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Posts from the ‘France’ Category

Nov 12

Only the dead have seen the end of war

Isn’t it funny how you come across things just at the right time.  Or maybe it’s just that one can make things fit when one needs or wants to.  Yesterday was 11th November.  Remembrance Day (or Veterans Day if you are in the USA or Canada and I imagine territories which I am too uneducated to know about).  It can have escaped no-one’s notice that this year marks centenary of the start of World War 1.  La Grande Guerre.  Yesterday, therefore the world stood and still silent to mark with gravity the huge death toll of the following four years.   And much was written and much will be written.  Rightly.

After 11:00 we set off to the village of Anglards de Salers south and a tiny bit east of home by about 45 kilometres.  After a light picnic we toddled off on our walk and passed the little Chateau de Trémolière making a note to return and visit when it is open (outside of the big cities and the heavy hitting sites, many places of interest are closed from Toussaint to Easter in France). It houses a  collection of Aubusson Tapestries, fabric and needlecrafts are passion of mine and besides it has the oddest tower I have ever seen.  We also passed the 12th Century Eglise de Saint Thyrse which features on the list of Monuments Historique de France and made similar mental notes and then an ancient stone fountain which represented the only water in the village until 1904 when the two fountains in the middle of the square were built.  The plaque on the now dried up ‘font’ declares that those Anglardiens who exodussed to Paris would recognise one another by statement that they had been ‘baptised in the stone fountain’.  The connection to Paris is something I will write of another time … the historic links between the Auvergne in general and Cantal in particular to Paris are fascinating and unexpected.

Looking down into the Vallee du Mars
Sturdy trees hastening to winter
Leaves dancing in the brisk November wind
Babbling through the woods the stream merries along
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The green belies the lateness in the year

As we walked the leaves danced in the wind.  It was a classic Autumn day – north of nippy, the air clear as anyone’s bell and the views from the 800 or so metres up above the Vallée du Mars absolutely spectacular.   In good spirits we came across a cross.  A stone cross with the figure of Christ depicted, as is typical in the area, quite tiny with a disporportioned head and massively oversized hands.  What stopped us in our tracks was the panneau next to it.  According to legend (and legend, as my children were always reminded is a story so old that nobody can remember whether its true or not), there was a battle fought on this land between Attila The Hun and the Gallo-Roman forces led by Flavius Aetius (Roman) and Theodoric I (Gaul).  This was in the 5th Century.  Hundreds of years later at the turn of the 18th Century a group of men from the pays came across what they believed to be Attila’s encampment and a dispute broke out when they found a cross there. This stone cross.  Presumably the argument arose as to who could rightfully lay claim to it.  Good old compromise prevailed and agreement was reached that it would be placed between La Mars and L’Auze hence it has stood where we happened upon it for the last 300 years.

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That’s the history or the legend but what stood out to me, was the body count in 451 AD.  120,000 men.  In one battle.  Of course I don’t have accurate figures for what the  populations of France, Italy and Germany were at the time but I am pretty sure that they were a tiny fraction of the populations in the early 20th Century.  Fifteen hundred years, ago all that loss of life.  One hundred years ago all that loss of life.  Present day all this loss of life.  I am but a helpless little voice but maybe if all the helpless little voices gather together – maybe we could try to give to peace a chance and prove Plato, whose words I have annexed for my title, wrong.

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PS:  When we got home and did a little intersleuthing on the net, we realised that this picture is not simply of a rock but of the ruins of a 5th Century fortress which stood on top and around it – you can see some of the stone-work in the foreground.  Sometimes you have to look a little harder to see the fact that war has been all around us for all time.

Nov 12

Wordless Wednesday – How now spirit! Whither wander you?

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Nov 4

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Beauty wakes the soul to act

I love taking pictures though I claim no skill whatsoever but I decided to start taking part in some of the challenges available to encourage a little discipline – always a challenge with me.

To that end, here is my effort for The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – Descent ‘This week, show us your interpretation of descent — experiment with your point of view and angle, or go even deeper with the theme.‘  The image is taken above Les Roches de Tuileiries at the foot of the Massif de Sancy in the Puy de Dome Departement of the Auvergne,  looking back down the gorge as a mighty storm was clearing:

 

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Les Roches de Tuileries, Puy de Dome, Auvergne

PS:  The title is Dante Alighieri of course … it seemed appropriate to quote him in a challenge entitled Descent given our assumption that one falls not climbs to the Inferno

 

<a href="http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/descent/">Descent</a>

Nov 3

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At the going down of the sun ….

Saturday was Toussaint in France.  Toussaint translates coloquially as All Saints Day.  It is commonly referred to as La Fête des Morts – the festival of the dead.  All over France people visit cimitieres and leave large chrysanthemum plants for their departed.  The cemetries are alive with colour – I find it very beautiful and appropriate as Autumn marches increasingly sombrely towards Winter and her chill stark blanket.  Not all find it so – a blog I read and always enjoy FranceSays wrote an excellent piece  just before the Fête describing her preference for the ghoulish and outrageous Halloween festivities on the other side of the pond, she being Canadian by birth.  I understand her sentiments – a preference for a joyful approach to celebrating the departed is entirely reasonable.  Another blogger, Tim Lyon, reminisces about Bonfire Night, his best day of the year and captures perfectly what I remember of those festivities each November 5th, I being English by birth.  Actually I am a bit sour about Halloween – not if you are American or Canadian, you understand but it is another example of British cultural traditions being  trampled by the stampede of Stateside stuff … one of the things I love about France is that it remembers that it is France and refuses to have its own identity ripped assunder.  You can have a ‘special relationship’ with whoever you choose without losing yourself to them.

Back to 1st November.  The Festival of The Dead and no cemetry to visit so what to do to appropriately mark the day?  We have long wanted to visit Oradour-sur-Glane which lies about 100 miles north west of our home, in the Haute Vienne near to Limoges.  On June 10th, 1944 a unit of the 2nd SS Panzer Division (‘Das Reich’) approached the village, encircled it, rounded up all of its inhabitants and massacred them.  642 of them.  Incuding 247 children and infants.  In 1945 Charles de Gaulle decreed that the village must remain untouched, that it should forever bear witness to this and all the other atrocities of the war that ended not quite 70 years ago as I write.  This year is the 100th anniversary of start of the war to end all wars … when will we ever learn.

