Booze Cruise

GPSkeptic

You can't find anything if you don't get lost.

A hole in the roof

Bulletin from our house in France. It started with a drip. Which started with a pinhole in the skylight on the top floor. Which we'd never have noticed had Natalie and Ben not been sleeping there. Ah, young love: very alert to drips inside the nest.

So we called Paul Thomas, our plumber and everyman. He took to the roof in a brief interval between storm bands and spotted the flaw.

But tragedy happened: the open skylight slipped and crashed. Its custom-bent plastic pane, egg-yolk yellow, polymer chains blasted to fragility by decades of sun, split up the middle. We'd started with a pinhole. Suddenly now we had a full-blown hole to the sky, on the top floor of our house in France. And the near-term forecast promised downpours.

My limit is about three days without attentive hygiene before I start to smell in my crannies. I was at my limit and had no intention of venturing out in public. But needs must: Paul and I raced off to Bricomarche, a French DIY store in the next town. I was the wallet, he was the talent. We found a piece of thermoformable replacement plastic. For a second we considered buying a second piece, just in case something went awry. But, non: confidence reigned. Just the one piece, then. We sped off to Paul's workshop a few miles away.

Cutting the plastic went well enough. Thermoforming the plastic, using a heat gun and a couple of boards, went well enough; we needed a curved edge on two sides to fit the channels of the skylight. We'd measured amply, hoping an extra few centimeters would make a better seal. You know what? We were wrong about that. The plastic cracked as we squeezed it in, an afternoon's work a waste.

We stared at our failure for a few moments, then jumped back in Paul's van, heading for the store to buy a second piece of plastic. This time, make a story short, we didn't fracture it. And returned to install the repaired skylight a few minutes before rain started to pour. All's well that ends well. At least I got to see Paul's house-in-progress: a masterpiece domestic renovation of a former distillery in a village of 600 souls.

I write on beautiful paper

And that's sometimes my inspiration.

For note pads I use Levenger pads, what the company calls Notationery. It has faintly printed boxes at the top of each perforated sheet: for topic, date, file under, and page. It has a narrow left-hand vertical column for making annotations. And it comes in a variety of colors. I started with legal yellow. That's still my default. But I also have a deep tint of robin's-egg blue and a pale flour cream that reminds me of something personal and secret. I write better on these note pads. I do all my outlines on note pads, where I can brainstorm freely with a pen.

The other place I get note pads is a southern French city called Montpellier. We have a house 45 minutes from there. Montpellier has a distinguished botanical garden, just reopened; its gate to the old city center is a miniature Arc de Triomphe; the first medical school in medieval Europe started here, in part because it was a Mediterranean port and close to the Arab world, where medicine was far advanced in the Middle Ages; it is the European headquarters of IBM; it is a conspicuously young city -- if you are a 20-something or 30-something and want to feel in the majority, like this world is your world, go to Montpellier. The clothes shopping there for women is superlative. And it's better than average for men; but you have to hunt. I bought a pair of dress boots there never seen outside France; they're made by an old (and small) French ski boot company.

But I digress. In the middle of 'ancien" Montpellier is Trait (see www.ourhouseinfrance.com for this and other shopping opportunities; under "day trips"). Trait is an branch of a Parisian company that makes custom note pads, and other paper and stationery related supplies. Trait (24, rue de l' Aiguillerie, 04 67 02 79 54) is down a narrow alley with a lot of other intriguing shops. We always drop a hundred euros there, buying beautiful notebooks, pens, handmade paper, gifts, weird greeting cards. Oh: go. Just a block away is the world's most delightful and curious toy store; absolutely one of a kind.

Chatham Brewing

One advantage: writing a magazine food column for years: people jump in with both alligators when you say you enjoy delightful regional eats and drinks. Dragged me (smiling) thru four Memphis BBQ joints in 24 hours two years ago. Case at this point: Chatham Brewing, Chatham, NY. I showed interest. Hilary Dunne Ferrone, the wife of co-founder Mister Hilary Dunne Ferrone, brought me a "growler" of their prize-winning porter. A growler is a large bottle filled from the tap. I had an iced-down cooler in my car's trunk ("boot," English folk). For two days I rambled the buttocks of western New England, presenting workshops, while that growler floated in a melting ice storm. Today, Saturday, I drank, doing yard work in humid, unseasonal heat. GORGEOUS! A chocolate bar in every sip. And easy on the productivity. You could drink this all afternoon and still make progress.

Macari Syrah

At the Macari tasting lodge on Long Island, the man selling the 2005 Syrah begged me to cellar it for at least a year. Sorry: I opened it nine months later, on Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008. Here's my report: it's still as raw as a fresh-sawn barn board. But I like it very much. There's something charming here. Red wines go to the East Coast of the United States to die, it's said. But people keep trying to break the curse. Macari Syrah: very personable.

Waiting for Dinner Guests

(1) America can still be right, though we've been wrong many times. (2) Management jargon is depleted language. (3) The time for blue shoes is upon us. We live in a blue shoe age. (4) It's not pornography. It's better.

To Get You Through That Extra Day

The Bentley Cocktail

The Bentley: recipe courtesy of Eric Felten's sweet, sweet journalistic enterprise, his How's Your Drink? column about cocktails in the Wall Street Journal's Saturday edition.

How I Personally Proved the Theory of Displacement

Martini
Five large olives