French Horns

One of the local lads has the habit of announcing his arrival from afar by playing Dixie on his car horn – something that started with Boss Hogg and the Dukes of Hazzard and should have ended with them. 

But there are other occasions when the sound of a horn – or even a whole orchestra-worth - is welcome. 

On Saturday there was a wedding – the first we’ve seen in our tiny little church. 

You know when there’s a wedding happening somewhere  nearby, because all the guests and the bride and groom drive around the locality tooting and parping.  The cars have bits of gauze on wing mirrors and aerials, so that should you rush out ready to shake a fist at the disturbers of the peace, you realise your error and wave instead. 

There’s a civil ceremony, and a church one; and between the two there is a lot of noise to be made, and joy to be shared. In times gone by, the bride and groom might have been carried aloft by their friends and paraded through the village, so this is the modern version. They go into the church for a short ceremony, and emerge for photos, and perhaps go into the Salle de Fêtes for a couple of hours, and then off they all go again, horns blaring. 

It’s very exciting and good-natured, and it’s an invitation to share in the event even if you don’t know them – though, this being Brittany, and close-knit, you probably do. 

On Sunday morning, the Chasse was about. They are allowed out to play with their guns on Sundays and Thursdays in our commune, so you know which days not to go walking across the fields dressed in fur. They have their hunting horns, which, by and large, the dogs ignore, especially if they can dash across a road in front of a passing car and frighten ten years off the driver’s life instead. Still, it’s the traditional note of Autumn. 

The nature of the land here is such that you can hear things coming for miles, especially when they make a lot of noise. So in the afternoon, alerted by approaching sound, we dashed up to the road to wait, and our patience was rewarded by a cavalcade of old cars.  There were a couple of real veterans, but mostly they were all from the 50s and 60s. A Mini, a Frog-eyed Sprite, a Triumph, numerous Renaults, Peugeots, and Citroens, 2CVs of course, a few boxy Mercedes, some khaki Jeeps, a Caravelle; there were two or three huge American cars, white-wall tyres and chrome enough to blind, and lots of little round utility ones like Morris Minors but even more minor. People were smaller when they were built. Cramming four modern adults inside makes one appreciate the Breton fondness for the sardine tin.

There must have been 40 or 50 cars in all, all to be greeted with a wave and a smile – because it’s infectious, all this excitement. It’s people enjoying themselves in their own treasured vehicles, sharing the magic of old-fashioned motoring on a sunny afternoon, stirring some memories, and inviting us to be part of it. 

You will rarely, outside of the cities, hear a car horn sounded in anger; but you’ll hear it often sounded in fun.  I know which I prefer.

© lms 2013

A Handful of Summer

Wherever you go at the moment, the bends of the roads are edged in spilled golden grain. Flocks of birds congregate to pick up the free feast, and with their minds on their stomachs they may not see a car bearing down on them until it is too late, so extra caution is recommended. 

All night the harvesters can be heard working, and tractors haul fully laden trailers back and forth between field and collection point. We have one a little way outside the village, and it's refilled almost as soon as it's emptied. It is manned all day and night for weighing and unloading. At present there is a huge overflow from the two wide open stalls, covered to protect it from the drizzle. 

The normally quiet countryside is humming with activity, and this year is better than many.  Signs are popping up everywhere – ‘Vends Paille‘– straw for sale.  The fields are topped of the grain heads, then the straw is cut and baled, then the stubble turned in. It used to be burnt in lines of black and flame, very controlled, but the only fires now are when the machinery clogs up with combustible dust.  It’s been so hot and dry that the crops have turned a deep copper brown, glowing in the sunlight, darkening in the fine occasional drizzle we have today. 

The huge harvesters and the small balers move from farm to farm, which can cause a certain amount of consternation to other road users when the ways are narrow. ‘Convoi Exceptionnelle’ means get out of the way: there’s a massive machine on the move, built for open prairies, not Breton lanes. Wide, tall, and often pulling some other many-toothed apparatus behind it, it’s a danger to telephone cables. If you find yourself following one, you may suddenly discover a spirit of adventure, and the desire to find out what some other road has to offer. If it’s a dead end, you can always come back, by which time the harvester will have moved on; and if it leads somewhere, you may see some ancient dwelling you never knew existed. Either way you win. 

