Passadoc Gazette - No 175

The weekly 175

Gift!

Gift : the confidences of André Peyron, his love for Provence and for the Provençal language. A report by André Abbe.

– I like to say that I am bilingual by birth! I was raised by my grandparents who, among them, spoke only Provencal... So I learned at the same time Provençal and French!

1983 – Guest at Michel Drucker, he sings
The Great Bear.

2019 - His confidences
to André Abbe

The Echoes of the Week
Quiz!
The sea urchins
The hamlet of Roya
The Bay of Saint-Tropez
The 101-year-old bed!
Any little Provencal history
Onions!

Quiz!

The sea urchins

The sea urchins! A treat for young and old... We open them in half and eat gonads commonly called « coral » because of their orange colour (most often); cooks say « languages »..

A sea urchin meal is a sea urchin.

Fishing is a beautiful family activity in Provence. Before, whole baskets of sea urchins were brought back without great effort; but sea urchins are rarer today.

Highly regulated, their fishing is allowed from 15 December to 29 February (variable dates depending on the region). The minimum catch size is 5 cm... Without the pricks!

Claude Boyer

There are chandeliers that I haven't eaten a sea urchin!

We were going to fish them in Saint-Aygulf with my grandfather in his Juvafour.

They were placed in a wooden cage on the sides of which he had fixed two large pieces of cork to act as floats, a glazed box to see the bottom as with a mask and a broom handle whose end was equipped with a trident to grasp the sea urchins.

There's no need to go offshore, it was enough to get in the water. At the time they were sweating and, depending on where we were bathing, it was better to be equipped with plastic sandals.

It was not uncommon for him to take advantage of the sea urchin to make the soup and harvest bious, rastègues, rags, snails or small rock fish and sometimes even an adventurous octopus.

I didn't like it when the cephalopod imprisoned him with the arms of his tentacles sticking to his skin and he was forced to shoot him to let them loose. He laughed at me making a grimace.

He was of this generation who was afraid of nothing or anyone; It must be said that he had survived three years of hell in the trenches then to impress him it took more than a octopus.

I haven't bathed in these rocks for a long time, but I imagine that the places must have become completely sterile.

The hamlet of Roya

A magical place, north of Nice!

– The last time we went there, there was a lot of people. It's really worth the detour; Don't miss that! recommends François Abbe.

The Bay of Saint-Tropez

For centuries, Saint-Tropez was a quiet little fishing village... Although... in ancient times, « this small Mediterranean bay attracted a large number of Roman, Celtic and Greek conquerors ».

His charm, his light are certain and in the 1920s many artists – painters and writers – succumbed to it: Matisse, Bonnard, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette... In the street of Mercy, the Bardot family has a house in which the girls of the family spend much of the summer.

In 1950, Brigitte, who is not yet BB, met Vadim... The cinema invades the city with its stars and gendarmes! Goodbye, calm down. Today, Saint-Tropez is known worldwide.

Jean-Philippe Tinois
Arriving by the sea in low season and getting served a little coffee on the port it passes and it's a nice perspective.

On the aesthetic side, two hours of traffic jam in the middle of the canard to park on the tarred parking lot and look in the streets lined with shops for a famous head... It's a tourist delirium that will only have the merit of telling his office colleague when returning tanned like a carambar:
– I went to Saint Tropezzz.

Jeanne Monin
I spent a summer long ago... No desire to stay, no desire to come back – if not to discover the calm of the hinterland.
Too many people, too many yachts that seem never to leave the dock...

Marie-Dominique Germain
Saint-Tropez was a large port of commerce centered by an amiralty and shipbuilding that carried out the great cabotage to the countries of the Levant whose exclusivity it had.
A village of sailors in the long run.

Giselle Penat-Lorde

Memories of tea and tea...

I sometimes had the opportunity, a few years ago, most often out of season, to accompany my husband, whose work forced him twice a week to go to the Gulf, including Saint-Trop of course.

We often ate in Ramatuelle, or the Tour Plan, or in Grimaud, Port-Grimaud, Cogolin ...

In the summer, he managed to be there before 7 o'clock when the noctambules were coming home with scrambled faces!...

By far I preferred his tour throughout the Haut-Var or in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (Castellane, Moustiers-Sainte-Marie)... and in the Alpes Maritimes, the small village of Caille for example!

At a very distant time, it happened that I had to accompany German tourists, to play guides also for foreign friends who dreamed of Saint Tropez, BB or other celebrity, I didn't...

What a chore... and have to install on the terrace of the well-known coffee, the summum.

What more wonderful, indeed, than choking on this terrace that the scarlet red blind turns into a real oven when the sun hits?

Ah! Saint-Trop with his Russian billionaires in gouguette, his « people » with glitter, its opulent yachts that spoil the view, its bimbos in insolent microshorts, its indecent luxury evenings, its Ferraris and its 4×4 with tinted windows that make the atmosphere irrespirable ...

As for the price of consumption, slurp !! Better be invited!

My most beautiful memory, however: the smile of my Czech friend Ivana, discovering Saint Tropez, in autumn 1969 and saying, laughing:

- Wow! I will now be able to play Marie-Chantal in Prague speaking of St. Tropez and perhaps showing all the photos, but in a circle of intimate friends...
What was preferable yes...

We read together a book whose title I forgot, but it was a story of Marie-Chantal, perhaps Chazot's book at the time, The Books of Marie-Chantal... Don't know!

