Post Cards from La Bourboule – Parc Fenestre

The most important thing about this park is that its name is NOT Finistere – just because that’s what I always call it doesn’t make it right, I am told.  I have this unfortunate habit of misreading and misunderstanding things, always in ways which make them much more interesting than the original meaning.  I like to think this is not proof of my imbecility, but an attempt by my subconscious to make life more exciting.  People should be grateful I don’t charge them for all this free entertainment I provide, but they seem to prefer the mundane truth to my inspired nonsense.  So instead of mulling over theories that link Cape Finistere with La Bourboule, I took photos of it.

The park is right in the centre of town, across the street from my hotel (actually most things are just across the street from my hotel, that’s how it is in a small town).  It is intended mainly for children, but anyone who comes to La Bourboule is a child at heart, and the park is full of people who are dangerously close to the age when we all turn into children again (Alzheimer’s and stuff, you get my drift).  I have not taken photos of the little train etc, because that is boring and anyway if you like that sort of thing just have a google.  Instead I focused on the things that caught my eye.

This Wood-Spirit, three feet high and hand carved

One of my favourite views of Glider Mountain!  Reminds me a bit of Portland Oregon, actually!

The amazing Goat-Tree!

My concession to the conservative image loving crowd – view of massive children’s slide-tower

Tomorrow is my last day, so today I have been buying thank-you presents for my minders in the Grand Therme and the charming ladies who run the hotel.  I am not sure whether this is a normal French thing to do, but so far no one has objected, on the contrary I have been kissed several times, which is probably a good sign.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – The church of La Bourboule

There appears to be only one church in La Bourboule.  There is a boarded up shop window in one of the side streets which contains some accoutrements suggesting a protestant provisional prayer room, but it looked rather dilapidated and unused.  I guess if you want to be religiously organised in La Bourboule, it is Catholicism or nothing.  This economic approach is typically Auvergnat in its sensibility – why shell out for half a dozen churches, like in the US, or at least two, like in Germany, when a single structure will suffice?  Much better to spend the saved money on extra large dinners!  I have found no traces of religious strife in La Bourboule, so have to assume their approach works.

Again the limitations of my little digital camera made themselves felt.  If I use the flash colours look washed out, and if not the image is blurry or black or both.  But some of the stained glass windows came out quite nicely, I think!

I have not attended any services there, since I don’t want to accidentally promise to do something I disagree with (that lack of French again), like praying for President Sarkozy - they pray for the Queen in England, so I guess it makes sense to pray for the President in France.  I am up for most sins (within reason), but have to draw the line at lying to God in church.  Anyway, that’s the reason why I can’t report here about religious practices, attendance, and fervour (or lack of) of the local worshippers.  But there are many candles burning in front of the saints, so they can’t all be heathens.

The Lady & Child statue above is my favourite item in the church.  It is a small carving, only about a foot high, and the proportions are a bit off.  But I find it very dignified, expressing a simple faith.  I don’t like religious images that are too perfect, just as I don’t like the music and choir to be too perfect during services.  They distract from the main purpose on hand, which should be experiencing God.

The inside of the church, seen from the door.

The church has a great many stained glass windows, mainly similar to this one, so I am only posting one example here.

There are five statues of saints with candle-holders in front in this church. They don’t all have a name tag, but well I don’t practice favouritism when it comes to saints so I lit a candle in front of each of them.  The one in this photo took the best picture and had the most candles.  The patron saint of this church is Joseph, and he had only one very small candle burning in front of him, so I bought him two – it doesn’t seem right to be the underdog in your own church!

This last photo depicts a church window in Murat le Quaire which is up the hill from La Bourboule and much smaller (both town and church).  I include it here because the style is so different.

Only two more days until it is time to go home!

Post Cards from La Bourboule – La Banne d’Ordanche Part 3

Back in Murat le Quaire ….

I earned that!

Post Cards from La Bourboule – La Banne d’Ordanche Part 2

and here we are, at the bottom of Glider Mountain!

It’s a long way up ….