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The village as it stands today – a permanent memorial to its dead and the thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms across a world at war …

I am not going to attempt to write the history, nor to comment on it.  I am neither qualified to do so nor foolish enough to pretend that I can.  There is plenty written, some by the scant few survivors (6 men escaped from under the piles of burning bodies, 1 was subsequently shot down as he ran; 1 woman escaped through a blown out window of the burning church where all the women and children were first asphyxiated and then shot and burnt).  If you would like to read more you should start with the excellent Oradour.Info site

‘Here, at this place of torment a group of men was massacred and burnt by the Nazis. Collect your thoughts.’

When you arrive at Oradour the route takes you towards the new town around the perimeter of the ruined original.  Parking up in the leafy car park, we settled The Bean in the car – dogs are not allowed and that is entirely appropriate … the idea of a dog innocently cocking its leg in this place is every shade of wrong.  Le Centre de la Memoire opened in April 1999 and replaced the simple kiosk that had previously served as the point of entry and ticket office.  The French government contribute €150,000 a year to the upkeep of the village and there is a determination that this shall be an everlasting commitment.  Lest we forget.  We bought tickets for the exposition as well as the village and it was money well spent.  In fact I think that visiting the village and not getting the whole experience would be futile. The exhibition takes you from 1933 (with a nod back to the German economy following La Grande Geurre) through the rise of Hitler Youth to the outbreak of war, the war itself, the Nazi occupation and Vichy France leading you relentlessly to the crucial date.  There is quite an emphasis on refugees of many nations and of course Jews.  As you would expect many of the images and accounts are more than distressing and I was thankful that we had decided to forego lunch.  Tears fall freely in such a place.  We watched the film which takes you from the peace and tranquility of this pretty, prosperous and unassuming village, contextualises the role of the Maquis (resistance) in the area and walks you through the events of the day.  It is nauseating, unpaletable.  Blinking and silent we tackled the last of the exhibition … the first thing you are confronted with is a list of other massacres and not just in France – Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland and most shockingly Belarus – 2,243,000 people wiped out representing a quarter of the total population.  I had no idea.  I am ignorant and I am ashamed.  The exhibition throughout is not partisan and this particularly impressed me … that the most appalling, barbarus act imaginable can take place in a place and that the architects of its monument are able to remember and acknowledge other atrocities was, to me, moving in the extreme.

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Scattered belongings left where they lay after the SS troops had ransacked and pillaged the village

You can then choose to walk around the ruined village – I should note that not content with murdering all its people and returning to ‘clean up’ the evidence the next day, the entire place was torched so what remains is a skeleton.  As we walked up the main street, holding hands all I could think of was what on earth it must have been like on that day when the rumbling lorries and tanks cut off all means of escape, when at gun point the population was rounded up separating man from wife, mother from son and for some time the people believed (as the soldiers told them) that this was a search for arms which they were safe in the knowledge didn’t exist so they expected that frightening as this was, they would be back to normal life in a few hours and chatting about their bit of excitement in the bars and cafes (10 of them) and over supper.  As normal.  But instead never again would lover hold hands with lover, husband with wife, mother with son because they were butchered.  All of them.  Butchered and burnt.  And to this day no-one knows why.  Theories are put out there, of course.  But no-one actually knows why.  I also thought, maybe oddly, of Jamie Bulger – the little tot killed by schoolboys in Liverpool in 1993.  At the time we were told that the boys didn’t understand what they were doing.  I found that difficult to rationalise and I found his little face at the front of my mind as I reminded myself that many of the assailants in this carnage were little more than boys themselves and that they would have grown up against and amongst the fervour of Hitler rallying his youth to cleanse the world of all but the Aryan.  What did they feel … what on earth did they feel as they slaughtered babies?

There were quite a few visitors – many English in actual fact.  We walked past the sign at the entrance to the village which says simply ‘Souviens-Toi’ … ‘Remember’.  We walked past another sign which said ‘Silence’.  I have to say that most ignored that polite request.  Many were taking pictures – I found this hard.  Particularly when a young man prepared to pose leaning on the doctors car. This is probably the best known symbol of the village …  Doctor Desorteaux arrived back from tending a patient somewhere in the Commune  and joined his father, the Mayor where he and the villagers had been rounded up on the Champs de Foires (village green) and waited his fate.  I wonder who he had been treating – a woman in the early stages of child-birth perhaps … maybe he said he would return later and see how she was progressing, or an elderly patient bedridden who he saw several times a week.  I wonder how long they waited for him to return before the news reached them that he and the whole of the village were no more.  (remember a Commune in France is like a Parish in the UK … it is not simply the village at its head but generally will have some or many outlying hamlets and farms within it). I wonder if they cursed him for being late with the medicine he said he would return with.  I wonder.  Because all I can do is wonder.  I can’t feel – how can I begin to?  Me, in my cosy little world desensitised by images played out on our TV screens of warzones the world over because we never ever learn.  Go to Oradour – hear the voices echoing on the village green, the rhythm of ordinary life and think.  Think what it actually means to go to war.  Then vow that you never will.  That you will do all that you can to stop the politicians from allowing us to be subjected to such vile, futile and self-serving actions.  Tell them that they are no better than Hitler – if you dare.

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The Doctor’s Car

I should note that the photographs that illustrate this piece are not mine – they have all been harvested from the internet.  Although we had a camera with us, we felt it entirely wrong and rather mawkish to take pictures in this place which is a killing field – the place where so many where slaughtered and who can have no grave because their assailants saw fit to destroy the corpses to render it impossible to identify them.  These God-fearing Catholics, many slain in their Church have no place to lie in peace.  We also chose not to walk through the village cemetary to the memorial, it being Toussaint and there being families leaving chrysanthemums for their departed.  However sombre, La Fête des Morts is a fitting festival and the French have it right in continuing to celebrate within their own culture.  In my opinion.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon – ‘For the Fallen’

PS:  I said that I feel that it would be futile to visit the village without experiencing the exhibition.  The village is beautifully kept – it is a memorial in the most poignant way and though things have been left as they were it is clean and tidy – there is no blood, there are no remains of the day beyond the buildings and some things that lie where they fell that day and, as though to underline that the assasins were God fearing men, Christ still hangs on his Cross outside the hull of the Church.  To me this is entirely appropriate – any more and it would be an invitation to the most morbid sort of voyeurism.  But the result is cleaned and to understand the brutality of the day, you need to read the seering words and see the ghastly images laid out in the museum.

