All Good Gifts Around Us......

As I think I’ve said before (ad infinitum probably) September and October are the best months to be here in the Haute Garonne. There are three main reasons: the tourists have gone home (sorry tourists... love to see you come, love to see you go), the weather is absolutely, gloriously warm and mellow and we are awash with nature’s bounty.

I’ve been on the receiving end of ‘all good gifts around us’ this week and while they may have been ‘sent from heaven above’ they have been delivered by my lovely friends and neighbours.

It’s amazing what a few straggly cabbage plants can bring forth. Capt. Sensible had some left over in the spring, and rather than throw them away he gave them to Serge, who keeps chickens and has a ‘potager’ close to our garden. Serge speaks no English, Capt Sensible speaks no French, but so far we have had in return, an abundance of ‘salade’, some melons, haricot vert and just this weekend enough tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and courgettes to make ratatouille for the entire village… or so it seemed.

I’ve also been on the receiving end of some delicious plums. The only problem was my small freezer was jam packed with a whole load of apricots which were going cheap on the market …9 kilo trays for €5. Well, that was too good for Capt Sensible to turn down, despite my weak protests that the freezer was full of home- grown raspberries.

If the plums can’t be frozen they can be turned into plum brandy…. you can see the way my mind works, can’t you?

I worked out that if I got going sharpish we could have some plum liqueur in time for Christmas.

I’d got the vital ingredients – plums (d’accord) sugar and brandy (purloined from Capt Sensible’s personal supply). Not his best French of course (I value my life) but the Terres Spanish stuff he has for ordinary consumption. I needed vodka - pas de problem and a container large enough to hold a couple of pounds of plums plus the sugar and alcohol. That was a bit of a problem, but then I remembered a rumtopf pot which I hadn’t used for years. I’d had a bit of a disaster on the only occasion I’d attempted preserve plums, apricots and peaches in the manner described in the recipe that came with it. The fruit went mouldy, the alcohol had secondary and ‘thirdary’ fermentation and the rumtopf became a breeding ground for botulism. It spent the next few years gathering dust as a kitchen ornament until, for some unexplained reason, I paid good money to transport it to France with all the other bits of junk that I foolishly thought might come in useful one day.

And so it has, but I don’t intend to leave the plums in any longer than necessary.

If you have an over-abundance of plums there’s just time to turn them into a Christmas liqueur. This recipe is very simple, and just the thing to warm you up after a chilly day in the mountains.



You’ll need a large macerating container with a lid ... a 1 litre kilner jar is ideal if you haven’t got a rumptopf crock,
and :
a kilo of plums
450 gms white sugar
500 ml. vodka
125 ml. brandy.

Wash, dry, halve and de-stone the plums. Place in the jar, layering with the sugar, then add the alcohol. Stir gently to mix the liquid and fruit, put on the lid and leave in a cool dark place for 2 months. Strain the liquid through a muslin cloth into a large jug, cover and leave to settle in a cool place overnight and then strain again. Bottle and leave for another 4 weeks. The liqueur should be port wine coloured and crystal clear, if it’s not, leave another week or two.

On Friday when Serge’s wife Martine turned up with the peppers, aubergines etc. the timing couldn’t have been better, as I had a roast shoulder of lamb planned for the weekend. I love ratatouille with lamb, and Serge had come up with all the ingredients.

This is my haphazard recipe for ratatouille:

I cut the courgettes,peppers and aubergines in half, leaving the tomatoes whole, and pour over a little olive oil. This time I used lemon flavoured oil(just because I had some in the cupboard), but you could use chilli oil for a bit of spicy heat.


I put all the veg in a big roasting tin, throw on some unpeeled garlic cloves (I like lots, but it’s a personal choice) some sprigs of thyme, a few roughly torn basil leaves and roast for about 20 mins in a hot oven.

When the veggies are nicely brown and beginning to go soft I take them out of the oven, leave to cool, then cut the peppers, courgettes and aubergines into cubes(large or small as you like) and skin the tomatoes. I squidge the garlic, which should be soft and squidgeable, onto the peeled tomatoes and mash them up a bit with a little more oil. This is then poured over the cubed vegetable, given a quick stir and spooned into a serving dish. You can serve it straight away at room temperature as part of a vegetarian lunch or, as I do, leave overnight in the fridge and re-heat in the oven and serve with the lamb. I think roasting the vegetables first, and leaving overnight increases the flavour. And beats the tinned ‘rat’ into a cocked hat.