And up …..

But here at last start the stairs that lead to the top.  And after another ten minutes or so, finally I arrive!  The view is great, though things are a bit hazy.

Part 3 to follow

Post Cards from La Bourboule – La Banne d’Ordanche



I have been up la Banne several times this holiday, but the weather was not good for photography and I took few pictures.  However, today was not bad, and since I wanted to deliver two rolls of toilet paper I trekked up again.

I had been up on Sunday and while saying Hello to the shepherd’s dog noticed that there was something wrong with the little toilet - water was coming out from under the door, which is rarely a good sign.  I unlocked the door and a gush of water greeted me.  There were ten centimetres of water on the floor, and the bucket someone had placed under the wash-basin was overflowing.  I emptied the bucket, swept the water from the floor with the broom I found leaning in a corner, and looked at the wash-basin.  A note stuck behind the basin said, Do not use the faucets! (in French).  I closed the faucets as hard as I could, put the sign into the middle of the sink where it could not be overlooked, and locked up.

Today I went to see whether the bucket was overflowing again, but I had closed the faucets well, it seems.  No water on the floor, none in the bucket.  I left my rolls of toilet paper and locked up again.  When I am on holiday I always buy too much toilet paper, so one of my little rituals is to bring it to this toilet a few days before I leave La Bourboule, as a service to the scale modelists and their glider-groupies.

Feeling sprightly today I proceeded to walk to the top of la Banne, which is not bad considering I had already walked all the way from La Bourboule, adding another kilometre or two to the six or seven already walked.  Then I marched back to Murat le Quaire, which is on the way from La Bourboule to La Banne, where I was meeting a friend for tea.  I was a bit early and parched, so stopped at a little café for an ice cold coca cola.

But enough blurb, here are the photos!

Point de Vue de la Croix, Murat le Quaire

The lake just beyond Murat le Quaire

A little detour off the road

On the road again

Getting closer …

and closer …

Part 2 will follow ...

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Les Galapagos

One name that has been snaking its way through these little vignettes is ‘Les Galapagos’.  It is always the first place I go to after having unpacked my bags, and it never fails to make me feel at home.  I meant to write about it earlier, but found it extremely difficult to photograph in a way which captures its essence.  I include two photos which are the least bad, but really have to describe it to convey a proper picture.

I had for a while used the place for early morning coffee, because it was central and one of the few restaurants that served coffee at that time in the open air on their patio.  I was usually the only customer, and coffee was served by an old man who seemed friendly enough but was not part of the regular serving staff.  The food was rumoured to be only soso, and I never saw any reason to dine there. 

One day I decided to visit La Bourboule not in Summer, as usual, but in November.  I was exhausted from working too much for a while and in need of a quiet break from it all, and secluded La Bourboule in the off-season seemed a good place for that.  It was pitch black when I arrived at the train station, and I had a lonely walk down the main road towards my hotel.  I felt a little depressed, and thought I had made a mistake to visit during such a dismal month.  Then I saw glowing in the darkness the warm orange lights of Les Galapagos!  It spelled ‘HOME’ in no uncertain way, and I felt strangely comforted as I trundled by with my suitcase.  Half an hour later I had unpacked and was ready for dinner after seventeen hours on the road, and naturally my feet carried me back to that hearth-like Brasserie.  There were few customers, but a feeling of cosy comfort pervaded the atmosphere.  The food was good and plentiful, but what really set it apart from other restaurants was the people who served it.  They were – indeed are - so kind and concerned for their guests’ wellbeing that I felt as though I had returned into the warm embrace of a long lost family.  (Since I am not a restaurant critic I feel I may be allowed to write that way!)

I found out later that the restaurant had changed hands shortly before I arrived that November, and the food, which I thought had been unfairly maligned, had actually vastly improved.  Les Galapagos specialise in local foods, and serve beef from Salers cattle, cheese like St Nectaire, and beer from a small brewery nearby (I am quite fond of the Noire which is a dark ale).  For dessert I tend towards the Brochette Ananas, a large amount of pineapple with a scoop of pineapple ice-cream.  Aside from the massive portions I can’t fault the food in any way.

