DLCI 2022 Magazines - June
June
2022
Summer is here!
NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE PRESIDENT
May has been a busy month! After recovering from a nasty dose of covid (unfortunately caught at my niece’s wedding in Cambridge), Philip and I have been to Ireland and the Isle of Man for about ten days. It was a tonic to get away and visit somewhere I have never been (Dublin, where our youngest son lives now) and also revisit old haunts (Isle of Man, where we lived for many years). The scenery is glorious and we had some lovely walks. We missed the heatwave here and there is a lot to do in the garden now we are back, but although travelling is fun, it’s great to be home again. This is a photo of our son’s Labrador, Loki, on one of our favourite walks, Bradda Head, with its stupendous views.
Bradda Head, overlooking Port Erin, Isle of Man
All eyes on Philip
Our DLCI events programme is also busy, beginning with our ‘Evening with Martin Walker’ on Thursday 9 June. Booking is now closed but we will report back to you afterwards on what we expect to be a very successful and enjoyable evening.
Sheila has almost finished totting up the accounts from the Leeds University Big Band evening on 6 April and it seems that we have raised at least 850 euros for our DLCI charities. This is a very pleasing amount and I would like to thank, once again, everyone who contributed towards its success.
July continues with a lunch at L’Atelier in Issigeac and August at Les Marronniers in Lanquais. Speakers and exact dates will be announced in due course.
Other dates for your diary include 15 September when we will be joining with the DOG club (Dordogne Organisation of Gentlemen) - also founded by Jennifer de Chabaneix - to celebrate our 35th anniversary. It is actually our 36th year (and their 35th) but due to covid, we were not able to do anything last year. We will meet for lunch in the Function Room at the Tour des Vents restaurant in Monbazillac. Those who know it will be aware of its reputation for excellent food and fine views of Bergerac and we have been offered a very special price of between 32 and 35 euros (tbc) for lunch including wine. Not to be missed!
Our AGM will take place in Bergerac on Wednesday 28 September – please note, at the Salle Jean Barthe, not at our usual venue of the Orangerie, which is being refurbished. No formal lunch will be arranged but the venue is very close to the Bistro d’En Face so members might like to eat there afterwards.
It is time to alert you to membership renewal time! The price is held at 25 euros per annum and the deadline is 31 July, after which date you will no longer be considered to be a member. Please see Rosemary’s item later in the magazine for full details! I remind you that DLCI is a friendly, sociable club and is completely inclusive – we welcome everyone who lives/has a second home in the area and expect all our members to be mutually supportive and kind.
Kathy
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL
As we will be coming to the end of our membership year on 31st July, I would like to ask ladies to think about renewing on line for their convenience and that of the treasurer and membership secretary. As we all know, internet banking is fast and efficient and avoids the necessity to write a cheque and use an envelope and stamp! Cheques will still be accepted but only if received by 30th June please so they can be cleared and the July records be correct. If you do not wish to renew your membership it would be appreciated if you could let Rosemary know (rocopley@hotmail.com) to help keep the database up to date.
WE HAVE CHANGED TO A NEW BANK AND THE DETAILS ARE GIVEN BELOW:
BNP PARIBAS
IBAN FR76 3000 4007 1200 0102 7370 112
BIC BNPAFRPP
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
‘AN EVENING WITH MARTIN WALKER’ Thursday 9 June at Quai Cyrano, Bergerac
LUNCH AT L’ATELIER, Issigeac
July – details to follow
LUNCH AT LES MARRONNIERS, Lanquais
August – details to follow
ANNIVERSARY LUNCH AT LA TOUR DES VENTS, Monbazillac
15th September - details to follow
No Member Of The Month for June
Back in July
JUNE BIRTHDAYS
Nikki Anthony
Liz Avery
Judy Barker
Sheila Harrell
Christel Haverkamp
Ann-Mary Stanton-Wugerse
Teresa Tildesley
Gail Turk
GARDENING IN FRANCE
by CHRISTINE LEES
Cut Flower Beds
If like me, you find that flowers in the supermarket are expensive and often poor quality (apart from Lidl who must have an honourable mention!) then you would benefit from having a cut flower bed. This also avoids the problem of leaving gaps in your flower beds where you have cut flowers for the house.
It is not too late to create one for this year, as the garden centres have annual flowers which you can keep cutting throughout the summer, such as Asters and Cosmos and Marguerites. You can also still sow annual flower seeds, and plant dahlias and summer flowering bulbs such as gladioli. In the autumn, you could plant some daffodils and tulips to cut next spring.
