French Leave.

I don't really lead the jet-set lifestyle that these last few posts suggest, but I am actually out of the country again. It's about 35C, and I'm holidaying in the French countryside, about to put my son to bed and fire up the barbie. We have some La Goudale biere de garde to have with dinner, but we're drinking little bottles of lager in this heat.

It's too hot, but fridge-cold Kronenbourg 1664 makes it bearable. If that sounds a little downmarket, then you should have tried the stubbies that were a welcome gift in the fridge when we arrived. They make the Kronenbourg seem so savoury-bitter as to be almost salty by comparison.

The pic has nothing to do with beer. Today I had one of the most mind-bendingly good ice creams of my life. Prune, red wine and Earl Grey tea. I remember being on holiday in upstate New York, hanging out with friends and reading old issues of The New Yorker magazine. An advert for Cointreau started with the phrase 'Those clever French'. My friend Ben laughed and commented on how rarely one hears that phrase these days. But in the case of prune, Bergerac and Earl Grey ice cream, the phrase is entirely justified.