Landing in Normandy

The issue of the bees

2010-07-17T19:22:00.001+02:00

The concern at the loss of bees is becoming widely known. From press articles, and television coverage such as this there is a lot of interest. Unlike the 100 square kilometre monocultures of the USA, like for almonds, which require the transportation of bees all over the country for the flowering season, Normandy is mostly natural. There is not (yet) a disaster. But rears are growing, and explanations being sought.

This is partly because there is still an enormous number of cattle and other beasts which graze, and are fed on hay in winter, so that wild flowers are everywhere, and of course the apple and other fruit trees. In April, the apple tree over our terrace was in full flower, and a short spell of warmer weather meant we could have our lunch outside. The apple blossom was covered with bees, the noise of their buzzing constant. A bit like the World Cup vuvuzelas. As far as I could see the bees were mostly honey bees.

The bocage also - even though it is becoming less - is still a huge reservoir of trees, bushes and flowers. The local authorities in the country carry out 'fauchage' twice a year: a process of cutting the vegetation on the verges and the high bocage hedges. One man on a tractor with a sort of enormous beard trimmer attachment can do kilometres in a week. The result is that there is a continuing series of flowering plants: primroses, violets, orchids, cut down after going to seed, and then followed by foxgloves, scabious, knapweed, thistle etc. with ferns and grasses for seeds coming up in profusion. Recently, in many places they have delayed the first cut because the winter was so bad, and all the plants are late.

Bees, and all forms of wildlife thrive. No pesticides, no flailing to smash trees and shrubs, and respect for the cycle of the seasons.

Honey bees are not as common in general this year as the several varieties of bumble bees, but they usually appear in large numbers in late July and August. Apple trees are mostly laden with fruit, as are other fruit trees. All flowers are blooming and dying back very quickly, because they are very rapidly pollinated, which is a good sign in general, although indicative of a bad winter.

We have a path to out back door through a near jungle of herbs - mint, oregano, lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, tarragon, which will take over the path when they all flower in a couple of weeks. Apart from the wonderful scents when you walk along the path, brushing the plants, there are great clouds of bees and butterflies which rise up and settle back as you pass.

We are doing our best to help the bees, growing trees, bushes, plants with flowers throughout the summer, and for the solitary speciies placing bamboos and other open tubes around the garden for overwintering and spring nesting. No pesticides, herbicides, or paranoid weed free cultivation. We have hedges on all four sides of our garden (1700m2), with hazel, beech, oak, medlar, blackthorn, hawthorn and holly. We have two big patches of garden that are not mowed, just left to nature, and they are full of flowers at the moment. In winter, we can often see goldfinches hanging off the knapweed seed heads from our bedroom. We also have three fields, which are used for grazing by a neighbour, with a family of cattle there for two or three weeks, then moved elsewhere, to return in a couple of months when the grass has regrown.

Virtually a paradise, which will end if the bees go.

Another Fete

2010-07-17T19:14:00.000+02:00

We are well into the season of village fêtes, vide greniers and celebrations. See previous post for more information. Bastille Day, 14 July, sees festivals and events everywhere. We went to one, and as always, encountered a few pretty unexpected incidents which we would never see in the UK.

Usually, the fêtes include a communal meal, most often served in a canteen style - line up with a tray and pass along the servers to get a starter, main course, piece of cheese, and a dessert. You then find a place on any of the long trestle tables under very large marquees; it rains sometime in Normandy. There will be a 'bar' where you can get bottles of wine at three or four euros, mineral water, and of course cider. There are variations, some feature mussels and frites as the main course, some grilled meat, some start with a rough - in the sense of not smooth, not low quality - pâté, occasionally served in very large terrines on each table to help yourself.

The fête we went to was called a 'mechoui' which strictly speaking is a word for a whole roast sheep, but locally is often used for a feast which may or may not include lamb. Here it did. There was a small vide grenier which was literally stuff from attics, and a bouncy castle.

The village has a population of just over 600; there were 731 lunch tickets sold. When we arrived, there was a huge modern marquee set up. No guy ropes and tatty canvas, this was a light weight state of the art metal frame with canvas stretched over it. It has a proper wooden floor. There were two rows of tables, each table seating 20 people. This was the first time we have found proper plates and cutlery - usually it is all disposable stuff. Though at one you were supposed to take your own couvert (plates, cutlery etc) which we had not realised. Fortunately near enough to the home of one of our party to drive back and get enough for all of us from her house. Like all French people she had enough stuff to cater for twenty or thirty at a meal at home. Here there were glasses made of glass, and paper napkins of superior quality, and all the places were laid out before anyone got there. Top stuff all round.

And the food was served to the tables, starting with a rosé wine based aperitif. The first course was one of those sort of fish terrines on a bed of macedoine veg, and mayonnaise. Taken out of a refrigerated lorry at the last minute, and brought round to the tables. This was followed by huge platters of barbecued sausages, traditional herb and spicy merguez together, with really excellent frites. Next were grilled lamb chops, followed by slices of roast leg of lamb and more frites. The lamb was probably the best, most tender, lamb I can remember. We had earlier seen the meat being grilled behind the marquee. a dozen or so big square barbecues for the sausages, and two huge rotisseries for the lamb, each with I think eight spits, each of which had seven or eight whole lamb legs over fires of large logs. They were hand cranked, basted with home made basters made from long poles with a metal cup or bowl attached to the end, and a large tray under the meat to catch all the juices. The meat was also basted with a broom made of bunches of beech leaves tied to a pole.

After that, a little portion of camembert followed by an ice cream (industrial, but French catering quality). Not bad for 15€ each. There were 61 volunteers setting up, cooking, serving and washing up afterwards.

The after lunch had finished (about 4.30) entertainment was the donkey races. These donkeys are not the tiny things at English seaside resorts, or wavering under huge loads or very fat men in the Middle East, but Normandie donkeys, of which there are two races: the âne Cotentin, from the Cotentin peninsula (you probably guessed that) which is pale with a dark cross of St André on its back, and the âne Normande which is browner. Both are threatened species and you can - apparently - receive a subsidy for keeping them. These donkeys were ridden for four laps round a little oval hippodrome type circuit, with volunteers riding them. These jockeys were adults who had clearly enjoyed their lunch, and had taken some wine with it. The donkeys were like donkeys always are, reluctant to co-operate very much. The result was that half the riders or more fell off, and by the last lap the donkeys slowed down, sometimes turning round and going the wrong way. The fallen riders seemed not to get trampled, even when they fell near the beginning when the donkeys were trotting along at a reaonable pace. There were no helmets, no saddles or reins, no liability disclaimers to be signed, no elfin safety of any sort. No one was hurt, and everyone laughed.

A couple of other things were going on, including a raffle where everyone got a prize (otherwise it was gambling and required a licence), and something described as a lapinodrome. This was a low wooden circle with numbered holes cut in it. Inside the circle were some rabbits (lapins), and the public bought tickets with the same numbers. The winner was the one who held the ticket with the number of the hole through which the first rabbit emerged. Similar games in the UK. The difference here was that the winner kept the rabbit. The event continued until all the rabbits had been won. They were not taken home as pets. Many country people keep rabbits as a food supply. They know how to deal with a live rabbit.

The other similar thing was fishing for ducks. One sees this at many events, lots of little yellow toy ducks with loops attached being caught by very young children with sticks with little hooks. At this feast, the sticks had three inch rings on the end, and the ducks were live. What they call cannettes, young ducks. And, as you might now guess, if you got a ring over the neck of a duck, you won the duck. One boy of about ten announced that he had just got his third duck, and ran off with it to put it in his parents' car. There was no likelihood that the duck would do any damage. Or indeed, anything by then.

