Who’s Who in our little patch!!

I guess this is the only way I’m ever going to get into Who’s Who, however I’m jumping the gun a little, because really this isn’t about us but those close to us, physically rather than emotionally!!  We now know most of the people by name but these have been omitted for reasons of privacy!

Our petite tranquil hammeau consists of nine houses, and innumerable plots of land which I shall make no attempt to unravel as French inheritance law divides land up in strange ways which is why we have a plot of 1000m² about a kilometre from our house!  Back in the hamlet, at the moment two of the houses are windowless, although they do have roofs and electricity.  The first shell is the first house at the top of the road, and has just been put up for auction as part of a liquidation sale; a small house (three rooms downstairs and potentially two upstairs, but with a staircase that goes nowhere as there is no upstairs floor) on a small plot which might just be ripe for development.  Certainly the guide price is so low it could leave a potential buyer with a lot of surplus cash for the renovations!   

The second, next down the road, is owned by a couple who live in another small hamlet just down the road.  He is English (but has lived in France for much of the time since 1984 and full time for the last ten years or so) and she French. They got married last year, and their house “in our patch” they are going to do up as a long-term rental, but due to problems with the purchase – basically the first time they bought it the seller didn’t own it (due it would appear to bankruptcy) so they had to buy it again with the renovation money, so it’s a bit on hold at the moment!!  Then attached to this is a pleasantly renovated house, which might have been two initially, owned now by a single lady, formerly married to a helicopter pilot, an actress who has lived there for nine years.  

Behind these three houses is a second row of three houses, both rows may in the past have been cottages tied to the farm at the bottom of the road.  The first from the top in the second row is empty and up for sale, but recently (18 months or so) lived in. It is very small (one up, one down and a bathroom in need of updating!) and built in such a way as it occupies one corner of the next house. The next house is lived in by a friendly French couple, who have lived there for about eighteen months, he an internet estate agent seemingly semi-retired and her a retired nursing auxiliary, the house is fairly small but rambling, with various out-buildings and alterations making it rather like la maison du lapin, or a rabbit warren!  The main living room / kitchen / diner is jammed with heavy ethnic furniture and interesting knick-knacks collected by the owners on various travels.  They have a camper van and have just returned from an extended visit to Morocco.  Previously this house was owned by an English couple who had lived here for something like sixteen years, it appears quite simply and primitively, there having been no heating upstairs and just a log burner downstairs and an earth floor in part of the downstairs.  But with advancing years, worries about health and a growing number of grandchildren, they decided to sell up and move back to the UK.

The house next to this one was owned by  the brother of the Englishman next door and used as a holiday cottage, but he sold it (last year) when his brother and sister in law returned to England, to a young Welsh family (Mum, Dad and seven year old daughter).  The parents of this man own a house the other side of Fontenay le Comte and a number of gîtes and spend their time between Le Vendée and North Wales.  The new owner’s father is busy renovating the house, whilst also getting his gîtes ready for the season, and it will be used as a holiday cottage for the family and possibly a holiday let.

Then there’s us, the house in the middle on the traffic island as it were – roads on three sides and commune owned land and a footpath on the other.  Not really a fair description as one of the roads is a little used parking area – for us, the Welsh family’s holiday cottage and the actress, another road down the side of the house is the road into the hamlet with minimal traffic and in many ways a dead end, and the one along the front peters out into a little used farm track a little way (30 metres) along which is our garden!

In front of us are the final two houses, one a very pretty and beautifully kept gîte, with Gîte de France rating, although seemingly only really used in the high season and holiday times like Easter, as well as by occasional walkers who pass close by on one of the many branches of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrim route.  You can follow from here to Santiago in northern Spain or “backwards” to Brittany.  This gîte is an old water mill with some of the original features evident and built on the edge of what previously had been the mill pond dam, now drained with just the river running through the field which is at the bottom of our garden.

And, almost finally, the “big” house, which although tall, obviously the main house and quite imposing is actually not very big.  It is lived in by a delightful old French couple, who also own the gîte and have made us very welcome, instigating a series of apero’s (early evening get togethers), the first at their house to welcome us to the hamlet, which is how we have started to glean so much information about our neighbours!   They also own much of the surrounding land and a large number of outbuildings, some more attractive than others!  They also, despite we think being in their 70’s, although we were originally told 80’s, work very hard at keeping everything as it should be, including tidying up after the fauchage man (village handyman) when he has tidied up!!  When we moved in they were very welcoming, but were quick to tell us certain things about what needed doing to our house!!  But it was simply their chance to have their say, about things we knew needed doing and by and large have been done or are in the pipeline.  We have worked very hard in the nine months or so since we moved in and before that in the garden and they appear to be suitably impressed, (but less so with our command of French!) although now much of the work is completed we will not be working so hard!!  That’s when our new hidden courtyard will come into its own as “le petit pause” as madam calls our tea breaks can become “grand” without her seeing and passing some comment!!!   