Speaking of massive portions, I tried my theory re the portion sizes and the canalisation holes out on half a dozen locals.  My first attempts served only to baffle them.  I am not sure whether this was the result of my startlingly original theory or of my startlingly original French.  However, my second attempts were more successful, because I had prepared a detailed drawing to illustrate my points.  Not only did I make myself understood, but everyone nodded in agreement that I had indeed uncovered the secret of their portion sizes!  I even received two additional facts to underpin my theory.  One, fat people float better than thin ones, so are higher on the water which makes their disappearance into the canalisation holes less likely.  Two, fat people are less likely to be blown over by strong gales.  I should add that one of my respondents expressed her worry that this theory would provide a good excuse for her husband to abandon his attempts to lose some weight, and asked me not to publicise it any further around town.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – The Duck-pond

One of the joys of La Bourboule is Parc Fenestre.  It is a large park in the centre of the town with lots of attractions like mini golf and a little train.  Most of the attractions are geared towards children who are well catered for in La Bourboule.  I spend many happy hours in this park.  My favourite feature is a little out of the way and not too popular with the masses, and that is the duck-pond.

The duck-pond of La Bourboule is unique, in my opinion, in that it features exclusively plastic ducks.  I have thought about this a great deal, and questioned any number of natives about it, but never received a satisfactory explanation.  Most of the natives had never even noticed the plastic ducks, and were as baffled as I when I questioned them about this.  One suggested that the French were notorious hunters of wild fowl, and perhaps had shot all the real ducks until the park keepers, tired of having to replace them, decided to use inedible plastic ducks which were, it was hoped, unattractive to hunters.  This theory, while ingenious, did not seem plausible to me - hunting is not allowed in city centres even in France, and I had never seen a rifleman in La Bourboule.

Another person I interrogated thought that the plastic ducks might be cheaper to maintain, and therefore the thrifty city council had introduced them on monetary grounds.  And an old man with a chiwawa assured me that a horrible duck pest had wiped out all the local waterfowl which had to be replaced by plastic ones.

All winter long I had pondered this matter, and when I finally returned in April an answer had suggested itself:  the pond was teeming with tadpoles!  Now ducks eat tadpoles, and lots of them.  A pond with ducks will quickly run out of taddies, and no froglets will be left to emerge in August.  Therefore I reckoned that the park keepers, no doubt fired by their zeal to encourage a resurgence in the waning numbers of amphibians in Europe, had introduced the plastic ducks to discourage real ducks from populating the pond.  A flock of homeless ducks, flying over La Bourboule in search of a new abode, would spy the pond, approach, notice the ducks, conclude that the pond was already occupied, and, with a resigned shrug, fly away again. 

That was my theory, and it pains me to report that it was widely pooh-poohed by all and sundry, not least the people of La Bourboule who did not believe their park keepers would adopt such devious designs.  But when I returned today to the park, what did I see but a large sign depicting a frog in the middle of the duck-pond, announcing to visitors bemused by the plastic ducks that this was a frog-pond!  Whether the park keepers had heard of my theory and decided that it was a good idea – after all, they already had the plastic ducks and the tadpoles, and it was better to be known as conservationists than as cheapskates too miserly to maintain real ducks – or whether I was the only one in La Bourboule who had cottoned on to their scheme I do not know.  Either way I am happy.  It just proves what I always say:  La Bourboule is Cool!



Post Cards from La Bourboule – The Mediatheque



The Mediatheque is one of the jewels in the crown of La Bourboule.  It used to be a covered market, but a few years ago the town decided a library was more important, turfed out the market traders, purchased a dozen bookshelves, acquired the volumes needed to fill them, and installed several librarians to minister to the reading public.

Since the Mediatheque is of such recent origin, and the librarians are not prepared to accommodate easy to acquire low quality reading matter in their beautiful building, the first impression I had when entering was, So where are all the books?  Had the town so exhausted their financial resources by refurbishing the building that they had no money left to buy any books?