Holidays, coaches, peasants

2010-05-27T17:40:00.002+02:00

The older generation of - what they are happy to call themselves - peasants in France never had the chance, time, or reason to travel much. Many have never gone more than a few kilometres from their home village. We know quite a few people in our corner of La Manche who still take their annual holidays in caravans at the nearest seaside camp site - about 35 km from here, a little town we often visit just for lunch. Now there is a splendid health service, a lot of people have gone further afield for medical attention, to see specialists in the big towns, or have operations. Not travelling for fun and adventure, though.

It took a lot longer for the French economy to progress after the war than it did the British. This was particularly so in the rural, agricultural areas, such as Normandy. As late as the 1970s it was possible to see horse drawn ploughs and other implements occcasionally. Of course, the French standard of living is now well ahead of the UK in subjective terms, though UK, Germany and France are 19, 20 and 21 in the world by Gross Domestic Product per capita, adjusted for relative purchasing power, according to the International Monetary Fund 2009.

However, in the last 10-15 years, many people who previously had neither the money nor the inclination to go anywhere, have discovered it is not only possible, but fun. With reasonable pensions, improved life expectancy, and families who have moved away, to other regions of France, or even other countries, a lot of the older people have begun to do a little exploring. Not by themselves, admittedly, but none the less going on trips. This has been facilitated by travel companies, so that it is easy, safe, not too expensive, and reassuring. In general, the travel companies organise one day coach trips to a particular destination, either a specific town, or around the region. These are arranged locally, and often start from about 6.00am with the coach going around several villages picking up the pre-booked customers. And off they go, returning at about 10 in the evening.

Being French, the price includes all meals. The first stop is for breakfast in a cafe on the way. We used to travel overnight to Caen-Ouistreham or Cherbourg from Portsmouth, and arrive about 8.30 at Villedieu-les-Poêles where we would have breakfast in a café. Most times, there would be a sudden influx of 30-50 elderly people, arriving at the same time, and obviously expected. They would be served café-au-lait or hot chocolate, a croissant or two, and in ten minutes they would all be off. Back to the coach. Lunch is usually at an auberge in the country - there are quite a few that now rely on pre-booked coach parties to keep going - with three or four courses and wine. Dinner will be somewhere else, and something similar. The expectations are that there will be proper meals, with proper traditional French food, at proper meal times.

In between the meals, the coaches will visit whatever places of interst are the apparent object of the trip. We were in Rochefort-en-Terre, in Brittany, when three coaches suddenly tirned up, and hordes of elderly French country folk descended simultaneously, and divided into two groups - one to queue at the public toilets, the others to rush into the village to see everything and buy souvenirs. The noise was incredible. A hundred people all chattering at once in what had a minute or two before been a quiet, hot place. The sound was a sort of loud twittering, impossible to hear any words, because every one of the people was talking at the same time. The only time I have heard something similar was when a huge flock of starlings finished wheeling through the twilight sky like smoke and all settled into the same group of trees at the same moment. Within an hour, the coaches had left for the next site.

Most of these travellers are women of a certain age. Men in general, and farmers in particular, do not last as long as women when they retire. The coach trips allow groups of friends to go on a trip together, without having to worry about making complicated arrangements, or finding places to eat, or having to drive. And being used to organised lives, they have no problems in starting before dawn.

There are also more and more package coach tours to more exotic places, lasting a week or even more. These work in the same way, but go to the further regions of France, and even other countries, and have hotel stays included.. The wife of a friend of hours finally made her husband go on a holiday to Provence this way, with some other friends, and it was the first real holiday away they had ever had. They were both over 60. When they came back, Yvon and Yvonne had different views of the experience. She enjoyed every minute. He found it interesting in a way, but was shocked that there were no cows, and that the land was all rubbish dry, stony, no grass.

In fact this was their second long coach trip. When the euro was introduced, there was a period of a bout a year for people to change their francs into the new currency, which could only be done at banks, and who recorded the details of each exchange. This created an immense dilemma for farmers and other country people. Many of their transactions are cash based - buying and selling animals, fodder and so on, and the money nver goes near a bank.. They do not appear in any documentation, and of course do not get included in tax returns. That is one reason why France has a higher standard of living and more actbve economy than appears in the official statistics. The difficulty was of course that the state would want to know where they got all these francs from, and demand taxes. The tax demands would be calculated on the asumption that whatever cash was found now, it was only a fraction of what had not been declared in the past, and the tax demands would hurt.

The tiny republic of Andorra, between France and Spain, presented a solution. There were no border processes, and the banks there would exchange francs for euros with no questions asked. Very many rural French people suddenly discovered that they had always wanted to see the wonderful sites and people of Andorra, and there was a constant stream of coaches visiting there for one day holidays. I have no idea how news of this benefit was circulated, but inevitably the French government realised what was going on, and started making spot searches of coaches along the road to Andorra. Anyone found with more francs than a short stay needed, was faced with a tax demand, and a fine. The trips carried on for a while, but when one coach was stopped and all the luggage searched, and a number of suitcases opened to reveal bundles of francs which nobody on the coach claimed, the risks became too great.

But it introduced a lot of people to the idea of travel and visiting new places. One of our widow friends last summer went to Spain, the Costa del Sol no less, on a coach trip for a week. She went with three of four other people from the village, and they joined forces with some from another village. They had many interesting evenings planning the holiday, and discussing arrangements over dinner at each other's houses. The holidy itself started the evening before, when they all gathered at two of the houses, so they would all be collected together. The coach began its collection of passengers at 3.00 am, and then went all the way to Spain, arriving in time for a late dinner, stopping only for meals on the way. There was a toilet on board, of course. The coach apparently had two drivers who took it in turns to drive. A week in Spain in a decent enough hotel, organised excursions and two good, proper meals every day. It was perfect.

Slow worms, and other lizards

2010-05-16T17:22:00.001+02:00

Slow worms, anguis fragilis, are legless lizards, about nine inches/24cm long. I can only remember seeing one in the UK, where it seems to be getting rarer. Here in Normandy a couple of weeks ago I saw this slow worm in our garden, moving very casually through some grass. This is the fourth time I have seen one here, each time in a different corner of a half acre garden, so I think I can assume that there is a colony living here.

Looking at it clearly, it is easy to see that it is a lizard, not a snake. Its head is lizard shaped, and although it moves like a snake, it does so because any creature with no legs and a long body has to move that way. It flickers its tongue, but so do most lizards. Despite their name, they can move quite fast, and can disappear into a hole or under rocks pretty rapidly.

We usually find common lizards in the garden at some time during the year, but not very many. We are not only fairly far North, but also our area is quite high above sea level, so we do not have as many as one would find around the Baie de Mont St Michel locally, and certainly not the numbers of individuals and different speciies that are common further south. The other reptile that we have is the salamander, and there is more about that here.

I also saw a quite large lizard, about 8 inches/22cm on a path by the sea on Morbiham, Brittany, a few weeks ago, but is scampered off into the undergrowth. It emerged a few minutes later, but imposible to get near. This photo is an enlarged detail, and not very good, but the best i could do. I do know what species it is.

Birds in spring

2010-05-07T17:43:00.002+02:00

On a cold, but bright, afternoon in April, we were walking along the promenade at the beach at St Martin de Bréhal. There were very few other people about, and the wind blowing off the sea was fairly vicious. The tide was incoming, nearly high, but with a low coefficient, so a lot of sand was still exposed. In the distance, it looked as if there was a cloud of pale smoke drifting along the beach. As we got closer, it was clear that it was a large group of something running about on the sand. A bit like an enormous number of very large spiders. Closer still, and it resolved into about a hundred and fifty sanderlings chasing almost in unison along the beach.

Sanderlings on the beach at St Martin de Brehal, Manche

Normally these waders run along the shore, following each wave as it recedes, and then scampering back as the next one arrives. Because the wind was whipping up fairly large waves, and there was very little exposed sand in between one receding and the next arriving, the birds were mostly looking for sand hoppers and other things ahead of the tide. There is another photo of sanderlings on the beach at Jullouville, in a more usual behaviour pattern, below.