 

Oct 30

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Who’s gonna drive you home ….

I’ve spoken before about the number of miles I drive, we drive – The Bean and I and whenever possible my Two Brained husband too.  But there is a fourth crucial element without which it would not be possible to even leave the house here except on foot (or pedal power which is another story entirely).  That is the car.  The car that since we moved here (and including the long drive from Oxfordshire) has covered an eye-watering 30,000 miles – that’s in one year and a handful of weeks.   I have been remiss in not speaking of this wonderful little beast – bright yellow and Spanish (SEAT) it was originally called Devendra Flan when I got it 2 and a half years ago.  My mother helped me find it and wanted to call it Buttercup (in fact she insists on calling it that to this day and I don’t correct her).  The name came from a Devendra Banhart song called Little Yellow Spider and the ubiquitous Spanish pudding found on virtually every menu across that great country’s girth which is actually Creme Caramel but which the Spanish always refer to simply as Flan (or Flarn ‘you don’t know flarn’ – Ben Stiller and Jack Black know).  Anyway since becoming French the car is known as Fronk and his voice, courtesy of the TomTom is beautifully gaelic.

Why now?  I hear you ask … why the sudden reverence to this 4 wheeled delight?  I’ll tell you … they say that you only realise you love something when you are about to lose it.  Fronk has had his share of scrapes this year including a broken wheel when I frappéd a concrete pillar in a blizzard but I knew he would pull through and he did.  He’s driven to and from England 6 times since and had a service there in May followed by a new drive shaft (cambelt) and a bit of surgery to replace something in his ignition timing in September when he went into Limp Mode (yes, honestly that’s what it’s called) on the M4 to Bristol.  New tyres to complete his all weather set (which took some ordering in the UK in September ‘no, madam – they won’t be available til November’ but were eventually tracked down and fitted and the English tyre man paid tribute to the French workmanship on the front wheel (from the frappé) which was a moving moment in my personal journey of entante cordiale.  He seemed so well on the trip back earlier this month, so well when I drove to Clermont to meet The Brain from his plane the following week, so well as we travelled the typical couple of hundred km around the place to walk and visit houses and just generally potter around.  The shock when we sashayed out in the late Autumn sunshine last Thursday to drive a few km to do a couple of hours walk and settled behind the wheel, turned the key and nothing, absolutely nothing happened was a fully armed body blow.  Panic!  Rush back indoors, Google  wildly for homestart information when you don’t have roadside assistance …. blank, zippo, Google say ‘no’.  Fortunately The Brain was calm and I have a good filing system – a call to the insurance company revealed that homestart is part of our policy with MAEF and half an hour later the cavalry arrived.  The car started – I was watching from our balcony – smiles all round.  Then confusion (me) as the car was loaded onto the breakdown truck (Depanneuse) … phone calls were made and the men stood round in a circle being well … men.  The truck was driven away with Fronk on top, I was beside myself – he had clearly died and I hadn’t even said goodbye. Tears were soothed  by The Brain – apparently it was the spark plugs, the man had ordered them and they would be fitted the following day when they arrived (French for spark plug is Bougie incidentally which is the same as candle so it was fortunate that it wasn’t me doing the talking because that really would have been an invitation for misunderstanding …)

The following day the car was returned.  Humming, frankly and I was singing along.  I love that car.  I don’t care who knows it and I will never again commit the sin of omission and fail to mention the crucial part he plays in my life.  Thank you French insurance, thank you French garage.  I love you all.

PS:  You might like to take note that according to the garage here, it is common place for garages not to bother to change plugs when they service a modern car … these had never been changed and the car has done 135,000 miles in total and had a major service in the summer.  You might like to make sure your garage does bother.  Just a thought 😉

Sep 4

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Dance me to the end of love

As previously noted, we drive a lot, little dog and I a motley pair and better still a trio completed by the husband with two brains.  One day not so long ago we set off for Grenoble at around 5 a.m.  We go to Grenoble reasonably frequently since HB2 has associations with IRAM (Institut de Radioastronomie Milliemetrique) and indeed worked there for 9 years throughout the 1980s.  He had a house in the Belledonne mountains until recently and still has a bank account at Caisse D’Epargne in the village of Uriage les Bains.  That we had to go TO the bank to reset his PIN will tell you that this particular bank is a teeny bit perochial  – this is a 5-6 hour drive and we can’t use the nearer branches in Cantal because Caisse d’Epargne is entirely localised.  Hey ho.

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Chateau d’Uriage in Uriage les Bains

We made it in time for His Brainship to get whatever it was sorted and for The Bean and I to have a stagger up to the chateau (now in flats which I rather covert the idea of living in) and back down again.

Back to the University campus for lunch and a quick meeting with the glorious and waspishly effete Philippe (him) and a speedy spin around Castorama in search of another garden chair (The Bean and me).  In case you are concerned, they didn’t have the right chair in the right colour … silly me – its almost time for Christmas, why would a shop have garden furniture in Summer!

Choices, choices – 3 p.m on a sunny Tuesday what should we do next.  We could walk in the mountains … appealing.  We could go shopping … I can always talk myself out of that one.  Or we can go to Vienne.  The Brains have been before and I have wanted to go here ever since I drove through it the very first time I came down to Grenoble on my own and decided, with no time constraints to go entirely non peage.  That Leonard Cohen played in the Roman theatre in 2009 is a further lure.  I love him.  I wasn’t there but I wish I had been.  He used to be accused of writing music to slit your wrists by when I was at school and proud of the fact that my dad looked like him according to the very beautiful Sarah Chant.  I was not very beautiful so having a father who resembled an icon was a way of attaining that popular girl status we all craved if only to protect ourselves from the less lovely bullies who would make your life miserable at the drop of your school beret.  I still bathe in his exquisite lyrics and though he has never really been able to sing and I am told his voice such as it was is fading, I would still have loved to sit and listen and marvel at the agility of the true poet.