I quickly realised that my initial impression was wrong.  There are quite a number of books in the Mediatheque, and jolly good ones, too.  It is just that I was so used to libraries which are short of space and crammed full of books top to bottom that the minimalist approach adopted by the Mediatheque took me by surprise.  The building is open plan and flooded by sunlight.  An upper gallery houses the CD and DVD collection, as well as a number of PCs for cruising the Internet, but the main collection is downstairs.

Half of the downstairs area is dedicated to books for grown-ups.  There is a good history section, including many books on local events, many biographies, lots of novels, plus natural history and geography books.  I spend little time here, because my level of French makes the children’s section infinitely more enticing.  The children’s section contains anything from books for tiny toddlers to those for teenagers.  There is inter alia a large collection of Bande Dessines, ie comic books such as Tintin and Asterix which I utilise extensively.

There is even a shelf of English books, courtesy of yours truly.  When I first discovered the Mediatheque I enquired about foreign language books, only to be informed that unfortunately the budget did not run to such luxuries yet.  Considering that most La Bourboulians only speak French that makes sense, of course, but I felt that they ought to invest in the future.  La Bourboule is poor, it depends on tourists, and if it wants to attract more foreign ones then the people must learn English!  The librarians agreed with my reasoning – at least I think they did, with their lack of English and my lack of French communication was uncertain – but repeated that there was no budget for foreign books.

Undaunted I offered them my English Tintins as seed-books for their English collection.  ‘I am learning French,’ I told them, ‘and don’t need the English ones any more.’  ‘But what about the postage,’ they replied, ‘books are expensive to ship and we don’t have a budget for this.’  I airily waved this aside, feeling like Croesus, and declared that I would cover the postage myself.  Having thus exhausted every argument to stop me from dumping my old books on them they expressed their gratitude, hoping no doubt that I would forget all about it.

But of course I didn’t, and in due course received a thank you for the Tintin books.  By now I had developed a proprietorial interest in the Mediatheque and decided to become a major benefactor.  Every month I sent a package containing several books to La Bourboule, hoping that the local children, who where learning English in school, would polish it to a gleaming sheen with the help of my books.  To ensure an avid readership I sent what I hoped were the most enticing volumes, beautifully illustrated old classics and new favourites like Harry Potter.  The next generation of La Bourboulians would speak perfect English, which would attract loads of foreign tourists, and La Bourboule would boom and prosper once more!

There was one problem with this scenario, but it only occurred to me after I was already too strongly committed to my scheme to abandon it.  Currently La Bourboule is perfect for learning French, because few people speak English and everyone is trying hard to teach me their language, no doubt in the hope of being able to have a conversation with this interesting foreigner – well, that’s what I like to think, anyway.  Once they all speak English, how will my French ever improve?

In closing I would like to thank the employees of the Mediatheque for their patience and forbearance with my monthly intrusions into their shelf-space.  Had I tried this with any other library I would no doubt have been sent away with a flea in my ear – librarians don’t take kindly to being flooded with reading matter which is not of their own choosing.  But like all La Bourbouleans, who humour me extensively and excessively, they were simply too polite and kind hearted to tell me off.  Also they didn’t know how.  Because they didn’t speak English.  And I didn’t speak French.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Having fun with French signs

One of the joys of being in foreign countries is discovering and interpreting the signs one encounters.

My all time favourite is ‘Sauf Bus’, which I first encountered on the parking place of a French motorway rest stop.  Whenever I don’t know a French word I try whatever English or German word looks similar, and since the three languages are closely related this often yields usable results.  ‘Saufen’ in German means drinking to excess, especially alcohol.  So ‘Sauf Bus’ conjured up an image of a bus full of drunken Germans, loudly singing disreputable songs and topping up their blood alcohol with cheap beer while careering down the motorway.  It seemed eminently sensible to direct them to their own parking space, so they would not irritate decent French people with their alcohol fuelled antics.  I burst into loud laughter and expressed my approval of the sign enthusiastically.  MDL was baffled by this sudden outburst and enquired about the cause of my levity.  Upon my explanation he knitted his brows and said, shattering my jolly image with three succinct words, ‘sauf’ means ‘except’.  Apparently ‘Sauf Bus’ simply meant that busses weren’t allowed to park in that spot.  How utterly utterly boring!