Granville, a couple of miles down the coast from St Martin is on a very distinct promontory, and is used as a navigation point by planes. It used to be that Concorde flew over the town, very high, at about 10.00 every night, accelerating past the sound barrier once it was well over the ocean. In theory. In practice, the sonic boom happened nearer to the land; we would hear it inland about 30k from the sea. Ordinary jet planes are usually well over 30,000 feet high, and not normally audible. Migrating birds also use it for navigation, and at Carolles, four or five miles further south, there is a thriving ornithological society which holds bird watching events spring and autumn to see the migrations. In fact, most of the west coast of the Cotentin, and especially the Baie de Mont St Michel, is a key annual migration site, as well as being full of seabirds, waders and others all through the year.

A couple of weeks after our walk at St Martin, we stopped off for a coffee in St Jean le Thomas, another of the coastal villages overlooking Mont St Michel, and as it was the first really hot day after the cold, we walked along the beach. The tide was way out, so to speak, with a high coefficient, and the edge of the sea was the other side of a couple of hundred yards of sand, and another three hundred of mud. At the water's edge we could see several hundred, maybe 1,000, largish birds. They were silhouetted against the sun, and imp;ossible to identify, but with the wind off the sea we could clearly hear that the larest were curlews, and some of the slightly smaller ones were whimbrels, confirmed when some of them flew inland over our heads, calling as they did so. We didn't identify any of the others. But a final surprise was that there were several shrikes hopping about on the large rocks dumped to protect the dunes. Had never seen the species before.

Sanderlings on the beach at Jullouville, Manche

River Vire walks

2010-04-19T13:07:00.004+02:00

After weeks of snow, and heavy rain, we are now left at easter with high winds and vicious showers. Nonetheless, the weather is good enough to restart some proper country walks. Like most of France, Normandy has a lot of well marked footpaths (randonnées), and maps and routes can be had, usually free from tourist offices, or newsagents (Maisons de la Presse). For example, there are many easy, interesting walks along the Vire River, from Pont Farcy in the south, to Carentan in the north.

Towpath

Towpath sign

The Vire is an appealing river, going though a long gorge north from the town of Vire, and running alongside the road for most of the way to St-Lo. For much of that part of its flow, it seems to me to be very much like the Wye in England. It even has an equivalent of the viewpoint at Symonds Yat, at les Roches de Ham. Just before St-Lo, at Candol, there is a very old bridge and weir, and well laid out walks along the towpath (chemin de halage) in both directions.

St Suzanne Village

For most of its length, the towpath has now been improved and surfaced, so that it is easy to walk and cycle, but also accessible without many problems for pushchairs and wheelchairs. It is also well marked with the signs shown below, information signs at all the points where you can join or leave, and regular distance indications - in km and minutes - between points.

There are obstacles and weirs along the length of the river, but it was even so used for water transport until replaced by rail and road. In a number of places the river meanders along, with rapids and weirs bypassed by old locks and short canal lengths, some just 25 metres or less. These locks (écluses) are mostly ruins, and in many cases the canal bit is silted up and overgrown. At Vire town there are waterfalls and rapids that effectively blocked the river traffic, and to the north it joins the Vire and Taute Canal. Interestingly, as many of these old lock locations are where the water flow is faster or over a weir, there are micro hydropower electricity generating stations - 11 between Pont Farcy and St-Lo alone. Each generates enough power to supply a few hundred houses. So not only has the river been turned into a valuable leisure amenity, but also a renewable energy resource creator.

We joined the river walk at Condé-sur-Vire; there are small car parks at most villages along the length of the walk. There is a base for canoe and kayak sports there (in summer only, of course). A week or so before, we had gone past the valley of the Sée at Tirepied, where the whole flood plain was under water, again. The Vire had also burst its banks then, with the water level up to three metres higher than usual. That meant that it covered the towpath, which is raised above the land, and burst into the fields the other side. There are permanent metal signs at each access point, which can be folded open to show that the path is closed because of flooding. Useful, because the flooding can be localised to where the river is narrower or the towpath lower. We walked a little bit along the towpath at Candol a few weeks ago, but most of it was under water and invisible. Now the waters have receded, and there were no problems; there were a lot of little rivulets still flowing into the river, though, and the ground was throughly waterlogged.

Spring must be arriving, because we saw four or five swallows skimming the river in between the showers, and apart from primroses and celandines everywhere, there were a couple of clumps of marsh marigold in flower. On previous walks along the river, we have seen otters, an adult near St-Lo, and a juvenile a bit further south. We also saw this deer (chevreuil) at Candol, during the hunting season, so it may have been away from its usual place.

On yer bike?

2010-03-30T16:52:00.010+02:00

The French of course take cycling very seriously. All through the year you will see cyclists in tight fitting club uniforms in bright colours, steaming along all the country roads, in ones and twos or sometimes a whole club of a couple of dozen identically costumed people, in a group, or spread out of several kilometres. Midweek, many of these cyclists are quite elderly men and women. While we no longer young English chaps never get much more exercise and excitement than discovering a new cardigan in Districenter or Gemo, our French equivalents are covering 100 km at high speed. For the fun of it. They may look wind battered and wiry, with faces like WH Auden in the sun, and wear hideously multicoloured nylon costumes and hats stolen from aliens, but my word they are healthy. Even sometimes into their eighties.

There are cycle races all through the year, big and small. The biggest of course is the Tour de France, and one of the second rank is the Tour de Normandie, which is happening right now at the end of March 2010. I don't read the sports pages in the papers anywhere, and haven't seen the local Ouest France for a a couple of weeks. I was thus utterly surpriased to find myself heading straight into the Tour de Normandie last Saturday. We were driving through the Forêt de St Sever-Calvados on a road we often take, when suddenly a group of motorcycle cops with blue lights and sirens came screaming along the road towards us, and waved us to stop, and pull off the road. Not easy because there was a ditch, and very little else. They were immediately followed by a dozen or so other motorcycles with two up and signs saying 'Officiel' on the front, and then thirty or forty vans and cars, all covered in big ads, and most with half a dozen bikes on the top. That was when we began to think that the Tour was also going through the forest...

A couple of minutes later, more blue lights and sirens, and a group of about 15 cyclists in their midst, and then yet more vans and cars with bikes on top. We thought this must have been the end, and began to move off. More officials whizzed up and told us to stop again. After five minutes we could hear a roaring noise, like a train, and over 100 cyclists screamed by at full speed, throwing empty drink bottles, food pouches and other stuff as they passed. They were so close together that it seemed that they could only be avoiding crashing by synchronising their pedalling. Five seconds and they were gone. Following them were more support cars, vans and bikes. And a group of people coming along picking up the rubbish the riders had thrown down. Two minutes later, it was all over, and we could drive on.

I had never actually seen a major cycle race up close, but the noise of the bikes, the speed at which they were going, and the closeness of the bunch were all quite extraordinary.

Cyclists having priority over motorists is not just something that applies to organised races, it is respected everywhere. Drivers will slow down, pull out to the left, and give way to cyclists as a matter of habit, whether the cyclist is a young racer training for the Tour, or an elderly lady coming back from the market, or a farmer who has already lost his driving licence wobbling home from the bar. Not like the UK, where cyclists are usually invisible, or if they are seen are perceived as two dimensional and need no space. Because cycling is respectable and respected, something like the Paris Velib system is very successful. Bike stands are everywhere, and the bikes are used by all sorts of people, from elegant lady lawyers with their briefs in the front basket, to elderly gentlemen with substantial bellies and award winning moustaches. Of course it also helps that Paris is much smaller than say London, and fairly flat, but the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, a cyclist himself, is planning a similar system. Whether the bikes will last more than a couple of days without being stolen, vandalised or destroyed is still unknown.