The World comes to Montrejeau

Every August our local market town sees an invasion. It has been going on for over 50 years, fortunately for the townspeople, the invaders are friendly. They arrive in coaches, rather than tanks, and they fill the streets with colour and a wide variety of languages.

It's the annual folklore festival of music and dance, and it happens in many a French town during the summer.


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It began for Montrejeau in 1959, and many of the countries taking part came from parts of Europe that were still firmly behind the Iron Curtain. I suppose it was one way of getting out and seeing what was going on in the rest of Europe - cultural visits being allowed, but I wonder if all the dance groups went home with as many as they came with?



Today's dancers and musicians come from all over the world as well as Europe. Most of the African or Caribbean performers come from former French colonies, and they certainly give the town an exotic air for a day or two. South America gets in on the act too, I remember one year a large Puerto Rican group brought traffic to a standstill, and almost took the whole show over in their wild enthusiasm.







One year, to our amazement, we heard what sounded like a Scots pipe band coming into the square... and it was. They went down a storm. Last year there were some Morris Men from Plymouth complete with fool ... they were greeted with bewilderment. Pipes, the French can do, a lot of French departments have a history of bagpipes... in fact the Breton group that came a couple of years ago had 'baguettes' that were almost identical to the Scots variety. Not so sure about their understanding of men with flowers in their hats and bells on their legs, waving coloured ribbons in the air.



It's nice to know that this wonderful cultural exchange is still going on after 50 years, and with no sign of the enthusiasm waning, certainly not on the part of the performers. On the last day they are here it's market day, and with summer tourists,plus 400 dancers, musicians and back-up teams (mostly still in national dress) the town is absolutely jammed packed. When it co-incides with a public holiday(The Feast of the Assumption)it's even worse. Thank goodness it's a good-will invasion.

The Harvest Home

In the Christian church the first Sunday in August marks (or marked) the start of Lammas-tide (one never knows with modern liturgy these days- it could be totally obliterated from the list of Anglican festivals ) Anyway Lammas runs from now until Michaelmas(Sept 29th), in other words through the harvest season. It derides its name from the medieval English word ‘lam’ meaning bread, and traditionally a loaf was baked using grain from the first sheaves brought in from the field.

Living where we do the seasons are as marked as they were in medieval England, just that bit earlier. Our hay harvest is all but over. The hay has been cut, left to dry (unfortunately we’ve had the wettest July since we’ve lived in France ) and for the past three or four weeks we have become accustomed to the rattle of tractors and over-loaded trailers roaring up and down the road in a frantic attempt to get it all in and under cover. It would seem an awful lot of hard work – they’re still at it at 11 o’clock at night – but there are beef cattle to be fed all through the winter so hay is money. The more you can store the less you’ll have to fork out for commercial feed, and the better fed the cattle will be.

Being a secular country, whilst hiding under the pretence of being a Catholic country (or should that be the other way round? One never knows with the French) old religious ceremonies seem to have been forgotten, but from a non religious aspect the bucolic celebrations associated with the harvest and the land are still observed here.

From the middle of July the rural community is gearing up for old time markets and harvest fetes.

The Marche L’Ancienne in Montrejeau acts as a good advertising platform for the August harvest celebrations. Out come the ancient tractors that rarely see the light of day, puffing, coughing and burning a small hole in the ozone layer immediately over the town.


There are teams of oxen, shepherds on horseback with their dogs riding side saddle, decorated farm trailers and the ubiquitous majorettes, the tinys looking vaguely worried as they try to keep up with the ‘big girls’, and not drop their batons.




The old copper still, that to this day pitches up in the local villages to distil the fruit harvest into something very alcoholic and inflammable, is brought out and joins the parade. It’s the same-old, same-old every year and although there is a smattering of tourists in the main the crowd is the same. You know that by the leg-pulling, joking and laughing going on as the older generation recognise old friends and neighbours.

The first weekend in August (which coincides with Lammas Sunday) sees the first of two Fetes de Moissan held in Le Cuing and Lecussan. The old farm machinery that’s been in the barn all year is dusted down and brought out, the threshing machines are checked out and a huge meal consisting of multiple versions of chicken is served in vast airless marquees.