I have a cutting bed sized approximately 3 metres by 1 metre which was rotavated from an area of lawn near the house. This gives me plenty of flowers for the house throughout the summer. It is currently a mixture of dahlias planted last year, dahlias planted this year, some Rudbeckias and Gazanias planted last year
from plug plants, Osteospermums, and Cleome bought in the garden centre, and there will also be Cosmos, Zinnias, and Lavatera sown from seed this year in seed trays.
Prepare the ground by weeding and adding garden compost and some general fertiliser. You can grow seeds in small pots before planting out for a better success rate with germination, or you can sow annual seeds straight into the ground in rows. Keep the ground and then the plants well-watered, and keep picking the flowers to ensure a continual supply.
Other annual and biennial plants you could grow include snapdragons (Antirrhinum), Bishop's flower (Ammi majus), annual Scabious (Scabiosa), Sweet William (Dianthus), and tobacco plants, (Nicotiana), cornflowers, poppies, sweet peas, and Love in a mist (NIgella).
Happy picking!
Chris
Liz Berks kindly sent this to us on the 16th May
Hello Orchidophiles,
Some of you know that I have a passion for wild orchids. I keep in touch with the current owners of our old Hazlenut farmhouse and land at Serres et Montguyard. I visited there last Wednesday and was delighted by the orchids which I found in large numbers. The current owner very kindly made this excellent video of some of them which I would like to share with you. The orchids you will see are the large tongue orchid (deep purple), the small tongue orchid (paler purple/pink), pyramid orchids (pink) and Bee orchids (brown with pink petals, and a few brown with white petals). To view the orchids, click here.
Enjoy, Liz xx
MAYS EVENTS
LUNCH AT VILLA LAETITIA, Bergerac Held on Friday 27th May
Review by Jean Walton
Well, here we are, back, at last, in the beautiful Dordogne after an enforced break of more than two and a half years, due to the unmentionable!
Lovely friend, Kathy John, whom I’d met some years ago on the Isle of Man where we hail from, asked me if I’d like to join DLCI originally in the Spring of 2019, despite the fact that we only manage to spend occasional holidays in our home close to Issigeac. She invited me along to an enjoyable vineyard walk and lunch, as a guest, where I found a very friendly group of ladies who made me feel most welcome. So I joined!
Then, IT happened, so, disappointingly, my membership lapsed. There was no point; the Dordogne was totally out of reach.
But, as I began, we are now back! As soon
as we booked this first trip of the year, I contacted Kathy and asked could I rejoin DLCI and I was delighted to discover that a lunch was to be held in late May at Villa Laetitia, a restaurant in the Centre Historique of Bergerac, where our family had dined previously. I brought my husband, Brian, along, too, knowing that one or two other halves and guests were to be coming along.
After several cooler days, the temperature had risen somewhat and twenty of us sat down to a three course lunch ‘a l’extérieur’ under the welcome shade of the huge, aged plane tree in the Place du Feu, a space shared by several other restaurants and one side of which is the site of the ‘Musée du Tabac’.
Good food, good company and the wonderful ambiance of this historic area made for a few hours well spent!
And, to top it all, I look forward to being able to attend ‘An Evening with Martin Walker’, before my current stay is over, which is another DLCI event. Bruno, Chef de Police, and his adventures helped get me through, as I read Martin’s books back to back whilst missing dreadfully this wonderful part of the world, where we are privileged to own a home.
DORDOGNE LADIES CLUB INTERNATIONAL
We would all like to congratulate Dawn on the successful rebirth of the Bergerac Book Club. Her enthusiasm is contagious and members enjoyed the lively discussions, book choices and sense of bonhomie.
The following extract has been chosen by Sue from the book:
'The Lives of Lee Miller' autobiography written by her son Antony Penrose.
Born in 1907, Lee was a fashion model, photographer, war correspondent, writer, haute cuisine cook and traveller.
'Picasso Himself'
(written by Lee Miller Penrose. for the brochure of a gala fundraiser for the Institute of Contemporary Arts, at the Tate in 1960.)
If Picasso were here tonight, to greet you and shake your hand, you would experience in his touch what the 18th century Dr Mesmer called 'animal magnetism'. His flashing black eyes have fascinated everyone who has even only seen Picasso but those who meet him feel thrown into an exciting new equilibrium by the personality of this small, warm, friendly man whose name means modern painting.
Wherever he is, he lives an unbelievably simple life in the midst of an unbelievable chaos of possessions. They are all treasures, motley, matched, chic, shabby, beloved or forgotten. Masterpieces lie next to junk which in his hands will become other masterpieces. Old iron, shards and bones await their moment of glory.
