RABBIT MARGERIE HANCOURT and CONJUGAL RIGHTS IN FRENCH PRISONS

To Dan Walker ~ 1 October 2020

Dear Dan

So good to hear you didn’t die. I hope you have fired the highly infectious N. You are right she is heartbreakingly lovely but with lovers like that who needs enemies.

On my way home I went looking for the auberge in Margerie Hancourt but it is closed. I stopped there many times over the decades and once with my parents. The farmer’s wife who served gave no sign of recognition as we entered but squeezed us in without a word and without asking served us with the plat de jour which was a rabbit stew cooked in mustard and cream and served with hot, fresh made fries and haricot vert. I have eaten many meals just as good but never one that was better. I have spent 25 years trying to recreate the Rabbit stew before I realised that the necessary ingredients that were missing - my mother and father and their appreciation of the food and me - were long gone and never to be found again. cf. Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi

I did however revisit another restaurant you might like to try on the Roman Road route ~ the Hôtel Restaurant de l'Abbaye at Clairvaux. There is a huge prison there and a fairly large police station. It’s on a ten mile straight which encourages fast driving. Thirty years ago a Gendarme would stand outside the police station saluting motorists as they screamed past at twice the speed limit. Can this be true? I do believe it is.

In the 1980s it had a restaurant with thirty, one-person tables all facing one way. It looked like a university exam room. It was arranged like this so that the men who worked in the prison could escape at lunchtime and dine in silence and solitude. Escape from the madding overcrowd made up for the view which was the boils on the back of the fat neck of the C wing sub-warden sitting in front of you. The food was good but the repartee left something to be desired.

Then in the 1990s and into the new century the hotel and the dining room was full of sad young(ish) women waiting for their afternoon of conjugal-rights. Well you too would look sad in such circumstances. Some of them, of course, were looking forward to an hour of fooling around with Jacques. Most of them, I fear, were not looking forward to a terrible blattering that they suffered only out of a sense of duty. They each ordered a pichet of the house red which was not too good but cheap and alcoholic. After a while they would go to the ladies room and fix their make-up and when they returned the woman who owned the restaurant ~ who genuinely believed that Andouillette was fit for human consumption ~ brought them a small Cognac “on the house” Those about to copulate stood to drink it down, smiled wanly at their sister in suffering and departed.

Now it has had a rebuild and a new look glass box extension. I stopped for a coffee, it was quite good and the menu looked promising.

See you soon. Covid and Boris the fuckwit allowing.