Matters Mechanical

My first car was a clapped-out Mini. It had lowered suspension and alloy wheels, and was a strange shade of orange. I made all my mistakes in that car, after passing my test and being officially allowed out on the roads to play with the other hooligans. (He Who Does Everything Around Here believes that I’m still a hooligan behind the wheel, but I beg to differ.) The good thing was that, being so small, I could mess up the parking and there would always be room around me, no matter what the angle (and I did leave a note for the owner of that car that wasn’t quite as far over as I thought). 

She served her purpose – she kept me out of the rain, carried my shopping, and did the school run. She changed my life. I called her Edna the Inebriate Mini, and I was very fond of her, right up until the day I was preparing her for an MOT. It seemed to me that if you presented a clean, well-cared-for looking car, it would do a lot better than an obvious heap of junk, so I washed her and polished her, and hoovered her out – and sucked up half the floor panel on the driver’s side. 

Edna had to go to a new home, where a young man learned to weld on her. I’m not sure what he did, but she ended up being called Barney, and came to a final stop nose-down in a ditch. 

I was reminded of this the other day when I read a story about two retired farmers (though that seems to be a contradiction in terms); brothers – you only had to look at the nose – who fifty years ago put their work horse out to pasture and bought a tractor. 

Fifty years ago means 1963. Carnaby Street, The Beatles, The Mini, the E-type Jaguar; and in this part of France, people farming with horsepower. 

Their new tractor was a revelation. They could do everything the horse had done, at twice the speed. They could use it for forestry, for ploughing, for harvesting. It revolutionised their lives: and they respected it, as they had their horse. After all, without it, and without the horse, they may as well be back in the Middle Ages. 

For fifty years that machine worked their farm, whatever the weather. It had no cab, so it was still fairly brutal work at times, in heat and rain and cold, but it provided the muscle, and they were grateful. 

So much so, that they have celebrated its half-centenary by giving it an overhaul. It’s been repainted, its engine sorted out, everything made to be just as it was when it left the factory – to the tune of some 20,000 euros. 

They wanted to give back something for all those years of loyal service. 

Our sheep-farming neighbour down south had to replace his ancient Czech Zetor tractor (bought in the distant past for 700 francs) that had carried his logs from woodland to farm and then to us, and all the feed for his sheep, and the million and one other things he had used it for (to the point where his doctor told him to get off and walk for the sake of his health. He climbed onto his daughter’s bicycle instead). He went for another old machine, because it would do what he wanted. He didn’t want to pay for a cab and a soft seat and suspension, or shiny green paint: he just wanted an engine to pull and carry. 

The value of a thing isn’t just in the monetary worth; it lies in its ability to do what you need it to do. When times are hard, maybe that’s something we should rediscover.  Forget built-in obsolescence: bring back the repair man and the spare parts stockist. A bad workman may blame his tools, but a good one will respect them.  If he respects them highly, maybe he’ll buy them a 50th birthday present.

©lms 2013

Bonne Année!

It’s traditional at the start of the year for each commune to hold a gathering called The Mayor’s Wishes.  Ours was on Friday. Everyone was notified, and we wandered up to the Salle des Fêtes at the appointed time to meet and greet. 

It’s rather like ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ where Aunt Ada holds the counting, just to check that no-one’s sloped off to better things, and escaped her Doom. 

We went in, and had to kiss everyone present twice (chaps do the manly handshake thing) whilst wishing them ‘Bonne Année,  bonne santé’. Then we stood around for a few minutes, chatting to all and sundry, and eventually sat at the long tables which had been set with glasses, plates, teaspoons, napkins, and coffee cups. 

The Mayor started by explaining that the turnout was low, as a lot of people are ill: gastro, bronchitis and flu are sweeping France, aided by all the warm damp weather this winter. 

Suddenly all that kissing and bonhomie seemed a bit foolish, not to say downright dangerous. 

She then told us all the civic news: who died, who’s been born.  The population of our commune has dropped by 10, to 179, since the last census. (Aunt Ada Doom wouldn’t have stood for it.)  She also told us about major expenditure last year - lots of road resurfacing, and a new workshop for the Commune Man - and what's planned for the year to come.

