French Windows

Some things the French have observed about the English have crept into their language. Our love of custard had led to the dessert being called ‘crème anglaise’. However, I was astonished to learn that it is never eaten warm. One of my retired students was describing what he made in his soup maker. The machine could blend and heat eggs, sugar, vanilla and milk to make ‘crème anglaise’. ‘Then, while it is nice and hot you eat it?’ I asked. ‘No, you put it in the fridge to cool,’ he said. All of my students affirmed that ‘crème anglaise’ is always eaten cold. So don’t expect hot custard on your ‘tarte tatin’.

A garden with flower beds and winding paths is described as ‘un jardin à l’anglaise’.  Something that we are often guilty of is ‘filer à l’anglaise’ which means to leave a gathering without saying goodbye to everyone. It’s hard enough getting used to going round everyone in the room to shake their hand or to kiss them upon arrival, without having to repeat the whole process when we leave. In our family we try to avoid it by calling out a loud, ‘Goodbye’ to everyone and giving an expansive wave of the hand. So yes, we do have a tendency to ‘filer à l’anglaise’.

There is a small footplate on the back of dustbin lorries and a vertical handrail. The dustmen jump on and off between stops like naughty schoolboys used to do on the back of red double-decker buses. Health and safety wouldn’t allow that in the UK.

One of our French friends complained about the noisy neighbourhood that she lived in. “When they come to clean the communal bins they make so much noise.” We were astonished. “The big bins on rollers get cleaned?” we asked, trying to conceal our surprise. “Yes, of course !” she said.

In France dustmen come three times a week!  One of my students was telling me about her recent holiday in Sri Lanka. She was horrified to see that people swept all their rubbish into the middle of the street where rats and flies were attracted to it. ‘And do you know?’ she said, ‘It is only collected once a week, so it smells horrible!’ I’m afraid, I kept quiet and didn’t tell her that some places in the UK have fortnightly rubbish collections!

Day 5. Now we had three attractions that we wanted to see, all in the same road! The home of the Chelsea pensioners, the rest of the Army Museum and the Chelsea Physic Gardens. We had tickets for the later, so that was our first port of call. Walking past the home of the old soldiers, and past the Museum we arrived at 66, Royal Hospital Road. The walled south facing gardens create  a microclimate where 5,000 examples of medicinal plants  have been used since 1673 to teach budding apothecaries how to treat illnesses. We forget that at one time there were no pills only tisanes, tinctures and macerations of plants. The founder, Sir Hans Sloane, served as physician to the Governor of Jamaica, where he saw quinine being used to treat malaria. We also have to thank him  for Cadbury’s chocolate as he observed Jamaican woman mixing cocoa with milk. He later sold the recipe to one of the Cadbury family.

At that time, remedies were more trial and error than scientifically proved. However, Alchemilla Vulgaris (see below) is sold today as a remedy for women’s problems, so they were not so far off in 1653!

In the 1850’s Florence Nightingale included in her Crimean medicine chest powdered rhubarb and essence of ginger to relieve bowel spasms as well as quinine against malaria.

Plants that were recognised as medicinal were given the name ‘officinalis’ which historically meant that you could find them in the ‘officina’ where the monks stored and prepared the remedies. Borage, Dandelions, Ginger, Rosemary, Sage, Marshmallow and Marigolds among others all have the Latin name ‘officinalis’. Borage is the pretty blue flower that traditionally decorates a glass of Pimms.

On sale in the shop were special bottles of Beefeater London Gin.

My family want to know why I am so interested in ‘weeds’ these days. I now have the answer for a generation who know little about wild plants but enjoy the drink of the moment – gin.

My weeds are your botanicals!

We never did get back to the Army Museum and the only part of the Chelsea Hospital we saw was their very reasonably priced teashop. It was just closing, but they kindly served us the vanilla ice-creams we needed. Vanilla comes from the seed pod of an orchid you know!

Day 4. Do not believe comments on Trip Advisor!

I had learnt that the National Army Museum in Chelsea housed the bones of Napoleon’s last horse. Someone had commented on social media that the museum could be visited in an hour. What a travesty! The displays were well put together and thought provoking. Many exhibits were interactive making them interesting for children and adults alike. There was humour too.

My interest in plants was fed by an activity to make insect repellant from well-known herbs. I mixed shea butter with tansy and came away with a sample of cream to be tested against mosquitos at my leisure.