All the old skills are on display, oxen grinding grain on a giant millstone, hand reaping, and threshing.
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The air is oppressively hot, and the smell of steam and oil mingles with the aroma of roast chicken.


The stubble scratches unprotected toes, and nothing runs to the published timetable …. but what the hell ? It’s fun, and like the Marche L’Ancienne it’s the same every year which is how our rural neighbours like it.

Racing Bikes and Fireworks

July and August are the months when it all kicks off here. Well, ‘here’ is no different to the rest of the country. For 10 months of the year the Haute Garonne jogs along at a fairly even pace – a ‘vide grenier’ every other Sunday somewhere, a ‘fete locale’ a repas de chasseurs, a Feu de St Jean (which is a good excuse for a meal and a bonfire) – nothing exceptional. But in the next eight weeks the department will go stark raving mad.

The celebrations commence with the commemoration of the Revolution. July 14th used to be known as Bastille Day, but now it seems to be known by the more PC title of the Fête Nationale. All the blood letting which followed the storming of the Bastille has been diplomatically shelved in favour of a public holiday culminating in firework displays. Nowhere in France can compete with the Paris display – well the Eiffel Tower and the Champs de Mar are pretty impressive in daylight, but at night, with the sky exploding in a thousand stars, the city becomes magical.

The second best display must be the Feu d’Artifice mounted on the walls of La Cité in Carcassonne There the surrounding vineyards are illuminated by a cavalcade of fireworks which soar up from the city ramparts and roll down the rows of vines in an ever-expanding explosion of colour. The event draws in thousands who park up anywhere they can, unpack a picnic and sit it out till the night sky darkens and a lone rocket signals the start of the spectacle. The tourists prefer to cram into the old city to soak up the atmosphere, all they actually do is pay over the odds for a drink, and miss the best of the display because they can’t actually see it. But they’ll get plenty of ‘atmosphere’ – the smell of burgers and chips, pizzas and several thousand sweaty bodies struggling to navigate the crowded cobbled alleyways. Not to mention a crick in the neck, and temporary deafness when the fireworks go off from the city walls.
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Old hands find a grassy knoll outside the city and bring their own food and wine. A few years ago the police had to close the Toulouse/Narbonne motorway due to the huge number of cars which had stopped on the hard shoulder to watch. Now it’s slightly more controlled, well, as far as the French ‘en fête’ can be controlled.

In the face of that sort of competition our nearest town had its firework celebrations the night before. On a suitably balmy evening after a very hot day, we joined friends at the lakeside restaurant, along with half the town, and several million flying things (ants, small flies? ) and watched the municipal fireworks, which like the Carcassonne ones are entirely free. The French government may have warned the nation that we must tighten our belts and not spend public money, but what the hell…. let’s all fiddle while Rome burns, except, being in France, we’ll replace the violin with fireworks.


In the week following the Fête Nationale the Tour de France descends on us for the Pyrenean stage of the endurance race. It usually passes within 10 miles of our village, and depending on the weather (it’s usually unbearably hot), how early they close the roads and if we have a ‘window’ in our non- existent social diary (life is one long party for retirees in rural France!) we sometimes endure a couple of hot sticky hours waiting for the pelaton to whiz past.

What am I complaining about? I’m not clad in sweaty lycra, bent over the handlebars of an instrument of torture otherwise known as a racing bike. I’ve yet to understand why they choose the hottest month of the year to stage the thing. I’m obviously missing the point, as I usually do where physical activity is concerned.

Now I have a small grandson I probably should be out there with all the other grannies and granddads scooping up the rubbishy freebies that the ‘caravan’ throws out to the eager masses. I sometimes wonder if the crowds are there to watch the race, or collect free samples of coffee, coloured pencils, packs of kids card games and cheap hats that rain down from the vans, cars and lorries. The riders speed by in a matter of seconds so I guess the freebies are the major draw.

The last time I watched Le Tour one of the riders lost a water bottle and two blokes nearly fell into the Garonne to get it. It was probably for sale on Ebay by six o’clock that night…. ‘as used by Lance Armstrong’.

As well as the major events we’ve the usual crop of August music festivals, everything from organ recitals, to hot jazz. And in case thoughts are turning to Christmas, there’s the annual exhibition and sale of Provencal santons in Saint Bertrand de Comminges. What better time to choose your Christmas crib than August?