Once the speech had been made, it was time for the galette des rois. This is a pastry and frangipane concoction with a hidden surprise: a fève, or bean, rather like the sixpence in a Christmas pudding. The bean is a little china figure, and the person who finds it is crowned king or queen for the evening. The crown represents the one you’ll need to acquire from the dentist afterwards, if you have been incautious. 

We spent the evening talking to a couple who had been to Scotland recently. They had eaten haggis for breakfast (though I’m sure she told her neighbour that it was made from beef, and I really didn’t have the heart to enlighten her), but had been aghast at the price of food. 15 € for a single plat! And the whiskey so expensive – they’d had to drink beer! The husband’s main interest, though, was whether we’d had Christmas Pudding this year. He seemed deeply let down when we said no. 

So as the plates were filled (and refilled twice more) people sat there poking about with their teaspoon to test for dental danger.  It’s actually quite hard to eat a warm pastry with a blunt teaspoon – try it sometime. 

Our glasses were topped up regularly, possibly as there were far fewer people present than had been catered for, with sparkling wine, and the conversation was deafening. Last year’s wishes included a plan to sort out the acoustics in the hall – obviously this was side-lined by road works and workshop-erecting. 

Eventually the plates were cleared away, and coffee poured: the teaspoon was retained for mashing the sugar lump into the cup. 

At the end of the evening, we spilled out of the hall into total darkness. The street lights go off at ten here, no matter what.  I have never actually been unable to see my hand in front of my face before: it is very unnerving.  Suddenly I understood the reason why people retired when the sun went down, with a gazunder under the bed: how would you ever find your way to an outside privy? Our little torch barely penetrated the black night. 

We came away glad that we had gone, if only to fly the flag: we were the only English present. Some were on holiday, some had moved away, and some were possibly struck down by one or all of the current maladies. I have a copy of the Mayor’s Speech to translate for them, so they’ll get the news without the beans, emergency dentistry, or any germs they didn’t have to start with. 

But they’ll have missed out on being made to feel part of it all, being with friends and neighbours who are pleased to see us, even (especially?) if it’s only once a year, and being, just for a little while, very French.

Bonne Année, et (and I mean this most sincerely) bonne santé!

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Here at the top of the house, thoughts are turning towards Christmas.   

Mostly they are thoughts such as, what on earth are we going to eat? (No idea). And will the sitting room floor be done in time to put up the tree? (Yes. So I’m told.) 

Every commune worth its salt forks out for a few Christmas decorations to light up the streets;  and it’s a tradition to take the children for an evening drive to see them all. Here in our tiny village, which has a mainish road as the high street, there are star-bursts attached to four lampposts; and there are coloured lights round the church door and windows. The star-bursts are new this year, and when first hung, only worked alternately. Now, after the electricity people have had the cherry picker out again, they all shine in the darkness. 

One overhangs the carriageway a little too much, right on a bend, so there’s a bollard to force the taller traffic away from the building and into the middle of the road. So far it has only been a cause for oohing and aahing, not aargh-ing. 

I can see this one from my house. In fact I have discovered that my bathroom blind which I have been assured is opaque, isn’t.  This gives me pause to wonder to what can be seen from outside on a dark morning when the light is on, but it’s a bit late in the day to be modest after two years. 

However, all this lighting requires wiring; and wiring is expensive. So expensive is it that every week there is a story in the newspaper about the theft of reels of the stuff from telephone companies and railway yards. Copper is the new gold. 

There has always been a worry that, when the petrochemicals run out, so will the plastics, and with them everything we use to communicate. Well, long before that happens, there will be a world shortage of copper. It’s in high demand here, there and everywhere. 

So highly prized is it, that in many countries mines which were long considered uneconomical to run are being re-considered.  All of a sudden, people are beginning to think that their lovely local area could once again be laid waste by mineral extraction, and they really don’t like it. 

It would be like telling Cornwall that the tin mines will all be re-roofed and the wheels at Wheal Jane will turn again. TheTamar valley would have arsenic production killing the landscape, as it did 150 years ago. 

Now, France needs income. There isn’t enough employment from relying on the tourist industry or farming. Chicken production is down, pigs are being sold off so cheaply that farmers will go under without state aid. You can import food from everywhere in the world, so why pay to produce it at home? But you can’t go on importing metals, when there’s a world shortage. We need/demand/want more and more technology, and that means, for the foreseeable future, wire. 