Workers menus

2010-03-29T13:04:00.003+02:00

When I first started coming to France often, in the early 1970s, finding so many good, cheap restaurants serving fresh, interesting food was a constant surprise. At that time, Britain was only just beginning to contemplate the idea of food as a pleasure, rather than a refuelling exercise. Elizabeth David's books had started a trend, but there was a long way to go. Apart from Chinese and Indian places, a few Italian restaurants and the Berni Inn steak houses, most towns had no restaurant at all, never mind one worth the name. There were the hotels catering for commercial travellers, and the places that catered for weddings etc, but the food was boring, overcooked, and unimaginative. A few pubs were moving on from the stale sandwiches and plastic pies, but then only into simple grills and fry ups. Having to move around the country for my work, I despaired of ever finding any reasonable place to eat with good food anywhere in the country. Even in London, there were not that many restaurants, other than in the very grand hotels like the Dorchester and the Ritz, way outside my income.

There was a feed back loop going on, of course. Because there was no British tradition of eating out regularly, there was no demand for restaurants. Because there were no restaurants, no one went out to eat. I remember at that time a German firm was looking at various places to set up a new, large factory, and Birmingham council was trying hard to attract them there, rather than somewhere in Italy or France. One of what the council saw as a strong attraction was the low wages that would have to be paid to get the right staff. The German management looked at the figures, and said 'But how can one of the workers afford to take his family out for dinner on Saturday night on those wages?' Birmingham said that no working people would do that, or want to, or expect to be able to. The Germans said that they did not want to be in the business of exploiting people, and that they wanted employees with more ambition and life, and set up their factory somewhere else. In the 70s, most British Francophiles knew about the Relais Routiers organisation. All the lorry drivers (routiers) used their guides to the best roadside restaurants catering for them, by having very large car/lorry parks, and providing very good lunches at reasonable prices. The idea that lorry drivers would expect to have a good quality, freshly prepared three or four course lunch every day was pretty extraordinary. That most of the meals cost very little in Brtisih terms, and usally included wine in the price, was a revelation. As was the fact that the drivers wanted to sit down at a table with others, and take two hours over their lunch. For us deprived Brits, particularly as for part of the 70s we were only allowed a very small amount of foreign currency each year (you collected it from a bank who recorded how much in your passport, and there were no credit cards), these relais were enough to justify a visit to France in themselves.

The Relais Routiers organisation is still going strong. The difference these days is that wine is not always included. The same tradition of good, fixed price, cheap meals of course is still important in France. Every where you go, there are bistros, cafés, auberges and restaurants with signs saying 'Menu Ouvrier' - workmens' menu - usually at around 8 to 12€ all in. Because of the catastrophic exchange rate, prices in France seem high to us, but are not in terms of French earnings. 8-12€ is in French terms really equivalent to about £5-6 - the same as a takeaway sandwich and coffee in London. But what you get is a choice of starter, such as a goat cheese salad, paté, hard boiled eggs with mayonnaise, or similar, or a buffet of all of them, followed by a choice of a steak, or pork chop, or beef stew or regional specialities, then two or three pieces of different cheese, then a dessert such as créme brulée, chocolate mousse or apple pie. Of course as much fresh bread as you want. In many places there are bottles of wine on the table, usually ordinaire, and you pay for (approximately) how much you drank: can be as much as 3€ for the whole bottle. Compare all this with a plateful of crap 'n' cholestorol for the same price in a greasy spoon truckstop in the UK.

Britain has improved beyond anything I could have contemplated thirty five years ago. There are many good, decent restaurants serving real food almost everywhere. Of course there are chains of rubbish places selling artifical pizzas, microwaved and boil in the bag ready meals, and other pretend food (tip: avoid places where you see a Brakes Bros or 3665 lorry making a delivery - they will be serving mass produced stuff in most cases). An aspect of this is that you can now eat as well in England as France, if you are careful, and at the same prices. That is a miracle.

Tips on learning French

2010-02-27T13:33:00.001+01:00

I am not a natural linguist, and it has taken me a long time to become reasonably confident in French. Along the way, I have found a few things that helped that might be worth passing on.

To begin, some sort of formal learning is pretty important especially at the very beginning.. It can give you concepts, grammatical insights, and the confidence of learning with others. Even if you can only manage the occasional hour of tuition at a further education college, it is worth the effort. If you live in London, the Alliance Francaise runs very good courses, and puts you into a very French ambience from the start. If not, there is always the Open University. I did one of their French diploma courses a few years ago, and it was very useful. Then you had to record middle of the night television programmes to help, but it is now all internet based.

Languages are about communication: to learn you need to communicate, and that really means speaking to others. Obviously, In France that is not too difficult, but may be more so in the UK, other than London. In France, make opportunities to talk to people as often as you can. As long as you are polite, and make an effort, just about everyone will help you out when you get stuck, and not laugh if you make mistakes. There is a piece on this blog about Getting on with the French, which might be useful. There was a documentary on French TV a few days ago (February 2010) about the French community in London. There are now somewhere between 300,000 and half a million French nationals living in London, which makes it the sixth largest French city by population. In my street in London, without about 58 houses (though many two or three flats now), there are four French families that I know by sight,enpought to say 'Bonjour', and probably others. In central and north London one can hear French being spoken every day.

In the 60s I read an article about the then famous cyclist, Tommy Simpson, who was based in France as that was the only place where professional cyclist could earn a living. He did not speak much French, but got on perfectly well with his cycling team mates, and the world in general, by using the word 'faire' (to do or make) as his only verb, followed by a usually relevant noun. So he would say 'je fais velo' - I will ride my bike' - or 'je fais dejeuner' - I had lunch, or 'je fais gagner ' - I am winning. Everyone understood him, and he had a very successful career, until he died in a race from the effects of performace enhancing drugs, probably the first famous sports person to do so. My point is not that you should avoid performance drugs, though of course you should, but that you can talk effectively and happily in France in French, however little you know, as long as you try.

If you are not in France, it might prove useful to find a way of establishing contact with French people learning English - or indeed another language - via the internet, and set up a regular online conversation. With the internet the way it is, there is no problem in being able to talk to and see someone anywhere in the world. Just do a bit of research around the concept of 'chat'. Asking a teenager you know to help explain it is best if you are over 30 - all teenagers seem to be in perpetual conversation with all the others. There are a number of sites where you can find people who want to help and be helped learning English and French. Try Total France, ExPat Blog, educational sites, and some social sites (beware wierd people and places, though). There are a lot ofpeople who are happy to help you with your French, in return for your help with their English.

Reading French newspapers really does help. The national papers such as le Monde are available in most British towns, and if not local libraries might often be able to get them. They do provide exposure to a lot of words you won't come across in textbooks, especially colloquial everday speech terms, and technical stuff, not to mention the sort of thing you will find in the advertisments. The virtue of a newspaper is that you can take your time, you can stop and start when you like, and look up things you don't understand. It will also demonstrate, if you are undergoing formal education in French, that the seemingly dozens of tenses that are part of French verbs, but not English, are rarely used, and you can do without them.

It is widely believed that television in France is generally dreadful. Not really true, though their rubbish is even worse than British rubbish. They do have more arts programmes, political discussions, and other serious stuff, and those programmes are often up to three hours long. Here is a really useful tip: watch documentaries, especially about the arts, on the French/German channel Arte. Everyone speaks very clearly, and steadily, unlike drama and popular shows where there is shouting, gabbling and slang that you will never grasp. As the programmes are usually shown in both countries, they are made with the need to be translated either by dubbing or subtitling, in mind. That means that speech is more measured, and more careful, and for someone learning the language whether French or German, this helps enormously. It might also be that arts programmes tend to feature intellectuals, academics, and the higher bourgeoisie, all of who usually think before they speak, assume that others will be interested in what they have to say and want to think about it before replying. And of course, a lot of it is being read from scripts, carefully.