It was her last exit west after Prague Spring and she had spent almost a year in France. She had to return a few years later several times, so of course after the velvet revolution and the last time in 2002 or 2003... Te pic mulkuIvana, I haven't forgotten anything, especially your crystalline laugh, your joy of living... rest in peace in your white paradise...

The 101-year-old bed!

– A perfect blend of modern comfort and family heritage, tells the story François Abbe.

A 101-year-old bed coming home! After passing through generations and even floods, this bed, which belongs to the history of our family, returns to the village of Roquebrune-sur-Argens.

A bedding specialist (and not just any one since he is called by major hotels in Cannes!) intervened to renovate some mortises.

Claude Boyer
They were of these furniture that could be assembled and disassembled over generations without suffering from it, not displeased by some Swedish brand with reconstituted wooden furniture...

Histoires de Montlaur
Quelle merveille ! Et quelle belle histoire que celle de ce lit qui continue d’être chéri après 101 ans.

Giselle Penat-Lorde
Tout à fait le lit de mes grands-parents paternels, que nous avions, après quelques réparations, encore à Roquebrune… Impossible à déménager sur Draguignan, il a dû faire le bonheur d’unbrocanteur.

Martine Chazalon
Je viens d’en hérité de un d’une arrière arrière grand-mère… Il a plus de 100 ans… Un lit bateau.

Jean-Pierre Violino

– Merci François ! Quel plaisir de le retrouver dans son village !

Dans le coffre de la voiture, retour de quelques pièces rénovées.

Toute petite histoire provençale...

François Abbe

– On aime les grandes histoires de Provence ; on aime aussi les petits récits… On aime la lavande, Saint-Tropez, Cannes…

Et puis les gens de Provence ! Pas forcément des gens célèbres, mais les gens indispensables pour la vie de tous les jours.

Les bergers… Mon père André Abbe en rencontra souvent, tels Gilles Bremond et J-Y Trigance, des bergères aussi : Martine Baron.

_________________

Levés tôt le matin et souvent couchés tard le soir, c’est le quotidien des hommes et des femmes de la terre. Sans dimanche, sans vacances ou à peine, et un salaire de misère… Qui accepte cela ?

– Le problème c’est que c’est un métier passion, qui se transmet de génération en génération, ce n’est que pour ça qu’on continue ! répond une agricultrice.

Jean-Philippe Tinois
Peut-être que se lever tôt et se coucher tard, c’est tout simplement naturel quand on aime l’activité que l’on pratique.

C’est d’ailleurs le rythme des animaux qui pensent en premier à leur subsistance et ont leur cerveau réglé par la lumière solaire.

Les hommes qui gèrent des troupeaux ne peuvent que se mettre au diapason et pendant la transhumance la sieste est obligatoire, non pas parce que l’homme le décide mais parce que le troupeau s’arrête, se met sous les arbres en rond à l’abri du soleil à son zénith, et rumine tranquillement…

À ce propos ne pas oublier un voile intégral léger et très respirant pour mettre au moins sur le visage sous peine d’être le seul à ne pas dormir, car qui dit moutons, dit nuage de mouches ! Et quand on s’est autoadministré une dizaine de claques, on est moins reposé que les autres pour repartir !

Jeanne Monin
Pour avoir rencontré pendant plusieurs étés un couple de paysans sur mon habituel lieu de vacances, je me suis souvent dit qu’ils faisaient un métier de chien !…
Il suffisait de voir leurs visages ridés avant l’âge par le soleil de l’été et les rigueurs de l’hiver, leurs mains souvent calleuses, toujours charnues.
Se levaient-ils tôt ? Sans doute… Se couchaient-ils tard ? Je l’ignore… Ce que je sais, c’est qu’ils ne faisaient pas la sieste ; peut-être parce qu’ils n’avaient pas de moutons !

Onions!

André Abbe

Les légumes sont chers, y compris les modestes oignons. Quelle pitié !

La ceba (cebo) était le végétal de base, pas coûteux, de l’alimentation des Provençaux. Cru ou cuit, en salade, avec de la viande ou du poisson.

J’ai longtemps pensé qu’il était question d’oignon quand enfant je criais « Ceba ! » après avoir perdu un amical combat. Mais non, ce ceba-là viendrait de l’arabe : pitié.

Quand je mange de l’oignon, ce qui n’est pas très fréquent, il m’arrive de penser à mes voyages de jeunesse en Iran, dans les années 60. Devant les restaurants, il y en avait des monticules. Sur les tables, des oignons crus épluchés attendaient les clients. Ils accompagnaient les délicieux tchélo kebab and tchélo rorecht.

J’ignore si cette tradition s’est maintenue dans ce malheureux Iran de 2023.

Claude Boyer
– Non mais vous avez vu le prix des oignons cette année ?

– Oh ça va encore, ils ne sont pas aussi cher que ça.

– Ah vous trouvez ?

Il n’en fallait pas plus pour qu’éclate le plus violent pugilat qu’on ait vu de mémoire de Briviste !

Un Sétois qui passait par là raconta cette algarade dont les pandores du coin firent les frais :

Au marché de Brive-la-Gaillarde,

À propos de bottes d’oignons,

Quelques douzaines de gaillardes

Se crêpaient un jour le chignon.

Les oignons inspirèrent Georges Brassens and Sidney Bechet.

Cited in The Gazette
André Abbe
François Abbe
Claude Boyer
Martine Chalazon
Marie-Dominique Germain
Histoires de Montlaur
Jeanne Moniin
Giselle Penat-Lorde
Jean-Philippe Tinois
Jean-Pierre Violino
Editor in Chief
Jeanne Monin