Look Out Carla's About!

Last Friday saw the 70th anniversary of General de Gaulle’s first speech via the BBC to the newly occupied French people urging Frenchmen to join him in resistance to Hitler and the Vichy government. It is quite ironic that very few French people actually heard the broadcast, and those that did, hadn’t a clue who he was. Indeed some cynics thought, with a name like de Gaulle, he was a pseudo Frenchman invented by the British government in an attempt to stir up French national fervour. As if we would! Well, not for nothing did the French refer to us as ‘perfidious Albion’.

Strangely, for no-one having heard him, and the BBC not having thought it important enough to save the original broadcast, every word of it can be recalled. So much so, the opening paragraph is engraved on the war memorial of our nearest market town. Oh well, it’s always said a prophet is never recognized in his own country!

Anyway the old boy got plenty of mileage last week. Nicolas arrived in London with medals to award to veterans now in their nineties (better late than never one might say) plenty of kepi-wearing military attachés, and of course Carla.

Oh dear, Mlle. Bruni should really come with a health warning – to other leader’s wives. They should be briefed on the multitude of tricks the French First Lady has up her model’s sleeve, and make sure they never stand next to her for a photo shoot.

Pity poor old Samantha Cameron. Being five months pregnant is tricky. The bump is too big not to be noticed and too small to be in the beautiful full bloom of late pregnancy. She’s sort of at that lumpy stage, and she hasn’t a clue what to do with her hands. There’s not enough there to rest her arms on top of the bump, so she clasps them underneath it, like she’s afraid it’s going to fall off. Someone give her a handbag, for heavens sake. But you have to have some sympathy for her Anyone who’s five months pregnant, and new to the job of consort to the Prime Minister, would rather die than be photographed beside someone as media-savvy as Carla Bruni.

World leader’s spouses must dread the words ‘The French President is making an official visit and he’s bringing his wife with him.’ Except Michelle Obama. As she’s about 8 feet tall, and built like an Olympic sprinter, she can well hold her own with Carla, as is proved in the photo taken on a visit to the White House; in fact Mrs. Obama makes Carla look quite washed out. Anyone but the American First Lady might as well abandon all hope of looking chic

I’ve noticed Carla is nowhere to be seen when hubby is meeting Angela Merkel …. is this a coincidence, or some smart maneuvering on the part of the German Chancellor? Maybe she arranges for her to be accidentally locked in the loo when the official photographer arrives. She’s no fool, is Angela. She’s also, bless her, incredibly dumpy so she knows the score.

Mrs. S was up to all her old tricks in London. She, like the late Princess of Wales, can hear the click of a camera shutter at 300 yards and that’s when ‘model’ mode kicks in, well old habits die hard. So there she was, tossing her mane and skittering about like the winner of the 2.30 at Epsom. The pout, the flick of the hair, the flutter of the eyelashes, I’d have loved to have seen her and Lady Diana sharing the same platform. Wonder who would have won? I think my money might have been on Lady Di. Prince Charles, minus Camilla (had she been forewarned?) seemed to be reduced to a pink-flushed jelly when faced with Carla’s performance, but the Boy David, to his credit, ignored La Bruni’s shenanigans, preferring to put an protective arm round Samantha, who looked as if she would rather have been having an enema in the delivery room than posing in the doorway of number 10.

What Madame de Gaulle would have made of it all I’ve no idea, but I’ll bet it had the old general spinning in his grave.

A Lively, Lovely Weekend

Well it would seem we have survived yet another Pentecostal ‘Féte Locale’. Fortunately it only happens once a year, because it can amount to a good deal of sleep deprivation … if you happen to live in the centre of the village, as we do.

The féte, as in most French villages lasts over the weekend, and usually kicks off on Friday evening. For the past week lorries and big caravans have arrived, parked up on the salle de féte car park, and pitched camp. Like Boer ‘vortrekkers’ the caravans corral the dodgems, the floating ducks, the tombola, and the candy floss stall into a cosy circle. At the far end is the stage, from whence all the noise comes, with lights and amplifiers brooding silently over the fairground until the hour comes for it to spring into life. Round about 10.30 a deep, but persistent beat will erupt and it will continue until dawn breaks. We‘ve got used to it now, and thankfully, due to our thick walls and heavy shutters, when we go to bed we seem to be able to shut it out and get a reasonably good night’s sleep.

