Making Haste Slowly

I’ve been in England a bit recently, which inevitably means I’ve been stuck in traffic. A lot.

I’ve been up and down the middle of the country on motorways, I’ve been in cities and towns and on country lanes, and it is no pleasure at all.

But whilst I’ve chugged along behind all the other cars trying to get from A to B in one piece, I’ve have time to think. 

For instance: why do lorries overtake each other? It takes on average three minutes for a reasonable-sized lorry to pull out, creep up on the one in front, overhaul it, and pull back in – so close, mind you, that the overtakee flashes the overtaker as soon as he has passed the front wing by a hair’s breadth to say that he has achieved his goal. That’s to say, he has gained about thirty feet of road, and a change of view. He has also annoyed a lot of car drivers, but that’s just a bonus.

And why do people in big towns buy fast cars? What is the point? They sit in the traffic, commuting to and from their executive homes on the periphery – and it’s only a matter of time before their edge of town houses become not quite edge of town any more houses – in their BMWs and Audis, which were built for the autobahn, not the Manchester Ring Road. They can’t do more than 30mph at the fastest moments, which are few and far between. 

Maybe the point is that, on the odd occasion when there is a gap in the traffic, they need all the torque they can get just to make a break from one lane to the next, because they are only going to get a tiny chance to do so.

Given the state of the roads, what you really need is a Land Rover – and not the fancy town version, either. Why risk your super-expensive suspension on the pothole-fest that is the British road system? In fact, get a 2CV – they were designed to be able to drive across a ploughed field, so that’s about right for the circumstances.

Whilst we were there, a lady was caught causing havoc by driving at 10mph on a major road, in the rush hour. Several drivers called the police, who came out in force. They tried to attract her attention in the usual way, but she ignored them, until she came to a roundabout. When they attempted to block her, she just kept going round in circles until a policeman got out of his car, ran alongside and tapped on the window.

Well, she said, she never goes 40mph – it’s too dangerous and you can’t stop.

It’s also practically impossible on most roads at that time of day. 

The only plausible reason to own a flash car in urban Britain is so that the man in the next car can look at you in envy, and think, Gosh, you look good in that, or, That’s a handsome hunk of metal you’ve got there – you must earn a lot.

Or maybe it’s to pretend that, if you ever got the chance to go over 40mph, you wouldn’t be afraid to try. Otherwise known as, you’re bluffing. How can you possibly know?

©lms 2011

The End of Summer

Every Tuesday, the mail box is crammed full of publicité. This is advertising from supermarkets, garages, furniture shops, and places that sell nothing but plastic, disguised as furniture and sundry household items.

 

The supermarket flyers are filled with pictures of meat. I have always found this rather odd. If I know I want a piece of beef, or some mince, or a chicken, I don’t need to see it, glistening in various states of undress with a decorative bit or parsley or a lemon carefully placed.  I’ll go to the shop and look at the meat on sale and decide then if it is up to my exacting standards.

 

There is nothing about a photograph of minced beef that is going to have me reaching for coat, purse and shopping bag and hurtling out the door with my tongue hanging out.  As for the picture of a whole bovine tongue, ready to boil, curled cosily round a carrot – no, thanks. I’ll pass.

 

This week, however, there is more in the publicité. It’s the end of summer: all the aoutiens are returning to work, the roads are growing quiet (not that they were exactly busy at the height of the season) and the hedge cutters are out in force. It’s nearly autumn; and next week, the schools go back.

This is the excuse to try to sell anything in bulk. You’ve finished being on holiday, so you must want to stock up on toothbrushes, washing liquid, crockery and cutlery. It’s all there, under the heading of La Rentrée. 

 

But the big thing is the stationery. School children here have to be provided with everything they will need for class and homework: files, folders, paper with special lines on to help them write neatly, pens, paints, labels, glue – all of it must be bought, and a bag to haul it about in, for each child in the family. It costs a fortune.

 

Back in the days when money was big, and weighed heavily in our pockets, there used to be a stationer’s on the way home from school, called E.P. Jones. I have no idea if it still exists, but to us it was an Aladdin’s cave of stuff. Pencils with gonks on the ends, exercise books with the Times Tables on the back, and weights and measures; crayons, fountain pens, ink in all the colours you could possibly need – all of it treasure, and all affordable, a bit at a time, from our pocket money. We bought it because we wanted it (and because it didn’t rot our teeth).

 

Now children are bent under the weight of what Mama has had to bring home by the trolley load. You see families with lists, poring over the shelves to make sure they get the right kind of felt pen.  Some people try to spread the load over the summer, but the good offers will only be available at the last minute. They must sit beside their mail boxes, desperate to grab the publicité, and to get down to the shop with the best prices whilst stocks last.

