Diversions.

Look what we did on the weekend:

Busy weren't we. Wallpapering. With Anna Spiro for Porter's Paints beautiful, hand drawn, 'Rosey Posey Trellis'. Notice the arch and all those door openings. All I can say is thank goodness my husband knew what he was doing.....he'd wallpapered his bedroom....when he was thirteen. We may have stayed up just a little bit late on Saturday night and at times on Sunday the pattern became almost hypnotic.....in the quest to join the dots. We got there in the end..... at around about half ten on Sunday night. I really love how it's turned out, it's totally transformed the area at the top of the stairs and it works so well with the toile sofa and Persian rugs which were already in situ.

Being just over 100 years old, our house has myriad elements which scream 'olde worlde, dark and fusty' yet cleverly, this wallpaper has taken all of that on board and now announces that it is unapologetically all of the above and that it's also the home of a 21st century family......don't you think?

I couldn't help myself and instagrammed one of the above photos.....imagine my excitement when it elicited the following comment from Anna Spiro herself....'Well look at that! I think this is my favourite use of my wallpaper yet!' Exciting.

After much deliberation, I am about to order a Designer's Guild velvet to cover the chair that I nearly had reupholstered last year in blush pink. To tie in with this space, I'm thinking that I might go emerald green with a dark blue trim (which also, coincidentally, happens to be Rupert Campbell - Black's racing colours in reverse):

Although I was also momentarily toying with mauve:

Both colours are featured in the nearby window, yet wouldn't be too outrageously matchy - matchy and would provide a pop of colour against the blue:

Or should I just go with hot pink.....Anna, if you're reading?

Serendipidously, over the weekend, I'd put the Jilly Cooper novel down and happened to be flicking through this book 'David Hicks: A Life of Design':

It is such an inspirational read when you are tizzing up your own home.....so many ideas. I can't wait to flagrantly steal this look.....when I finally get around to taking my pile of framing in, I will be asking for different coloured picture mounts.....a la David Hicks circa 1953:

This book is a visual feast of images of the late David Hicks' work, flavoured with stories about his fabulous life. It was written by his son, Ashley, whom you might remember showed our gardening tour around his parents garden at 'The Grove' back in May....in the torrential rain:

I subsequently looked up Ashley Hicks on Wikipedia (as you do) and was surprised that it claimed that he avoided the fateful boat trip in Ireland....the one where the boat was blown up by the IRA killing his grandfather, Lord Mountbatten, his cousin and a local teenager, because, and I quote.....'I didn't go on the boat because I went to buy some cigarettes'. I wonder if it's true.

Anyway, back to the book about his father.....I loved the story about how proud David Hicks was to have his 13 year old daughter, India, participate as a bridesmaid at the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and  Lady Diana Spencer....so proud that he had the wreath of flowers that she wore on her head, dried, framed in perspex and put on display at his home.

I was also seriously impressed with David Hicks' drinks table...check it out:

This, in stark contrast, is ours:

It's so dry that it even has an orchid growing in the champagne bucket. Addled by jet lag, we did momentarily think about stocking up on spirits duty free on our re entry into the country, however, remembered just in the nick of time that we'd already used our booze limit to bring in Chateauneuf du Pape.

Having read what David Hicks wrote about an under stocked drinks table...'it not only looks mean, but is visually meaningless (harsh words)...I like rows and rows...and several back up bottles of spirits....it gives a generous, welcoming atmosphere, and if a bus load of friends does descend on you, you are ready for them'. I might have to drop in to the bottle shop on the way to do the school run.

Rx

Transitioning.

Hello from a wintery afternoon in Hobart.....complete with snow on Mt Wellington:

We are home. After a meticulously executed 44 hour trip from Nimes, which involved hire cars, trains, planes and pre booked maxi taxis we materialised at our front door only to discover that we'd forgotten to organise......the keys. Cue the locksmith. By this time it was dark and cold. Bleak. We had to go out again. To say goodbye to our last remaining beagle. Somehow he managed to make it to the day that we arrived home and we were able to say goodbye. Cue the tears.

The last two weeks have been a fog of jet lag and displacement....and I'll admit to also indulging in a tad of gratuitous homecoming malaise.....I have packets of sunflower seeds sitting on the kitchen bench waiting to be planted and I've been painting my toenails YSL 'Bleu Majorelle' which is the colour of the Mediterranean sky:

Sigh. So while I may have been daydreaming about our sojourn in the south of France the reality has been the unrelenting horror of unpacking the house.....how did that happen so soon.....and a never ending whirlwind of athletics carnivals, Irish Dancing Competitions, teacher meetings and myriad trips to the uniform pool. 

So, I've been trying to console myself with some soothing (although possibly manic) gardening....planting more box (because you can NEVER have too much), roses, punnets and punnets of hollyhock seedlings......and the beagles. Look how stunning this hedged rose garden in Stockholm was:

And those Danes have an incredible gift for using hollyhocks, they seem to just sprout out of the footpath:

 So beautiful. Needless to say,  I'm determined to try to achieve this effect at my house.

