{"id":2288,"date":"2023-07-02T09:35:52","date_gmt":"2023-07-02T09:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2023-07-02T09:45:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T09:45:32","slug":"the-baguette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/the-baguette\/","title":{"rendered":"The baguette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is a law of nature in France (maybe it is a law of the Fifth Republic) that nowhere in the country is more than ten minutes\u2019 walk from a bakery.<\/p>\n

This means that at 7.00 a.m, as another blazing day began in Les Sables d\u2019Olonne, the town was up and out for the morning\u2019s baguette du moulin.<\/p>\n

And I was up with them, nose to the screen, following Google Maps\u2019 little blue dots to La Moulin de la Chaume (boulangerie et viennoiserie).<\/p>\n

Actually, I wasn\u2019t just up. I was up and bathed (well, a flannel, the little blue bowl balanced on top of the loo and a kettle of water courtesy of the marina shore-power). A fresh T-shirt and ready to face \u2013 not just the day – but a most important week.<\/p>\n

For I am here to promote the French edition of Old Man Sailing: Le vieil homme hisse la voile<\/em> (literally \u201cThe old man hoists the sail\u201d). The translator, Christian Calliyannis, normally translates poetry and insisted it was a much better title \u2013 it has emotion in the words, apparently.<\/p>\n

Apparently, he is right because Olivier Piquer in Montreal, who has narrated the Audible edition emails: \u201cYou have a beautiful book.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This was important because it is a bit presumptuous to rock up in the world\u2019s headquarters of singlehanded sailing and offer oneself for interview (via an interpreter, of course) to TV and radio stations, the local paper \u2013 and, frankly, anyone else who will give me the time of day. Particularly, when only last week, they were debriefing Kirsten Neusch\u00e4fer on becoming not only the winner of the Golden Globe Race but the first woman to win any Round-The-World sailing event.<\/p>\n

But then recently, I have received an ego-boost. A review for the last book, The Voyage, from someone called Cassidy in the United States on May 11th <\/sup>reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Passmore is my new favorite writer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s truly wonderful to read someone who infuses all their work with wit and charm. For better or worse, he is a self-aware individual who never attempts to hide his warts. Truly it\u2019s the opposite, he embraces them with humor and acceptance. I can\u2019t recommend his books enough. If you love sailing, you will of course love his works, but I\u2019m certain you could never set foot on a boat and still greatly enjoy the time you spent in John Passmore\u2019s tiny floating world. This is a quote from \u201cOld Man Sailing\u201d I now find myself sharing with everyone, \u201cIt is a great comfort to be stupid. Disasters about to happen do not trouble the minds of those too dim to imagine them.\u201d If you can read that and not laugh, you simply have no sense of humor. We have all had that feeling. That moment when we realize the only reason we find ourselves amid a disaster was our own inability to see what was obviously coming our way. Read his books!!\u201d<\/p>\n

So, on the strength of that, in Baltimore at the end of the Jester Challenge, I went off on the bus to Skibbereen and got a thousand leaflets printed in French, complete with translations of some of the best reviews of the English version \u2013 along with boastful little sub-heads like \u201c10 000 exemplaires vendus en anglais<\/em>\u201d and \u201c882 <\/em>\u00e9<\/em>valuations Amazon. 4,6 <\/em>\u00e9<\/em>toiles\u201d<\/em>. If I didn\u2019t get on telly, at least I could hand them out in a town which can\u2019t really tell the difference between singlehanded sailors and minor deities.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t deliberately setting out to test this theory as I embarked on the search for baguette. But Google Maps landed me outside the boulangerie Moulin de la Chaume only to find the door firmly closed. An ancient, curling print-out informed customers that the establishment would be closed from the 22nd<\/sup> of June until the 6th<\/sup> of July. A hand-written note beside it advised them that their baguette du moulin would be available from the distributor on the quay.<\/p>\n

Retracing the little blue dots, I found no sign of a bakery on the quay. There were caf\u00e9s open at a quarter past seven with Frenchmen arguing about politics over small cups of coffee and even smaller glasses of cognac. But no baguette du moulin.<\/p>\n

Not wanting to interrupt their discussion about the riots, I looked around for someone else to ask. There was only the road sweeper in his orange jacket, emptying the bins. I polished a simple sentence and tried it out on him.<\/p>\n

Only in France would you find a road sweeper who not only makes an effort to understand your tortured grammar but actually takes you to buy your bread: \u201cBut certainly one may buy baguette du moulin. One may buy it from the automat for pieces.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And certainly one might: A machine delivers warm bread down a chute every morning (and hot pizza by night, according to the sign).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was a good start to the day \u2013 and given that, I turned to my new friend, the road sweeper and asked him: \u201cDo you like the sail?\u201d <\/em>It was a reasonable question. He was, after all, resident in a town which turns out several times a year to line the breakwaters and wish Bon Voyage<\/em> to one bunch of sailors or another.<\/p>\n

But yes, he liked the sail. In Les Sables d\u2019Olonne, all the world likes the sail.<\/p>\n

I gave him a leaflet. He paused to read the headline: \u201cFascinating history which addresses well also to sailors or landlubbers\u201d.<\/p>\n

He smiled. He thanked me extravagantly.<\/p>\n

And he put it in his pocket \u2013 not the bin, which was most gratifying.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An early morning walk through the back streets of Les Sables d’Olonne for the breakfast baguette.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a law of nature in France (maybe it is a law of the Fifth Republic) that nowhere in the country is more than ten minutes\u2019 walk from a bakery. This means that at 7.00 a.m, as another blazing day began in Les Sables d\u2019Olonne, the town was up and out for the morning\u2019s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2294,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions\/2294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}