But, that’s not really quite it, as I said above “almost finally,” as relatively close, up the road and to the right is a large farmhouse and associated buildings, lived in and worked by one of six of the previous farmer’s children.  The farmer also drives the school bus during term time and is married to an accountant and they have, we think, three children – a boy late teenage /early twenties, an older teenage girl and a boy of about 10 or 11, seem all to belong!  Then, just around the corner, the retired farmer and his wife live in a spectacular, architect designed house overlooking an enormous flooded stone quarry which we think they own and is now no longer used for stone but for irrigation water, much (we are told) to the annoyance of the local water company, as they undercut their price!!  This couple are extremely friendly (when we first met him he lent us a handheld translator to help us with our French!) and invited us in for a drink on Easter Sunday when all 23 of their family were visiting, some of the younger ones were pleased to use their England and although the retired farmer speaks some Dutch and German, he maintains that English is too hard to learn!  To which I tell him that’s my problem with French!  However, the first time I saw him in his green boiler suit he looked like something out of the Walton’s, and limping in such a fashion that he rather drags a foot, so as to make me joke that he looked like a mad axeman – on the second occasion he was carrying a large curved sickle, which rather added to the effect!!!  He also seems to be fairly accident prone, and although retired won’t stop wielding sickles, strimmers, chainsaws and the like, and is often bandaged up or sporting various cuts and bruises often on his head and hands.  So now if we walk by and he’s in charge of a dangerous implement, we try not to draw attention to ourselves, not fearing for ourselves but worried he might wave to us with disastrous consequences!!

So that’s a little who’s who of those within spitting distance of our new abode, the only others being a large house that the owners use very infrequently at weekends and holidays which is next to a long low ex-mill building that has been converted into an amazing holiday cottage, sold just before we moved by Parisian owners, who seemed to have integrated better than most Parisians.  Generally, the Parisian’s are the butt of many a French joke, in much the same way as the English are prone to talk about the Irish, the only difference being the French mean it and usually accompany the “joke” with a angry spit.  It’s supposedly so bad that Parisians would, when car registration numbers identified the area the owner came from, register their cars in the area of their holiday home to avoid being run off the road!!   The new owners are also apparently Parisian, so we’ll have to wait and see.  Then, about a three minute walk past these houses, there’s a somewhat untidy farm which is actually in the next commune, the river being the boundary, and the owners of this we know nothing about.  But, just past this and back over the river so back in our commune is one final “nearby” house, owned by good English friends, previously Lancastrians, although I suppose still Lancastrians through and through – you just have to hear them talk!!  That’s fine by me but the wrong side of the Pennines for Linda!!!  But it certainly leads to some good banter and as they are rugby fans, but as far as I’m concerned the wrong “code” that adds to the repartee!! 

And, as they say “That’s All Folks!!” or should that be “That’s All of the Folks!!” – well at least for the time being as a new house has just been granted planning permission and been marked out ready for the diggers!  It’s situated just above the two rows of houses and along a bit, a reasonable size for a family, so some young blood may be on the way!!               

Pour le poisson, c’est necessaire la rivière,

or indeed ...... Se prendre le chou

Paul our neighbour teased me the other day when I was sitting out at the front cleaning some window fittings to recycle them.  No, it wasn’t the recycling, it wasn’t the fact that as soon as the sun shines, we’re outside eating often when the locals are done up in hats, scarves and thick jumpers and it wasn’t the knobbly knees we expose when we sit outside in the sunshine dining al fresco, or as Paul et al think al arctic!  But I was hurt and somewhat taken not only aback but also by surprise, although it made a change from the normal greetings and exchanges about the weather – yes I know stereotypically it’s the English who talk about nothing but the weather, but with the French, particularly in rural farming communities, it seems quite a popular topic of conversation and has certainly helped us to get away from simple hellos and good-byes!