I picked up a handful of grain from the road, and it was warm in my palm. Corn or wheat, I’ve no idea: but it was fresh and dry, a sign of good things to come. 

It’s a pattern as old as farming; what goes into the ground will, if we are lucky, come out of it again, multiplied and ripened and in a form we can use. It’s that connection that we have lost, between sun and earth, seed and flour, but it was all there as a promise in the little fraction of the harvest that I held. Soon it will be the turn of the maize, standing tall and dense and darkly green, tassels browning and cobs ripening.  Some fields are already being turned again, smoothed out, drilled, planted with hope for a good autumn.

The weather has made up for its sulky spring self. The holiday makers have had a wonderful break, and will go home sun-warmed to their bones, leaving us to make the most of the rest of the summer. What’s good for the crops is good for the soul, too; because no matter how sophisticated our lives seem, nor how technologically crammed, underneath it all we are still elemental, and everyone responds to a little warmth after a cold season.

©lms2013

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

There’s a lot to be said for the sea. 

Brittany, of course, has a lot of it, so no matter where you are, you’re never that far from a spot of ozone replacement therapy. In these hot days, the lure of the beach is stronger than ever, though it calls all year round. 

The coast differs greatly depending where you are, from the wide sandy crescents of St Brieuc bay, to the tiny little beaches amid the rocks of the Côte de Granit Rose, to the mighty cliffs of the Atlantic coast.

We’ve been up to the beach at Les Rosaires in all weathers. One wintry Tuesday we picked up a whole roast chicken and a pot of fried potatoes and onions from the rotisserie man at Quintin market, and ate them in the car watching the waves hurl at the beach. 

Even on the least inviting days there will be someone in the sea. It’s common to see groups in wetsuits walking breast-high through the water, occasionally with a leader who does the whole thing backwards whilst encouraging the rest.  One lot were all equipped with paddles, looking for all the world as though their boat had sunk under them. There are events where these teams walk all the way across the bay, though I think I’ll give that a miss; you can’t exactly sit down half way for a breather. 

We’ve recently been up at high tide, with the waves foaming at the rocks just below the promenade, and the sea noisy but not quarrelsome.  Later the same week, it was flat calm, murmuring at the sand. There have been men with fishing rods stretched out, hoping for a bite. In other seasons there will be lots of people bent at the waist, looking for shellfish with which to fill their buckets. The beach occasionally gives generously, but it also takes back: every year someone will die for concentrating too much on the possibilities of a free lunch and not enough on the turn of the tide. 

Just now it’s full summer, and very hot, so there are families at the beach; but there are nothing like the crowds we have seen on the TV news. ‘England is having a heat wave – head for the sea and broil!’ It doesn’t seem so frantic here. Dogs, horses and radios are banned from the beach from 10am to 7pm. There will be people playing volleyball, courts scratched into the sand, and children building sandcastles; there will be babies trying out the water for the first time, and teenagers discovering that air and water temperature don’t line up as closely as they hoped. There just won’t be a lot of noise or cramped crowds. 

There are sailing schools, and numerous vessels just offshore with matching sails, passing back and forth before the breeze – or against it, which confuses a landlubber like me no end. 

This proximity to water is wonderful, even though neither of us is a swimmer; we’re more the frantic floater types.  We live near a lake, but there’s something sinister and waiting about lakes; I’m not sure what it is, but still deep water worries me. The sea doesn’t wait for anyone. It just does its thing, backwards and forwards, endlessly, and in many moods. 

Now, the renovations can’t be put on hold just because it’s summer, you know; but we’ve come up with a compromise. I will go into yet another DIY store and gaze longingly at plumbing sundries, (largely because I’m the one with the specs about my person and neither of us can read the small print without them), in exchange for a swift detour to the beach five minutes up the road. It works out really well. We both get some exercise and fresh – occasionally very fresh – air, and we come home with lots of things to keep He Who Does Everything Around Here occupied next door for hours afterwards. 

