Une petite pause sur la terrasse

Quel est ce monde, si plein de soins,

Nous n'avons pas le temps de se lever et regarder. 

William Henry Davies ~ Leisure

What is this world, if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No apologies for using this quote once more, but it is just so apt and reminds me how lucky I am to have the time!  I’ve also translated it into French and it still scans quite well, now I just need to learn it sufficiently to retort to our neighbour the next time we are sitting outside having a very English Tea break and she passes with a somewhat surprised “Ah, une petite pause!” hence the title of this small piece.

At a recent petite pause, we were far from idle, as there was just so much birdlife to see, and at times to duck from; as the swallows, who in many ways stole the show, used the space between the buildings as a wall of death repeatedly flying round and round in close formation, as many as six at a time.  Then, one or more would peel off and either rollercoast down towards us and backwards and forwards between the house sometimes seeming to play chicken with us, who would duck or swerve first!, or they slalom in and out of any open door or window – barn, garage or indeed house – before a tighter wall of death sequence and back out into the general mêlée.  Who needs animals in a circus when you have nature’s own fantastic antics?  And, the swallows don’t stop there, as not only are they the aeronautical acrobats but they also do a mean high wire act (although when the young are just learning to fly it can be a little tentative, the less confident staying nearer the supports!), as well as clowning around just for the pure joy of chasing each other or laughing at the strange English couple sitting drinking their tea below.  They have also sent the odd “custard pie” our way, but it might be tempting fate to say they haven’t scored a direct hit – YET!!

But, it didn’t stop there, as in the time it took to drink the cuppa and force ourselves back to work we witnessed even more visually as well as audibly!  There was a blackbird and a little woodpecker who repeatedly flew, with a purpose, from the wooded bank behind the neighbour’s house to the garden of another neighbour and back.  They were obviously intent on something, which we later discovered was the rapidly ripening and equally rapidly disappearing cherries on the neighbour’s tree!

Distant mewings alerted us to a pair of huge buzzards soaring high above the hamlet on the warm currents rising from below, as mere specks high in the azure blue of the cloudless day, they were far too high to be hunting, even their keen eyesight wouldn’t have spotted a tasty field mouse from such a far-flung vantage point.  No, they were simply having fun and finding time to stop and stare, albeit aimlessly, well fed and happy on this warm sunny day.  With our own lunch looming fairly rapidly, we really ought to have dragged ourselves away from this remote display, but the languid mewings were cut into by the closed and louder sounds of the hoopoe – hoo poe, poe, poe, poeee .... and the nearly repetitious cuckooing of our neighbourhood thug, although our particular one has the tendency to add an occasional extra cuc – cuc koo, cuc koo, cuc koo, cuc cuc koo!!, in no obvious pattern, having the time not only to stand but also to listen, we spent some time trying to work out if the extra cuc was regular or erratic (OK, ‘er indoors is bound to pick up on that line and say that actually it was only me, not her!!)  Having just decided that the pattern was irregular, not to be outdone, and maybe trying to grab my attention, the hoopoe started to miss out the poe!!

Finally, there were the chickens noisily scatting around for any tasty morsel, behind the nearby barn, the cooing pigeons passing backwards and forwards further down the drive and the redstarts, who had successfully reared their brood in our open barn, bopping up and down with their squeaky warbling competing with the scolding chuckles and short twitters of the blue tits who had successfully nested in a small hole by our garage door. 

What with the pigeon piazza, the swallows multilayered spaghetti junction and the blackbird / woodpecker boulevard / motorway and all the various tweets and twitters, I’m tempted to say that thankfully there wasn’t a mobile phone in sight to shatter the peace, even though it wasn’t all that quiet.  And .... with so much going on there was a real danger that the petite pause would become somewhat grand!, and once we have our cour cache (hidden courtyard) très grand.  But, although this might stop our immediate neighbour from noticing us slacking, we will still, as during the recent weather, dine in the company of 1000’s of passersby, if the multitudes of vapour trails criss-crossing the sky are indicative of the evening rush hour.  Hopefully however, like the buzzards, they’ll be too high to really notice and certainly too far away for us to hear the unspoken tut-tuts or to see the nearly raised eyebrows as we have yet another petite pause.  But to that I’ll simply say -  Pas le temps de voir, en plein jour, Streams plein d'étoiles, comme un ciel de nuit. ~ No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night. A little more of that wonderful poem!                  

One can but hope!

Okay, it’s July 14^th in rural France, a bank holiday to remember Bastille Day, July 14^th 1789, the start of Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Liberty, equality and brotherhood) and so as you can’t forget the Revolution, this tripartite motto is liberally plastered on every public building and beyond.  But, that apart and from me normally so laid back and tolerant (unlike her indoors!), the man featured below was an out and out prat, who should have lost his liberty, it would be hard to find his equal and there was little brotherly love evident in the assembled crowd and I came mighty close to telling him!  I think all that stopped me was the worry that an outburst from me would have been “water off a duck’s back” as I am sure I wouldn’t have been the first and highly unlikely to be the last or it might simply have inspired the crowd into an impromptu lynching!!

