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

Works in progress

 

 

Bathroom before and after

 

Kitchen before and after

Just to prove that while I'm writing, he who does everything around here has been doing everything around here... all his own work.
 © lms 2013

To the Victors, the Spoils

2014 is going to be a big year for looking back. It will be the anniversary not only of the end of the First World War, but also of the 1944 D-Day Landings. 

Now, quite apart from the sombre nature of these occasions, there are practicalities to be considered: or, to put it another way, there’s cash to be earned, on both sides of the Channel. There will be many, many people who want to come and see where they, or their fathers, brothers, or uncles were, at the time. They will be there to commemorate the lost, and the disasters, even while they celebrate survival and ultimate victory. 

War has a particular reverberation among the French that the English can never understand.  As we have never been occupied (or at least, not since 1066), we can’t possibly comprehend the emotions involved. Regularly there are stories in the paper about former Resistance people – ordinary, extraordinary, men and women - who will never, ever talk about their experiences, because they took an oath of silence 70 years ago and will not break it. The memories live on behind the eyes of those who saw too much, when they were very young, to forget now that they are old. 

All over France there are plaques to those who were shot against church walls or in village squares: the tiny human scale of warfare. There is Oradour, the village that died one day, and stands as it was left, cars in the streets, bicycles upturned, plates on the tables.  Only the people are gone. 

But here we are, looking forwards to 2014; and in Normandy, a group of six tourism offices in a sector dominated by the Right, wanted to band together and claim the Normandy Landings as their own. They would have a sort of theme park monopoly on the celebrations, based around Utah, Omaha, Gold and Juno beaches. 

Unfortunately their plan omitted Sword Beach, where the only French party of 6^th June landed, and Pegasus Bridge, which falls under the aegis of the Left;  they were going to be quietly set to one side, because current political divisions couldn’t be bridged. 

I was thinking about all this a few weeks ago, as we travelled back through Normandy.  It’s a green and rolling country, famous for apple orchards and dairy cows, cider and Camembert. It struck me how very French the architecture of the towns is, and how strange it must have looked to those young men disembarking for the first time.  Amidst the war-torn ruins that lay before them were people going about their business as best they could, working land already ravaged by so many other battles going back for millennia – the Romans, the Vikings, the English, who all came here armed to the teeth and ready to grab what they could, or defend what they had. 

The question of the D-Day Landings theme park was settled from on high, when the regional politicos would only squabble over their share of the spoils. Some see this as an imposition upon their rights as locals, others as the only way forward. 

Yes, there are practicalities to be considered, and hundreds of thousands of visitors to be housed and entertained and fed: but if we want to commemorate something so tragic, violent, miserable, heroic, victorious, look into the eyes of the people who were there, of all nations.  We can’t own that, or package it, or sell it. Honour it; and be very, very glad that it wasn’t ours to deal with, and to live with and to remember until we die. 

Normandy is beautiful; it should be seen, and visited, and enjoyed. Let’s not squabble over rights to the past – let’s get on and learn from it.

© lms 2013

Comically Historical

The French have got a thing about comic books – bandes dessinées, as they are known in the adult world.  Go into any bookshop, and the busiest place will be the adult B.D section.  The (mostly male) customers may do more reading than buying, but there they will be, leafing through the pages for hours on end. These books are works of art: so much so that there are annual B.D. festivals, where aficionados gather to dissect and discuss the latest books and the classics. 

There are all types of these books.  Anything from flying ace war stories to the Wild West: improbably-chested heroines, muscular heroes, sci-fi, insects, dinosaurs, erotica: it’s all here, in glorious colour or black and white. You only have to think of Tin Tin (though he was Belgian so he doesn’t count). 

Well, there’s nothing new under the sun: the first cartoon story, in words and consecutive pictures, was the Bayeux Tapestry. 

