Jake’s been off school yesterday and today – so today we’ve been baking biscuits, as opposed to my usual cookies. I’ve dug out my cookie cutters for Hallowe’en and we’ve iced and decorated our biscuits. It’s a very simple recipe:
- 225 g caster sugar
- 225 g butter
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 450 g flour, sifted
Just cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and then add the flour in 50 g increments, mixing it in with your hands until it’s a dough. Leave somewhere very cool for an hour (or in the fridge!) and then roll and cut out. Some people are fussy about them being level and flat and so on. I don’t care because they don’t last long. Bake for 10 minutes at Gas Mark 4 – whatever that is. Then leave to cool, then ice!
I am unscientific with my icing sugar – Put a bit in, add some milk and mix to a thick paste. Add light colours of food colouring first and be very sparing if you’re adding darker colours to mix to other colours.
Jake and I painted them with a cocktail stick – and then we all enjoyed eating them!!
I’m planning on having a ‘feu de joie’ (a fire of joy – or bonfire to you and I) for the 5th November, seeing as we can’t get back to England at half term. I’ve planned an extensive list of potato and apple products – pommes d’amour (toffee apples), purée de pommes de terre (mashed potato) sausages, jacket potatoes done on the barbecue, parkin (only if I can find molasses, my make-do substitute for Tate and Lyle’s divine black treacle) bonfire toffee, fudge, baked bananas and chocolate, mushy peas, pickled red cabbage – so Jake can invite some of his friends round. I’ll invite a few neighbours and English people who I like – and we’ll have some games and a small bonfire (not forgetting firewood is now a commodity, not something to get rid of!) which I think will be jolly lovely!!
We’d also gone to look for the non-existent maison de la Resistance in Chasseneuil – apparently a room in someone’s house (not unlike a ‘teddy bear’ museum I went to in Japan which really was just someone’s front room done up!!) – but didn’t find it, so I dragged us up to the Necropolis in Chasseneuil instead. Amazing to think it was a small hub of Resistance activity. I thought Jake might be interested because these were your real life Jack Bauers and Tony Almeidas, taking pills to stop themselves confessing under torture. The Necropolis is dedicated to the Resistance fighters in Chasseneuil. It’s quite amazing to think of these real people fighting. Not like the British, sending people to war, but actual war around your own home, affecting everybody – your parents, your children.
Unfortunately, however, in the midst of this solemnity and sombre necropolis, Jake and Steve decided it’d be great to do their usual horsing about, throwing each other about, attacking each other, kicking each other, punching each other. I said I’m not taking them anywhere ever again. They can’t go anywhere without it being street theatre and almost a contact sport for the average passer-by. So they’re staying at home from now on. I shall not allow their noise pollution to escape Les Ecures. I’m sure it’s their way of holding hands, but it’s more like chimps playing. In fact, I’ve seen this very thing on Monkey World, where the little chimp chases after the bigger chimp and they roll about for a bit and then the little chimp ends up playing too rough and the big chimp ends up losing his temper and playing too hard. How little we have evolved.
I’m standing at the foot of this huge memorial, mulling over the seriousness of world war and contemplating life 70 years ago, and they’re rampaging through it like they’ve escaped from La Vallée des Singes.
Next week, I might go and look at some stuff on my own and leave them at home. Men.
As I write, Jake’s just gone outside to set fire to some pine needles, and is murmuring about ‘it only gives off a smoke’ – Neanderthal, then, rather than chimp?!
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