If you want Christmas to be bright and shiny for your children, maybe there’s a sacrifice to be made: there’s gold in them there hills, and copper too, and someone, sometime soon, is going to want to get at it. 

Now, where did I put those candles?

The Unkindest Cut

There is a town which used to be known for the making of a particular kind of knife. It had a high quality steel blade which folded neatly into the bone handle. It bore the name of the town where it originated. 

Recently I read that the name of the knife, which is also that of the town, was bought by a businessman, and was now applied to an entirely different product range made in the Far East and imported. The locals are up in arms: if someone owns the name of their town, then where do they live? They can’t (or don’t want to) put it on their addresses, as it’s a trade name. They’d be advertising. They can’t make their own knives under their own traditional marque, because they don’t own it anymore, so their name is now associated with what they consider an inferior product. 

Niort in the Deux Sèvres was famous for the production of slippers. Now, you can’t possibly understand the relationship a French person has with their slippers. These aren’t just things you slip on inside the house to ease or warm your feet at the end of the long working day in clogs or wellies, or to preserve the parquet from your stilettos. A good pair of slippers is to be cherished, lived in, worn in public. One elderly chap drove one of the original silver 2CV vans to the supermarket at Vouillé every week, dressed in his best corduroys (even in summer) and his navy jumper and his beret, and on his feet would be his traditional slippers. He was a happy man from the ground up. Well, you know yourself: unhappy feet can really spoil your day. 

But times change. Even the most traditional item can be made cheaper elsewhere, so a couple of years ago the last slipper-maker in the Deux Sèvres closed down. People check out the ones on the market stalls, and tut over them, and complain about the materials and how they only last five minutes, whereas their old pair did faithful service for ten years and more. 

Back then, people didn’t earn much. They knew the value of what they bought, and expected things to outlive them (which is a mean feat in France, as I’ve mentioned before). A man bought a knife, and could hand it on to his son: the maker might never sell another to that particular family. A chap could go to his grave in his slippers, stepping comfortably shod into the hereafter. 

Now people earn more money than their parents ever dreamed of (well, I don’t: I’m a writer. I didn’t think up the story of a Boy Wizard in time, and am therefore broke); but as the man from the former knife-making town said, young people say they haven’t the money to plant a few leeks in the garden, whilst texting on their mobile phones and cranking up the volume on their mini-music devices. 

There’s no point in making things that last. Why go to the bother of having your old knife sharpened, and its spring replaced, when you can buy a new one for half the cost? Why keep your slippers in pristine condition when you can just chuck them in the bin when they look a bit grubby and pop back to get another pair? 

So the traditional industries close down, and people haven’t got any money, and they have to buy the cheap imports because they can’t afford anything else.  Someone’s been asset-stripping, and thrown out the bit of the product they don’t need – the people behind the name. We can have anything we want, dirt cheap: but at what cost? Ask a Frenchman with a blunt knife and sore feet. 

©lms 2012

Still wearing my other hat

And it's live and lovely!

The One Word Challenge Anthology by Talkback Writers is now available (e-format only) from:

 http://alfiedog.com/products-page/ebooks/one-word-anthology-talkback-writers/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A5W0OAY

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/253994

There - no excuses! Get it on your Kindle, download a pdf, but please buy it!

It is an amazing feeling, you know, to have your words not only published but out there in the real world for sale. There are previously published and hitherto unpublished writers in this anthology, but you won't see the join.

I'd never written Flash Fiction until I started the One Word Challenge each month, and it's quite astonishing how much you can fit into so few words. Rather like Hemingway and his 'iceberg' style of writing, it's what lies underneath, implied, shadowed, known but hidden, that fills out the story. It's a snapshot of a moment in time, but a moment that the character has come to from somewhere, en route to somewhere else.

I'm not poet, but I'd love to try, seeing what can be said by these talented writers in only 40 lines.

One word, but the possibilites are endless.

With many thanks to all involved with the publication - you may now relax!

Wearing my other hat

I'm taking a step sideways today to blog about something not to do with France.  

In my other life I’m a writer (what do you mean, you couldn’t tell?) and something exciting is happening there. 