Another favourite of mine is any sign that says ‘Rappeler’.  For example, there might be a sign indicating a nearby school, and under it is written, ‘rappeler’.  ‘Rappel’ in German means to lose one’s rag, to go mad, as in ‘einen Rappel kriegen’, so I interpreted the sign accordingly.  ‘Don’t lose your temper now, there may be schoolchildren on the road!’  How very peculiar, were the French so short tempered that they had to be warned against it all the time?  Again I was corrected by an unamused friend.  ‘Rappeler’ means ‘reminder’!  Chastened I sank back into my seat.

Here in La Bourboule I discovered the most ridiculous sign ever.  It shows a fish jumping out of the river, with a red bar across it, and the legend Peche Interdit.  I had a field day with that one.  ‘Firstly,’ I declared, ‘it is ridiculous to address the fish with a sign that they can only see if they jump out of the river, thus doing what the sign forbids.  Secondly, if fish want to commit suicide, what right have we to stop them?’  But the ‘Peche Interdit’ part of the sign really got me going.  ‘Why order the fish to talk to each other, this is ridiculous!  And anyway, fish can’t read!  What a stupid sign!’ 

My companion, who had tried to interrupt me for some time, finally got a word in edgeways.  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’  Was he dense or something?  ‘‘Peche’ means ‘fish’, and ‘interdit’ means ‘talking to each other’.  The word derives from ‘inter’ meaning ‘between’, and ‘dit’ being a form of ‘dire’ meaning ‘saying/talking’.  Therefore ‘Peche Interdit’ means ‘Fish talk to each other’.’  But my closely reasoned analysis of the sign failed to impress my friend.   ‘‘Peche’ means ‘fishing’’, claimed the omniscient one.  ‘So what are you saying, the sign tells fish to talk to anglers?  Very nice thought, but I can’t see it happening!’  He began to pull his hair.  ‘No, what I am saying is that the sign means ‘Fishing is not allowed’ – ‘interdit’ means forbidden!’  ‘So why on earth doesn’t the sign show a fisherman with a red bar across?  What an extremely misleading and stupid sign!’  ‘Why don’t you just learn French,’ he said.  ‘What, and miss out on all this fun?’

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Aromatherapy

For the Methode de Proetz, the first treatment every day, one has to take a number and wait one’s turn, and somehow there are always thirty people ahead of me.  Whether I come at 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, or even 9:00, there are always about thirty people who got there before me.  Each person takes about two minutes, so thirty people mean waiting for one hour.  I hate waiting!  So now I drop in whenever I have finished my morning rituals, take a number, and do other things.  First I buy a paper, then a croissant, and then I get a coffee at the machine in the Thermes’ Cafeteria and have breakfast.  By the time I have reached the comments section and am getting exasperated with them my hour is up and I return to the de Proetz waiting room.

I have been observing my fellow curistes, and noticed with pleasure that many of them are my size or smaller.  So either asthma affects small people disproportionately, or the people who live within a hundred miles of La Bourboule and seem to be the main Thermes patrons are smaller than the northern Europeans who normally surround me.  Either way it makes a nice change for me - it is very irritating to be looked down on by the majority of my fellow human beings.  That is not to say there are no advantages to being small, if I keep quiet I get easily overlooked, which can be useful.  And I can comfortably use antique furniture, which was made when people were smaller – tables are not too low, chairs allow my feet to touch the ground.  Taller people are often uncomfortable in antiques, and that keeps prices down!  Best of all I only need a tiny house, which is a great advantage in these ridiculous house-price times.