As in many communities the length and breadth of Metropolitan France and beyond in areas referred to as Overseas France, this day warrants celebration.  Indeed, in our own small commune (parish) there had been a very sociable aperitif  laid on by the maire (mayor) and conseil municipal (municipal council) at which this year mention was made of our commune’s gold award for citizenship and was followed by a picnic and games afternoon – predominately the women and children playing board games or cards and the men outside playing the local game of palets, where teams throw small metal discs onto a heavy lead plaque laid on the ground, the scoring and principle being I guess a little like tiddly winks!!   Proceedings were then brought to an end by the presentation of the gardening awards for the year and a further verre de l’amitié (glass of friendship) or two soaked up with thick slices of the local brioche (soft sweet bread).

Then, this year it was back home to sleep off the rich brioche as much as the several glasses of friendship, including a very small and very strong absinthe fabriqué a la maison of a friend down the road.  A strange tasting and lingering liquor it certainly was; my English drinking partner deciding it was a little like a very peaty but also very sweet whisky, which we decided went better in the coffee that was subsequently poured into our empty, albeit syrup lined glasses.  We both felt the taste had lingered, when some hours later when we picked up our friends to go to one of the nearest towns for this year’s Bastille Day feu d’artifice (fireworks), it was still there!   

My ever roving ears first picked him up out of the crowd, although he would have been better suited to the gutter, after we had parked the car, had a glass of wine from the outside bar, under the beautifully floodlit tower of the church whilst awaiting the lantern procession, which we dutifully joined to walk to the fireworks.  He and his friend joined the procession just behind us and as I have a tendency to eavesdrop, shortly picked up on his slightly bizarre conversation with his female friend.  Herein would appear to be the root of the problem, to which quickly I would happily have taken an axe had I one handy, as you might have guessed by now this guy really irritated me and by the looks and comments all around, not only got to me but also a lot of others!!  The problem seemed to be his need for requited love and he had obviously decided that the only way into her ..... heart, I guess, was to be a loud brash show-off, fuelled it would seem by a drink or two as well as the being egged on by the object of his affections who tantalisingly waved in front of him her ..... heart, I suppose that would be!!

The strange conversation behind us involved some over the top advice on whether the object of his desires should have a life of her own or visit her mother whose own life seemed to be rapidly diminishing.  The advice seemed from a distance to be rather self centred; after all he was trying to get into her ...... heart, or something like that, and rather oddly seemed to suggest as she had the rest of her life ahead of her and her mother had had her life, she the object of his desire, should give up on her mother and life her own live to the full, and he was more than happy to help her with her ...... heart, which seemed slightly surprising in view of the rather heartless appearing advice.  Happy, he was well on the way to entering her ...... heart passionately, as we arrived at the fireworks and he announced loudly to the person of his heart’s desire and anyone else who happened to be within a considerable radius how exciting it all was and hopefully it would rise to his considerable expectation and not be a damp squib!  Then, the surrounding street lights went off to darken the night and make the forthcoming pyrotechnics even more striking, to which said gent firstly made an over the top suggestive “Ooooh, it’s gone all dark!”  The darkness was quickly followed by the first salvo of fireworks, the accompanying musical soundtrack all but drown out by the ooohs and aaarghs of the strident suitor, who kept up a noisy running commentary, with lots of ooohs and aaarghs of growing intensity, loud dismissive comments, when after a few initial bright loud bangs that lit up the night sky and surrounding countryside, he sneeringly said “Well, is that it then!”  What it seems he hadn’t realised, as well as how irritating he was being, was that at occasions such as this the French pull out all the stops and displays are organised with seemingly scant regard to the cost.  This meant that having been determined that it was all going to be a short, hardly worth stopping drinking for affair, giving him a chance to get back to his own quest, he needed to become even more outrageous if only to save face.  Unfortunately, the worse he became the more his intended seemed to help him rise to the occasion (all the alcohol could have made it difficult without her help!) and the brash, dismissive and scathing comments grew more and more intrusive and irritating, to the extent that when the finale exploded into the night air, it was almost a relief that his ill-chosen words, comments and lusting would now stop.  The spontaneous and rapturous applause at least drown him out and I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the surrounding watchers and enforced listeners were applauding extra loudly with a mental picture of someone on the inside of their hands, in the hope that this might have a similar effect to a voodoo doll, and I’m sure most of us would have stoically born the pain of sticking pins in the imagined effigy!

Needless to say we didn’t hang around and made sure that we weren’t anywhere near the annoyance as we went back to the car, I’d have hated it to get ugly, which might just have spoilt his chance of worming his way into her ...... heart – I’ve always been a sucker for a happy ending!!    

And finally ..... what was it that “One can but hope?”  Quite simply that the man in question, or should that be questionable man and indeed his partner who encouraged him and played along, are tourists here on holiday and will shortly be going home.  Well after all, somewhere on the list of reasons for moving to France must have been to get away from pratish Englishmen, particularly those on holiday – but, somehow that doesn’t quite work!!

An really finally, an uncanny postscript:  This afternoon we had an invite to afternoon tea in the chateau, to find during the course of the conversation that Monsieur is in the middle of transcribing onto the computer a children’s fairytale he has written.  When I confessed to also being a writer, I proceeded to tell him the rough synopsis of what you have read above, to which he responded, near bursting with excitement, that he too, on the same day had been writing in the fairy story about Liberté, égalité, fraternité, now how strange is that!?!  Almost as strange as the conversation that ensued, dissecting the motto, deciding that it was rather dated and in real terms somewhat impossible, but as an underlying principle it probably still hits the spot.  You see our conversations cover a lot of ground and at times become quite deep and philosophical, in our quest to put the world to right!!!