Carcassonne is actually a walled town in France that essentially looks like something out of either a fairy tale or the Middle Ages. It would seem quite normal to find Joan of Arc - The Maid of Orleans or some soldiers of the Knights Templar strutting around the vicinity.
There are other examples of walled cities - like York in England for example and there are some fine castles such as Skipton Castle in Skipton Yorkshire, that I personally find just as breathraking.
However Carcassonne does look to have history and mystery.
I remember our French teacher at school, Madame Cesbron. She had a particular liking for check clothing and her favourite item appeared to be a yellow and black check suit, which she seemed to wear a good deal of the time. Predictably she drove a Renault car and she always seemed to be in a bit of a distant mood, like there was a lot on her mind. We were given French names to use and one girl was called Carrine which the teacher pronounced Cah-hine in a very exaggerated way. We had to study the Marsaud family - Madame, Monsieur, their two kids and their dog, Bruno and go through just about everything they ate, wore, used, etc. Masses of French verbs were drilled in to us, like some military exercise.
Some people use the phrase 'My Dutch Uncle' and it really means something completely different and has nothing to do with a 'Dutch Uncle' at all.Well I didn't have a Dutch uncle, I had a French Great Uncle, though we always dispensed with the 'Great' bit.
I met him once on a trip to Boston Spa with the relatives - he was staying with my Great Aunty Alice, along with his wife Nellie, who was Alice's younger sister. They were over from France on a whistle stop visit.
Uncle Edward had a French mother and an English father. His father was a representative of a large mill called Lister & Co at their French office. He met Edward's mother, married her and produced Edward and Lillian his sister. They lived in France but Edward came to England to work in Lister's Mill's Manningham Bradford offices. He learned that Nellie was looking for someone to give her lessons in French and he eventually married her but not until he had served in the French army on the Great War.
When I met Uncle Edward he was an old man, but very pleasant. He was tallish, thin and bespectacled with a strong French accent and that late August afternoon we went round Aunty Alice's back garden together, though he was in poor health by that time.
So when Pippin expressed an interest in Carcassonne, who was I to refuse him? It would have been positively rude to ignore Pippin's requests to appear with some Carcassonne bunting - so here he is in all his glory.
There is also a game called Carcassonne which was produced in 2009 and uses 'meeples' and tiles for 'expansions' and people put the game tiles in wooden boxes. Er, yes - very nice, but Pippin isn't a meeple, people, - not yet anyway...!
