I adore doves and the gorgeous turtle dove lovebirds from last year are once again back on our terrace. They’re beginning to make their nest for the summer, but it’s not without complications. They seemed to bicker (quite loudly) for a few days about where the said nest should go; location, location, location isn’t just for humans!

They now appear to have agreed on the right place, and enjoy twig shopping while we’re sitting on the terrace eating. As their future nest is perched in the wisteria directly above the table, it means that our plates end up seasoned with bits of twig and dead leaves. Luc took pity, because more twigs were dropped than positioned, and placed a small plank of wood under the soon-to-be nest, moving fallen twigs from the floor onto the plank. I think he might add some nuts and bolts, and perhaps some simple instructions Ikea-style, because so far, things are looking very precarious.

This lemon and parsley sauce works well with any white fish. I used hake.

Recipe for white fish with lemon and parsley sauce (serves 4)

• 15g butter
• 1 shallot, chopped
• 1/2 fennel bulb, chopped
• 480g fresh white fish
• 150ml dry white wine
• 150ml vegetable stock
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the sauce:

• 50g butter
• 40g plain flour
• 500ml milk
• Small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
• 1 lemon, juiced
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in a pan over a medium-low heat, then add the flour. Stir for a few minutes until a paste forms. Gradually pour in the milk, stirring continuously until all the milk has been incorporated and the sauce coats the back of a spoon. If the sauce is lumpy, stir rapidly a few minutes more. Bring to a simmer and bubble for 1 min. Remove from the heat and stir through the parsley. Add the lemon juice and seasoning.

Place the butter in a medium frying pan and melt, add the chopped shallot and fennel and cook until translucent. Add the fish, white wine and stock and bring to a gentle boil for about five minutes, or until the fish is cooked. Strain the fish and season, then serve with the sauce.

I was greeted at ‘La Poste’ yesterday by an armed security guard, a bouncer almost. He gave me a very thorough visual frisk, concluded, I assume, that I was unarmed, and let me in. I was then ushered to a smiling receptionist who offered ‘a mini bar of chocolate while I waited’. This was beginning to sound ominous. I hadn’t come to La Poste to dance, eat chocolate or to wait; I had come for a stamp. It turns out the mini bar of chocolate would have needed to be laced with premium skunk to take away the pain of the wait and general confusion.

Show respect and kindness towards the vending machines

Once settled in a surprisingly orderly queue (as a rule the French don’t queue; they entangle themselves together anarchically, whining loudly), I looked around and realised that I had never seen so many postal employees in one room. And then it dawned on me that I had never seen so many automats either. There was an employee for every automat. Was I missing something? Aren’t automats meant to steal jobs, not dole them out? There were notices above the automats asking customers to be ‘kind and respectful towards the machines’. No foul temperedness directed towards automats would be tolerated.

In the end it took 47 minutes to buy a single stamp. I was helped by three different people who patiently coached me on how to coax a stamp from a vending machine. To no avail. In the end, a stamp was ripped from a book, old style. And I never got my change because the automatic change drawer refused to open, and by this time I was losing the will to live. I left stuffed full of chocolate, a few centimes poorer, my head reeling.

Recipe for courgette and parmesan pancakes (serves 2)

• 1 egg
• 85g flour (I used spelt flour but any flour will work)
• 100ml milk
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
• 200g courgettes, grated
• 30g parmesan, grated
• 10ml olive oil

Combine the egg and flour in a mixing bowl, gradually adding the milk. Add the bicarbonate of soda and seasoning, continuing to mix. Lastly incorporate the garlic, grated courgettes and parmesan. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and spoon the mixture and fry over a medium heat until the pancakes are golden brown on each side.

May be eaten alone with a green salad, or topped with smoked ham and a poached egg.

At the end of April, just after my last post, my mother suffered a small stroke, so I immediately jumped on a plane to go to see her in hospital. The trip was impromptu and stressful, and I was definitely giving off ‘madwoman dragged through a hedge’ vibes. Although not enough apparently to stop a lady in gardening gloves from nabbing me on my way to the hospital. She said: ‘you look like a good basket hanger’, which for some reason computed in my exhausted brain to ‘you look like a basket case’.

She then dragged me, dazed and confused, into her front garden to introduce me to the hanging baskets she wasn’t tall enough to hang herself. Once the job was done, she started looking around for other things to occupy me, to keep me off the streets no doubt, so I explained that I had to dash off to visit my mother in the nearby hospital. She seemed a bit put out and said: ‘oh well, at least she won’t be going anywhere then’.

I returned to London a couple of weeks later with Léo. During the previous trip I had locked myself out of the house in bare feet, and then fainted at the airport, so I was deemed ‘high risk for general stupidity and danger to self’ by both my husband and son. To my delight, we discovered a fun new way to get around: E-scooters! The first time we tried, Léo sorted out the logistics and off we scooted. A little way down the road, I yelled ahead to Léo that my scooter didn’t seem to be going as fast as his. He drew to the side of the road, signaling for me to stop, and said: ‘You seem to be managing OK, so I’ll take the child speed lock off!’ He takes his duties very seriously.