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L’ancien Theatre in Vienne

Of course Vienne won.  You know that.  And we arrived in the late afternoon of a particularly warm day, parked and strolled.  This place is lovely.  The second largest city in Isere (the largest is Grenoble) which in turn sits in Rhone Alpes.  The Rhone strolls leisurely through it.  Large and languid it needs make no extraneous effort to impress.  It just is.  The town was first settled by the Romans and wears those remains well.  Here the semi circular Ancien Theatre, there the Temple d’Auguste et de Livie, the ruins of the medieval castle on the hill that was built on Roman footings, the pyramid (otherwise known as le Plan de l’Aiguille) which rests on a four arched portico this is a place that knows what it is.

Cathedral de St Maurice
Le Temple de’Augustus et de Livia
Mediaval tower with extensions
L’Hotel de Ville
Spanning the river Rhone
L’Eglise St Pierre

It shimmys you through its history easily and the town moves around its monuments fluidly – al fresco bars and cafes abound and clearly it is thriving.  A huge new tourist office is being built looking over the river on which you can take a boat the size of a small principality to cruise and dine.  We made a note that we will.  It is a place we will return to and explore over and over again.  We whistle-stopped around it seeing the stunning cathedral of St Maurice, the elegant city hall and all the above except the needle.  I noted the casual layabout roman carved blocks by the Temple with some glee … one of the things I love about Rome is the way the ancient has just been squished in with the modern over the centuries and the bits that drop off just stay where they lay.  It has the beauty of an overstuffed boudoir whose owner can’t bear to part with a single thing, even if its broken.

I should note at this point that I have an overwhelming and admittedly, to the casual observer, quite possibly strange obsession with the departements and regions of France.  When we first drove the long drive from Oxfordshire to Cantal late last summer, we bought a book in one of the Aires on the way called ‘Les 101 departements de France’.  It is aimed at children …. probably quite young children if I’m honest but I love it.  Slowly, slowly I am making sense of the geography of this huge country and slowly, slowly I am learning all the departments, their numbers (they are numbered alphabetically) and I can idly note where the cars that punctuate my drives long and short come from.  And its not entirely pointless to know where they are from – for instance, there are lots and lots of Paris plates in Cantal and I know why …. if you want to learn you will have to stick with me because I am being discursive enough in this post already.  But I will, I promise, write about what I have learned the historic connection between the two is, before very long at all.  My pledge is that if you hold you breath, you won’t turn blue … I don’t want asphyxiated readers on my conscience so that will be spur enough to write it.  Back on piste …. I live in Auvergne (in Cantal – number 15 to be precise) and to the west of me is Limousin and number 87 is Haute Vienne.  Which means there must be a Vienne.  And indeed there is (number 86 naturally) – I’ve been there … it’s in Poitou-Charente and its capital is the lovely Poitiers which I will always think of as Sidney.  If you are as old as I you will know what I mean.  But Vienne is not in Vienne.  It’s in Isere.  And that it was historically called Vienna makes it even more confusing.  But one thing I was sure of  that Viennoisserie, the wonder of French patisserie must certainly come from Vienne.  I pressed my nose against several pastry shop windows … I am often to be found in this postion lured by the sweet wonderlands they always are.  And I went home secure in the knowledge that I had been in the home of the croissant.  Only to find that they come from Vienna.  But then again … maybe it was this Vienna.  Before it was Vienne.  Surely.  Surely the French can’t be eating Austrian pastries … can they?

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I’d buy it ….

On the long drive home I told my husband a story of a trip a little while ago … stay with me now, settle and I will share it with you.

In April we travelled to Russia.  For Russia you need a visa.  The two venerable institutions (that which he works for and that which he was visiting) communicated, many people filled in many forms for him and we travelled to Lyon to drop our passports, pay a fee and settle back for their return in a week or so.  Two Brains went back to the US a few days later (that our daughters are convinced that he is one of The Men in Black may go a way to explain how the passport was in Paris via Lyon and he still managed to board a flight from Europe and enter the US without a murmour) and I woke the following day to an ominous email telling me that something was wrong in the process and I needed to contact him urgently.  Actually, my paperwork (which I had filled out myself) was perfect but unfortunately the enormous combined brains of the two venerable institutions had made a mistake with his.  Frantic calls to Paris, more paperwork and eventually, after nearly two weeks,  a call to tell me that the passports were ready for collection in Lyon.  That I was due to travel to London on the Monday left me with no alternative but to drive down before the Consulate closed at midday on the Saturday.  Which I did.  And a lovely drive it was – sunrise over the volcanos of the Puy de Dome can never fail to captivate.  The Bean, unimpressed by the display  slept and we made Lyon by 11.  I ran in and out bearing the treasured passports complete with visas and skipped back to the car to take tiny dog for a walk and grab a coffee before the journey home.  The consulate is in a pretty area of what is a lovely city and one that I fully intend to explore but enough of buildings and rivers and city ambience, the point of this story is a person.

