Quel fromage!
Sir: After J. B. Kelly's `Toujours la blague' (11 May) and Jeanne Strang's counter- offensive (Letters, 1 June) balance seems to have been restored on the culinary front.
However, we (a middle-aged couple who have chosen France for our retirement) rally to Mr Kelly's support and would even like to add the cheese and fruit which Mr Kelly mentions as exceptions to the general decline. It takes a detective with more than Holmesian talent to nose out a cheese that is not more or less spoiled through industrialisation, and it is equally difficult to find apples with the 'right' taste. Normally they have a taste of mould (storing?) or fish-oil (fertilising?), and the choice, in our region at least (Provence), is limited to a maximum of three sorts.
Miss Strang's no doubt excellent book on local food must indeed be very local. After leaving Denmark ten years ago we find it increasingly difficult to find veal that is not pumped so full of hormones that it shows from the colour, beef that is suitable for steaks (roughly once out of four attempts), and chickens that taste of any- thing except fish from the doubtful things they have fed on. Not to speak of tomatoes (praised by Miss Strang): for several years we have been unable to find any that have• a taste at all, and whose skin is not hard as plastic. Our annual visits to Denmark confirm that food and vegetables in that country have roughly kept their quality, whereas it is steadily declining in France. As for Mr Kelly's trying experiences of French bureaucracy, they seem to have been worse than average: we only had to wait for two months before having our `permis de sejour' renewed. But, as they
`It's all right! It's only me.'
say here: `Pourquoi faire simple ce qu'on peut faire complique?'
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