On November 12^th, an e-book is being published: One Word Challenge, by Talkback Writers. This is an anthology of poetry and flash fiction written by the members of the Talkback forum of Writing Magazine (UK). The pieces are all written in response to a monthly challenge: a word is chosen, and we have to write about that word in any way we like, within strict limits - 40 lines of poetry, or 200 words for fiction. The winners of each month’s competition choose the next word, and judge the entries. 

We have decided to bring out a collection of some of the entries, with the intention of raising funds for a charity, inspired by a very special little dog. This is Medical Detection Dogs. http://www.medicaldetectiondogs.org.uk/ 

The charity trains dogs – not any particular breed, but chosen for their intelligence and their ability to learn – to accompany people with certain medical problems. Our little friend, Lola, lives with poet Liz, who suffers from diabetes. Her blood sugar can drop without warning, even with all the modern aids available. Lola, with her heightened senses, can tell when it is about to happen and will warn Liz, so that she can take glucose and stop herself from falling unconscious. You can read more about Lola (and Liz) here.

http://lizbrownleepoet.com/lolas-charity-to-receive-benefit-from-ebook/ 

This is vital work, and could help a lot of people with Liz’s condition. The dogs can also be trained to help with other illnesses, and possibly even to sniff out cancers. We’d very much like to help them, and so 10% of all proceeds will go to supporting them in their work. 

I hope some of you will think of buying the ebook ; it will be for sale through Amazon and Smashwords, but also direct from the publisher at http://alfiedog.com/ebooks where it will be 99p. I am proud to say that I have four stories in there, which I hope you’ll enjoy. 

If you’d like to read more, there will be an article in January’s Writing Magazine, in the shops on December 6^th.  https://www.writers-online.co.uk/

Go on – that’s a good read for under a pound; and it could help a lot more people to live normal lives.

Toussaint

It’s that time of year again: the weekly publicité tells us that every supermarket and garden centre everywhere is stocked to the roof with chrysanthemums. Empty shops will open just to sell them by the pot. Markets will have stalls dedicated to them. It’s nearly All Saints, and on that day, November 1^st – a national holiday – people everywhere will be placing these flowers on the graves of their lost ones.

  

Hallowe’en has become a new and not totally trusted event: it’s for the young. It's lost its original significance. All Saints is for the older generations. It used to be celebrated in England, in a sombre fashion, as an exclusively religious day. Here in France it belongs to everyone who has someone to remember; and failing that, it's a day off work.

One of the many things that perplexed us since coming to France is the lack of old graves, and indeed graveyards. Where are they all? In England, burials traditionally took place within the churchyard; historically, disposing of the bodies and souls of the dearly departed was the purlieu of the Church. You can walk amongst these tombs, in various stages of upkeep, in just about any village and town.
 

In the Poitou, this is rare. The cemeteries are detached, often on the edge of the village, with no religions building in sight, and on inspection, you will find nobody commemorated from before the late 1800s. 

South of Poitiers there is a Protestant burial ground in a forest, dating from the 17^th century. It had to be hidden away because the believers couldn’t, wouldn’t, be buried according to Catholic rites. They were outcasts in life and death by virtue of their religion. But that is one of the oldest sites of common people’s graves still in existence. There will always be the grand tombs in Cathedrals and city churches, but where were the ordinary people laid to rest? Where is the old hallowed ground? 

What’s missing is the sense of time, of continuation. Earlier generations couldn’t afford engraved stones to mark their passage through history, as was the case in England too; but there aren’t any monuments to local lordlings or constables, either.

In Brittany there are churches with attached burial grounds, still in use. One of these, at a tiny village near here, has an ossuary. This is a small stone building with open sides, like a miniature market hall; and inside are jumbles of old bones. 

The graves are occupied as long as there are people to pay for their upkeep. Once this lapses, a notice will be attached to the headstone, warning that if there is no contact from the relatives of the deceased within a certain time, the plot will be cleared and made available to someone else. It’s a pragmatic approach.   

With the publicité for shellfish, and wine events, and chrysanthemums, that comes to the mailbox every week courtesy of La Poste, there will often be a leaflet advertising funerary monuments. Look at our range of stone! Look at our carving! Want your loved one’s name in Gothic script, picked out in gold? Easy terms available! 

You can have your place in history for as long as there’s someone to remember and to care: which, when you think about it, is the simple truth. 

Perhaps fame should be measured in chrysanthemums. 

©lms 2012