 

I don’t know if the children are excited to be bought all this lovely new equipment, or resigned to the fact that it signals the end of summer. They may grow up to associate the buying of a new pen with Mama and Papa no longer having the time to play with them. There is no school uniform, so they aren’t all crammed back into the dreary colours of the English schoolchild’s daily wear, but even so, the message is clear, and must stay with them for life: when your world comes down to paper and ink, the fun’s over.

©lms 2011

A Bit of a Boar

Driving through the countryside the other day – well, we can’t actually go anywhere without driving through the countryside – I spotted a man on the edge of a wood carrying a bow and arrow. The bow was big, modern, and professional-looking, and it reminded me that la chasse is almost upon us.

 

This is the season when signs appear along roadsides warning you that packs of dogs may erupt at any time from the undergrowth in pursuit of real, or imaginary, prey. There will be men in bright red hats lurking at field entries with large guns in hand, and whole fleets of white vans pulled up at the roadside in the middle of nowhere.

 

These men will, after the first foray, have gone back to base for a hunt breakfast. This will have involved huge amounts of food and some alcohol, to ward off the cold, and to bolster the spirits of those who will spend the entire time standing around waiting for something to happen.

 

La chasse is a very well organised event. In order to be allowed out with your gun and your fellow man, you will have a license, and to get that, you will have to pass an exam. This deals with the kind of game you are allowed to hunt, and what it looks like in all its stages of growth. You will be able to identify the right age of your prey, so that you don’t kill off next year’s animals. You will know which bird is edible, and what sex the boar is that is heading towards you bent on head-butting you to death.

 

All over the country there will be solitary men with guns broken over their arms, strolling through bare autumnal fields with their Breton spaniels racing around and ahead, eager to help bring home the spoils. And every Sunday morning at around 8am, there will be the pop-pop of sportsmen trying to shoot something startled out of its weekend torpor.

 

There will be stories in the papers about the ones that got away, and the ones that didn’t. One year, the police were called to a road accident involving a boar and a car. When they arrived, there was only a boar-shaped stain on the ground, and no sign of either. I suppose one man on his own couldn’t shift the boar – which is a big, big animal – and so called the authorities. But several men, in passing vehicles, say, who saw his dilemma, could manhandle the beast into a handily open back door, and take it away for later consumption. Boar is very good to eat.

 

Here in Brittany, it is possible to go hunting with a bow and arrow. It’s how it used to be done, after all; and if a boar stands on your inadvertently abandoned bow, it is not going to be able to shoot you in the leg whilst you hide up a tree (much the best idea).  Furthermore, you are less likely to accidentally shoot your colleagues, which happens a little too frequently for comfort.

 

The thing is that hunting here is about food. Unless it is causing havoc, if you can’t eat it, why go to the lengths of trekking across fields in the cold, consuming a huge breakfast, and standing around for hours trying to kill it? And if there is a problem – as when hares were found to be suffering from a form of leukaemia – the hunt bans the killing of the animals to give them chance to recover. It’s organised; it involves all levels of society; and it means that many households own large guns which are, by and large, responsibly used.

 

So, if your farmer neighbour invites you to partake of a dinner of civet of wild boar, remember to check his van for big dents as you go in. If there aren’t any, be very polite about the cooking.

©lms 2011

History in the Making

It may have escaped your notice, but this year Normandy is celebrating its 1100^th anniversary. In the year 911, the king of the Franks decided he had had enough of trying to fend off the attacks from the Vikings, and said, “Look, lads, why don’t you just take this bit of the country for your own, to look after?” Rather, you might say, in the manner of a parent with children squabbling over a toy – give them one each and tell them to play nicely.

 

The name of this king was Charles the Simple, which is rather unkind: unless it meant, “what a brilliantly simple idea that was about the Vikings”. (There was also a king with “the Bald” after his name, which wouldn’t be acceptable today, but Charles the Follicly Challenged doesn’t really work, however true). 

 

So in 911, Rollo, the leader of the Vikings, became the first head of what was to become known as Normandy – the land of the North men. I once had a long conversation in a doctor’s waiting room  with a Frenchman who, when I mentioned that, as the English had been ruled by William the Conqueror and his descendants for many years, that made us partly French, said very dismissively that William was a Viking so he didn’t count.

 

Now, you may think that 1100 years is a goodly slice of history to be celebrating: but that’s young, compared with some anniversaries remembered here in France. Down south, for instance is the little town of Vouillé La Bataille, in the Vienne (not the one in the Deux Sèvres, which is an impostor). The water tower, or château d’eau, without which no French town or village is complete, is decorated with the image of a warrior, and the date 507.