Things have been made to feel worse as I've succumbed to a nasty little lurgy, which has been working it's way through the whole family and has now taken up residence just behind my face. So yesterday, I had to pull out all the stops and between rain showers we all rugged up so that I could lead an expedition to the Botanic Gardens to gaze upon the wonderment that is Peter Cundall's Veggie Patch made famous on the ABC's 'Gardening Australia' programme. It's always guaranteed to make me feel happy.....however the sight that greeted my eyes was enough to make me.....almost....cry. It's been gutted:

I had no idea. 

Anyway, I've also been engaging in a spot of comforting home decorating which ultimately involves wallpaper and upholstery....be still my beating heart....yet to set the plans in motion it also involved getting the plasterer in, who, of course, reduced the house to an utter mess. Plaster dust = days of dusting, vacuuming and mopping. There is no way around this sorry fact. 

I keep flashing back to our road trip to Sweden, Denmark and Ireland, where everybody in the family had a turn at ticking something off their bucket list. The boys lived their dream of two days at Legoland and a night in the hotel.....where our room overlooked the magic that is Miniland and our Irish Dancing aholic daughter celebrated her 12th birthday in Dublin....complete with tickets to Riverdance at the Gaiety Theatre. 

And me? Mine happened in Stockholm, when I'm not ashamed to admit that I dragged the whole family to the recently opened ABBA: The Museum:

Tick. I loved every single minute of it. How could I not....I danced on stage to 'Mama Mia', sang 'Waterloo' in the sound recording booth, sat in the 'Arrival' helicopter:

And then.....I stood in front of these:

It all came flooding back.....how desperately I coveted one of these dresses as a five year old. In fact, given the chance, I'd still love to give one a whirl on the dance floor. 

Did you know that the girl's had their names emblazoned on the back...see:

And that back in the early days of ABBA, Frida used to make their costumes. 

And my husband? He was very excited to actually drink Guinness and watch 'Father Ted'.....in Ireland. I'm pleased to report that he did both....even on a couple of occasions at the same time:

And then, just because it was there and it had to be done, we all kissed the Blarney Stone:

 Even the baby:

I mentioned this to an Irish friend the other day at the school gate and she promptly told me that all of the local lads after closing time at the pub in Blarney.....go and pee on it. I hope she made that up.

Rx

A bientôt.

So this morning, I swapped the soundtrack to my jog from Daft Punk....to ABBA...because tomorrow we leave Uzes en route for three weeks travelling around Sweden, Denmark and Ireland:

Our suitcases are almost packed. Luckily, we've just discovered that the international airline, which will eventually take us home to Tasmania, has increased it's luggage limits to 30 kilos each...phew. This last week has been a whirlwind of frenetic activity.....amongst other things, the fete de l'ecole and the end of year spectacle....here's the five year old sporting a gardener's costume....whipped up by the teacher out of the magic that is crepe paper:

The farewelling of friends....I even donned this Collette Dinnigan frock:

and drove an hour down the peage to Montpellier to have a swanky lunch with my fab friend Nicole at the Musee Fabre:

....while my husband and children watched the stage finish of Le Tour de France.

And here's the ten year old bidding au revoir to his best friend from school, the friend who single handedly turned his school experience from torture into triumph (thank you, thank you, thank you):

And the ticking off of the last few activities from our bucket list.....including climbing two of the three towers of Uzes:

And canoeing down The Gardon and under the Pont du Gard:

I'm really sad to be saying goodbye, it has been a truly amazing experience in an incredible place.

Look at this achingly beautiful field of sunflowers that I stumbled across on Sunday on the way to a brocante market:

And this view of the the Virgin Mary glimpsed from the Jardin Medieval:

And even more perspectives of Uzes' answer to the leaning tower of Pisa, Le Tour Fennestrelle:

And finally, feast your eyes on this dramatic electrical storm which crossed over in front of our place last night:

So, so beautiful. 

Anyway, I am just going outside and may be some time.......realistically, I may be all the way back in Hobart before I can access my computer again, seeing on the next stage of our journey that we're flying Ryanair with only carry on bags and even then we'll all be crammed into that Volvo. Anyway, if you're tempted you can always check in and see what I'm up to on instagram here.

Rx

Deguster.

So, if I've whet your appetite for a trip to Uzes here's my insider's guide to hanging out and imbibing in this beautiful, medieval village.

Our life in Uzes has centred around the Place aux Herbes, which is tucked away in the pedestrianised heart of the town, inside the Boulevard:

Every house that we looked at renting was measured on a scale of how far away it was from the square. We ended up in a four storey town house, the one with the dove grey shutters....conveniently it's equidistant from the square and the children's school and so close to the Ducal Palace that we can hear the flag on top of the tower being whipped by the wind:

Most mornings, after I've dragged myself through the surrounding countryside in the Valee de l'Eure, jogging, I rendezvous with my husband in the square and I negate any beneficial effects the strenuous exercise may have caused, by pulling up a chair at a cafe....either 'Les Terroirs' which has WiFi or 'L'Oustal' which does not yet which has better coffee.... and drink a cafe creme....or two. And then we are back again at the end of the day, for an evening apero....a glass of crisp pink rose for me and a pastis for my husband. This tends to be relatively soon after we've placated the children, who are usually in full cry about how hairy their day at school was.....with a Nutella crepe at 'Passion Vanille' (1 Place aux Herbes, Uzes):

This has proven to be such a fail proof way of winning them over to the bright side of being in France that we have inadvertently assumed the mantle of 'Passion Vanille's' best customers. So frequently has our family descended on this shop, that last week, when they were photographing ice cream sundae concoctions for their new menu, they were taking photos of the various ice creams and then feeding them to our children.....for free. 

