Owl Windows vs fenêtre œil de taureau

I should perhaps issue a “health and safety warning” at this point, as some of the following is not for the squeamish!  But first back to the beginning!

Nearly every old house has one, an attractive stone framed oval window, not dissimilar to the “owl windows” found on the eaves of many old Cotswold houses, the function of which was to allow owls access to the loft space, which would often have been used as a food store, so the owls could have a steady supply of food – the mice who thought their luck was in and had found a steady supply of food – your winter stocks!!!  

But, in France they are invariably on the ground floor and often have a waste outlet set into the wall below them, as does this one that is on the gîte opposite our house. 

And our house also has one, well when we moved in it had the remnants of one, it’s here to the right of the fireplace above the tiled shelf with no drain hole on which the tap emptied – presumably the previous inhabitants relied on using a washing up bowl and emptying it into the gutter outside.  But, as for the window, the previous inhabitant obviously like his privacy and had bricked up the window, leaving the glass in situ, having first tried to keep out prying eyes by white washing the glass.  The bricking up, which interesting was also done to a number of other windows, and not a window tax in sight, just neighbours intent on seeing what was going on or simply a paranoid resident, referred to by our new neighbours as “special!”  Initially, thinking that we had a lot to live up to, to become special ourselves, we were quite relieved to discover that special in this French context, would be “special needs” in an English context – what “translated it for us was the tendency of Monsieur opposite to accompany anything about their previous neighbour with what seems to be a universally used gesture – the forefinger turning small circles in the vicinity of your temple!!

Nevertheless, back to the bricked up window, or indeed the haphazardly, albeit it sturdily closed up window with a  variety of cemented bricks and stones, as I was to discover when a heavy duty jackhammer was necessitated to remove the debris, miraculously leaving the glass intact!  And as a quick aside; when DIYing in France, the local paint may be rubbish, and many a expat car returns from the UK with a boot full of B & Q’s finest, or for reasons of equality, Homebase, Great Mills or any other number of national DIY chains, but the cement is something else and once in position it is not intended to be removed again.  Indeed, just incase any unwary house renovator, particularly of English origin, has other ideas, then often it is reinforced with intertwining metal bars!!  Well, one of the things we were keen to achieve, possibly before we knew about the cement and the metal bars, was to try and return some of the original features to their former glory, which as you will see we have achieved in the photo with the small iris, which is actually an enormous IKEA clock on the far side of the kitchen – imported from the UK and purchased with a silver wedding anniversary gift from good friends, although IKEA is sweeping France as it has already done in England and is cheaper than many of the other similar shops, but as the pound weakened the prices are now more expensive than in the UK.

Having been lent the electrician’s jack hammer, an extremely powerful tool, which I’m sure should require a licence to operate, I decided to also see just how well the house is constructed – they don’t as a rule have surveyors cast their eye over a property before purchase, and I’m glad to say the house withstood my inexpert onslaught magnificently!

Not so however the kitchen shelf, purporting to be the kitchen sink!  I had over several days carried out what could have been misconstrued as half-hearted attempts at breaking up the “sink,” but on each occasion, despite a large chisel, a heavy lump hammer and enough welly to result in an aching back and stiff arms, I quite literally barely scratched the surface and where the metal reinforcements were just below the surface, I failed even to scratch it!!  Hence, the electrician taking pity on me and lending me the jack hammer as he went off for the evening, or was it simply that he thought by setting me loose with a machine worthy of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, I might demolish the house by morning and save him some serious hole drilling.  At times between the electrician, the plumber and various “mates” there were two of them both heavily armed and trying to attack each other through a sixty centimetre granite block wall!  So not only the cement is hard in these here parts, so are the walls and the artisans (trades people) come to that!!  Suffice to say that in about half an hour, not only had I rattled loose most of my bones but also made significant inroads into the seemingly endless block of reinforced concrete – then a gaping hole appeared towards the base above which it became obvious that there was a large block of stone, which I managed to stop jack hammering just in the nick of time, a moment longer and it may well have been reduced to a pile of rubble.

It was about this time that I hatched a plan, instead of removing the whole thing, to be replaced by a tasteful but not necessary piece of furniture, I could reinstate what had possibly been the base of an old sink, prior to modernisation in the Le Corbusier style!  My only concern was that the jack hammer, whilst not turning the large stone to dust had quite badly dinted it at the front, and so decided it would be better to remove it and possibly turn it over if the back was better.  Suggesting my plan to Linda, she was in agreement, however suggested it would be better if I simply flipped it over and didn’t remove it first!!

