Spending the last few weeks down in France gave me time to contemplate….. more than I had imagined because although not a technology freak, I have suffered a few weeks without it (unexpectedly) and realised that I value ‘it’ a little more than I thought.

I’ve stored away my tales from the Pyrenees and will doubtless post those in coming weeks – rural France, a lack of internet, phone line, speakers for our music, mobile signal, autoroute delays and so on will not get me down!

Back to London in the rain now but still warm are the memories of sultry summer days… My throat is hoarse from laughter and the house is strewn with the detritus of our return. We can sit back and reflect. One of things we‘ve have been doing whilst away, with much hilarity is using memory triggers to associate things we want to remember or memorise – it doesn’t always work but has caused some fun. It sort of started for me when, on our first night at our place in France, I couldn’t sleep and in my wakeful state I went through a shopping list of just a few items for the next day. After eventual sleep I sat at the kitchen table with my aunt, Lady Sedgewick and tried to recount the list but I got stuck on the item beginning with H….. some time later I stood up and shouted “H is for handle!”

Lying in the sun with friends on another day we began trying to recall all the US states and their capitals (why? Nobody really knows) and I can tell you that the way to remember Tallahassee as the state capital for Florida, is to see Florida as a tail and then it will come to you…I won’t say the others at present and I can assure you that Florida was the most logical – the other prompts might give too clear a glimpse into the strange psyche of this particular group! You know who you are and Oh! Hi Columbus! Still baffles me…

A is for artichoke and they were bang in season, so early on we had the classic and delicious artichoke leaves dipped in melted butter. It couldn’t be easier you just boil the whole artichoke in salted water for about 45 minutes then serve it whole – you pluck the leaves off and dip them in the butter then suck the flesh from the petals…

We followed that evening with some lovely prawns which were simply drenched in garlic and parsley butter, skewered and rotated over hot coals.

One of those meals in which the ingredients do all the work.