No, I was sitting outside scrapping the old paint off these window fittings, admittedly wrapped up in an extra fleece as it was quite early and the bright sunshine still had not got much warmth in it, so quite prepared for a cheery hello, isn’t the wind cold today and to think a couple of weeks ago you could sit outside for dejeuner et dinner!, well if you can’t beat them laugh with them!!  When Paul suddenly pointed at our remorque (trailer) which is currently parked on the terrace at the front of the house as we have started the long haul of clearing Roger’s Retreat, our thousand square metres of virgin jungle, well at least head high and higher brambles and wild roses with the biggest thorns I have ever encountered and ever had to remove from various parts of my anatomy.  When you take a slasher, the correct and recognised (except by google spell check!) term for a long handled billhook-like implement, which is fantastic for bramble bashing from a far, when the brambles and wild roses have grown rampant and unchecked for many a year and are several metres long, they have a nasty habit of creeping up behind you and going for the posterior!

But, back to the remorque, having heard a number of recent stories about a growing number of thefts of garden implements such as débroussailleuses (brushcutters) and tronçonneuses (chain saws) – French gardening can be somewhat difficult and I mean the language not the digging, planting and weeding (creusement, plantation et le désherbage)!!, I decided that like French men the world over, well certainly in France, I would be bereft and totally at a loss if my trailer were to go missing!  I suppose it would save lots of work as we wouldn’t have to keep going backwards and forwards to the déchetterie or tip!, but no doubt we would end up borrowing a friends or using the insurance money to replace it, both causing more hassle than simply safeguarding our present trailer.  Consequently, I had it chained to a substantial post with a heavy duty lock and chain, and it was this that was causing the mirth and merriment than I was taking so personally!!  Here perhaps I should explain that Paul has extensive sheds and outhouses along the track from their house all open fronted and full of tools, although the more expensive items such as the débroussailleuse are locked away at night even if often lying around in various parts of the smallholding during the day.  He found it quite hilarious that I had locked up the trailer and I suppose that as trailers (and little white vans) are really extensions of the male assemblage and as such untouchable by other males perhaps it was a little over the top.  In a weak and perhaps unpatriotic (albeit true) attempt to save face I said that it was necessary in Angleterre, to which I think he responded and I possibly concurred that England is full of thieving ... voleurs.  I would have gone on and blamed the recession, the government, the media, unemployment, the breakdown of society and family values – indeed the “big” lack of “society” and also corrected his misconception that everyone in England is a thieving voleur (actually it doesn’t mean what some of you are no doubt thinking, it means robber!!), but at this point overcome by his cruel onslaught and feeling very distressed, my French vocab let me down!!!!

However, not one to hold a grudge, a couple of days later, I saw Paul walking up the track outside his outbuildings carrying his fishing rod, which he proceeded to cast along the track and to play with the line.  I think the visitors we had for tea were somewhat bemused when I said I needed to go and put Paul right, they know just how limited my French remains!  But, I quickly strode across to where he was fishing and called his name; he turned around perhaps surprised at my boldness at instigating a conversation when there was little “weather” to comment on, at which point I simply said “Paul, pour le poisson, c’est nécessaire la rivière” indicating the distant water course at the bottom of the hill!  Fortunately, he understood and turned around with the twinkle that is usually evident in his eye and answered with a bemused “Oh, really!”

I returned to our terrace and after having discretely punched and air and uttered “touché,” I then had to explain my bizarre behaviour to our tea drinking visitors, but at least felt a certain amount of honour was restored!!

Oh, and se prendre le chou (taking the cabbage) along the lines of taking the mickey, which I read in Connexions, an English language French newspaper, the day after this was written!!   In this article it explains that being a race of jardiniers, each with their amazing potagers, and as the article says “many everyday expressions have their roots in the vegetable plot(!)” , there’s even a new book by Julie Amerlynck called Phraséologie Potogère – Vegetable Phraseology!     

Just a quickie tonight!

A couple of nights ago was a two French letter night.  No, I’m not even going there, however much I hear you saying “Oh, go on .....!!”

No, these were of the written variety and two very different letters they were too!  The first was to the company that recently fitted our new “mini-station” fosse septique, or septic tank to those of you not in the know!  The ins and outs of the fosse, in relation to the salesman (“how you call it ‘sheet’”) and the workings of this new type of system, may follow in another piece, but for tonight I will explain why we came to be writing to the company.

Generally we are delighted with the new compact system that lies hidden under the terrace at the front of our house; the merest hint of a gurgle, during quiet periods, the only clue to what lies below, and we’ll just tell our family and friends, that it’s quite simply a hidden underground stream, springing up where you would least expect it – in reality it’s the aeration that is helping the bacteria to attack and treat the ..... well, how you call it “sheet!”  Somehow, sitting out there in the warm spring sunshine enjoying a glass of wine, the more romantic notion of the underground stream is more appealing!