OK, so a common theme running through our time here has been bribing our children to endure school....where we plunged them for one term, initially friendless and unable to communicate, into four achingly long days a week from 8.30am - 4.30pm, doing lessons in unfamiliar French, suffering the hardship that is the canteen when their parents wouldn't rescue them and bring them home for the two hour lunch break and instead they had to stay and be dished up a three course meal.....and surviving teachers that shout. We may have also had to resort to other means, beyond the Nutella crepe, with the next most popular being the occasional trip to the 'Haribo Factory', which is very conveniently located just on the outskirts of town (Pont Charrettes, Uzes):

In our defence, you can count our number of trips to the 'Haribo Factory' on the one hand. The French nurse a national addiction to sugar and it is an overwhelming sight to see laden boxes crammed with confectionery leaving the outlet shop. I've never seen anything like it. Next to the boutique, there is also a 'Musee du Bonbon' which is a pleasant enough way to while away the afternoon although it's not really 'Charlie in the Chocolate Factory' esque as you don't actually see them making the famous gummy bears.....although, if you are so inclined, in a museum environment, you can try your hand at twisting a liquorice strap or coating a Tagada in sugar. Regardless, children love it....especially as there is a generous dose of free lollies.

Anyway, I digress....on Wednesday and Saturday the square is overtaken by the market:

I have just finished wading through a biography of the late English cookery writer, Elizabeth David, who it transpires, was responsible for suggesting that Le Creuset be coloured in that iconic shade of blue....the same blue as a packet of Gauloises cigarettes....and who wrote about the market in Uzes and how it 'sells delectable food and how she was able to buy at least fifty different cheeses, the bakery sold seven varieties of bread and the pate in the charcuterie was delicious'......I'd agree with her yet add that in addition to all of this you have to get your hands on some of the spectacular olives (especially the green ones stuffed with big slices of garlic), steel yourself to fork out at least 10 Euros for the stingiest yet best piece of nougat that you will ever taste (on Saturday they were road testing a new flavour...tiramisu) and DO NOT, I repeat, do not leave without buying some of Cyril's snails either in the shell or in a biscuit.

Our family has scaled to new heights of snail worship, as on the weekend we all drove out to have dinner at Cyril's snail farm 'Les Escargots de l'Uzege' which is transformed into a restaurant on Saturday and Sunday nights over summer:

We sat at our table and gazed out over the 'parc' where 45,000 snails are in residence, we saw them being watered and relentlessly nagged out children to be careful not to upset the snails.....or be electrocuted by the fence:

For entree, I had snails stuffed with melted butter, garlic and  parsley while my husband had his snails with truffle:

Main course was Escargots a la Provencale, snails in their shell cooked in a thick ragout of onion, garlic, wine and tomato:

Followed  by a dessert of snails...OK, not really, however on the assiette gourmande there was a snail shaped biscuit filled with chocolate ganache:

Since we have been in Uzes we have been eating our way around most of the cafes and restaurants in town....I say most as I'm hoping that in the last hurrah of school we can synch the babysitter and manage to try out a couple more. Until now, our favourites have been 'Le Comptoir du 7' (5 Boulevard Charles Gide, Uzes) where we went for lunch soon after we arrived...back in the days before we had a babysitter, during the middle of a tempestuous thunderstorm and where we accidentally drank a litre of red wine.....from what I remember though, the food, service and atmosphere were very good....in a town where most of the food is overpriced, over fiddled with and touristy. 

You won't find 'Au Petit Jardin' (Boulevard Gambetta, Uzes) in any guidebook yet, as it only opened a couple of weeks ago....it was the babysitter who put us on to it:

It has a beautiful, little garden in the courtyard out the back, where parasols vie for space and pots and mixed borders spill flowers, herbs and greenery:

The food is interesting, delicious and decorated with flowers....look at this fish carpaccio garnished with lavender sprigs:

And this magret de canard with caramelised raspberry compote, eggplant and mashed potato which was unexpectedly studded with fresh raspberries:

This traditional looking creme brûlée was perfumed with orange flowers and tasted gloriously like summer:

We have also had some perfect picnics up on the garrigue with afar off the the rooftops and towers of Uzes in the distance:

Nothing beats a glass of champagne and some serious patisserie from either 'O Saveurs de Mon Enface' (Centre Commercial Pont de Charrettes, Uzes):

or from 'Deschamps' (17 Boulevard Gambetta, Uzes):

Trust me on this....although, if you have a penchant for drink and cake, like I'm afraid that I do, you can easily recreate a similar experience anywhere and make your heart sing.

Rx