Anyway.  On Saturday I received a new toy, an aromatic oil nebuliser.  I put twenty drops of oil into the apple (the top comes off), turn on the nebuliser, and aromatic steam escapes from the apple core.  The apple is lit from inside, every second there is a different colour.  The colour is reflected from all the miniature drops of oil which have been distributed by the nebuliser all over the inside of the apple.  When it is dark it looks amazing in a Walt Disney sort of way.  I had it running for much of the night with eucalyptus oil, and it really helped with the cold.

Thank you for all the Get Well wishes!  I am not doing badly, I sit up on my bed and read French magazines and newspapers, having run out of English ones.  Yesterday I read an interview with the daughter of Jackie Kennedy in Paris Match (took me all of three hours!), and today I tackled the DSK television interview (still in progress).  I had thought of watching it, but I couldn’t find the on/off switch of the TV in my apartment.  So I watched A Christmas Carol again on my little laptop and learned a great new French word:  Baliverne!  That means Nonsense! and is Scrooge’s favourite word before his conversion.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Market Day



Saturday is market day in La Bourboule.  It is not a very elaborate affair, there are several stalls with fruit and vegetables, also some with sausages and hams, ditto for cheese.  I also noticed some clothes stalls, but they, too, sell only solid basics which can be found in any other market or shop.  La Bourboule is a small town with down to earth sensible folk, who don’t go in for unnecessary fripperies.  The tourists are pretty much the same – the luxury loving snobbish upper class types go to Le Mont Dore just up the road.  I have never been to a market day in Le Mont Dore, I am loyal to La Bourboule and refuse to be tempted.

But despite the simple nature of the market I found some keepsakes that will cheer my heart when I return to Oxford (see photo above).  A pottery stall yielded the pig, which serves as a smoked sausage (saucisson) holder.  These sausages are kept at room temperature and are eaten a few slices at a time, so having a custom-made receptacle for them is extremely handy.  They tend to end up in the bread basket, or jostle for space in the fruit bowl, and neither option is very desirable.  If in the bread basket the bread acquires a sausagey smell which goes badly with jam and honey.  If kept in the fruit bowl the grapes end up smelling smoky and sometimes a moist fruit soaks into the sausage and the flies descend upon it.  So the saucisson pig seems like an excellent idea.

I also bought a letter train - a little locomotive which pulls the seven letters of my name.  The price was Euro 5, the same price for any surname.  A good thing my much-married friend Mrs Leadbeater-Beaconsfield-Ffolkes wasn’t there to purchase a train!  This is the sort of idiot purchase one regrets when one returns home, but I like to live in the present and will worry about that later.

I also bought lots of strawberries, grapes, tomatoes, and fennel.  No cheese or sausages, obviously, I will not be unfaithful to Au Regal Auvergnat!  Since we are on the subject of sausages et al, the French word for them is choucrouterie.  This is derived from choucroute, meaning sauerkraut – smoked sausages and ham are traditionally cooked and eaten with sauerkraut.  But although I looked everywhere, I have not found any sauerkraut anywhere, not in the shops and not in the restaurants.  The world is full of things to worry about!

The tablemat in the background of my photo, by the way, was bought at Remy, the newsagent next to Les Galapagos.  I was looking for a ready reference for acquiring some French grammar, and the tablemat seemed the best option.  Remy stocks them for French school children, who are just as bemused by the number of tenses as I am.  ‘Eight tenses,’ I exclaimed when I looked at my purchase while waiting to have my nose Methode-de-Pruetzed, ‘wouldn’t three be enough?’  A little boy who was also waiting to be treated turned to his mother and said, ‘Ha, you see?  I am not the only one!’  The mother shot me a glance which I translated roughly as, ‘stop ruining my kid’s chances of getting into college!’  Luckily it was my turn to enter the doctor’s office.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Lazing on a sunny afternoon ….

While the nights have been quite cold, we have had a few rather hot days here.  I am not at my best in hot weather, but grow lazy and sluggish and tend to doze a lot.  At home I spend such days, if unencumbered by the demands of work, next to the pond in a deckchair, the fountain playing, the frogs on mossy rocks around the pond, and probably surrounded by the remains of a large water melon (me, not the frogs).  And for some strange reason, and against type, I read cheap plantation novels on those occasions.