At La Californie, his villa in Cannes, there is a large mirrored sideboard heaped with false noses, beards, and hair, costume jackets from everywhere; the harem, the bullring, the circus (no bullet-proof vests or straight jackets) - and dozens and dozens of hats. Picasso's own pleasure in dressing up and seeing his friends as clowns or choristers is innocent but the game itself like 'Truth and Consequences' can be an unforgettable revelation as well as an ice- breaking gambit.
The crown makes the king and the laurel crowns the poet, so perhaps the 'hat- trying' in which all comedians and most men indulge is the fulfilment of a wish - a form of fortune telling. If the cap fits, wear it. One becomes tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. The ears and the eyes, like the ego and the id, become protean and the expression can change from malevolent to angelic all because of a 'titfer'.
If you are already a Facebook user, you can join-in discussions on the 'Dordogne Ladies Book Club' private group. On there you will find notices, reviews of personal reading, plus any monthly choice of book & the subsequent joint reviews etc.
Just follow this link to the group and put in a request to join.
DL Book Club Private Group
There is also an ongoing list of books recommended by members, which can be
emailed to you periodically on request.
Lastly we will encourage and give all possible help to anyone wishing to start-up a new meeting group, with a few friends, in their area.
JUST FOR FUN
POETRY CORNER
Instead of a poem this month I discovered some wonderful quotes about what the month of June meant to these authors :
‘In my college years, I would retreat to our summer house for two weeks in June to read a novel a day. How exciting it was, after pouring my coffee and making myself comfortable on the porch, to open the next book on the roster, read the first sentences and find myself on the platform of a train station’
- Amor Towles
‘What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapour filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.
The world is somnolent and cool in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.
But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment...
What a soft thoughtful time, in this illusory gloom, like a night blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of colour.’
- Vera Mazarian, The perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
...and this last quote I include because I love it...
‘If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun!’
The late and great Katharine Hepburn
RECIPE OF THE MONTH
Marquise
Sent in by Pat and Basil Sansom
1 litre dry white wine
500 grams Lemons
250 grams Fine white sugar Equipment
2 litre sealable jar e.g. Kilner jar. Mandolin or very sharp knife Colander
Measuring jug
Two sterilised wine bottles
Slice the lemons very thinly, including rind, and remove the pips, add the sliced lemons to the jar. Watch your fingers if using a mandolin.
Pour in the sugar, then add the wine.
Seal jar. Must be a tight seal. Give the jar a good shake.
Store the jar in a cool place on its side. Turn the jar every day to ensure sugar dissolves. Leave for a least a week, one month is preferable.
After storage :-
Open jar and pour, a little at a time, the liquid and lemons into a jug,
Strain through a colander into another jug so that only the juice and small pieces of the lemon flesh are in the jug. Squeeze the lemons to extract as much juice as possible. Discard the lemons left in the colander.
Pour into the wine bottles and repeat process until the jar is empty. Do not use a fine sieve, unless you do not want the pieces of flesh.
Seal the wine bottles, and store in a cool place. The longer the Marquise is left before opening, the more intense the flavour.
Before drinking, give the wine bottle a good shake, making sure you distribute the pieces of flesh evenly.
SHORT BUT TRUE TALES FROM A ONE - TIME YORKSHIRE TOURIST OFFICE WORKER
(Among other things!)
Mid-day on a summer Saturday Enter man and wife with 3 children.
‘Can you tell me where I am?’
‘Yes, if you would like to look at the map - this where you are’
‘Whereabouts is that?’
‘You are on the M62 in Yorkshire’ ‘Where’s Cornwall ?’
I Pointed to Cornwall on the map ‘Where is London?
Look of amazement on my face
‘You need to continue to the M6 and head south’
‘I left London at 8 o’clock this morning to go to Cornwall. I got on the motorway!’
‘Unfortunately you must have driven on to the M1 and come north - you needed the M4 heading west out of London.’
I often wondered if people arrived at their destination.
Yorkshire Lady Of Wit
PETS CORNER
Loki and Thor playing at Cringle Reservoir, Isle of Man
Sent in by Kathy John
PHOTO REQUEST
We would love to include more of your photos including those for Pets Corner in the next Newsletter. Simply email me at DLCIMagazine@gmail.com (no later than 25th of the month) with the photo and where it is. They will be published in the next months newsletter
LASTLY
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THIS NEWSLETTER.
PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO CURRENT DATA PROTECTION LAWS THIS DOCUMENT MUST NOT BE SHARED
WITH ANYONE WHO IS NOT A CURRENT DLCI MEMBER