It’s not cold
14 degrees celsius today. We had a couple of colder and rainy days earlier in the week but the predictions are that this winter in the Tarn will be mild. I planted coriander two weeks ago in the (unheated) greenhouse and it’s sprouting.
The Charity Christmas party at La Villa de Mazamet was lovely. I heard the boys were pleased with the amount they raised. I find the house fascinating. The architecture is unexplainable. No way of pinning down the name of its style, it’s just its own thing. It was built at the beginning of WWII, which seems highly unusual timing. It’s different from the other grand homes in Mazamet in that the owner wasn’t a wool/textile industrialist, but an accountant. The boys joke that he must have been skimming off the top. Part of the ground floor was originally used as the accounting offices of the owner- so it was probably more just a Trump style business decision. Impressing people to create more business.
The interiors are very, very restrained. In a way it’s sort of the opposite of number 42. Here we have a very low key exterior and you come in to find ornate paneling, marble, gilding- and colour. La Villa has a flamboyant exterior but very discreet interior decoration. Just compare their stairs and ours to see what I mean:
But of course, their place is ideal for what they do. The distribution is perfect for a bijou hotel. Having started out life as partly a business, the spaces are very well divided/separated. At number 42 rooms very much open to each other. The green salon opens to the grey salon and to the scullery, the dining room opens to the study. Everything (except the kitchen) opens to the main hall. Four of the bedrooms have Jack and Jill bathrooms. In every sense it was designed for a family.
In other news I’m done with the planning for our Christmas and New Year’s dinners. Both very old-fashioned. For Christmas we’re having lobster with tomato and basil and for NY’s filet steak with morels in cream.
My Mazamet 
Love looking at those old places!
I see you are serving lobster. Out of curiosity, how much do you have to pay for it? Around here, we regularly buy it for $5.00/lb. (we have a fisherman friend) and we saw it advertised for $6.00/lb. when we were out running around yesterday. That would be live, from a fisherman’s truck by the side of the road. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Live a European Homarus costs at least €25, but more like €30. So between €40 and €50 per kilogram 😀
LikeLike
Egads, that’s what I thought. You are generous hosts, then! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Only once a year! 😀 No, I’m kidding. This year we decided to neither go to or throw parties, so it’s just the two of us at home- so I wanted to do something nice that we don’t have all the time.
LikeLike
We usually have lobster somewhere over the holidays – our offspring and their offspring love it. (we used to tell our own that they wouldn’t like it. . . our grandchildren, however, were brought up differently) 😉
LikeLiked by 2 people
Interesting to note that lobster was once considered such terrible food that it was fit only for the indigent, indentured, and incarcerated!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Really? I had no idea. Was this in Canada or everywhere?
LikeLike
True of this area. I know people (they’d all be in their 70’s and 80’s now) who used to pick the lobster out of their sandwiches on the way to school – throwing it out for the birds – rather than the other children see how poor they were.
LikeLiked by 2 people
How amusing. It’s funny how those things change. In Portuguese colonial culture cod had a similar role, only eaten by the lower classes.
LikeLike
Indeed, lobster was something the poor ate. It was cheap too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In my day, the cheap food was bologna. (pronounced in these parts, ‘baloney’) Our children loved it and always wanted it in their lunch sandwiches — something I never did! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s like Mortadella, isn’t it?
LikeLike
“Just compare their stairs and ours. But of course, their place is ideal for what they do.” – ouch! 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not asking. . .
LikeLiked by 2 people
You’re evil! I didn’t mean it like that, I think their place is lovely! Plus being more restrained is better suited to a hotel because they need to please the largest number of people possible. Number 42 only has to please 2 people 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes Pink, the Liberace look wouldn’t work so well in their case.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The style of the hallway at number 42 is 18th century.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You know I’m only pulling your finial. It’s not Rococo, your stairway, is it, or Baroque? I think of those as rather more fancy in design, but know nothing about the subject, really. Your staircase looks more 19th. century, to my eyes. When was #42 built?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The style was popularised in the 19th century, particularly because of its use in Paris in many of the Haussmann buildings, but the combination of the wrought iron/marble/stone walls goes back much further. The sort of textbook reference is the stairwell at the little Trianon:
https://api.art.rmngp.fr/v1/images/17/163223?t=KIVc_pUe5ShJIS26-8qxrA
LikeLiked by 1 person
So is #42 somewhere between Rococo and Neoclassical, or are those references altogether inapplicable?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The exterior is 100% Neoclassical. The interior is a combination of a number of styles. The paneled grey room is Louis XV, the green room (with the Zuber paper) is baroque, the dining room is Directoire. Maison Jansen liked to play with styles and periods in a way other designers hadn’t done before 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Re “For Christmas we’re having lobster with tomato and basil and for NY’s filet steak with morels in cream.” You know, there is such a thing as living too well … ah, forget I said that, I am just jealous! Tre bien, mon ami!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t get too jealous, the only way we can afford living as we do is by doing everything ourselves, from cooking to gardening 🙂
LikeLike
You have a lovely home. Your staircase is much nicer. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! It’s a slow process, but we’re getting there. Thus far I think the grey room is the biggest success 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Nice! And what fun to decorate!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lobster is expensive in Australia too, but mostly because we export a lot of it. Favourite lobster dish – fresh off the boat with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of salt. 🙂 I’ve only eaten it like that once but my tastebuds still remember almost 40 years later.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Raw? I’ve never tried that. I suddenly feel terribly envious.
LikeLike
Um..it was dead!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I liked seeing the interior of the villa – hard to know what to expect from the exterior.
Is the rest of the places as ‘squared off’?
As to food and poverty….oysters were the food of the London poor in the time of Dickens.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lobster *and* oysters! This blog is starting to sound like a dinner party in a converted barn in Gloucestershire 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
As long as it is not one of Cameron;s ‘kitchen suppers’…
LikeLiked by 1 person
And yes on the squares. There’s a front to back central hallway (south to north), and then rooms opening nearly symmetrically on both sides. It’s a grid like Manhattan.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes but what will you be serving to drink with the lobster?! I’m having a lovely white bordeaux with our seafood apps–we splurge on shellfish this time of year too. And cheese. And salumi. And pastries. And butter. Always butter with me you know ($8 a pound!) But we’re gluttonous Americans!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Have you ever tried Échiré butter? If not, look out for it at your delicatessen. It’s out of this world! These days my stomach isn’t reacting well to white wine or champagne, so I’m in sort of red no matter what situation 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wonderful stuff, Waitrose in Wells sell it, about a six mile drive from me. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t know vegans like you were allowed butter 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you can say you do all your own gardening – like when you lied to Steve up above – then I can be a part-time vegan. 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
You bastard ! I do almost everything!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Kind of almost everything 😉 and after all, what’s the point of having money if you can’t hire someone to do some of the less pleasant stuff out there. Preferably while you watch from the balcony with a cool drink. And you know, it’s just a coincidence that he’s the best looking gardener in town.
Oh, sorry, that was probably just what I’d do if I could afford a gardener… 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Right, well I’m ‘almost’ a vegan then!
LikeLike
Pure evil! Eeeeevil. I cannot, for example, call for water- or a bath. This means I must manage life without help.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m so terribly sorry, I had no idea. I think I’d rather die than have to prepare my own lobster. Appalling!
LikeLiked by 3 people
😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
White for apps, red for dinner!
LikeLike
Echire was our local butter…did not know how spoiled we were.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You had me with ‘morels and cream.’ Mmmmmmm. The interior design is lovely, as are some of the architectural details. I’m all for restraint when it comes to design. There is elegance in knowing when and what to hold back.
LikeLiked by 1 person