Not the sort that feature palatial mansions populated by dashingly handsome plantation owners and southern belles with innocent minds and heaving bosoms.  No, the sort I read are set in a grimly grimy Alabama, where ignorant uncouth white slave owners lead unglamorous lives in rustic settings, trying to augment the meagre harvests from their clapped out fields by selling their excess slaves.  What makes me read those books (I have four, picked up accidentally with a box of vampire novels) when close to a heat stroke completely eludes me.  Perhaps it is the relentlessly emphasized heat, or the undemanding nature of the books.  I read them half a page at a time, then doze a little, then flick through a few pages, then read a few more sentences.  I don’t know any other books I could read that way.  Or perhaps I read them for the smug feeling of moral superiority for not being a slave owner they induce in me.  It might even be a symptom of impending heat stroke.

But I digress, it must be the heat.  In La Bourboule, needless to say, there are no cheap plantation novels.  None in English, anyway.  So I spent the afternoon resting on my bed, minus the pond, the frogs, the water melon, and the haphazard reading.  I just doze.  Outside my window is the Dordogne, a small rushing creek which hurries noisily across its rocky bed.  A few birds sing, a bell chimes three times, I wake with a start – too late for lunch!  I turn over and go back to sleep.  Who needs lunch when there is ice cream in the freezer compartment.  They’ll miss me at Les Galapagos, but they will understand.  No one remonstrates with curistes who sleep all the time, because it is generally assumed that the Cure is terribly exhausting.  Actually it is not that bad, the heat is much worse for me, but I am not going to destroy a myth that caters to my vices.

At six o’clock I wake again, this time by a cold gust through the window.  The day’s heat battles with the night’s chill, and six o’clock has gotten caught in the middle.  I am not sure how I feel about this, I enjoyed dozing away the day, but now I am wide awake and suddenly remember that I had better get the house cleaned up before the weekend.  Sniff.  Hic transit gloria mundi.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Why the portions are so large

I have been wondering for quite a while why the portions in the La Bourboulian restaurants are so much larger than in Paris.  I had considered and rejected any number of interesting theories, like the obsession of the Parisians with slimness and the greater cost of catering in the capital.  My favourite theory was that the recent massive influx of small tourists from Asia whose petite bodies need less food than their European counterparts had led to a general reduction in portion sizes.

But today I have finally hit upon the real reason:  Large kurb-side holes in La Bourboule!  When wandering around the town I have often observed the large rectangular holes that line the streets everywhere.  They are about two feet wide and half a foot high and appear to lead straight into the canalisation, so can be considered bottomless pits.  This morning as I returned from my daily curiste activities I noticed a small boy tripping just in front of one of the kurb-side holes, and had it not been for the swift action of his adult companion he would no doubt have fallen into the hole and vanished forever from our sight.

Now heavy persistent rains are a common occurrence in La Bourboule, and can lead to a considerable volume of water in the roads, turning them into small rivers in their own right.  Just imagine a slim person being caught in a deluge, blown about by a lusty gale, tripping, and being swept by the rushing waters into one of those kerb-side holes!  Without the large portions served by the La Bourboulians I have no doubt that the tourist population would soon be decimated to negligible levels.

The natives, of course, know all about the holes and through a long process of natural selection have achieved an uncanny ability to avoid these death traps.  But since the town depends on tourists for most of its income, and a continuous culling of paying guests by the ubiquitous holes would have bankrupted them, the restaurateurs decided to double their portion sizes, thus ensuring well-filled tourist stomachs and eliminating the possibility of their customers going down the drain.

Tomorrow I shall test this theory out on the owners of Les Galapagos!

Speaking of talking to the natives, I felt a little less exhausted from the Cure – it always takes a week or so to adjust – and decided to make a few cautious enquiries about Fatty.  My little friends had told me that his name was unlikely to be known to the natives and that they had almost certainly not seen him.  It would therefore be best to get in touch with La Dame d’Ordanche, who could probably give me some directions regarding Fatty’s whereabouts.  But aside from telling me that she used to roam the mountains around La Bourboule they did not know where she was.