For example, last night I watched a programme called 'Un Soir àu Musée' (an evening at the museum), which was about a new exhibition of JMW Turner paintings in Paris. Apart from the fact that the pictures are stunning - one can see that Turner put up the scaffolding on which the Impressionists hung their work - the programme was hugely interesting, with some extraordinary filming in Venice to back up the paintings. The commentary, and all the interviews, were clear, obviously correct French, and easy to understand. This programme was actually on France5, but is typical.

Another tip is that many digital channels (and all French television will be digital only soon- March 2010 in lower Normandy) often have the option to have subtitles for the hearing impaired members of the audience. This can be really helpful to learners of French, because you can see the words being spoken written down simultaneously. Of course, it cannot be word for word, but the gist will be there, and it is surprising how much this helps learn more of the language. A big problem for learners of any new language is elision, the running of words together, so it is very hard to tell where one word ends and the next starts. Seeing it as well as hearing it makes that much easier. It also helps with pronunciation, and interpretation of what you hear. A good illustration of this is the phrase 'la vie en rose', which means 'life in the pink' or the good life. When spoken, it can be hard to tell the difference between that and 'la viande rose' - pink meat - or 'l'avion rose' - the pink aeroplane. Context helps, but confusion means thinking about what was said, and then missing the next bit of speech.

If you are not in France, many programmes on Arte are available to watch on the internet at Arte.fr for a week after broadcast, for free, as are some programmes on the other French channels, so you can watch them from other countries.

For immediate translation of words and phrases, I have put Babel Fish on my always visible bookmarks, so I can very quickly copy paste a fragment of text on the internet to get the meaning. The software is free - there is a link on this blog. Not perfect, but as good as any other translation by machine.

One last thing that I found positive: learn some key common phrases that can both give you time to think if you add them into a sentence, and suggest to the person you are speaking to that you are a bit more fluent than you really are. That second point, strangely, means that people are more relaxed, and less likely to expect that they won't understand you, so conversation becomes easier. The sort of phrase I have in mind is 'c'est à dire' - that is to say - which gives you the chance to find the words you need without looking if you are really struggling, 'comme ci, comme ça' - a bit/more or less/maybe/average, and is useful to cover the situation where you just cannot think of anything specific to say, and 'ça fait du bien' - that will do very well/ is fine. But above all: practice speaking, listening and communicating. No substitute, and it is more enjoyable that you might think.

On the trot

2010-02-26T16:11:00.002+01:00

If you ask a British person what the words 'trot', 'trots' or 'trotter', you will usually get one of these replies: Montezuma's Revenge, Delhi Belly or some other acute digestive disaster, a member of the Militant Tendancy, Socialist Workers Party or some other doomed 1980s far left group, or a cockney chancer played by David Jason in a long running tv comedy programme. In France, it refers to a very popular form of horse racing.

Le Trot consists of horses pulling flimsy two wheeled vehicles along race tracks. The wierd bit is that the horses cannot gallop, but must trot, in a prancing, slightly absurd fashion. They race round tracks, quite fast, but not as fast as normal horse racing, and of course the chariots take up more room, so there is quite a lot of jostling and confusion. I think it is a very silly process. I believe in North America they call the little carriages 'sulkies' for some reason. I know of three or four bars called 'le Trot' or 'le Trotteur', and Normandy being a very horsy sort of place, there are often horse boxes being towed around, with the little carriages attached to the back, their shafts sticking up into the air.

Out of season, and sometimes on summer evenings, you might find trotteurs exercising on some of the beaches. Apparently, apart from having long flat stretches to practice on, the sea water is good for the horses, so they sometimes go through the shallow water.

A good example is the beach at Jullouville, where at low tides there is a very long, wide and sandy beach. Here are some photographs of several trotteurs on a January afternoon.

The naming of inhabitants

2010-02-09T19:18:00.001+01:00

The other day I half noticed the word 'canisiais' in the headline to a small article in the Ouest France paper, and had no idea what it meant. Reading the piece showed me that it referred to a person from Canisy, a small village near Saint Lo. The French have names for the inhabitants of just about every town and village, but I have not been able to discover any logic in how they come about.

In Britain, we tend to talk about a Worcester woman, or a man from Southampton, or a person from Porlock. I can only think of Londoners as a similar form. Glaswegian, Liverpudlian and Mancunian are surely not really used by the inhabitants as routine. There are a couple of usages derived from Roman names, such as Exonian for Exeter, or Salopian for Shropshire, but they are not much used. Stratfordian and Oxfordian are not related to the inhabitants, but to those who believe the works of Shakespeare were written by the chap from Stratford, who signed his name most commonly as 'Shagspeer' - if six examples can be called common - or who believe they were written by the then Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

Most of the French terms seem to be of two types. The most frequent is to add -ais to the end of the name, such as Granvillais, Caennais and so on, and the second to add -ois, as in Niçois or Virois. Then there is Parisien, but it then gets very, very confusing. Here are a few examples: Vannes: Vannetais; Avranches: Avranchinais, Saint Lo: Saint Lois.

It can get very strange: the inhabitants of Manvieu-le-Bocage are apparently les Mévéens, the people in Manche les Manchots (though this is being replaced by Manchois). The people from Villedieu-les-Poêles -God's Town of the Saucepans - are called most often les sourdins, the deaf ones, from the centuries of hammering copper, but also les Théopolitains - theos from the Greek for god, politi for town. Those from Lisieux are les Lexoviennes from the Roman name of the town.

My favourite is that for Pont l'Evéque - Bridge of the Bishop, where the splendid cheese is made. There is a Bishopsbridge Road in London, near Paddington Station, but it is utterly anonymous. The people of Pont l'Evéque are known as les Pontepiscopiens or, sometimes, les Episcopontains! That is just strange, but it does imply some knowledge of Latin.

Jazz in Granville

2010-01-24T18:11:00.001+01:00

A recent jazz concert in Granville was another illustration of the way the arts are flourishing in Normandy. The musicians were the Indigo Trio, from Chicago: Nicola Mitchell on flute and voice, Hamilton Bankhead on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. The venue was the tiny 64 seat Théatre de Presqu'Ile in Granville. I have been to this theatre before, and this time it was also completely full. In fact there was not just standing room only, but the eight or nine children in the audience were moved onto the sides of the stage to make more room. Brilliant performance by a terrific group, who were clearly not used to playing such a small place, nor to the different ways of a provincial French audience.

After a 45 minute starting piece, and a couple of shorter numbers, they took a bow, and then looked at each other in bemusement, because the audience applauded enthusiastically, but nothing else. French audiences are very respectful towards the artists, and assume that the artist decides what he or she will do, and that decision is the right one on artistic grounds. Not up to the audience to question that, so there was no expectation that there would be encores. However, after a minute or so, an English voice in the audience (not me) called out 'Could we have another please?'. The musicians were greatly relieved, and started another 45 minutes.

The group's other concerts in their tour were in much bigger places, like the theatres at Caen and Rouen, but I think the intimacy of the Presqu'Ile made for a better concert than many in the bigger places. The performers were closer to the audience, and the audience could see exactly how the musicians played. This was for me particularly interesting watching the drummer, who had a number of personal techniques. It was fascinating watching some of the more intricate pattern making, and the use of a variety of sticks and brushes. By coincidence, I saw him again on television a week ago, playing with the 77 year old jazz musician Arche Shepp. This was on a programme on the wonderul France-German channel Arte. Shepp was interviewed, and spoke in English and fluent French at random, sometimes switching in mid sentence. The CD with that music is available here, and is a fascinating mix of jazz and - as unlikely as it might seem - rap music.

The Théatre de la Presq'Isle has now been renamed the Théatre de l'Haut Ville, and has become associated with the othert theatre in Granville, the modern Archipel, which has 443 places. Compare Granville, population 14,000, with a similar size of British town, and see if you can think of one with even one functioning theatre, never mind two.

Lac de la Dathee

2010-01-17T18:56:00.001+01:00

In the seventies, the need for an improved water supply for the town of Vire led to the damming of a valley fed by a little river, La Dathée. This is now a lake, of about 45 hectares, and has been turned into a leisure resource as well as a water reservoir. There is also a large nature and bird reserve.