Pretty it is, but mostly closed on a Saturday morning, in this area that is mainly devoted to businesses.  Vainly looking about for a likely pit-stop I nearly fell over a tiny little lady pulling a shopping trolley prettily adorned with macaroons.  She was trying to catch the attention of The Bean so I stopped in politeness and truthfully complimented her cake-garnished pull-along.  In my opinion there can never be too many macaroons in a life, preferably to devour but if that isn’t an option then images adorning pretty much anything are an acceptable reminder of their delight.  The lady was truly like a sparrow – tiny, black eyed and spry.  She coaxed and cajoled The Bean who dutifully danced on her hind legs and the lady rewarded me with the tinkling laughter of so many fairies ringing tiny bells in the tree lined square.  She told me she had a dog indoors who is so old that he can only make it to the bottom of the steps twice a day to perform his necessary functions and that aged and slow as she is the dog can’t keep up at all.  She asked if I was from Lyon and I told her no, English but living in Cantal.  She was interested.  Did my husband work there … no – America.  She hoovered up every morcel of information I could give her and pointed in turn to the only cafe open on a Saturday morning in this district.  She wanted to know if I had children.  I told her about the girls and about the son I gained with marriage.  She laughed at my eye-rolling descriptions of them and asked if they visit often.  I told her they would in summer I hoped.  We chatted away and she asked if I had grandchildren.  Not yet I said.  And then all of a sudden her face creased in the wrong way.  The sad way.  Her dark beaded eyes clouded and tears pricked them.  I touched her arm and asked stoutly (I am English in a crisis) if I could help.  She composed herself and told me that she had lost a grand-daughter.   To start with I thought this must have just happened but in fact it was over 20 years ago. Aged barely 19, killed in a road accident.  A fool drove his car into hers.  He survived, she died.  She said not a day passes that she doesn’t think of the girl, a promising ballerina so full of life then brutally stamped out.  The girl was her youngest grand-daughter.  She said the dancing stopped with her passing.  I couldn’t leave her in her sadness so I suggested we take coffee together.  We walked the square and sat in front of the cafe for maybe a half hour.  I would estimate that this little bird was at least 85 and probably ten or even more years older than that.  Her clothes, immaculate, her tiny frame that would fit in her own shopping trolley, her lovely lilty slightly growly voice, her directness affected me then and I will always think of her.  Not as often as she thinks of her dancing grand-daughter but nonetheless I will think of her often.  The grief still so raw after decades and the root of it the fact that she still walks and her grand-child is motionless.  Dance me to the end of love ….

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Plateau d’Artense in the Belledonne above Grenoble …. to me this is where my father walked when his spirit left his body. I can see the lively young spirit of a dancer on the path with him

PS:  Familiarity breeds contempt – unfortunately 2 weeks later I got a rather official letter rather officially telling me that somewhere between Brioude and le Puy en Velay I had been doing a whopping 97 in a 90 zone – 1 penalty point, 45 euros and a note to self that nearly a year here has made me rather too blasé.  To note:  Here there is no 10% cushion … in fact at 90 kmh the allowable excess is 2 kmh – that’s less than 1 mile per hour at nearly 60.

Aug 16

25 Comments

I don’t care what the weatherman says ….

‘If the weatherman says its raining, you’ll never find me complaining’ goes the Louis Armstrong classic ‘Jeepers Creepers’.   Which some days, in fact some summers – this we are told is the worst for 100  years for sunshine and the worst since 1977 for rainfall,  is just as well.

You might recall that we had started out for Paris at midnight or thereabouts and arrived just before 6 a.m.  By 11 O’Clock I was clear of the Embassy and we walked a little before heading back to the car and out of the city for the long drive home.  And it is still a long drive – that 500 km to get to Paris is exactly the same on the way back.  We decided to stop for lunch in Orleans, capital of le Loiret in the region known as Centre because that’s just exactly where it is.  In the centre. And in the centre we found a lovely restaurant which filled us full of fish (me) and pork (him).  The waiter had clearly stepped straight out of Le Cage aux Folles sporting the skinniest of skinny jeans, a very chic loose white shirt with a smattering of flowers, Converse low-tops which matched my own and hair tied back in a tiny tight bun. He spun and pranced with zesty aplomb and I could happily have taken him home and put him in my wardrobe to pull him out when I need a breath of fresh air in my life.  The rain had persisted down on Two Brains and The Bean whilst they waited for me in the park opposite l’ambassade and it increased as we drove south.  We were cold and wet when we arrived at the restaurant but a replete belly does much  to improve damp spirits and after a quick flick round the city in the car and a decision to visit in the dry some day we set off again through the rain towards our ultimate goal.

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Some time ago, I expressed a desire to see Bourges (capital of the Cher also in Centre).  I pass by the signs whenever I do the long drive to Calais or back (or, indeed the slightly shorter trip to Paris).  Where Orleans is a pretty plateful – half timbered buildings, a cathedral that ranks with the finest in France and the river running stately through the middle, Bourges is frankly gluttonous.  Everywhere you turn are cobbled streets lined with those beauteous half timbered houses reminiscent of Stratford (upon Avon not Olympic Central).  The Cathedral is enormous, monstrous even.

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Overall and oddly Bourges didn’t do it for us.  It stuffed us full but left us feeling empty.   It confused us and that was the problem – Bourges doesn’t quite know what it is.  But the fact is that it is so much easier to have a strategy when you are one thing.  If you are a small and perfectly formed medaeval or whatever epoque village or even a middle sized or large one you have an identity and your planning can and should encapsulate that.  If on the other hand you have been an important place since Roman times, have a plethora of half timbered Shakesperian houses, a volume of 17th and 18th Century masters dwellings and a cathedral which mushroomed in a mere 60 years to be a soaring gothic monster you have an identity crisis in your melting pot.  DSCF8516Of course a melting pot can work,  but the real problem comes when the place has been ripped to bits by allowing nondescript modern buildings in the centre and no thought has been given to the way they harmonise with the old.   Of course the heavy hitters all over the world, the big iconic cities, can cope because they have huge budgets born of investment and commerce but for a place like Bourges with an embarrassment of historic gems but a total reliance on their tourist income it must be beyond challenging to manage.   If someone comes along with an idea and a desire to be in the city then taxes and the prospect of employment force the good folks of the town to say yes, eager to enhance the towns coffers – those same coffers that must be stretched to breaking by the voracious needs of so many historic treasures.  We have since discovered that the town has quite the problem with vandalism and youth crime – this, it seems is the fate of such places the world over and I wish I was smart enough not just to question but to dish out the answers.   The people, though,  were thronging and despite the looming skies and damp underfoot it still looked the fine historic town that it is.