Two near hernias later, a friend and I by an amazing feat of engineering technically called “aggling,” managed to remove the capping stone, it was too heavy for the both of us to lift, despite Linda’s suggested “pancake” manoeuvre!  But, we got it outside without injury or mishap, left it by the step and removed the rest of the stones to allow the alcove to be tidied up, the base concreted and the base stones reset whilst I scratched my head as to how I could possibly get the capping stone back into place, and after the difficulties of the removal it crossed my mind that a pleasant light weight wooden seat / shelf on top might be the answer, but blithely dismissed this as it didn’t “restore the origin features” that we were setting out to do.  More head scratching and a throw away comment to another friend who was surprisingly game to try and get it back, but hadn’t been there when we first moved it!  The comment, simply that it would be easier if we could cut the damaged bit off the front, tidy it up and make it lighter.  But easy as it may sound, cutting a block of solid stone at least fifty centimetres thick and eighty long posed another problem.  Simple, say the friend use my angle grinder, should go through that like butter and amazingly it did!!  A five centimetre cut top and bottom a sharp tap and the damaged front fell neatly away leading about two thirds of the original stone, and still two of us could barely lift it, but by brute force, aggling and certainly not ignorance, we managed amazingly to reposition the cut down stone and restore the feature as shown here!!  And we didn’t even break any of the newly lain floor tiles!       

But, now we get to the squeamish bit!  Shortly after successfully relaying the stone, and having paid due reverence to the master masons who had constructed Stonehenge, who weren’t, due to the size of their blocks, even able to employ aggling as a technique, I was visited by French friend from the village!  He admired the window and feature and said it reminded him of his childhood, when one of his jobs was to clean, by the light of the window, œil de taureau ready for subsequent eating, hence the window’s French name fenêtre œil de taureau – not there yet?  Bull’s Eye Windows and it doesn’t refer to the bit in the middle of the dart board – hence the warning for the squeamish!

Now that’s one original feature that we won’t be reinstating!!  Instead the light from the window sets off a lovely plant and also allows us to see who is coming down the road, as well as the other day neatly framing a pair of grazing deer in the field beyond!

It's so quiet you can hear things!

February 2012

“It’s so quiet you can hear things!”

You see I can’t get away from things like “Clever Words” or quotes of the month and although when I said this and claimed it as my own; my greatest critic, cynic, love of my life and pourer of scorn said, and I quote “I expect someone said it before!” But, although extensive research has unearthed a number of songs, notably: “It’s, Oh, so quiet” by Betty Hutton and later covered by Björk, “So quiet in here” by Van Morrison and “Lately it’s so quiet” by OK Go, none of them include “my line!”  Then there are famous quotes such as: “It’s quiet now.  So quiet that can almost hear other people’s dreams” Gayle Foreman (author), “The world is quiet here” Lemony Snicket (pen name of novelist Daniel Handler), “It was so quiet you could hear a pun drop” Bugs Baer (American journalist and humorist ~ Arthur “Bugs” Baer) and the closest I’ve found to date; “The quieter you become the more you can hear” Baba Ram Das!  So I’m claiming it, now I need to know how I can be credited with it for posterity!

I uttered this evocative line as we sat down to have lunch outside on our terrace for the first time this year, in bright February sunshine, barely ten days since daytime temperatures were struggling to get above minus 3 or 4!  Ok, we were still in long trousers, shoes and socks, a two or three layers on the top and the neighbours thought we were strange, but then they thought we were strange eating outside everyday in the summer last year.  It appears alfresco dining isn’t always the norm in France, certainly for our neighbours it seems to be for high days, holidays, stinking hot days or when simply the dining table isn’t big enough for their extended family – they have five children, at least 20 grandchildren (petits enfants, however big they become!) and a number of great grandchildren.  Thankfully, they also have a number of large undercover areas, should on the day they have all been invited the weather proves unkind!  It has just been, today, officially announced that February was one of the coldest on record!!

We sat there quietly chomping on our French bread – it was the soft, par baked variety, rather than the crispy baguette, otherwise the world might never have got “the line!”, and it suddenly struck me that in our hammeau tranquil it was indeed intensely quiet, so much so that those sounds that were around could be clearly heard!  First there were the sheep on the neighbour’s lawn, let out of their field, partly to find pastures new, but also to avoid them having to get out the lawnmower and certainly the mellow baaing and plaintive calls of the lambs, now quite big as they were born before Christmas, was preferable to the harsh mechanic sound of the petrol lawnmower.  Then, the chickens in the next field could be heard clucking and cock-a-doodling, although thankfully they don’t seem to be early risers, heralding in the dawn each morning – were they, then coq-au-vin springs to mind!  The stream then bubbled into hearing, no longer the raging torrent of the winter storms and settled from the melt water of the recent snow, now a peaceful, murmur reminiscent of the first chapter of Kenneth Grahame’s famous book; Wind in the Willows ~ "The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea."