There has been a facility for hiring canoes/kayaks. pedalos and so on for some years. There is also a solid, if not formally paved, walk (randonnée) of 6.25 km all the way round. There are a couple of steep slopes, but the path is good for pushchairs and wheelchairs, as well as joggers. As this is France, at the start of the walk by the carpark, there is a little sign describing the creation of the path. It cost 49000 euros, funded more or less equally, by the Basse-Normandie Region, La Manche Department, and Vire town. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, public spending is identified and defined in France.

France is a bit behind the UK generally, in providing wheelchair access, though it is improving. At this lake there is a special car park for wheelchair users, leading on to a purpose built doc for angling from a wheelchair. There are anchorage points, appropriate level barriers, and of course a flat access lane. There is also a picnic area (this is France), but with a couple of specially designed picnic tables: a bench on one side only, and slightly higher than usual, to allow wheeelchair users to share a tables with other epople. Not seen that before. This was funded by the same parts of the state, plus a grant from the Credit Agricole bank.

The last time I went to the lake was after the weeks of heavy rain, in early December. The dam (barrage) itself was fairly spectacular, as in the picture. The river flowing away from the dam was over its banks. The lake itself has burstits banks all round. The Dathée and another smaller river were overflowing as they entered the lake, additional drainage ditches had been cut all round to prevent the paths being flooded.

2009/2010 - such a winter...

2010-01-07T19:14:00.003+01:00

December 2009 and the first week of January 2010 have been unremittingly awful, and therefore highly unusual. Not as dramatic and destructive as the Great Tempest of Boxing Day 1999, but long and continuously depressing in different ways. It started with ten days of virtually constant rain, when the daily rainfall was more than the average for the month. Rivers overflowed their banks, and everywhere was sodden. Then the weather went dry, and often sunny, but day after day below zero. The first two photographs show the valley of the river Sée near Tirepied, between Avranches and Villedieu-les-Poeles. This is a flat valley where normally the river gently meanders along, but in times of heavy winter rain can flood. This year it flooded almost completely, and before the flood waters had all gone they froze. Before there was any chance of a thaw, the snow fell. That was on 17 December. and the picture with cattle was the view from our bedroom window the next morning. And the snow is still here, being renewed every four or five days, just as it looks like the last is going from the fields.

We were marooned in our house for four days. On the second day, a farmer used a tractor with a shovel to try and clear a way out, but once we get out of our little rural lane, the road has a sharp incline, and I could not get all the way to the top - 50 metres - even though my foot was to the floor in first or second gears, the car stopped moving. Downhill ended in a T-junction at the bottom of the valley, with sharp climbs in both directions. The last photo is the walk to the village after three days of snow.

New Year's day, and the snow fell continuously, another foot or so. It was gardually reducing until yesterday, 6th January, when another foot fell. It is snowing again as I type, and of course we cannot get the car out and are marooned again. Fortunately, there is a small epicerie (grocery) we can walk to in the village, and a depot de pain as well, though the two mornings a week butcher hasn't been able to get there.

I know there has been a lot of snow in the last few days in the UK, and it seems the bad weather is stretching all the way to the south of France. Must be the climate change - global warming leading to a shift which in the short term is very cold, before overheating. It is also interesting that we in western Europe have had unreasonably good weather, compared with North America, for centuries and longer. Toronto in Canada is on the same latitude as Madrid, and they have snow for six months every year. Snow is really pretty for the first day, but ther magic wears off. I found that in Quebec a few years ago, when the temperature was minus 25 without counting the wind chill, and there was no free running water anywhere. The Saint Lawrence river at Quebec city is about a kilometere wide, and was entirely frozen except for a single little channel kept open by an icebreaker chugging up and down 24/24. We have not got it that bad, yet, but ten years after La Tempete, another bad winter. Is a pattern developing?

Where the money comes from - and goes

2010-01-06T17:32:00.001+01:00

There seems to me to be a much greater sense of civic pride in France than in the UK. This applies particularly to the local arena, where spending money on civic resources and appearances is expected and welcomed. In Britain, any council expenditure on non-essentials such as the theatre and dance, art works, street decorations and the like tends to get criticised by a large section of the local population, and the tabloid press nationally, as a 'waste of taxpayers' money', 'councillors's ego trips', or most damning of all 'elitist'.

This goes to all public expenditure, see for example a big piece in the Sunday Times on 3rd January 2010 headed 'BBC wastes millions' about art works being commissioned around the BBC redevelopment. Of course, the Sunday Times is owned by Mr Murdoch, who also owns Sky TV, which of course needs to damage the BBC for commercial reasons, but there is nonetheless a willingness of people to accept this sort of idea.

In France, local mayors, departments and regions are all prepared to invest in the quality and enjoyment of life, whether it is subsidising a theatre, financing cultural events, or justinstalling and maintaining wonderful flower beds everywhere. All part of maintaining and enhancing la patrimoine.

Here are a couple of examples. In Vire, a town with a population of about 14,000 people, there is a new theatre, seating 618, with a team of about 18 people, including a writer in residence, and which puts on demanding and interesting productions. It also has extensive educational programme, and takes productions to quite small villages throughout Normandy. It is the Theatre de la Preau, and has a budget of 1.6million euros.

In Villedieu-les-Poeles (population under 5000) there is a museum of traditional furniture, small museums of lace making and copper working, a whole range of free public events in the streets.

There are theatres at St Lo, Coutances, and Granville. Granville also has its Museum of Modern Art. Avranches has the Scriptorium - a museum of all the old documents from Mont St Michel - which as a series of exhibitions throughout the year: the most recent was of photographs of literary figures by Robert Doisneau. Every village has its salle des fetes, and a comite des fetes to devise and bring about events.

What is also noticeable is that all of these resources, events and activities receive their public funding from a variety of sources, and these are publicised properly. Theatre programmes, museum exhibitions and every event include details of where the money came from. For example, the Theatre de la Preau had a wonderful drama/dance production called On Somme (about sleep) which was fiannced by about a dozen organisations and other subsidised theatres, and a play about Madame de Sade co-produced with 10 other companies. The programme does not play it safe, with mixed media, dramas about racism, jazz, a piece based on the writings of Studs Terkel, and almost all are completely sold out. Many of the productions are actively ptomoted to young people and schools and colleges, with big discounts for parties and organised groups of students.

I cannot think of anywhere in the UK where small towns have such resources. Not Swansea, Bedford, Leicester for example or similar large towns have as many artistic and cultural facilities.

Remembrance day(s)

2009-11-17T16:26:00.000+01:00

As it happens, this was the first year that I was in Normandy on the 11 November. In the UK, although the main Armistice ceremony, with the Queen and government at the Cenotaph in London, takes place on the preceding Sunday, many other ceremonies happen on the 11th itself. Of course there is the two minute silence at eleven minutes past the eleventh hour, which seems to be more respected recently than a few years ago.

It seemed a good idea to go to one of the local commemorations in Normandy. That proved very difficult. Last year, I was driving through Anglesey on the day, and most of the villages I passed through were getting ready for a small ceremony by their war memorials, and eventually, we stopped and joined one of them at eleven o'oclock.

But here, I could find little information in advance about what was planned, mainly perhaps because I could not get the Manche Libre local weekly paper, for various reasons, the week before. I have no idea why, but it is extremely difficult to find out much information about any events in the future, whether arts and entertainment, celebrations, or activities, locally. Presumably because everyone knows what happens, and news is passed by word of mouth in what are very sociable communities, there is no need. Certainly, when we do get to hear of an event in time to attend, it is usually a sell out.

Anyway, I found out about a ceremeony on the preceding Sunday, in Avranches, but that was all. On the 11th, we went to the nearest town, but absolutely nothing happened. No ceremony, no silence. Nothing. There were official wreaths and flowers on the War memorial, so something had happened at some time; the previous Sunday, it turns out. None of the villages we passed througn showed any signs of an event either. Very odd.