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We made our way to a cafe and as we sat down the sky unzipped and a deluge of biblical proportions (not the first and not the last of this journey) flashed down.  We sat outside, The Bean sensibly hiding under the table which, though protected by an awning began to puddle nicely. The place was staffed by three men – the oldest, clearly the boss and a younger man who swiftly took our order, coffee and creme brulee for me and chocolat chaud and a mousse au choc/vanille for Two Brains.  Picked up off the table and cradled like a baby in our arms, it remained dry enough to eat swiftly.   We watched a young woman with a baby in a buggy all enveloped in a rainhood with the older child wearing her coat to protect him.  Sleeves down to the floor and dragging feet he clearly felt it unfair that the baby had the luxury of cover whilst his mop of hair was stuck to his head with cold water that then ran down his cheeks in pesky rivulets.  She smiled and smiled and the little boy will look back one day and realise what a good mummy he has.  We attracted the attention of the youngest of the trio of staff and asked for more drinks.  He looked at our now sodden bill, loped inside and 15 minutes later was still affecting to clean behind the bar.  Older man passed.  We said we had asked for coffee and he leapt indoors shooting the boy a look and saying a very few words that proved suffficient to galvanize, nay ignite the youngster.  Smiling to himself the boss retreated.  One day the boy will look back and remember what a good boss he had ….

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PS:  Like many I’m a sucker for a gargoyle and amongst all the amazing carvings surrounding the cathedral was this absolute gem who looks for all the world like Voldemort in J K Rowlings Harry Potter series.DSCF8508

Aug 14

5 Comments

We’ll always have Paris ….

Last week the usual suspects – the two of us and the extremely small  dog got into the car at midnight ten and headed for the bright lights of Paris.  It’s about 500 km to Paris and we had an appointment at the US Embassy just off Place de la Concorde at 08:50 sharp.    Dog settled under her blanket in the soft basket she travels in when we drive – the definition of a ‘litter’ is a mode of transport powered by humans (often slaves) in which the high-born travel in luxury.  That pretty well says it in terms of The Bean in transit.

The two of us are well versed in long drives living where we choose to.  So one of us drives for 2 hours and then we swap, the theory being that you get some sleep.  We at least rest.  Nonetheless, arriving as we did in the City of Lights at a little before 6 a.m was slightly hallucinagenic.  I was driving as we headed down the right bank of the Seine and Two Brains snapped like a Jap as le Tour Eiffel loomed ahead.  Frank (pronounced Fronk after the wonderful wedding planner in ‘Father of The Bride’), our SatNav, called us ever onwards to our destination and was surprisingly accurate in finding a carpark right opposite our destination in Rue Gabriel.  So amazed were we that he had pinpointed what we had asked for (he has a talent for getting tired and emotional at the most inopportune moment) that we drove past and had to do a sweeping circuit back again.  Safely parked we surfaced into the great iconic square and this is the point – it was almost empty – insignificant traffic around, the sky lightening and for once an almost uninterrupted view of a landmark.

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The drive was entirely worthwhile.  Whatever awaited in the Ambassade (and for that you will have to wait) somehow didn’t matter in that moment in the slicing chill of the early morning which could only come close to being spoiled by a hugely rude waiter at breakfast.  And believe me, he tried ….

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PS:  The quote is, of course, from Casablanca and is attributed to Howard Koch one of several screenwriters who came and went in the process of producing that miracle of a film.

Aug 5

38 Comments

I’ll be your dog!

We walk.  The Bean and me and HB2, when he is here makes three.  There are 340 marked PR (petit randonnees) across le Cantal and I have set myself the ideal of walking all of them.  In keeping with the rest of France these are marked walks, mostly circular and varying in length and difficulty.  The simple colour coding system tells you if it is easy (blue), longer and more difficult (yellow) or very long and varying in difficulty (green).  One weekend recently we decided to drive to the far north east of the departement (a drive of about 1.5 hours) and do a nice long green walk.  The duration was estimated as 4.75 hours for the 14.5 km.  We packed a picnic of cheese and bread and tomatos and set off.  The day was glorious – sunny, hot and with a fair scattering of the fluffiest white clouds dancing across the bluest of blue skies.

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The walk was glorious too … and along the way we three became four.  About 5 km into the walk having marvelled at a tiny Roman bridge, failed to find a museum founded by two young boys aged 11 and 16 in the 1990’s housed in a pain four they restored themselves, and nattering contentedly whilst watching The Bean foraging and ferreting as she does, we entered a petit hameau.

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 As we exited the village it could not escape our notice that a young and very boisterous German Shepherd dog, ears yet to stand upright so probably no more than 8 months old, was running along beside us.  We stopped and shooed him home.  We walked back up the road to encourage him but, oblivious, he continued out of the village.  After a kilometre we were concerned – he was haring in and out of fields, he was very very happy, joyous in fact, but he clearly was not clear about where he lived.  Let me put this in to context – this is a huge and rural area … houses are scattered and he did not appear to belong in the hamlet we had traversed.  The Bean was getting fed up with being carried to prevent canine fisticuffs so we decided to release her and let them bond or not.  DSCF8108At this point I named the dog Boomerang for not so subtle reasons.  We spoke to him in French – he was quite forgiving of our accents but he obviously had absolutely no notion whatsoever of discipline.

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An hour later, so three hours into the walk, we decided it was time for lunch.  The puppy sat nicely on the other side of the track on whose grassy verge we had plonked our behinds and watched intently as HB2 wielded the Opinel (as essential a French accessory as a mobile phone to an adolescent, this is a wooden handled foldable knife which comes in a huge variety of sizes … the blade on ours is about 3 inches) to cut cheese and bread.  What lovely manners I murmured – he clearly knows not to disturb his humans when they are eating.  DSCF8109The words barely vapourised in the air, he leapt up and floored me and I, like a beetle on my back, was helpless to fend off his face-licking.  ‘Non’ bellowed Two Brains at which the dog fell back looked around and seized up my spectacle case before bounding up the path and lying down with his trophy triumphantly pinned between his front paws.  We hastily finished our peturbed picnic and packed up.  The dog surrendered the glasses case and off we set again.DSCF8142

