Lost In France
Years ago when I was a young man, having modelled myself on Laurie Lee and gone "flaneuring" I went in search of Cider with Rosie (or her French equivalent), with nothing more than a backpack and a thumb.
Long story short, in the words of the hoarse goddess Bonny Tyler, I was Lost in France. I knew I was somewhere near Lyon, it was early evening and I had nowhere to stay. I came upon a dusty old cafe in the middle of nowhere which was closed for the evening, but I knocked on the door anyway in the hope they could direct me to some kind of life or activity, not easy in provincial France at the best of times.
A ruddy looking middle aged woman came to the door and in bad sub O-level French, I explained my plight, she ushered me in and showed me directly to a room in which the heavy floral wallpaper ran up the walls and across the ceiling in one horrendous avalanche of dark brown and mustard. I looked down to see a bed that looked as though it already had an invisible giant laying there as the mattress could have doubled as a paddling pool such was the backbreaking bowl that it offered up. On closer inspection, the sheets did not appear to have been changed since the Liberation (there were still tell-tale Pubes de la Resistance lodged in the nap of the brushed cotton candy striped sheets). I was desperate for somewhere to crash and I nodded, at which she did a 180 turn, beckoning me back down the stairs, miming the act of eating as she walked ahead. I nodded again smiling, looking forward to a nice bowl of soup and a crusty baguette perhaps.
What greeted me in their private kitchen will stay with me all my days. Picture this: a contemporary pose of Leonardo's Last Supper re-enacted in Rigsby's Rising Damp Kitchen if you will, featuring two or three teenage children, the old man with waistcoat, round belly, ridiculous Sherlock Holmes pipe and proper moustache Gauloise, the wife and mother walked backwards around the table with a loaf of bread under her housecoated armpit, carving off huge chunks of bread which were falling directly onto a table covered in caramel leatherette, in turn covered in a thin layer of grease.
The food was rustic to say the least, no plates were afforded, instead, directly onto the greased leatherette were sliced in turn, chunks of, very very smelly cheese, a whole back leg of Bayonne ham (unshaved I fear), a few other unidentifiable body parts, and a vile sausage which I soon learned was addressed as Andouillette. I did some research later and discovered that this is best described as an intestine packed full of the pig's unmentionables including, lung, eye, tripe and chitterlings (colon) the last of these ingredients giving it the unmistakable aroma of feces. You did not have to look very far if you were in search of short hairs either, they seemed to attach themselves to any sticky surface, i.e. anything in the room.
There was a big old 27 inch telly perched on one end of the table, playing some kind of naf game show (which the French do so horribly well) at volume 11 and just in case I should forget that I was in the country, a small goat wondered around under the table trying to eat my shoes in between sweeping up any crumbs or body parts that fell to the rank flagstoned floor. There was a small terrier making a terrible raquette of some kind as well (excuse pun).
I drank rather a lot of the red wine that they all drunk like water and gradually I relaxed and begun to enjoy the everyday insanity of the situation. I even thought for one minute that the old man would offer his youngest daughter up as a bed warmer but in retrospect she was already in family use for that purpose. And so I slept and scratched and tossed and turned most of the night and was gone at the crack of dawn, thankful that I had not, in the end, been murdered and processed for paté that night. I lived too fight another day, I just needed to find a toilet.
These days, TripAdvisor would probably x-rate food and accommodation like this.
Photo: The vile sausage in question: Andouillette, less said the better.
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