Picky bits from France
Short and sweet and chic (from my holiday)
While you’ve all been sweltering in the heatwave in Britain, I’ve been sweltering in France. Classic, innit? Going away when it’s hot at home feels like you’ve paid full price for something that is 50% off in the sales a day later.
All that said, it’s been beautiful here, and I do appreciate there’s a world of difference between slogging it out in the heat while trying to work and squinting on a sun lounger so you can carry on reading your third novel of the week. It’s been just me and my husband and two of our friends, generously sharing their house with us. We’re staying in a place that feels like Cornwall or the Hamptons for the French… low key but stylish, beaches that stretch for miles, the Atlantic sea and surfers, low timber houses, rows of tiny shops, restaurants with striped awning and a daily bustling market selling everything from rattan lampshades to cherries. The four of us cycle everywhere under vast blue skies, get smashed in the waves then home to eat salade verte, baguettes spread lavishly with salty butter and gulp down oysters that taste as if they were in the sea five minutes before.
I know there’s endless debate about the French and their chicness – is it chic or boring? How can they really be that thin, when they eat that much bread – they must be lying? Are their children really so much better behaved? Is dropping in the occasional bon mot in French pretentious? IDK the answers but I do know that THESE things are Frenchy miracles – available in Angleterre – and life is nice when you have them. And now that we have the weather of St Tropez in Bournemouth, you can recreate French heaven at home, too.
Du Pain
Breakfast is the tell, isn’t it? I don’t eat it at home, or if I do, it’s a complicated set up where I’m trying to incorporate 48 different health instructions (protein! probiotics! organic!) But on holiday, I want what the Frenchies do: bread, butter, jam.
Simple as it sounds, there are still rules. No strawberry jam, please. Those large blobs of fraises are tasteless. Raspberries only, with titch seeds that get stuck in your teeth. Bonne Maman Confiture de Framboises is the fella. Available from le supermarché anywhere.
Watch out for this ‘demi sel’ butter thing they do. I suppose because the full salt is so salty it’s pretty much visible. Yes, it sends your cholesterol levels sky rocketing. It’s also delicious.
Buy here – avoid the demi-sel.
With the densest, crispest baguette you can find (sacrilegious, I’m sure, but I am rather partial to those half-baked baguettes from supermarkets, popped in the oven to be served steaming hot at home). Rip off chunks, spread B&J liberally. That’s le petit déjeuner sorted.
Barely Cooking
No, not Paltrow in almost no clothes frying something up (MADNESS!). No, barely cooking means assembling food. Plain, washed lettuce leaves with a dressing as uncomplicated as it gets (six spoons EVOO, four spoons cider vinegar, salt, pepper, maybe a bit of sugar). The only veg you need for the table for the whole summer. (I didn’t say this was healthy. I said it was French.) Salade verte plus any kind of fish or meat or vegetables (if you must) seasoned and thrown on a barbecue, that’s lunch and supper.
With rosé all the day long for me (Minuty is 16 euros a bottle here!). And sur la table: tablecloth, linen napkins, a bowl of roses.
If even this level of ‘cooking’ is too much in this heat, a good source tells me there’s Joséphine in London, famous bistro in Chelsea, which has also opened in Marylebone. Utterly French.
Block colour dressing
I spotted a mother on a bicycle (her baby was strapped to a chair on the back and it wasn’t screaming or covered in chocolate ice cream so maybe it was better behaved), in a long, loose dress of vibrant blue, her dark hair pulled back into a bun, huge sunglasses, and oversized blue and white earrings dangling. She wasn’t on her way to a wedding or a fancy garden party (as I would have been, dressed like that), she was pulling into the car park of the supermarket. Nuff said.
ZW Collection linen blend dress £69.99
Wolf & Badger, blue mirror Matisse earrings by Chavelli
Dressing up for the beach (or garden)
I wanted to take a photo of a woman on the beach and obviously, NO. But she looked so fab. Probably late 50s or even early 60s, dazzling white bikini, dark brown tan, lipstick, straw bag, straw hat, big sunglasses, fat gold hoops, leather wedges, khaki shirt dress and belt tossed onto the sand. She sat alone and I’m projecting all kinds of things onto her but she looked utterly at ease. No book, no phone. Just her and her chic Frenchness and the sound of the sea.
You can buy these baskets off Etsy and they are EXACTLY the same as the ones they sell in the markets in St Tropez. £24 at the time of writing but I think that might be a flash sale.
Immersion Culturelle
If you really want to get into it, head to the Institut Francais, either online or IRL. It’s based in London but encourages ‘cross-cultural exchange’ with events all around Britain – French cinema, la musique, language courses… I’m definitely checking it out to encourage my son’s GCSE endeavours
And you don’t have to get on the Eurostar for other lovely French things… Visit the Courtauld Institute for French Impressionists, or the Wallace Collection for Fragonard and Watteaux. Buy French clothes at Sézane (buy one size bigger). You can even play boules at Cleaver Square in Kennington – a beautiful Georgian square, the first in South London, with a proper boules pitch in the middle (grumpy French men arguing about the score not guaranteed).
C’est tout mes amis. Only a little one this week because futher repose and the end of my novel is calling me. Drop me a heart if you liked it. Subscribe if you don’t already – it’s libre!
Love,
Jessica x
Wonderful piece. Who knew there was that much butter? That website is wonderful.
We had a holiday in Ile de Re in a heatwave a couple of years ago, perfect, cycling from huitrerie to huitrerie for oysters & rosé and then bathe beach, wonderful …