Friday and Saturday are given over to ‘les jeunes’. The proceedings kick off with a village ‘repas’ on Friday evening arranged by the salle de féte committee. The committee are all young people, which is in direct contrast to village committees in the UK, where the average age is about seventy. The food isn’t exactly ‘gourmet’ but the wine and digestifs flow, a good crowd turns up and before long someone will murder ‘La vie en Rose’, or ‘Mon Legionnaire’, before the oldies stagger home and les jeunes arrive for some unadulterated house music … or is it garage? Whatever it is it sure ain’t Piaf.

This year Saturday night was somewhat ‘livelier’ than normal. Around four in the morning some over-excited revellers decided to let off a barrage of thunder flashes. Not the great big ‘simulated- battleground- trainee- squaddies- for the use-of’ sort of thunder flashes, these were the domestic variety, but in the confined area of a narrow main street and village square they might just as well have . World War 3 (according to Steven Speilburg) was in imminent danger of breaking out, and even when the ammunition was exhausted the troops still had plenty of energy to return to the music, which after a brief breather, resumed with gusto.

Sunday was altogether quieter, with families pouring in from the surrounding villages around mid afternoon to sample the delights of the dodgems and the ‘barbe á pappa ‘ or granddad’s beard .. known to the rest of us as candy floss. Later in the afternoon the artillery arrived again and resumed their bombardment. Fortunately the bangs didn’t resonate quite as loudly in daylight. The music resumed but it ended earlier, about 2 am, perhaps the late night on the Saturday was catching up with them.

Today was essentially for the village. As is the custom with French fétes the celebrations start with a short service at the war memorial to honour the dead from the two World Wars. Shortly before 11 twenty or thirty villagers assemble at the church and walk the few metres to the memorial, lead by a side drummer and a bugler. The drummer adopts a funereal tone, reminiscent of the Revolution. I half expect to see a tumbrel, packed with condemned aristos, rumbling across the bridge en route to the guillotine. I think I’ve watched ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ too often, due to a schoolgirl crush on Dirk Bogarde, now totally demolished by reading John Coldstream’s 2004 biography on my teenage heartthrob.

The service is short; a bouquet is placed at the foot of the monument and the bugler launches into the ‘Marseillaise’. After this everyone retires to the bar for free drinks. An accordionist appears, the side drummer (suitably refreshed) shows off his supreme ability to perform single paradiddles and embarks on a musical duel with the accordionist. The battle seems to end in a draw.

Some considerable time later the bugler and the side drummer depart in their car. I wonder if they advertise themselves in the local free newspaper … ‘ Side drummer and bugler available for fétes locale, Bastille Day celebrations, VE day anniversaries and bah mitzvahs. Competitive rates’.

After this, the afternoon has been remarkably quiet. The boules tournament was well supported by players (all male) and spectators, and played under the shade of the trees, strangely boule is not a sport that’s played at any other time in the village; I think it needs a drowsy, hot afternoon and a plane tree-lined square, the sort you find in the south. It seems to go perfectly with pernod and water, and black olives.

We have had a perfect weekend, with the garden thermometer hitting the high 30’s, but it doesn’t always work out like that. The weather here can sometimes be as capricious as Britain just when you really want it to be nice. The week’s forecast looks gloomy, with rain and falling temperatures, but at least no-one rained on our féte.

There have been half-hearted attempts by the French government to abolish Whit Monday as a public holiday, due to the fact that some years (this one for example) the month of May sees 4 separate public holidays. Up to now it’s been blithely ignored, and judging by the fun everyone has had today, I can see little Sarky and his government in that tumbrel if they persist in enforcing it.

Problems in Paradise.

For anyone living in France and relying on an income from the UK these have been hard times. Sterling has taken a real bashing over the past eighteen months and even though France has been relatively lucky in avoiding the worst effects of recession it has not been immune to inflation. Add these two facts together, and you have some pretty unhappy expats.

Judging by recent postings on expat forums it would seem that there is a steady stream of disillusioned Brits selling up and heading home. Every day, it seems there are small ads. offering left hand drive cars with low mileage, nearly-new white goods, and of course houses, some renovated, some in the process of.