And, as the stories flowed from the river, more a babbling brook, but worthy of a name ~ Ruisseau de la Sauvagère, that’s almost as long as the stream itself!, circling above us and mewing loudly as they soared high on the rising thermals were a pair of buzzards obviously enjoying the weather as much as us!

A tractor then rumbled by on the road at the top of our hamlet, echoing through the valley and heralding the end of lunchtime, just as the low roar of a passing aeroplane invaded the peace and quiet as it made its way to who knows where, but still fascinating to think of all those people thousands of feet above us travelling at vast speed and all, like the river with stories to tell, be they exciting, mundane, mysterious, sad or simply fantastical!  Our tranquillity was then totally destroyed, by the sound of excited children and although at times I’m heard to utter that when out walking and passing a school at lunchtime when the children are out at play, does give me pangs of nostalgia, just at this moment, I couldn’t help but think that actually “It’s bloody noisy here really!!!”   

Le trompe de chasse

February 2012

Le trompe de chasse ~ Eglise Ste Hermine

I mentioned before about the winter air, particularly on a Sunday, being full of the sounds of gunshots (often very intermittent, as unlike the past the French now don’t shoot anything that moves, they are much more selective and indeed regulated), braying hounds, convoys of little white vans and the sound of mobile phones (in these days of hi technology, the hunters keep in touch by cell phone!!).  But also, more traditional methods continue and the above sounds are nothing compared to the shouting and echoing of the small, but mighty powerful, hunting horns.  Both the voices and the horns being used not only to call back the dogs and frighten the prey, but also to add to the macho excitement of the occasion, as you must remember that these hunts are in part to put food on the table, but more importantly social gatherings and for many the only time in a busy week that they can let their hair down and have a good time.  As such the majority of French hunting that we see, or more likely hear as venturing out on hunt days can be somewhat perilous particularly after lunch, during which the liquid refreshment flows freely!!

But, it’s to the horns, or trompes de chasse (hunting horns) to be precise.  On most of the small hunting parties you see they comprise of a short slightly curved brass horn about 30 cm long with a mouth piece that is blown through to produce the loud, rather harsh, calls that echo around the place, shattering the peace of an otherwise peaceful day – apart that is from  the raucous shouts and very sporadic shots.  The horns can however, be altogether more elaborate affairs, over 4 metres in length twisted around several times in a circle about 50 cm across and carried over and indeed played, with the bell facing backwards and with a detachable trumpet like mouth piece, removed to allow the substantial amount of broche (or spit) that builds up whilst the player blows forcefully through the two millimetre hole in the mouth piece.  Now, you would be forgiven for thinking I’m rather knowledgeable about these horns, previously only heard from a distance, and they are powerful enough to carry over a vast range, and also in the hands of an expert can play tunes, despite the lack of any trumpet-like valves or French horn like valve levers – indeed previously tunes have wafted through the air on particularly still days, adding a certain intrigue.  Thus intrigued, and discussing said instrument with a friend down the road, he told me that a group of horn players (I now know to be called Les Échos du Lay – The Echoes of a Song) locally give concerts and perform at the annual “Hunt Balls,” on all accounts altogether more down to earth and indeed earthy affairs than the suited and ball-gowned hooray Henry’s that come to mind when thinking about the Équivalent anglais!

So, I became determined to track down one of the concerts, and brave what I felt might be a somewhat repetitive evening of similar sounding tunes, after all there must be a limit to how many notes you can get from a thin tube (about 12 mm in diameter), a 14.5 cm pavillon (bell) and a mouthpiece with a 2 mm hole.  But, for a while the scent ran cold and nothing seemed to break cover until, early in the new year we were invited to La ceremonie des voeux (Ceremony of vows!), complete with a verre de l’amitie (avec ou sans alcool), so much more intriguing and indeed better tasting than the English equivalent of the Parish Council AGM and cup of milky tea!  This, as I have written about before, is one of several social highlights of the year and turn out is impressive, maybe in excess of 200 people out of a population of 360 ish can’t be bad, and having sat through the annual report and finances, newcomers to the village are formally welcomed and receive a gift and then the glass of friendship, or should that be glasses, and it’s time to catch up with friends, wish those you didn’t see at the beginning a Bonne année, and try to remember/judge on the hoof the requisite number of kisses on the cheek!  We took with us the friend mentioned above and drink in hand, he introduced us to his friend Bruno, a member of  Les Échos du Lay, and my education on the trompe de chasse commenced in earnest and he excitedly told us that there was a concert the Friday after next at the church in Ste Hermine.  Then, looking rather deflated, said that although they were playing there would be explanations of all of the turns before each one, and being obviously very astute had realised our limited grasp of the French language and was worried we wouldn’t understand.  Brushing this concern aside, more anxious to hear the tunes than worry about what they were about we arranged to purchase tickets, bid Bruno good night and started to leave, never a quick process in France, as the kissing starts again.  We thought it diplomatic to speak to the Mayor before leaving, and as he now realised we could speak a little of the language and perhaps understand even more, he didn’t do a runner.  When we first met him, he would wave in a friendly fashion and being a little shy and speaking no English, he would quite simply make a run for it!!  Before exchanging pleasantries with M. Maire and then taking our leave, we were approached by the secretary of the mairie, who we have always found to be brusque and businesslike to the point of being rather aloof and offhand, but not tonight, she was with a very demonstrative friend who it transpired lived some way away and spoke the rudiments of English and wanted to try it out and both of them appeared to have started on the verres de l’amitie some time before the allotted time – to the point that they were both very giggly, like a pair of naughty schoolgirls, and hopefully within walking distance of where they were sleeping that night!  At first we thought it strange that you bring your friend for a good night out at the local Parish AGM, but then decided that maybe, the secretary had inadvertently double booked and to make up for it brusqueness and businesslike had been thrown to the wind, in much the same way as people throw caution!