On Monday 16 I bought - belatedly, as it is published on Thursdays - the current Manche Libre. There I read about ceremonies everywhere, though virtually all of them were on the Sunday preceding or the Sunday after the 11th, so we missed them all.

Gratifying to see that many things were happening, and that here in France where the effects of the two world wars were most pronounced, they do still remember those who died.

Even more important was that many of the ceremonies involved those few people who experienced the last war, as combatants, and civilians. Many villages especially commemorated those soldiers who had died locally, whether British, American, or French. For example, at Muneville-sur-Mer, a special ceremony at the graves of three English airman killed in July 1944 when their plane crashed to the ground.

Another special commemoration was of eight Moroccan soldiers, members of General Leclerc's Free French army, killed in August 1944 in the battle of the Percee d'Avranches, at the cemetary in Montjoie-Saint-Martin. It was not until 1999 that the soldiers were identified as from Morocco, and islamic gravestones erected. Outrageously, the headstones were defaced by some racist morons in October, an act condemned by Pesident Sarkosy and everyone else. I am sure that was a factor in organising a prominent ceremony, (link is video in French) local politicians, the Moroccan consul, and indeed, the sons of General Leclerc.

I hope next year to be better informed in advance.

Becoming French?

2009-11-11T13:49:00.000+01:00

In the first of the pieces on this blog, I talked about how to get on with the French. Basically, the French are extremely formal and polite. Every encounter with every person begins with 'Bon jour' and ends with 'Au revoir' or similar. Failure to observe this politeness is seem as extremely rude and insulting, and this leads to French people being pretty frosty in return.

A couple of recent incidents make me think I am becoming French myself. The first was a visit to a small restaurant in a nearby village, with a couple of French friends. As we walked in, there were only two groups of customers already there. We all said 'Bon jour messieurs/dames'. The first group just stared at us blankly for a few seconds. So did the second. They then started talking amongst themselves, and of course both groups were British. Initially, I was annoyed on behalf of our friends, but then I realised that I was also offended.

The second incident was at the recycling bins in the village. As I was emptying three weeks of stuff into the relevant bins, someone else drove up, and got out of his car. I said 'Bon jour' as to anyone else, but he just looked straight through me. I was really annoyed, and thought how ill mannered that was. When he drove away I saw a UK registration number on his car.

At one time I would have just thought that this was typically thoughtless behaviour on the part of unaware Brits, but now it does actually offend me. I know that many British people seem unable to acknowledge others unless they already know them, but it seems to be getting worse. Walking around the reservoirs at Tring in Hertfordshire in the summer, there were a few other people passing by in the other direction. Some people said 'Good afternoon' but many others ignored me. For what it's worth, if there were two or more in a group, speaking to each other, who did not reply to a greeting, the accents were usually what one might tactfully call estuary, whereas those who spoke did so in a more home counties tone.

Human beings are a social species, and our survival and success has come about by being able to cooperate, and to find ways of adjusting our behaviour to those around us. Lately, in the UK, that seems to be disappearing, to be replaced by selfishness, individualism and every man for himself. Very sad, and perhaps a case of evolution going into reverse.

In France in general, respect for others, cooperation and living in a society seems to be surviving, at least away from the bainlieus (suburbs) of the bigger cities.

Importantly, I think, it is still there with the younger generation. For example, the other day I was waiting at a red traffic light behind a boy on one of the low powered scooters made to look like real motorbikes that you can ride from the age of 14. He saw a couple of friends, both boys, parked his scooter, took off the alien space helmet they all have to wear, and greeted his friends. They were all about 15, but they all shook hands. Another example was a young teenage girl out with her family saw a group of schoolfriends on the other side of the road, crossed over, and kissed all of them twice. In both cases there were two or three minutes of chat, and off they went again.

This formal greeting, involving physical contact, seems extremely important to the French. When I meet anyone local, whether for the first time or not, we all have to shake hands. If the other person has been working and has filthy hands, he might offer just a little finger to shake, or in extreme cases just his elbow. There is a book by an English business man in Paris, which talks about the etiquette of shaking hands and kissing all his colleagues at work every morning.

With women, after the first meeting, it is usually two kisses on the cheek. In Normandy it gets a bit more complicated. I think the rules are: acquaintances two kisses, friends and family three, close friends, and immediate family, four. At Fetes de St Sylvestre - New Year's Eve - dinner dances, everyone kisses everyone else four times, or shakes hands, at midnight. At larger events this can take quite some time. But it all seems to mean that people are more respectful of each other, and reduces the possibility of antagonism. And that cannot be bad.

All hallows, chrysanthemums and tombs

2009-10-27T15:31:00.009+01:00

This last week of October has seen here in Normandy an extraordinary profusion of pots of flowers, almost all chrysanthemums, in all the markets, supermarkets and other shops. It seems that everywhere you go is barricaded by masses of huge colourful pom poms. I have no idea how the producers manage to grow theses flowers so perfectly round, and so entirely covered in blossoms, and it must involve a fairly large industry.

This is all part of the preparation for the catholic festival of Toussaints, or All Saints, which is on the 1st November - and has been since the ninth century. It is one of the main religious observations.

The flowers are for dressing the tombs of deceased relatives. Toussaints, or All Hallows (hallows is the old English for saints), is the day of the dead, the time to remember those who have died. On the day, all the cemeteries are crowded with people coming and going, placing these enormous flowers, or other arrangements, on the graves of their relatives.

Unlike the UK, almost all French people are buried rather than cremated, and have marble memorials, not just headstones, erected over them. It seems that every town, and many villages, have their what used to be called in England memorial masons. There are few such enterprises left in Britain, but they seem to thrive in France. Our part of Normandy is rich in granite, so there are even more firms than usual, cutting and polishing granite tombs, headstones and other memorials. In our village over the last fifty years all of the retail activity has dwindled, so that now there remains a small grocers plus everything else, a butcher two mornings a week, a depot de pain (not even our own boulanger any more). The one thriving business is the funeral director, which has its own granite tomb making arm.

It would be harder to have the same sort of festival in the UK, not only because the catholic influence ended 600 years ago, but because, simply, there are no tombs to visit and leave flowers.

For some reason, chrysanthemums, particularly white ones, are associated with the dead, not a major component of most bouquets of decorative flowers as in Britain; if you are invited to dinner at a French home, do not take chrysanthemums as a gift.

The night before All Saints day was of course 'All Hallows evening' or hallowe'en for short. Whilst there are many who dispute the non christian origin of a celebration at that time of year, there is some evidence of an Irish festival, and certainly most early societies celebrated the end of the harvests, and the preparation for winter around the equinox. That detailed written evidence does not survive is of course because the christian churches suppressed and/or absorbed all the old festivities.

What we can see is that there are remnants of common primitive practices. People dressing up in various ways, the presence of or driving out of spirits, the use of lights and candles, rituals not used at other times, are all pretty standard. As is the use of severed heads in one form or another. Real heads, freshly cut off, are I believe no longer that common, but the use of substitutes such as hollowed turnips or pumpkins seems to be increasing.

Halloween used to be a minor regional activity in the UK. In Somerset in the 1940s and 50s it was never mentioned (we had wassailing, much more important, and effective). It was more of an event in the North of England – probably the Norse connection – and Scotland, the Celtic/Gaelic history. Those groups seem to have taken it to North America, where it was expanded and commercialised out all sense.

Twenty years ago, there was no mention of it here in Normandy, but the growing influence of the supermarkets, and their desire to sell more and more of more and more to the public has resulted in halloween becoming a big marketing event. Sadly. The same with Christmas, which was a minor celebration, with a big family meal on Christmas Eve, and not much else. Some churches and civic buildings such as mairies might have been outlined with a string of white bulbs, but now every town tries to outdo its neighbours with the ostentation and in my view vulgarity of its municipal Christmas lights.