Back home on the ranch

Back at home, things were no better; a couple of barn owls chased the pigeons from their loft, amidst much noisy commotion and feather flying, and we discovered their babies this week. The pigeons are currently homeless.

Just a day after my return, all four horses escaped into the setting sun through a gate that Luc had left open. Luc went after them on his tractor; I marshaled the surrounding neighbours by screeching down the phone. In the end, Luc rounded up the monsters single-handed, and then wondered why I wasn’t more forthcoming in my praise. It seemed irrelevant to him that if he hadn’t left the gate open, they wouldn’t have buggered off in the first place.

And now for the ‘cerise sur le gateau‘ (the icing on the cake): We, The French, have apparently voted en masse for a 12-year-old school-dodging white supremacist called Jordan. W.T.A.F?

I first made this recipe when I worked in a ski resort as a student, forty years ago. It’s as delicious now and it was then.

Recipe for Beef Stroganoff (serves 4)

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced 
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 250g mushrooms, sliced
• 500g fillet steak, sliced
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 50ml white wine
• Splash of cognac/armagnac
• 150g crème fraîche
• Handful of parsley, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add the sliced onion and garlic, cooking on a medium heat until softened. Add the butter, then the sliced mushrooms and continue to cook for another five minutes, then set aside. Place the steak slices in the frying pan and fry for three minutes, until slightly browned, but not overcooked. Return the onions and mushroom to the pan, add the seasoning, mustard, tomato paste, white wine and splash of cognac, stirring well. Lastly, add the crème fraîche and cook for another five minutes. Add the chopped parsley and serve over rice or pasta and green salad.

A hunter friend presented us with a brace of pheasants and we invited him to eat them with us. He seized the opportunity to lecture Luc, at length and rather bossily I thought, on the fact that he’d cleared away too much of the undergrowth amongst the pine trees, causing the animals to flee. If they have fled, they haven’t gone very far; I found a couple of deer in the tack room last night, helping themselves to the horses’ grain.

Round and round and round again

France has the dubious honour of having the most roundabouts in the world. (And also the most famous roundabout in the world: The Arc de Triomphe in Paris.) With a total of 42,986 roundabouts (and counting), France also ranks first when it comes to number of roundabouts per capita. My apologies for sounding as though I swallowed a copy of ‘Boring Stats for Nerds’.

Roundabouts were ‘imported’ from the UK in the ’70s, because intersections were becoming too dangerous; French drivers simply didn’t stop. Although they have improved things, danger-wise, it’s not unheard at all of to see tyre marks going right through the middle. Driving around the outskirts of Bordeaux this weekend, I was suddenly struck by just how many there were; we went around a total of 16, in under six kilometres. Unfortunately my inner ear stayed in roundabout mode and I spent the afternoon veering to the right, like a haggis on flat ground.

A Landscape Gangsta and inappropriate comedy

In other news, Java has adopted full-on Landscape Gangster mode (like the insatiable roundabout builders). We have more holes in the garden than I’ve ever seen, which isn’t ideal when you’re as prone to spraining your ankle as me. I think the sodden ground has just proved too irresistible for her. I spotted Luc having an apparently amusing and in-depth chat with a post box the other day. On further inspection, I discovered he was actually talking to a security guard who was sitting beside the post box. But for a moment, from where I was standing it looked for all the world like he was in the midst of a psychotic break.

We just got back from the funeral of a friend from our town. For some reason Luc used his recently-installed Waze navigation app, to get us to the church. That is, our church in our actual town; it’s still not clear why the app was needed… Anyway, in the middle of the service, during a hush (of course), it suddenly blurted out: ‘FAITES DEMI-TOUR DES QUE POSSIBLE’ (do a u-turn as soon as possible). And this, on repeat until we were able to get it under control. Getting it under control was no mean feat as I was suffering from that shame-making, dignity-stripping, sweaty, uncontrollable silent laughter that ill-timed comedy moments cause. A poignant message for a sad afternoon nonetheless, I thought.

Recipe for pheasant with pancetta and prunes (serves 4)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 onions, finely sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
• 4 sprigs of thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 300g thickly sliced pancetta, cut into strips
• 2 pheasants, gutted
• Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
• 400ml white wine
• 200g prunes
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place a casserole dish ( large enough to take both pheasants) over a medium heat and add the olive oil. Add the onions, garlic, and thyme and bay leaves and cook for about five minutes until the onions are soft and slightly golden. Add the bacon and fry for a further five minutes until golden. Add the pheasants, season and then cook for a couple of minutes, turning often, until well browned on all sides. Add the white wine and then the prunes, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cover and cook in the oven for about an hour. I think this is best served with a potato and butternut squash purée and green peas.