There are as I see it three main reasons for abandoning the dream.
For the under-fifties who have relocated here and need to earn a living the sheer practicalities of the idea are a nightmare. One of the big dreams has been running a B&B (chambre d’hôte)or renovating tumble-down barns into gites, two enterprises that are reasonably easy to set up in Britain. Not so in France.

Many expats come with a trade - electricians, builders, and plumbers – again a pretty straight forward occupation to persue in the UK. But to start any sort of business in France is an obstacle course in which (especially if your French is a bit basic) the participants are blindfolded and handcuffed.

And it doesn’t matter how small your enterprise is going to be. I met a young couple last year who had jumped through every hoop the Chambre de Metiers could produce in an attempt to sell Asian food and spices on a few local markets. It was hardly on a global scale and after a few months of struggling they felt defeated and deflated. They were regretfully returning to the UK, but with the vow, like General Macarthur, to return, albeit when they were closer to retirement. The rules and regs. have been loosened a little in the last couple of years, with the creation of the Auto-entrepreneur scheme specifically for small, one- man businesses. But its still a little shop of horrors.Some returning expats can become a bit paranoid and actually believe that the French have it in for Brits wanting to earn a living in their country, but they forget that French entrepreneurs have to go through the same struggle.

The over-fifties may not have the this problem, as by and large they tend to be early-retired with a good pension pot, or investments, or older retirees with a state pension and perhaps a small private pension. But it’s this latter group that have been suffering from the strength of the euro, so this is one of the major reasons for returning to the UK.

Another common thread for the over-fifties is family ties, and in particular grandchildren.Even with technology such as Skype, and webcams, many retirees (I have to say it’s usually grandmas) genuinely miss seeing their grandchildren on a regular basis. Those cheap air-fares that convinced us that friends and relatives could pop over for long weekends don’t seem that cheap when you come to the ‘pay now’ bit the online booking form. How did a 99p one-way ticket suddenly turn into the £130 debited to your bank card for a return for two adults? With mortgages to pay, rising prices and limited holiday allowance, sons and daughters just can’t afford to hop over with the grandchildren more than once a year.

Well, you might say, what’s wrong with older grand-kids coming over for a few weeks in the summer holidays? Brilliant idea. The brutal truth is that the lovely old farmhouse you bought in the middle of no-where, which you fell in love with for its peace and tranquillity is ‘Boresville Central ’ for teenagers. Four weeks with Granny and Grandad down a country track miles away from the nearest town seems like a prison sentence.

So with regret many retirees put their idyllic hideaway on the market, and pack up their retirement dream along with their dogs, cats and memories and move back. Often they disguise their loneliness by convincing themselves that their grown up children need them for child care duties. This may seem a selfless act of parental loyalty, but I wonder how many sons and daughters may actually dread the idea of Mum and Dad moving back to a house down the road?

A harsh reality of life in rural France for many expats is loneliness. And that affects all ages. I met a charming girl a few weeks ago, who moved here about a year ago to live with her partner in the house he was renovating. The views from the garden were spectacular, a pretty little village was less than half a mile away – I would have died for the location- but they were selling the house, and everything in it, and moving back. Lack of a regular income was the main reason, but she seem to be quite relieved as she’d been so bored and lonely when her partner was out at work. He spoke good French - she didn’t - so she was completely isolated. There was no-one around that was vaguely her age even if she had been fluent in the language, and in rural areas friendships are hard to establish. In this France is no different to any British village, xenophobia flourishes in backwaters.

Sometimes we need a good listener, either to help solve a problem, or just to have a moan to, and being so many miles away from close family can turn minor niggle into a full blown crisis. Fortunately help is at hand. There’s an excellent English speaking organisation, run by volunteers who understand the problems of life in a different country and culture. It’s similar to the Samaritans in that there is a dedicated phone line with listeners on hand to do just that … listen. They are specially trained and entirely non-judgemental, so in fact for some it’s much better than talking a problem over with a friend. How many of our friends can really be relied upon not to criticise or offer well-meaning, but wrong advise?

Their website is www.soshelpline.org (there's a link in the right hand column of this blog) and the phones are manned from 3pm to 11pm. And if you’ve time on your hands you can volunteer to train as a listener. If you don’t feel you could do that, there’s lots of other ways to help – from distributing publicity, to organising a fund raising event like a book sale or a coffee morning.