Mother-in-Law yesterday.

I really like Picasso though, pictures with women with one eye higher than the other looking very much like the ex mother-in-law, who incidentally I like very much, it's just her daughter that I struggle with. I also agree with his statements that the ability to create art hasn't really changed since cave painting began. I did try and recreate a cave painting for my own man cave once but gave up when I realised that I wasn't as good as the  Neanderthal I was trying to copy. The Cave Person clearly went to art school. The series of pictures I really like are Picasso's bull progression which really show how far we have come in art since Neolithic times.

Cave painting to modern progress

One of Picasso's masterpieces sold for £45m!

Not all of Picasso's work has been as well received, I understand from Jeremy Clarkson that the Citroen that Picasso made had a few issues.

Cheating at art in the olden days

Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotti and Marieschi I absolutely adore as they show clear historical detail in their masterpieces. They did however cheat a little by using a camera obscura which can be compared to using tracing paper or painting by numbers as its difficult to get any of the perspective wrong. Just look how skilled they are drawing people in those pictures, pretty shocking. So are they masterpieces as they cheated? I would however quite happily stare at their brilliance in the form of a print. 

Does that make me cheap?