The day was hot and of course got hotter as hot days always will, so when we entered the sweet and tiny hamlet, no more than a farm, a couple of houses and the remains of a church now welded to a barn, we were gently fatigued.  DSCF8123Actually we failed to notice the welded church as we searched for the table d’orientation so that we could regally survey the landscape laid out below us.  We found, we surveyed and we assumed l’ancien eglise must have succumbed to the elements at some point because it was no-where to be seen.  Assume, as our youngest daughter regularly reminds me, makes an ass out of you and me.  And as we walked on now following yellow markers (we had been following green and then green and yellow together which is not unusual – the paths often link for a while) and occasionally consulting the book for reference points the terrible truth began to dawn.  We, The Bean and the adopted dog which showed absolutely no sign of fatigue were on a different walk.  And the walk was taking us in entirely the wrong direction.  In this terrain it is not a simple matter of backtracking so we took the decision to continue in a circle back to the village with the viewing point.  And from there try to find our own walk.  That this meant in total a deviation of 6 km with a stray dog seemed perfectly reasonable to our heat-shrunk minds.  And so it was that this raggle taggle foursome made its way back into the village and joy of joys there, beside the welded church which we had failed to notice before which was indeed (as the book told us it was) opposite a table d’orientation (not the one we had found earlier but one looking in the opposite direction – so we have now regally surveyed the entire 360 degrees of landscape laid out before us in this lovely spot), joy of joys in addition there was life – there were people.  Real people.  A woman coming out of her milking parlour, two little girls of around 6 years old and a smaller little boy and, as it turned out, the most joyous of all – Granny!  The imposter dog disgraced himself by hurling upon the children with us shouting – ‘he’s not ours – he’s following us’.  But as deranged as this must have sounded these lovely people helped us.  Granny really.  The younger woman did not understand a map which is entirely reasonable given that she knows perfectly well where she is and doubtless can find her way anywhere necessary with no problem at all.  They clearly thought us mad to be wanting to walk but Granny showed us the way, even tipping us off for a shortcut and with much waving, sighing relief and many thanks we continued on what would be the last 5 or 6 km of our epic journey.  The dog was still with us – Granny had advised us to find the mayor in the town and pass the problem to him.  We felt rather bonded to Boomerang by now and agreed that if we were by now in our own house with a garden (the search is on) we would keep him.DSCF8141

It was on this last part of the journey that I realised that he had clearly been a commando in a previous life.  He took to leaping up high banks and running ahead of us only to explode down on us again when we least expected it.  This was very funny except when we were walking high above a small river and he decided the best approach was to divebomb The Bean and see how funny she would look bouncing down the sides of what, in my tired, vaguely emotional and borderline delirious state seemed to be a very steep ravine.  We put him on her lead (perfectly adaquate for her, this slender piece of leather looked more than faintly ridiculous on the overgrown puppy).  It was clearly a new experience and took all of Two Brains strength to keep him vaguely steady.  At the end of the path, relieved that we were coming into the last village before our destination, we let him run again.  We were just congratulating ourselves at how clever we were to train him a teeny bit in the hours (and by now it had been 5 hours) he had been with us when he bowled us the googly of the day.   At the entrance to the village was a huge, very old and very deep water trough – the sort that entire small herds of cattle could take their fill at when moving from field to field or field to barn for milking.  The sort that appear in Constable paintings of rural idyll in the 18th Century.  DSCF8152Rambiggles the divebombing commando dog went over to look, braced himself and leaped in.  Being steep sided he could not get out.  That in itself was bad enough but I should tell you that the water was gloriously embellished with hugely swollen cowpats across its entires surface … how, why, I know not.  I prefer to keep it that way.  Sighing the sigh of the resolute and exasperated, Two Brains walked over, hooked the dogs collar and pulled.  I held my breath so hard I think I may have turned blue because Two Brains can’t swim.  Images swam infront of my tired eyes of me, anchored by The Bean, having to pull the pair of them out.  Or me diving in and shouldering them as The Bean hooked them out.  I was well and truly scared.  I am happy to report that none of this came to pass and the dog was liberated.  And liberally drenched us with stinking water as he shook himself dry.

Onwards to our destination and we sank onto the tailgate of our car, changed our boots, ate biscuits and wondered what on earth to do … Sunday night is not the night to find a mayor and we didn’t feel like ringing 112 and declaring an emergency.  Lights from the Auberge called us like moths and we walked in – it was quite a chic establishment and we looked and probably smelt like something you would cross the street to avoid,  but thankfully the lady in charge was sweet and accomodating and took control.  Dog was fed, shut in and the Mayor informed in the morning.  We have since heard that he has been returned to his rightful owners.  For how long is a dubious question – this dog is in dire need of a high fence, a strong lead and Barbara Woodhouse (or for those of you not old enough to remember her … Dog Borstal!)DSCF8132

PS:  The necessary PS.  So touched were we by the lovely attitude of the family high up on the rounded hill who helped us that the following week we returned with a box of sweets to thank them.  The look on the face of Granny and the children was enough to warm my heart for the rest of my life.  We chatted for a while – she said she was pleased to have helped us, that she could no longer walk where we had walked but she used to and is sad those days are behind her.  She told us she had been to our part of Cantal and that she liked Saignes (about 10 km from us) because of its beautiful Roman Chapel.  The children, dark limpid eyes fixed earnestly on the tin with its sweet delights to come, listened, smiled and waved us off as we drove away.  I am certain that they thought us dotty but they didn’t judge us, had never expected to see us again in their isolated spot where they have lived and will live out their lives, and will live in my memory for the rest of my life as an example of who I would like to be.

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Mar 22

46 Comments

Who’s that knocking at my door ….

It could be said that mine is a curious existence, living here in one of the least populated areas of Europe on my own.  I came here 5 months ago with horribly rusty French.  I came here with few possessions – so much either sold or abandoned along the way as I moved and moved and moved again.  I came here for love.  But my husband, my love, lives in Boston.  Yes, its a curious life.  One day I’ll explain.

The last week, though, has been punctuated with knocks on the door.  I inevitably feel a mild panic when this happens because it means I will HAVE to listen, understand and respond.  I am fluent in shopping as previously acknowledged but a knock on the door could herald anything at all.  Particularly an unexpected one.  Like the time when the post-lady brought a letter each for signature for Two Brains and I.  I managed to explain that he wasn’t arriving from the US til the weekend but I was so flustered I couldn’t find my passport as ID for her – she became equally alarmed as she thought I had permanently mislaid it and explained very patiently to me that I can’t travel out of France without a passport.  It was only afterwards that I began to wonder if she was alarmed at the prospect that they might not be able to get rid of me …..