 

In that year, Clovis, king of the Franks, decided to take on the Visigoths, under Alaric II. There were also Ostrogoths, but they were busy elsewhere having a bit of a punch-up with the Byzantines, so couldn’t come to play, though they were invited.

 

The two armies met near Vouillé at dawn. The Visigoths used cavalry; they were very good at this, and hoped to carry the day, but things degenerated into a general bout of fisticuffs.  And in the middle of this, having their own set-to, were Alaric and Clovis. In those days, leaders led.

 

Clovis won by killing Alaric, at which point everyone downed tools and said, Fair enough, guv'nor, and went home. Well, actually, they took it as a sign from God, but the result was the same. The next year Clovis decided Paris was a good place to have a capital; so he could be seen as the founding father upon whom one could, in a vindictive moment, blame the creation of the Paris ring road.  Can’t have a Paris ring road without Paris, and there would be no capital city there without Clovis. I rest my case.

 

Whenever we went to the market – a very good one, on a Saturday morning – or to the supermarket at Vouillé, we drove through The Valley of the Dead – La Vallée aux Morts – which was a little off-putting, and caused us to regard the offal section with a rather jaundiced eye.

 

But without the fracas at Vouillé, Charles the Simple couldn’t have given Rollo the run of Normandy, as there wouldn’t have been a Frankish king at all. And then Rollo’s descendant William couldn’t have come to England, and Harold wouldn’t have got the arrow in his eye (unless he liked playing dangerous sports and didn’t listen to his mother).

 

So there you have it – one lucky punch, one handy stab, and the whole of English history was changed. Celebrate, by all means, the anniversary of Normandy: but don’t forget Clovis. It’s all his fault.

©lms2011

Blowing Hot and Cold

Most mornings when we open the curtains, there is mist lying between us and the hills. There is always a question mark hanging over the day – what will the weather do today?

 

Down in the Vienne, there was no mist.  At 7am, we would open the shutters, and there would be the sun, brilliantly clear, already heating the clay tiles and bleaching the grass. Summer was relentlessly certain and endlessly there.

 

That was part of the problem. It was just too hot. When we moved into the house, in early June, the grass was white and brittle. We were grateful for the shade of acacias which roared from dawn till dusk with exhausting bees, and for the march of apple and peach trees whose blossom enchanted and whose too-abundant fruit drew wasps and hornets to feast on the fallen.

 

That first year we planted out peppers, aubergines, tomatoes, courgettes, chillies, butternut squash and melons: they all thrived and produced excellent crops. I bottled ratatouille, and froze pints of soup which would be wonderful in the chill of autumn and the depths of winter. 

 

The following year was a cool summer, and wet. We learned that the plums came every alternate year; probably the trees were exhausted and had to recover. But the year after that we were back in the heat again. The soil baked so hard that it was impossible to weed, even by hand with a trowel. The only way to work at all was for one of us to go in with a fork, to break the surface, and the other to go on hands and knees and force the roots out. 

 

Watering was to be done by 10am or after 7pm, and hose pipes were banned. The authorities checked: they went out looking for suspiciously green patches from the air. A dear friend who was working in her garden (slightly green in places) was astonished to see a helicopter coming straight up her drive towards her. No more gardening in a bikini for her that year.

 

We lived in the half light, with shutters pulled to against the sun which rotted the upholstery of anything left near the windows.  We went barefoot on hot tiles inside the house, but daren’t go outside without shoes for fear of burnt soles.  We had a small plunge pool, and that first summer we used it quite frequently, late in the day, when the sun had gone behind the high hedges. We would sink nervelessly into the tepid water and just wallow, too wrung out to try to swim.

 

Even the weather reports in the paper couldn’t think of new ways to say, it will be sunny.
 

We went out one day in the air conditioned car, to buy an ice cream maker. It was 40C, and when we got back to the car, it wouldn’t start: the garagiste said the engine didn’t like that sort of temperature, and the only thing to do was to throw a bottle of water over it to cool it down.
 

Sleep was frequently impossible, with all windows open, fly screens in place, and a ceiling fan whirring. It was interminable.

 

So each morning, when we draw the curtains, and look at the mist, we relax, just a little. It’s summer, but it’s gentle.  We’ve done our time in the sun.

©lms 2011

The Next Big Thing

Apparently one third of all French people are overweight.

 

I read that in the newspaper recently, and my immediate reaction was to ask where all these people are when I am standing at the checkout in a clothes shop trying to look slim. 

