actually sauerkraut. I am presented with a vast plate piled high with cabbage, seven or eight different types of sausage and potatoes, enough for at least four people. I struggle to get even halfway through the meal. Knowing I still have a little way to drive I decide against drinking alcohol, but a large cold beer would have been perfect.
On the last leg from Cahors to St Caprais I donât falter once, and following the given instructions I take only forty minutes to reach the village. Jock is waiting out the front with his two, half-wild black village cats, Shagger and Minnie the Moocher.I canât believe itâat home I have a fat black female cat, also called Minnie the Moocher. Jock gives me a kiss on each cheek in typical French style and within ten minutes I am sitting at his dining room table clutching a glass of local Cahors red. The adventure has just begun.
9
J OCKâS RETIREMENT RETREAT in the Lot has been affectionately dubbed âJockâs Trapâ by his friends, with a handmade pokerwork sign beside the front door and letters posted from Australia and New York addressed accordingly. Itâs a simple old stone house in a small fourteenth-century village that time seems to have forgotten. Half the buildings are deserted and there is no shop or café, just an incongruously modern glass phone box and a mailbox thatâs emptied every day except Sunday. Jock discovered his dream house empty and derelict one summer eight years ago when he was holidaying with his oldest friends, the Barwicks, who have a house nearby and have been coming to the southwest for their summer holidays for more than thirty years. Originally the little house was no more than two rooms and a barn for the animals, but with help from friends and local tradespeople it was lovingly transformed into a comfortable home, with cream walls and pale terracotta-coloured ceramic floor tiles. Jock converted the old barn into a simple kitchen and the vaulted roofline into asecond-storey addition, with two bedrooms and a bathroom. Immediately I love the house, and also Jock, who turns out to be one of lifeâs great discoveries.
At first glance Jockâs physical appearance is somewhat alarming. Heâs very tall with a large frame and a handsome thatch of silver grey hair, of which he is rightly proud. His face bears testimony to his passion for red wine and his reluctance to wear a hat during the long, hot summers of southwest France: to say he has a ruddy complexion is an understatementâitâs brilliant scarlet. Jockâs interests in life do not extend to being even vaguely concerned about his clothes or personal appearance. Heâs one of those blokes who prefer wellworn, comfortable gear; the only problem is that some of his clothes have been worn to death, with the fabric fraying at the cuffs and falling apart under the slightest stress. And there are many stresses. When Jock bends over itâs not unusual to hear the ripping sound of fabric tearing apart. His pants are perilously suspended beneath his rounded belly, held up by a belt that is constantly in need of tightening. In winter, when he can wear a sweatshirt over his usual shirt, he dons braces and this means the trousers are less likely to take a nosedive.
âI was born with no hips,â he laments at least twenty times a day while grappling to catch his strides before they drop to the floor. Sometimes, late in the evening, he isnât quite quick enough.
Jockâs many female friends constantly chide him about the way he dresses. He sometimes doesnât get around to shaving for days at a time and heâs been known to wear the same daggy clothes until they practically walk around on their own. I wonder to myself if he was dressed like this when he was a medicalreporter covering news stories in New York. I suspect so because he proudly tells me how, speaking at his seventieth birthday, our mutual friend Gil referred to him as
On the last leg from Cahors to St Caprais I donât falter once, and following the given instructions I take only forty minutes to reach the village. Jock is waiting out the front with his two, half-wild black village cats, Shagger and Minnie the Moocher.I canât believe itâat home I have a fat black female cat, also called Minnie the Moocher. Jock gives me a kiss on each cheek in typical French style and within ten minutes I am sitting at his dining room table clutching a glass of local Cahors red. The adventure has just begun.
9
J OCKâS RETIREMENT RETREAT in the Lot has been affectionately dubbed âJockâs Trapâ by his friends, with a handmade pokerwork sign beside the front door and letters posted from Australia and New York addressed accordingly. Itâs a simple old stone house in a small fourteenth-century village that time seems to have forgotten. Half the buildings are deserted and there is no shop or café, just an incongruously modern glass phone box and a mailbox thatâs emptied every day except Sunday. Jock discovered his dream house empty and derelict one summer eight years ago when he was holidaying with his oldest friends, the Barwicks, who have a house nearby and have been coming to the southwest for their summer holidays for more than thirty years. Originally the little house was no more than two rooms and a barn for the animals, but with help from friends and local tradespeople it was lovingly transformed into a comfortable home, with cream walls and pale terracotta-coloured ceramic floor tiles. Jock converted the old barn into a simple kitchen and the vaulted roofline into asecond-storey addition, with two bedrooms and a bathroom. Immediately I love the house, and also Jock, who turns out to be one of lifeâs great discoveries.
At first glance Jockâs physical appearance is somewhat alarming. Heâs very tall with a large frame and a handsome thatch of silver grey hair, of which he is rightly proud. His face bears testimony to his passion for red wine and his reluctance to wear a hat during the long, hot summers of southwest France: to say he has a ruddy complexion is an understatementâitâs brilliant scarlet. Jockâs interests in life do not extend to being even vaguely concerned about his clothes or personal appearance. Heâs one of those blokes who prefer wellworn, comfortable gear; the only problem is that some of his clothes have been worn to death, with the fabric fraying at the cuffs and falling apart under the slightest stress. And there are many stresses. When Jock bends over itâs not unusual to hear the ripping sound of fabric tearing apart. His pants are perilously suspended beneath his rounded belly, held up by a belt that is constantly in need of tightening. In winter, when he can wear a sweatshirt over his usual shirt, he dons braces and this means the trousers are less likely to take a nosedive.
âI was born with no hips,â he laments at least twenty times a day while grappling to catch his strides before they drop to the floor. Sometimes, late in the evening, he isnât quite quick enough.
Jockâs many female friends constantly chide him about the way he dresses. He sometimes doesnât get around to shaving for days at a time and heâs been known to wear the same daggy clothes until they practically walk around on their own. I wonder to myself if he was dressed like this when he was a medicalreporter covering news stories in New York. I suspect so because he proudly tells me how, speaking at his seventieth birthday, our mutual friend Gil referred to him as
Similar Books
