La Vie Française, no. 3

Life certainly gets more sociable and interesting in the middle months of the year; it is the time when many towns and villages have their ‘fêtes locales’. This usually involves some sort of event during the day, a meal in the evening and then some sort of music - the most frequent is one of the many local mobile discos.

Recently our village put on a ‘soirée grillade’ - just a meal with no other arrangements to spoil the evening. It was billed to start at 8:00 in the evening but we have learned from all the previous events that we have attended that nothing starts on time, or anywhere close to it. So we didn’t bother to go along to the Salle de Fête until 8:45 thinking that perhaps things would get moving around 9:00. A complete mistake, we stood around chatting and consuming aperitifs until finally at 10:00 moves were made to the tables and the meal began.

In truth not an awe-inspiring meal but it was accompanied by copious quantities of wine, which of course assisted in the business of communication and making new acquaintances amongst our French neigbours! Added to the aperitifs it meant that one of us was a bit, how shall we put it, tiddly/squiffy/ over-happy. And proceeded to go round inviting many of the village neighbours to come to our house to carry on the party as well as also being able to see the work we have done to improve/renovate the house. And of course there is a great deal of interest in seeing what we have done.

So from approximately 11:30 on a steady trickle of people made their way to our house and the fun got under way. Much alcohol was consumed, much hilarity as it took effect and much singing of traditional French, English and Scottish songs, most of it led by the Maire. It took an age to finally get everyone away and I fell into bed at close to 4:30 in the morning with no real recollection of about an hour of the night after 2:00, but I don’t think that I behaved badly as none of the neighbours has said anything untoward!!

Any way we’ve satisfied a great many people’s curiosity about the house at the same time as providing much enjoyment and furthering good relations. Roll on the next village event and a chance to do something similar all over again.

La Vie Française, no. 2

It’s been a while and many things have happened but I’ll pick out this one for your interest. We have an enclosed stove in our main sitting room - look at the second picture in the post for December 2009. It is wood-burning only and at the start we were able to use the copious quantities of old wood taken out of the house as the reconstruction work proceeded. I acquired a chain-saw and cut it up into usable pieces, not an easy process as the majority of this wood is very old, and therefore very hard, oak. But it burns hot and slow and so is ideal for the stove. But of course there is a limited supply of it and it became apparent in autumn that we might run out in the course of winter. So I bought a supply of mixed oak and beech from a local supplier in the village and that has been sufficient; indeed we do have some wood left over for next winter.

At the beginning of this year a note came round from the Mairie - parish council in equivalent British terms - inviting residents to express an interest in taking wood from the local “fôret communale”. I went to the Mairie and said that I would like to have ten cubic metres of wood. I was then telephoned and invited to a meeting one Saturday morning to discuss and decide the allocation. In due course an ‘interesting’ meeting took place in which all the bids for wood were read out to the assembled interested people and then a discussion ensued. Most of us had asked for amounts between 10 and 15 cubic metres, but two people (I think that they are related in some way) had asked for 25. This caused considerable irritation amounting almost to anger as the view was that they wanted that amount for commercial purposes rather than personal use. Remember this was all conducted in rapid and highly accented French straining my capacity to understand to the very limit. The end result after much wrangling was that everyone had their requests met except the two with ‘excessive’ demands who were told that they could have only 15.

And then off we went to local woods to be told where we could cut down the trees. As I am not as well equipped as all the locals who tend to have all the kit I was pointed in the direction of a particular part of the fôret where it would be easier for me to cut the trees and get the wood out to our house. I was also shown that the trees that could be cut down were marked in a particular way.

Knowing that the trees would need to be cut before the onset of Spring, apparently there is a wish not to disturb nesting wildlife, I immediately set to work to cut down trees. I do have some experience of tree-felling as I have had to remove some trees in various gardens over the years. But that is not quite the same as cutting trees down in a wood. The first attempt led to the tree falling against another tree and refusing to budge until I had cut several lengths from the bottom, in effect felling it many times over. Much hilarity for my on-looking companion.

However, I did get the hang of ensuring that trees fell as I wanted most of the time. Only once did a tree fall in completely the wrong direction and in so doing fell partly across a road. Fortunately no traffic was passing and I was able to cut away the offending braches and clear up before anything did pass by. As each tree was cut I also cut it into lengths which could be moved and put into our trailer and then taken to our field.

But this would have taken a very long time were it not for our neighbour kindly telling us that he would use his tractor and trailer to do the transporting. With all the wood back in our field the next step was to cut it to suitable lengths and split it, if necessary, to make it usable in the fire. Simple to say but what a task! Much chain-sawing and axe work to accomplish this plus it all needed to be stacked neatly in order to leave it to weather and be suitable for burning.

The pictures above show aspects of the process which I have to say would not really be worthwhile were it not for the fact that the one resource we do have in abundance is time. And at the end of it we have now 12 cubic metres of cut wood which cost approximately a seventh of what we would have to pay to acquire commercially, so perhaps it was worth doing. As for next year ……

La Vie Française, no 1

We thought that you might be interested in what happens here aside from all the building work that we’ve been undertaking. So this is the first in an occasional series of posts which will cover elements of what we do outside of improving our living conditions.

For the past six months Joanne has been assisting twice a week, on a voluntary basis, at a local refuge for stray and unwanted dogs. Apart from the enjoyment of working with the animals it also helps her to improve her French as the other volunteers are locals and speak very little, if any, English.

To help raise funds for the organisation, events are held drawing in the public. For example, about three months ago a ‘cowboy evening’ was organised and we were persuaded to attend. Apparently, I discovered after the event, cowboys, country music and the like are very popular in the area. Large numbers of people turned up in full cowboy regalia and much enjoyment was had by them doing line-dancing and American country/barn dancing – bizarre in deepest France.

Recently we were invited to what we thought in advance was to be a social ‘tea party’; an afternoon gathering of the volunteers with some refreshments. Wrong! It was, I judge, a committee meeting of those most involved with the work at the refuge. But it was like no other meeting of this type that I have ever been to. Yes, there were refreshments – plenty of cakes of one sort or another (we have learned that in this area sweet food is preferred on these types of occasion to savouries) and an endless supply of champagne. All to the good so far in terms of what we had expected. But there didn’t appear to be any formal ‘rules’ to the meeting – no obvious chairperson, no agenda, no secretary, no minutes. As a result anarchy seemed to be the order of the day. The lady who is the central figure in the organisation, we have no idea if she has a formal position or title, was unbelievably aggressive. As other volunteers tried to raise points she interrupted and would not allow them to make any points. When she felt in any way criticised she shouted people down. At one point it seemed to me that there might be a walk-out by a husband and wife pair because the wife was shouted at, the husband made serious threatening noises about what he might do. The accounts that were presented were so incomplete as to be little more than a joke and no one raised any questions about them. And of course the meeting was conducted in very rapid, heated French which got worse as copious amounts of champagne was consumed. Shouting, champagne and cake proved a lethal combination as the cake got sprayed around from various mouths in the heat of the moment leading me into avoiding action! And it all tested our comprehension to the limits and beyond.

Eventually we managed to find a gap in the arguments and shouting to make our excuses and leave, somewhat shell-shocked by what we had witnessed. And we did wonder whether the people who had been on the receiving end of the aggression might cease to give of their time and efforts as a result. Joanne has asked the person with whom she goes to the refuge whether the meetings were usually conducted in the manner which we had observed and apparently it was not an unusual occurrence.

So, our first experience of how the French can conduct the business of a voluntary organisation was something of an eye-opener. Not at all what I had expected in a country where every voluntary organisation has to register with the state and have a proper set of rules by which it is supposed to be run.