Armed with this sparse knowledge I cautiously asked someone in the Library.  ‘No no,’ she replied, you mean La Banne d’Ordanche, it is right there!’  She pointed out of the window at Glider Mountain.  I asked her how long she had lived in La Bourboule – perhaps she had not heard of La Dame?  But she was third generation La Bourboulian and resented my implications.  Anyway, she had to pick up her son from school.  Then I realised she wasn’t a librarian, and that the library was closing.

Oh well, better luck next time.

Post Cards from La Bourboule – Daily Delicatessen Orgies, courtesy of Au Regal Auvergnat



As soon as I have settled in a little I go shopping for food.  I usually have my main meal at the Galapagos, but also need to take care of breakfast and supper.  The first stop is always Au Regal Auvergnat.  It is located in a side street a little off the main thoroughfare of the town, 21, rue des Freres Rozier, and has most convenient opening hours.  So if one feels the overwhelming urge at seven in the evening to stock up on cheese and sausages it is never a problem, Pascal is there at one’s service. 

This, by the way, is not just a figure of speech; Au Regal Auvergnat delivers a customised service I have not encountered anywhere else.  Pascal once decoded a decidedly obscure e-mail sent by me, composed a brilliant gift basket, bought bread in another store to add to it, and delivered it after work as a surprise gift for a dear friend, at no extra charge and for a complete stranger (we met in person only afterwards).  Now that’s what I call service!

The shop is a veritable treasure trove of sausages and hams, cheeses, wines and spirits, jams and honeys, chocolates and bonbons, and many homemade salads.  I like to think of the shop (such a prosaic word for this gourmet’s paradise!) as a sort of Essence of Harrods Food Halls – all the best bits Harrods has to offer without any of the make-weight space-fillers one encounters there.  Pascal does not stock the honest but boring staples of one’s daily fare like bread and butter or fruit and vegetables.  These needs are catered for by any number of decent solid shops in the vicinity, but Pascal has no truck with them – he seeks to please the top end of our taste buds.

Any normal human being, possessed of sensible priorities, first buys all the staples and then, having counted the remaining money, regretfully concludes that sausage & liqueur will have to wait until the lottery has finally been won.  Being subnormal, or should I say abnormal, or even supra-normal, anyway definitely not normal, I shop the other way round.  Long experience has taught me that the boring solid foodstuffs bought in such quantities by all and sundry often end up uneaten and in the waste bin.  Or they are eaten in excess and add inches to one’s waistline.  Either way is undesirable.  Delicatessen foods, on the other hand, are never wasted, since necessarily bought in small quantities and unfailingly toothsome.  Being concerned about both waste and waist, I always shop at the Regal Auvergnat first.  After I have bought my fill of sausage, headcheese, salad, ham, cheese, honey, and wine I usually conclude that I have no money left for buying bread, butter, potatoes, beans and other fattening foods and resolve to subsist entirely on my delicatessen, with a few tomatoes and grapes thrown in.

Luckily the Galapagos pile my plate high each lunch time with the healthy provender my doctor insists I take as nourishment, so my daily delicatessen orgies have not undermined my health in any noticeable way.  And they have kept me relatively slim.

For those unable to visit his shop in person, and indeed for people like me who try to combat frequent bouts of homesickness for La Bourboule by consuming large quantities of cheese and sausages when not in the Auvergne, Pascal set up a flourishing Internet business on Ebay.  I usually order sausages and cheese, but draw the line at spirits and honey, since their weight makes them expensive to ship.  However, should you have fallen victim to the bitter charms of Salers, a liqueur made of gentian and reputedly extremely healthy, which I failed to locate anywhere in London, then Pascal is your man – he carries three different types in various size bottles.

http://stores.ebay.fr/Au-Regal-Auvergnat?_trksid=p4340.l2563