Cheese cloth and bloomers

Frustration, frustration across the nation. I’d actually written half a blog and tried to save it when I wasn’t on line and it got lost immediately. So now I start again. Don’t save Jo…wait until you are online and then save.

Ok – at the weekend I was in Adderbury delivering workshops alongside my sister and John Spiers. Whilst there I was wearing a blouse of mine that reminded me of cheese cloth…so called I believe as it used to be used to drain cheeses before they cut it up and sewed it into blouses……..hopefully washing it first. I asked Fi if she remembered cheese cloth, ” oh yes I used to have a beautiful pink and white striped blouse that I looked absolutely gorgeous in. But then being 15 and 16 we’d have looked gorgeous in anything really!” I sort of grunted in agreement but actually I had no concept of being anything that might resemble gorgeous to anybody until I reached my forties where I had finally learnt that I could charm people….little to do with what I looked like and more to do with how I behaved . In a blog in the past I remember telling the story of attracting my first boyfriend by standing on a chair at an event and singing. Don’t worry it wasn’t some random public area but an event where these things were not unexpected. The result had nothing to do with my physical looks then either but at least brought them then into perspective. Hard to miss in my case though many of you who know me will agree. I found in my forties that I often had a natural and naughty twinkle in my eyes that people liked and I also realised I could switch the sparkle on and off. The same sparkle you get when in love but with added mischievous. (Otherwise acknowledging I am an incorrigible flirt) Although mostly the sparkle is there and rarely switched off due to a lust and love for life. Realising that I had a certain amount of charm, for some people, enabled my self confidence to grow.

I have no memory of a favourite cheese cloth blouse myself but I do remember a pair of outrageous clog type shoes. They didn’t have a wooden sole or a leather upper. They had a two and a half inch cork sole and the bit you slipped your foot in was made of three stripes of brightly coloured plastic. Being vertically challenged I loved feeling taller. You’d think because of that I’d wear heels now but I find that the feeling of falling forward (not helped by a large bosom tipping the balance) and my ability to look like Les Dawson when walking in them have put me off. I could never master the model’s hip swing. As tights never seem to fit me properly and often wrinkle around my ankles you’d only need to add a crimpelene dress and out of date handbag and there you have it morphation complete Les Dawson otherwise known as Jo Freya or Jo Fraser as I was then.

My other memory is that I bought a pair of white cotton workers dungarees and then dyed them pink. On several occasions I’d go to take a ‘comfort break’, inadvertently flick the over shoulder straps down the loo, sit down and then wee all over them. No problem if at home where you could change immediately but hard to explain when in company like a-session coming back into the room with damp shoulders and a slight smell of ammonia. Sorry ! The saxophone slings I wear that you hook the sax onto to take some of the weight can also cause problems on the loo. More than once I have got them caught in my pants just before standing and gone in to a strange bobbing type dance as a result. Fortunately all without witnesses ……until now!

I’m sat today in my house in France with mother. Her first visit here so you may hear more about that. For some reason we were talking about sowing and cookery lessons at school. She said she rather admired the schools that had thought far enough a head to get you to make ‘pinnies’ in the sowing class which you could then wear in the cookery class. She said in her school she had to make numerous pairs of something that was called ‘pilch’. I have checked the spelling and that’s what she remembers. These were made from floral material, effectively a bloomer type under garment with elastic at the waist and then around the thigh bit. She has yet to meet anyone one else who has heard of pilchards…sorry that was spell check – ‘pilchs’. Anyone out there heard of them. Mum thinks it might be a generational thing. She is 78 years old born in 1939…… or indeed have you any other unusual garment common to your life that the rest of us may never had heard about?

I wonder if you could inadvertently put your pilch on sideways!

The kettle’s on.

As the life of a musician isn’t about routine when I can have a routine I am quite rigid about it with flexibility. What that means is that I am full of contradictions, like most people, but that the coffee should be ‘real’ and at 11 am. If it isn’t immediately on the horizon but is likely to happen sometime before 2pm I don’t panic. I do panic (ask Moirai) if there’s no real coffee. I drink two small coffees from an espresso machine. Too large to be an espresso so more like an Americano but not served in a bucket size like all chain coffee shops these days. Moaning older woman alert…..what’s wrong with good quality small coffees rather than over sized watered down shite the worst of which is the chain that starts with the same letter as shite…….and breath.

We have two types of coffee in our house and here in France. Real coffee otherwise known as Jo’s and ‘shite coffee’. That doesn’t mean you’ll get a bucket load but actually refers to that funny tasting stuff that comes in powder form out of jars. Never touch the stuff myself . Snob – moi!

So that’s one routine. The other is tea at 4pm with, as I said to Mum, ‘with the comfy chair torture’, ‘of course’, says she! If that quote means nothing to you you need to see if there are any YouTube clips of Monty Python and the Spanish Inquisition sketches. Then it’ll all make sense. I am also a tea snob and of course now feel totally justified due to the revelation about plastic in tea bags. Yes, I drink my tea lose brewed in a pot and have tea cosy’s and tea strainers. We also have two types of tea. Jo’s tea and tea bags for those who can’t be arsed going through all the tea making paraphernalia.

I also prefer neat piles outside …..stop it…not those kind of piles….to cupboards where things have been randomly placed or shoved in. My partner is the opposite. This means cupboards fill up, the outsides look tidy and Jo is running around going where the f…ing hell have you put the so and so. The ‘stuff things randomly’ method means you end up buying more as you have no idea what you’ve got. Case in point. Mum has just helped me go through the cupboards here because between myself and my sister they have become, to my brain, illogical. The consequence…..I now discover I have two jars of cardamom. Fortunately they’ll keep and you can never have too many. One of my favourite flavours .

I am not altogether happy that the jams, honey and marmite are in with the mugs and tea cups but there is a logic there and you can now see clearly where the herbs and spices are, the sauces and additions (harissa, mustard, caper berry’s preserved lemons etc) pasta and grains, teas and coffees and cake baking type stuff. All good. Do I sound a little OCD yet?

We’re off in a minute as I am going to show Mum around Mirepoix. Then we’re heading to my friends Andy and Ros’s. They behaved like angels last night not only coming in and lighting a fire, turning heating on etc but making the beds and turning the the blankets on. The fact that they had done that last bit nearly made me cry with relief. Fab as the plane was delayed and we didn’t roll up until 00.40. I really can’t thank them enough.

Today is a topsy turvy day and fairly typically French. We manage to go on an expedition to Vals having planned to have lunch first and then see the extraordinary church which I knew Mum, who’s called Ruth by the way, would appreciate. I had checked the opening hours of the cafe. We got there in the pouring rain. Found the cafe which was very obviously closed and decided to do the church and then head home for lunch. On walking back to the car in slightly less rain there was a clear sign on the wall with the cafe menu on it saying open everyday from 29th March – or not! We then drove home in the dry!

In Carla de Roquefort, above where my house is, they have a little out door market every other Sunday in the summer months. I wandered up there on a non market Sunday for some exercise and there, all alone, was one market stall holder with a table laid with vegetables. I got chatting to her and she said we, I couldn’t come on market day so I thought I’d come today instead. There were no signs ups up and the little market place is not visible from the main village in fact it would only be visible from about two properties. So why on earth did she pitch up anyway? She didn’t seem at all phased by the fact no-one would know she was there. That I also find fairly typically french….and charming with it.