Which isn’t tapestry at all, it’s embroidery.  No-one knows who made it, or commissioned it, or where it was supposed to hang. It may have decorated the Cathedral; it may have been in some lord’s castle. For now, it’s safely displayed, out of reach of bugs and humidity, in a converted seminary in Bayeux town. 

We dropped in to see it on the way back from England, and coincided with market day, which may or may not have had a bearing on the lack of car parking places.  We followed the signs, and found the place, and paid our entrance, knowing what we were going to see. 

Actually, we didn’t: nothing prepares you for the reality of this long band of linen, decorated in 3 or 4 colours, which tells the story of how Harold was a liar and a cheat and said first of all that he wasn’t after the throne, oh dear me no, whatever gave you that impression? And then he turned round and said, Surprise! I lied! So William gave him a poke in the eye to prove that liars never prosper. 

Rather like in TinTin, the English are depicted with wide moustaches. They’re the medieval equivalent of the baddies in black hats. 

The horses are wonderful, prancing, falling, hooves aloft and flailing: and pretty much as horses continued to be depicted until well into the 19^th century, with all four feet off the ground at once, bouncing across the scene at full stretch. 

The boats are open; you’d have thought the chain mail would rust in the salty air on the Channel crossing. The battles are rather clean – just lopped off limbs lying around bloodlessly. And there is Harold with an arrow in his eye (we’ve talked about boys playing with sharp objects before, some five hundred years earlier: they never listen). For some reason, people like to linger here for a better look, which is more than Harold was getting at the time. 

The audio guide that sounds rather like Edward Fox takes you through the whole thing at a brisk trot. ‘Here in Scene 4… Here in scene 8’, with no mention of the interesting things going on in scenes 5,6, and 7. You get the idea that a coachload of tourists is just about to burst in behind you, so you go with the flow as directed, until you arrive rather breathlessly at the end of the story. William wins, every time. 

But – and this may be because I’m English – I have to wonder: what if Harold had ducked? 

And one final thought: the Normans won at Hastings because they had the best archers. So what happened between then and the Battle of Crecy, when the feared English longbow triumphed?  Is that a case of being hoist with your own petard?  Or, as we say, what goes around comes around; and if you don’t listen to your mother, you’ve only yourself to blame.

©lms 2013

Reality Blog Award

I've been nominated for an award by the lovely Carol Bevitt, at carol-bevitt.blogspot.fr - which is how it appears on my screen, though she's not in .fr but in .uk - the mysteries of modern science.

To earn my award I have to answer some questions, so here goes:

If you could change one thing, what would it be?
What, only one? In this whole world? I'll start close to home.
I have an inordinate ability to put off writing when it's the one thing that gives me most satisfaction and pleasure: why do I do that? Perverse, I suppose. Like my ability to put off exercising when I know I need it for my health. Perverse again. So I think I'll just opt for changing my perversity!

On a national scale, the idiocy of the House of Commons where debate is rarely any more than a bunch of bragging kids blaming the other side for getting it wrong now, or historically, but never saying, 'Well, how about if we all just discussed this rationally and came to a joint conclusion?'

If you could repeat an age, what would it be?
Not sure I would: at any stage in life we are the sum of the years before, so if I went back to 25 or 35, I'd still be the same person. If you're asking when was I happiest, I don't know: what if that time hasn't come yet? Why go back, when I can go forwards?

If the question means, what would I do differently, the answer is nothing - how could I, being the person I was then, without the knowledge I have now? And even knowing what I now know, would I guarantee to get it right? No - I'm human, and the choices are always innumerable. You make the decisions you make at the time, given the information you have at the time.

What one thing really scares you?
Running out of money.

If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be?
Well that's the joy of being a writer (when not procrastinating perversely): I can be anyone I want to be, any time, any day, just by writing in another character's voice. I have a cast of thousands inside me, and I can think like them, and do what they need to do, and use their words, to my little heart's content.

Now I have to nominate someone else's blog for the award - I may add to this list later, but for now, my nomination goes to:
 www.mystripybook.com
©lms 2013