But, back to trumpets, well hunting horns, and as the number of days to the concert diminished, so did the temperature – the whole of Europe being thrown into a cold spell extraordinaire, with South Vendée night time temperatures (with little respite during the day) plummeting to minus six and beyond, with talk of minus 12 by the end of the week, and the concert was on the Friday!  Fortunately, the weather had stayed dry and so the roads were not icy, and so there was nothing for it but to put on as many layers as was humanly possible, including two pairs of socks, two pairs of trousers and almost too many layers on the top to count, as well as hat, gloves and scarf, as you may remember the concert was in the church – never the warmest of places!  I was the driver, so with difficulty due largely to the inability to move with all the clothes I was wearing we went to pick  up our friends and cautiously made our way, to avoid any unseen and unexpected ice patches, to the church.  We arrived about on time, but weren’t concerned as France never starts on time, but were amazed to find the square and surrounding streets outside the church, completely parked up and we just managed to grab the last space in the next car park, it was obviously a popular event and people weren’t being put off by the cold.  The cold did however make for a speedy start, as the horn players start outside and it was no time to be hanging around in the cold.  What happens is a lone horn player enters the church / venue, goes to the front and calls the others to join him.  The others then process up the aisle and the concert starts, with rather oddly the performers with their backs to the audience.  Having finished each piece they turn to the audience to accept the applause and whilst the next song is announced and explained, before once more turning their backs.  I guess the sound from the horns comes to the audience purer that way, but as the volume is fairly great, except in the quieter pieces, I’m not sure it would make that much difference.  And, the more alert amongst you will have noted that there are indeed quieter pieces, the range of notes and volume quite remarkable and every piece was different, and I’m sure reflected what was said about it in the introductions, although sadly much of this was lost as the announcer spoke too fast, at least for those of us who struggle!

But, there followed a magnificent and varied concert, with a song thrown in during each half, as the players needed a break after a good half hour or so to quite simply get their breath back!!!  And, with this being France and winter time there was vin chaud (mulled wine) available in the interval served from a covered market stall – OUTSIDE in the freezing cold and most people went out, if not for the wine then a cigarette or a “wet on the wall!!”   Then it was back in for more varied and colourful tunes, played by the ensemble who were all kitted out in a distinctive and very elegant livery comprising of tall leather boots, hunting breeches, white shirt, cravat, back waistcoat trimmed with gold braid and very smart three quarter-length hunting green coats with more gold trim around the pockets and lapels – indeed the troop cut quite a dash and enthralled the large and very varied audience from young children to the elderly.  The horn players themselves were also varied in age and it was good to see one or two younger members included, who had their own following, a group of likely looking lads sitting in front of us and who would in England have had better things to do on a Friday night, than to cheer loudly and supportively when the introduction to the group were made towards the end and their friends announced.  

So, despite earlier misgiving a good time was had by all and amazingly the church wasn’t as cold as expected, I was able to take off the hat and gloves and fortunately unzip the coat, as I don’t think I would have been able to sit down otherwise!! And, finally ...... I ought to mention that Wikipedia helped greatly in my quest to be an expert in the field!!  To find out more, just put in tompe de chasse and if the sites in French ask for a translation – more wonders of modern technology!

P.S: Just a quickie, on what might be called “The House!” front, particularly for those missing the previous missive format!!!  The other day I ended up completing diametrically opposed jobs:  First, I have been forced into putting down some mouse poison, to cut down on the Olympic training that seems to go on above our heads at night, with mice running backwards and forwards keeping us awake.  (So much for Ici devant nous!) Then, I ended up covering over the hole in the ceiling where we had relocated a lighting rose, initially to stop the draught but also, to stop the mice falling through and hurting themselves!!  Maybe, in hindsight that should come under The Day’s Thought!