So I sit here at the bottom of the house – I’ve had to decamp, or suffer from heatstroke up under the roof – and write, with a new view of the garden to gaze at for inspiration, while he plumbs and mutters and wanders in and out for cups of tea. Then, when he comes in frowning, and says, ‘There’s a bit of a hitch,’ I sigh and reply, in that wifely understanding but slightly exasperated way, that we’d better go and buy another part. I’ll pack my sun-hat and towel, and reach for the Factor 50 cream. 

Yes, there’s a lot to be said for the sea.

 © lms 2013

July 1st - it must be Summer!

The sun has come out, the temperature’s on the rise, and every commune is having fetes of one sort or another. 

We had our Music Festival a week ago. This is a very local event, held in the car park of the Mairie and the church. Anyone can take part: you just book your slot with the Mairie’s office.  (Yes, I could have; no, I didn’t.  We have to keep the entente cordiale cordial, you know). 

The evening began with a Balade Chantée: this is a walk round the village’s many little green ways, in amongst the houses, accompanied by a donkey (for reasons that weren’t explained, especially not to the donkey, who objected to being there) and a group of singers. A man and a boy played Breton pipes, if the singing flagged.  All the songs were question/answer ones, where the lead sings a line and the rest repeat it. We stopped at the Fontaine of St Théo, a place where women used to scrub their smalls to the beat of bawdy songs. We paused at a house where the garden is open to the public on regular occasions; and then off we went after the donkey, behind our own garden, and back to the Mairie. 

Within a few minutes, with barely time for a small glass of wine, we were whisked off to the church, where a choir sang something French to the tune of Over the Sea to Skye, and Zulu and Maori music, as well as some jazz: and they really enjoyed themselves – as did we, even if the benches were designed to make sinners repent.

 The interior of our village church

Outside again, there was time for a galette saucisse: a galette, with a sausage in it, wrapped in a napkin, and eaten like an ice cream cornet – just the thing for a chilly evening. 

After that there were various groups who for some reason sang in English (and I have never heard A Hard Day’s Night rendered with such perfect diction before), some Breton dancing and traditional music, and all washed down at the obligatory beer tent. 

It ended with a bonfire and a trumpet playing a salute. 

Yesterday was the Fete du Monde Rurale. This is rather larger, and canton-wide. 

Now, the thing about this is that it happens every two years, in pretty much the same guise: the first time we went it was in the grounds of the Chateau, but this time it was on a dairy farm at the other end of the village. (As that’s about 300metres from end to end it’s not far).  This time we had the sit-down meal: it was organised so that we all took a glass of kir, a tray holding a plastic plate, half a melon with parma ham, a piece of cheese (‘the cheese course’), and a dessert, and sat down at a table. There we found napkin, cutlery and spare plastic cup.  We could buy a bottle of wine if desired (it was), and we settled down again. When we had eaten our starter, we took the same plate outside to where men were slaving over a barbecue grill, on the hottest day of the year so far, cooking beef from a local beast. We were given our steak and two boiled potatoes, and went back to our table.  Eventually a lady came round with a coffee jug, and the meal was complete. 

By now the decibel level in the barn had risen to astonishing proportions, but we were wise to have gone in when we did. An American-style marching band came in to play later, to add to the fun, but we listened from the safety of the open air. 

Outside there were farm machines old and young in use, Breton horses with foals, wine tasting (we didn’t),  farm-made ice-creams (we did), and a man herding geese with a sheepdog.  

 

There were stalls set out with rural history, and other farm related exhibitions. There were two beer tents (it was a hot day) and a helicopter selling 5-mintue taster rides. These went on long into the evening after everyone else had left, and the cows had been milked. 

Pretty much all of this will be repeated next time, and everyone will go again, because it’s free (apart from the meal and the drinks), and because it’s local and it’s what life is about. There’s nothing complicated, apart from the catering for nearly 1000 meals, and you may have seen it all before: that doesn’t matter one jot. It’s a community event, and it’s being seen to be part of it. 

And by the way, the beef was excellent.
 © lms 2013