 

A book  came out recently which reckoned to tell us all how to be as thin as a Frenchwoman. Well, there you are – I am as thin as a Frenchwoman already. So are you. She may not be the one you are looking at in the street, the one who, when she turns side on, vanishes; but she is the one you have a reasonable chance of resembling. 

 

The only way to be as thin as a thin Frenchwoman is to have her genetic make-up.  You may as well want to be as short as her, too – because French people in general are not as tall as the average English person; and nobody is as tall as the Dutch. Do the Dutch also want to be as thin as a Mademoiselle? 

 

Apart from the fact that being hooked on trying to be thin is pointless for most of us – look to your parents, and think about it – why should we want to look like someone who in all respects looks nothing like us? 

 

When we first came on holiday to France, playing tourist, we were amazed when, on entering some attraction like an Abbey or a museum, the hostess behind the till would, without us speaking a single syllable, promptly hand us the English guidebook.  We had not been in the habit of thinking of ourselves as typically anything, really.

 

So we asked the owner of our gîte what it was that made us so obviously English. The answer was simple: “You are tall, you have red hair, and you come from a country where the sun doesn’t shine.”

 

Red, in this context, means fair; and furthermore, she said, “You have freckles.” Well, there it was: the unavoidable Englishness of it all. The blue eyes are another giveaway.

 

Since those early days, my hair has given in to its platinum tendencies. Oh alright, I have gone silver, and I don’t use hair colour. The French find it fascinating. I turn heads in the street. Women of a certain age, all sporting this year’s mahogany, will actually stare at me. They think I am being either very bold, or stupid, but whatever the reason, they find a perfectly ordinary head of perfectly ordinary hair to be a thing of wonder and puzzlement.

 

So maybe the next book to come out, in French, will be “How to look like a Middle Aged English Woman – the Essential Guide.” Because, as much as we want to look like them, maybe they would like to look like us? They are already hooked on Marks and Sparks, and the modern version of Carnaby Street décor, complete with Union Jacks on their cushions and red phone boxes on the wallpaper. Why not long for silver hair and blue eyes whilst they are at it?

 

We are never satisfied, you see. We all want to look different, whilst being terrified of not looking the same as the next person. We just don’t want to look like us.

 

Well, I for one am going to stand tall (though not as tall as a Dutch woman) and hold my silver head up, and set a challenge: I am the Next Big Thing.

 

I wonder if I will catch on?

©lms2011

In a Roundabout Way

July 14^th is a national holiday commemorating the storming of the Bastille on that date in 1789. It was a political prison, and its fall marked the beginning of the French Revolution.

 

Last time we were in Paris, we went to find it. There is bound to be a monument, or a ruin, or something to mark its importance, we thought. 

 

Wrong. It’s a roundabout. And every minute of every day, Parisians storm it again, in their Renaults and Citroens. The idea seems to be that, if they throw themselves at it fast enough, centrifugal force will shoot them off down the right side street. If it seems like a good idea to go and stand in the middle of it, take my word for it – it isn’t. You won’t survive the attempt.

 

The roundabout is a fairly new concept over here. Whereas the British have had them for donkey’s years, and the Highway Code will tell you exactly how to approach one, and how to choose a lane, and when to signal, the French seem to have no idea how to handle them. 

 

Until recently, it was the rule that anyone joining any road from the right got right of way. So if you were on a major road and someone approached from a farm track, that rule applied, and you would screech to a halt, and do the gentlemanly thing. In fact there are villages in Brittany where the rule has not been changed, and there will be a notice to tell you of this as you enter. If you don’t see it, you may well wonder at the hostile reception, not to mention the death wish of local drivers leaping out in front of you.

 

Motorists over a certain age can cause no end of interesting moments as they pull across your front wing, with a determined set of the jaw, and a gesture implying that you are completely and unjustifiably in the wrong. When such a person approaches a roundabout, your immediate instinct is to floor it and get out of the way. The behaviour of the other drivers suddenly seems understandable: it’s simple self-preservation.

 

There is a big roundabout here which we have learned to avoid at busy times. This means taking a wide detour, but in the long run, it is the wiser course. Nobody has any lane control. They will either drive all the way round on the outside, or they will be on the inside and suddenly leap across in front of the outside laners to take the desired, but apparently totally unexpected, turn-off.

 

If you try to do things properly, you not only confuse the locals, who then drive in the middle of the two lanes in case you should be trying to overtake them, or you are too scared to ease out for your turning because there just isn’t room, and no-one will give way. You could be there for hours.

 

No wonder the Paris ring-road is notorious. It’s just a giant roundabout. And on that particular roulette table, all bets are off.

©lms2011