Well, apart from the slight delay due to inclement weather, first rain and then snow, the ordering and installation went very well.  We had a reasonable, albeit “bread and water for the next year” quote and knew from the outset that it was likely that once they started digging they would hit rock and need to call in the rental services of “Le Pic,” which at the time I thought would come in the shape of a large and noisy JCB with pick attachment, enough to rock the very foundations of the house, as the five cubic metre hole was to be dug within a couple of metres of the house!   However, initial progress with their own mini-digger and scoops was quite encouraging, and the chasm opened up before our very eyes, and indeed before our very front wall of the house!!  But, just as we thought we might get away without “Le Pic” which I forgot to tell you comes in at the staggering price of €520 plus tax for a day, at eighty centimetres they reached the solid granite bedrock on which our house is built, obviously by a very wise little piggy!! So, it was on the phone for “Le Pic” which duly arrived at about 3.00 p.m. and could be heard growling its way down the road from some distance!  It was almost a disappointment when it became obvious that the low-loader, enormous lorry was the growling bit, and there dwarfed in the middle of the low-loader trailer was another mini-digger, the same size as the that we already had gracing the terrace, but lying ominously on the trailer, in front of the mini-digger was the “business part” the revered, spoken about in whispers, “pic” attachment, which was soon put to work.

By just after lunch the following day, “Le Pic” had done its work and was ready to collect.  Imagine then our dismay to be told that as “le Pic” had been with us on two days, the rental charge would be TWO DAYS - €1040 PLUS TAX!!  Well, something of an argument ensued and finally we reluctantly agreed to pay for a day and a half on the promise that the salesman would go back to the firm and plead our case.  Having heard nothing for just over a week, a letter was needed if only to express our disappointment at having to pay so much for nothing, due to inefficiency on behalf of the company.  To date the letter appears to have fallen on deaf ears, much as we expected it would, but at least it made us feel better and it is left that although we would recommend the system to others, we would warn prospective buyers to be careful of “hidden” and unfair costs!!  I guess they might not be sending any prospectives to see us!!  

The second letter was altogether a more pleasant one to write and in fairness I suppose it was really a card.  Those of you who visited us at La Loge, may well have met Mickaël, the local farmer’s youngest son, who turned 40 on the second summer we were there and seemed to have possibly been left on the shelf – his brother and sister both married with families, incidentally three girls apiece, settled down in modern houses on the edge of the farm and Mickaël seemed to have a flat attached to the farm house, and from afar it seemed that he simply worked too hard, at all hours leaving little time for courting!

Well, just before we moved to our new house, Mickaël appeared first with a little girl (about 10) who we didn’t recognise and was introduced as Marie, daughter of a friend.  Then, riding shotgun on the tractor was a little boy (about 7) wearing a mini version of Mickaël’s work boiler suit and who we discovered was called Mathis and was Marie’s brother, and Mmmm... if you notice a pattern emerging, when Mum, Mickaël’s friend arrived riding shotgun, we weren’t surprised to find out her name was Myriam and she spoke a little English which left us in no doubt, but pleasantly surprised, to find out that she was a good friend of Mickaël’s and he had indeed moved in and she was making sure he came home at a reasonable time!

Just after we moved, we were driving down passed La Loge to check the post box, with some local friends in the car, when we turned the corner and came face to face with Mickaël in one of the large farm tractors and instead of the normal friendly wave, he stopped and shot out of the cab and round to the car, excitedly asking us how the move had gone and were we now all settled!  But, there was obviously something else and quickly with the broadest grin imaginable on his face, he told us he was going to be a Papa!, the baby expected in March.  The next time we saw him to speak to, was in early February, he was en famille at a concert of hunting horns in one of the local churches and Myriam was looking very pregnant and on saying not long to go, thinking March was only a couple of weeks away, with feeling she said that the baby wasn’t due until the very end of march, still some weeks away!

Then, a couple of weeks ago we received a birth announcement card in the post, designed by Marie et Mathis and welcoming Maélie into the world!, and informing us that Papa and Maman were fous de joie, overjoyed, and Marie and Mathis veillent sur moi, watching over her.  We were honoured and delighted to be included in the happy occasion, the card being sent the day after she was born and quickly sent one of my homemade teddy bear cards welcoming Maélie into the world!

“Oh alright then .....!! To finish just a quickie, to square the circle and let you know that whereas we know them as French letters the French know them as capote anglaise or English hood, although I guess not in evidence in this case!!!