Marengo was looking a bit long in the tooth, but his bones were over 200 years old! He survived the battle of Waterloo and was brought back to England and died at the ripe old age of 34.

We could have spent a lot more time there but had an evening appointment at Lord’s to watch a game of cricket. Me? Cricket? Really? A match that only lasted 3 hours sounded acceptable. As I wrote to my daughter, I discovered many reasons to enjoy after work matches. 1) The lady’s toilets have no queues, 2) The ground is mostly filled with young business men, 3) The 6’s are celebrated by bursts of flame throwers and music, 4) There is a roving presenter who gives hampers to random spectators, 5) Picnics can include alcoholic beverages.

I would even go again!

Day 3. Why would a couple who live in France go to a French restaurant in London? We were meeting a friend and Côte Brasserie was his choice. The two course lunch menu at £12.95 was very reasonable. I had an artichoke risotto which contained plenty of  vegetables. The dessert, chocolate mousse, was also very acceptable. We are great fans of Bistro Pierre too. It seems that British initiatives are providing the UK with better French restaurants than we have managed to find in France. Our friend recommended a visit to the little known Sir John Soane Museum in Holborn, 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to be precise.

It was raining slightly, so we divide into a Flying Tiger shop. Where else can you buy colourful elastic bands, salted liquorice sweets and a rain cape?

Sir John Soane was an architect and collected a huge range of artefacts on his continental travels.

He knocked three town houses into one in order to display them. He loved letting light into buildings and in order to do so removed several floors leaving narrow walkways and balustrades, heavy with huge vases. If I had been his wife I would have protested, ‘You’re not planning to remove yet another floor are you darling?” Walls were also removed in order to replace them with  up to three layers of paintings on hinges –  ingenious and not to be seen in any other home. We were there at 4pm when the clever idea was demonstrated to visitors.

There were not a lot of explanatory panels, but the guardians in each room were experts in their fields and happy to answer questions. The Egyptian sarcophagus in the ceiling-less cellar was lowered into place using hooks and ropes from the four corner pillars of what was left of the walls. You only have to ask!

Day 2. Having  a theatre trip planned for the evening, it didn’t matter that we stayed in all morning while rain fell steadily. After lunch we took the tube to Westminster, crossed over the bridge in blustery wind heading for St. Thomas’s Hospital. No one was ill, but the Florence Nightingale Museum is located in a southern corner of the campus. Tickets can be booked online. There was a temporary exhibition about the Spanish ‘flu  which promised to be interesting. There was plenty to see and plenty to learn about this formidable lady who refused to be confined to the norms of her day. She felt God’s call on her life to be a nurse and despite objections from her wealthy family and all around her she relentlessly pursued that calling. A bench was engraved with these words. “On February 7th 1837 God spoke to me and called me to His Service”. She found fame during the Crimea War where injured men were evacuated south to the town of Scutari. Florence organised the hospital there and put in measures to restrict the spread of disease. Men were washed on arrival, given clean hospital clothes and put into beds with clean sheets. Florence campaigned for better conditions and used her love of statistics to produce easy-to-understand graphs and diagrams that illustrated the unhealthiest times of the year. Mary Seacole also helped injured men with plant based remedies, such as using ginger to treat diarrhoea and cinnamon as an antiseptic, that she had learnt about in the West Indies.

The exhibition about the ‘Spanish ‘flu’ was a bit too visual  in that it reconstructed a temporary hospital ward with a couple of beds. The origin of the illness is still being debated. It was reported in Spain as Spanish newspapers were not censored.

St. Thomas’s hospital large foyer contained a café, a clothes shop and a Marks and Spencers! We ate our packed meal in a dining area for patients and staff while we bridged the gap between our afternoon and evening activity.

We were off to see a play! The old council chamber of London’s County Hall is now used as a theatre. We were going to be members of the audience at a trial. Twelve ticket holders would even get to play the part of jury members.

The stage was a cleverly constructed  platform in the centre that also became a front room, the court and the scene of an execution. Agatha Christie wrote many thrillers that lead the reader up the garden path – this was no exception. ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ is not a title that grabs at you, but the play was certainly a thriller with typical Christie twists and turns.

I was impressed by the marble sinks in the toilets but at least the taps were not gold plated!