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March 23rd is polling day in France.  Les Elections Municipales.  They happen every 6 years and will result in new Conseils Municipales and new Maires across France – some will be returned, some overturned.  In essence, we vote for the governing body for our Commune and they in turn will vote amongst their triumphant team for their leader and deputies.  We are fortunate in Champs – our Maire, his adjunct and the Conseil are proactive and hard-working.  I see the Maire tearing around the place at a rate of knots on foot and in his car.  He is very hands-on and has the most fantastic gaelic shrug to ice the bun.  I know him reasonably well as a person (he married us last year and graciously accepted our invitation to attend our wedding breakfast and is tireless in his support of the lightning lab.) and I know he has the interests of his, geographically very large, commune and its relatively small and scattered population genuinely at centre stage in his life.   As the ruling party, as it were, his get the opening crack at canvassing.  So the first knock was from ‘Dialogue et  Action’ and I was treated to two smiling faces, an acknowledgement that I know Monsieur le Maire and was left with lists, biographies, an overview of achievements and their manifesto for the next 6 years.

A few days later, the oppostion are allowed out.  A further knock and I am greeted with another pair of smiling faces, a further list of names, biographies and their manifesto for the next 6 years.  Of course on closer scrutiny they are critical of the old guard and it is not a surprise that their collective name is ‘Champs Avance’ with a strapline declaring an intention to donner un nouveau souffle a Champs (invigorate or quite literally give fresh breath).  That the opposition are highly critical of the old guard is hardly newsworthy.  This is politics.

I will not reveal my hand – both manifestos are interesting, my opinion is not.  Both highlight the issues facing this pays perdu.  I am priviliged to be allowed to vote.  I am European and I pay taxe foncière and taxe d’habitation so I am eligible.  I take the responsibiity seriously and have reflected hard.

In doing so I walked from Montboudif, a little over 10 miles from here, this little village is the birthplace of Georges Pompidou DSCF5458and the people of Cantal are justly proud of the fact.  Pompidou was France’s longest serving prime-minister under the fifth republic.  As a little girl, I loved his name – it was one to be uttered and repeated annoyingly to my mother (mummy, mummy, mummy – I can say POMPIDOOOOO) and I remember him as President and his death in 1974 whilst in office.  I also remember visiting Le Centre Pompidou in Paris first in 1977, shortly after it was opened, as a 17 year old and again on honeymoon with my first husband when he took a picture of me with my mouth wide open next to a huge funnel to demonstrate the size of my gob.  Let’s face it – the marriage was doomed from the start!

That Pompidou was a diplomat and chose peaceful means to resolve issues such as the angry student uprising in the late 60’s, is no surprise to me given his heritage.  It is also no surprise that he came back to the region often.  I imagine he breathed the fresh, fresh air and felt the beautiful fertile earth under his feet and returned to the frey invigorated as Two Brains does these decades later.  Along the way I chatted to two elderly men – one splitting logs with all the vigour of a man half his age, pointed out that his little tiny tangle of houses looks at the Monts Dor in one direction and Monts du Cantal in the other – he asked why he would ever want to live anywhere else?  I could only agree.

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The other, thrilled to find I live here definitivement told me to come look him up if I need a steer on houses to buy in Montboudif … don’t use an Immobilier, he said – they are all crooks!  I hastened not to comment, feeling that virtually in front of Mr Pompidou’s maison natal I should adopt the line of least contention.  But having local ears to the ground will certainly prove invaluable when we come to the search for Le Manoir ….

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The third knock came and I assumed there must be a third list.  I should have remembered my youngest daughter’s apharism that ‘assume makes an ass out of you and me’, but instead I opened the door onto the dark landing (I will tell you all about the unique nature of the electrical system here another time but suffice to say that the lights in the communal area were having a bad hair day).  There stood a slight elderly man on his own.  He did have a leather bag under his arm which I assumed (there’s that word again) as I hastily said entree s’il vous plait to get him out of the gloom, contained the list of names, biographies, and manifesto plus critique of the old guard.  Then I heard the words that strike terror into the hearts of most …. je suis le temoin de Jehovah.  Panic coursed through me – I had allowed a Jehovah’s Witness into the appartment and I needed above all to get to the boulangerie before it shut at 12.  It was now 10:30 – this could be difficult.  I smiled and told him I am Buddhist.  This has always worked in England.  It isn’t strictly true but I was married to a Buddhist for several years  and I do still live by some of the rules as part of my own gobbledegook belief system.  He smiled gently and asked how I explain the creation.

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Remember this is all in French.  Remember too that I was slated to read Philosophy at Cambridge when whatever God you attune to was still in nappies so I am hard-wired to theological debate.  Yet it was not combat but his gentle spirit that captivated me and I was away – all fear of spoken French disappeared and I passed what I can genuinely tell you was a lovely 30 minutes.  He told me his son in law (not a JW) spent 2 years in England and he would happily introduce me if I need any help with understanding documents and so forth, he listened as I told him that Two Brains is a scientist of some note – he was particularly interested in the Trous Noirs and hopes that the presentation will be repeated – gave me his number so I can let him know when/if.  He told me about a lovely Indian fellow who lives in Bort who has done some notable research into the workings of the mind.  I told him that my life is about learning, learning and learning.  I also apologised for speaking French comme une vache espagnole.  He said he liked my modesty.  It actually was not modest just simple truth but the comment was kindly meant.  He left after 30 minutes, did not give me a copy of Watchtower and I hope I run into him again.  Whatever his beliefs, you see, he is a kind and lovely fellow.

The two men on my walk were kind and lovely fellows.

A friend of mine mentioned a film called ‘Field of Dreams’ on FaceBook the other day.  If you build it they will come, says the voice.  I am fortunate to be in a place steeped in history with the most fantastic natural landscape (volcano?  Two a penny here mate!) and a population of genuinely content people.  The pity is that they are leaving, the young seeking employment in the cities because they have no choice.  I would like to breathe life back into this place. So that this place will breathe vibrantly for all the years to come.  I have started and little by little I will achieve what I can – how can I resist when I am surrounded by such simple charm?

  If I build it, will you come?

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PS: I have broken most of my rules in this post – don’t talk about politics, avoid talking about religion, step away from the too-personal but the one I would urge you all to adhere to is this:
Never, ever, EVER eat anything with surprise in its title, in a restaurant …..

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