Day 1. We wanted to see Greenwich, and as the weather was fine, why not go by bus? My husband planned the route which started by us catching the 94 from Notting Hill. Like excited children we climbed the stairs and took the front seats. Hyde Park was on our right for half the journey far as Marble Arch. Arriving in Regent Street, we were not in a  rush so decided to have coffee in  a very posh looking little restaurant. From outside we could see a sign on the counter that coffees were £2.20 – not bad prices. Having sat down and looked at the menu coffees were  nearly £5.00 each. I checked the sign on the bar and spotted ‘take-away prices’ in smaller print! Grrr!

 Another bus took us to Elephant and Castle, and then we completed the last leg to Greenwich. With our Oyster cards the complete journey had cost us £4.50 each – less than that cup of coffee!

Greenwich Park boasts a small herb garden which was perfect for somewhere to eat our packed lunch. There were not very many different herbs, but the mint flowers attracted a huge hornet that I hoped was not an agressive Asian one.

Greenwich Park is enormous and the Observatory is on the top of the hill to the south. We wanted to see the International Date Line, but discovered it was in the courtyard of  the main building where a ticket needed to be bought. We had seen various free exhibitions and were feeling a little  a bit cheated, when we saw people queuing in an alleyway below the courtyard. Ha, ha, the date line had been extended down the wall and across the pathway. We got our picture after all without being forced to pay.

We hadn’t realised that there were so many attractions in Greenwich. The Maritime Museum merited a longer visit, but we wanted to walk under the Thames via the Greenwich tunnel. Passing the Cutty Sark we found a small domed building that looked more like a Victorian public toilet than a tunnel entrance. However, spirals of steps took us down several levels from where we could walk under the Thames to the beautifully named Island Gardens next to the less beautifully named Mudchute Park. The Docklands Light Railway took us through the mass of high-rise and tower blocks of the amazing, new Docklands development.

Jaffa Cakes were one of the challenges of the week on ‘The Great British Bake-off’. When Paul Hollywood, one of the judges, dunked his in his tea, Mary Berry exclaimed, ‘We don’t do that in the south.’ The Daily Mail ran a whole page article on the subject of whether to ‘dunk’ or not! A top French Chef was asked to comment. He said that the French are the champions of dunking! They love to dip their croissant into their morning coffee, and their buttered tartine into hot chocolate. Anyone who has watched the hilarious film ‘Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis’ will know that one of the jokes is about people who live in the north of France dipping their ‘maroilles’ stinky cheese sandwich into their morning cup of chicory coffee. An iconic moment in French literature was when Marcel Proust wrote about eating a madeleine sponge cake while drinking lime flower tea. ‘I raised to my lips a spoonful of tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses…’. French literature would be poorer by far if Marcel Proust had not been in the habit of dunking!  Not forgetting the champenois custom of serving a ‘biscuit rose de Reims’ with champagne as a dunking biscuit!

I love duck. One of our Saturday night treats used to be a Marks and Spencer’s aromatic crispy duck with pancakes, hoisin sauce, cucumber and shredded spring onions. If there is duck on the menu, I enjoy eating it. On the other hand I, like many Brits, hesitate when it comes to ‘foie gras’. We don’t feel comfortable with the idea of putting a tube down the throat of an animal and force feeding it until its liver is 10 times its normal size and takes up most of the bird’s body cavity. So it was an, ‘Oh, dear’ moment when I read, ‘Le confit de canard est un plat phare de la cuisine Sud-Ouest et l’un des éléments incontournables du cassoulet. Le magret est issu du canard gavé pour produire cette perle de la gastronomie française, le foie gras.’Of course! The meat that goes into cassoulets and served as ‘confit de canard’ and ‘magret’ in the South-West is the leftover meat from the carcasses of the force-fed ducks – what else would they do with it? On the bright side it is another reason to avoid the delicious looking chocolate or coffee eclairs that appear in freezer shops at Christmas time. They contain foie gras! I can imagine the terrible feeling of deception as an unsuspecting person bites into an inviting looking aperitif only to find that there is a greasy, meaty, savoury filling and not the light, whipped, sweet, cream they were expecting. To spit out, or not to spit out, that would be the question? To add to the strange concoctions I have seen, what about ‘Crème brûlée au foie gras de canard’?