Autumn mists, mellow fruitfullness, and road works.

2009-10-19T17:32:00.001+02:00

Now the holiday season is well over, there is a huge number of maintenance road works all over France: in addition to the existing longer duration road building projects, everywhere is subject to resurfacing, widening for cycle lanes, and similar short works. These seem to be carried out quicker, more efficiently and with less disruption than similar jobs in the

Yesterday, in a 35km drive, I passed through five different circulation alterné (one way) stretches. The basic resurfacing process operates in the same way at each. Firstly, there are warnings and speed restriction signs long before the works. At the start of the action, there is a man with a stop/go board, and usually a walkie-talkie to communicate with the other end of the works if there is a bend or other obstruction. 50m behind him is one of those big road plane machines, which moves very slowly forwards, scraping off the top 15cm or so of the old surface, which it conveys into the back of an attached lorry. As soon as the lorry is full, the plane stops, the lorry unhooks itself and drives off, to be replaced immediately by an empty lorry already waiting. About one minute of stoppage.

Behind this assembly is a tanker full of hot liquid tar, which sprays a thin layer of the tar on the newly scraped road. Next is a tipper lorry full of gravel, attached to a machine full of tar, which moves forward at the same speed as the plane. The lorry slowly raises its load, which drops into the machine, which mixes it with the tar and lays a 15cm even spread. When the lorry is empty, another is waiting to be hooked up and start delivering its load. Behind that are two large or three medium rollers, which roll backwards and forward compressing the new mixture into a hard surface.

The men with the stop/go boards are advancing another few metres each time they reverse the signs, so that there is minimum disruption of the traffic. And because they communicate, they can reverse their boards according to the volume of traffic in each direction, and as soon as one direction has passed, they can start the opposite lot going, rather than inflexible traffic lights. As the whole works moves along continuously, the single lane traffic stretch is always short.

Each team seems to be able to resurface about a kilometre every day, in both lanes.

In the

, the same work takes days, with diversions, long contra flows managed by traffic lights, and days and days when nothing happens at all. If they use road planes, they always stop and wait for a lorry to be summoned from somewhere, rather than having one waiting. They seem to run out of tar and gravel, the rollers are off on another job somewhere. When one lane is finished, there can be a week or two before work starts on the other.

I think part of the problem is that the

local authorities have no concept of negotiation, or how to manage contractors. They do not understand that time has a cost and a value, nor do they really consider the needs of the public. I can say this because I have seen them in action, both as a management consultant working for both sides in different deals, and as a resident. I have seen the inadequacy of their contracts, their failure to demand deadlines and penalty clauses, and in short, they are eaten alive by the professional negotiators from the contractors.

On occasions when I have discussed this with them, one of their arguments is that if they are too demanding none of the firms will bid for the work, to which one can only despair. These firms have to keep working, and the public sector represents a huge part of their business, if not all for some of them. They are bluffing. And if all of them refuse to bid, or submit silly bids, then they must be operating a cartel, which is unlawful. All a

council has to do is phone Rol Normandie or one of the other French engineering firms, and get them to do the work. As we have seen with electricity and gas provided in London by Electricité de France, and rubbish collection, street cleaning and much else carried out by Véolia, the robber companies in the

cannot compete on price or quality.

authorities are utterly in the hands of the contractors, across the board. I once saw McDonalds take a cleared site, erect one of their dreadful food shops and open for business, in three weeks. At the same time, the council contracted to build a similar size set of basic offices beside a school. Six months later it still didn’t have a roof.

France

, contractors seem to be more honest, the public sector more competent, more determined to get value for money, and actively supervise and manage the projects. Part of this might be because funding comes from several sources in most cases.

You will see signs at the start of most works showing that the project was financed by any combination of the European Union, the state, the region(s), the department(s), the town(s). Taxpayers see where their money is going (the signs often show the amounts from each source), and how they are benefiting from larger sources. In general, the French citizen knows what happens to his or her taxes, and what they get for them, and for that reason do not have the ludicrous uproar about tax and spending that permeates British politics.

However, as an example of something weirdly French, I once saw a very bizarre method of managing the road works in the south. Driving from Nîmes to

Arles

, in August, in the heat, there was a traffic holdup. As we crept forward we eventually came to the cause of the delay: line painting. This was being carried out as follows.

On either side of the road was workman, joined by a string tied to the left foot of the right hand man, and the right foot of the left man. There was a piece of cloth tied exactly in the middle of the string. The two me simultaneously took four steps forward and stopped. Behind them came another man with a machine like a slightly more sophisticated line marker on sports grounds. The machine stopped at the central piece of rag, the men walked forward another four paces, and the machine put down a metre dash of white paint. It then moved on to the string, and so on.

Every four of five dashes, the string was allowed to touch the ground, and some cars allowed to pass. Clearly easier and quicker than measuring, but just a bit, well, quaint.

The fast birds have gone..

2009-10-14T14:49:00.004+02:00

Although I like watching birds, and have all the usual guides, I can't identify with the twitchers and list compilers. The pleasure is just in the observation. I have been reading a new book, called Birdscapes by Jeremy Mynott, which tries to explain birdwatching in all its forms. It is, in fact, a fascinating and, to use an old fashioned word, learned work with references to everything from John Cage's 4'33” to Beaudelaire, Greta Garbo, Hilda Quick and Kevin Zimmer; it has added a lot to my knowledge and understanding of wide areas beyond birds.

Anyway, the house martins that have been twittering and twisting around the sky here for the last few weeks in increasing numbers, have now disappeared back to Africa. This is later than usual, and is probably because of a prolonged warm spell. Although they are amusing, agile little things, their mud nests under the eaves of houses do end up surrounded by large amounts of caca, dripping down the walls and in mounds on the ground.

In some of the ancient bastide towns of the Dordogne, they have nested under the roofs of the medieval market arcades. On ordinary days, they happily fly in and out without a problem, but on market days when the arcades are full of stalls, smoke and smells, and the cafes have tables full of people, they get rather twitchy, and desperately avoid flying directly to their nests. Instead, they fly around – at high speed – or perch in odd corners, before dashing to the nests. Their desire to hide the locations of the nests is defeated not only by the obvious crap around them, but by the squeaking cries of their young.

The swallows went early in September. One day we were at a vide grenier in a small village. Most of the houses were eighteenth and nineteenth century, but a couple were modern pavillons, and it was on these that about 200 swallows were gathering. Too many for the roof ridge, they were landing on the individual tiles, hanging on for a few moments before starting to slide down the roof, when they would take off and fly about for a minute or two, before trying again.

They were all continuously chirping, and every so often about half of them would take off at the same moment, whizz around a bit, and land again. Then without any apparent signal, the entire group took off, flew twice all the way round the adjacent field, and then headed off towards the south. Within twenty seconds they were invisible, and there was no more sound of cheeping and chirping.

The swifts were the last to arrive, and the first to go. In London, where I live near Hampstead Heath, the arrival of the swifts in May is the sign that summer could now begin. Some years they are late, and there are never many of them, just a dozen or so. But the first sightings, often high in the sky, accompanied by their high pitched screaming and high speed diving, is somehow very reassuring. Over two or three weeks as they pair up they perform some major aerobatics, especially when two start high in the sky and loop in opposite directions down to nearly ground level, at what must be an approach speed of well over a hundred miles an hour, and banking slightly at the last second to pass within inches of each other, screaming all the while.

By the second week of August the young are flying too, and although the groups seem to split up during the day, as dusk begins they all seem to gather and fly screaming around the sky for half an hour, just for the fun of it. Or so it seems. Occasionally, on hot days, parties will fly at maximum velocity along busy roads, at just above head height, again screaming all the time. The suddenly, around mid August, they have all gone. That, like the flowering of the rose bay willow herb, is the mark that the best of summer is probably over.

The martins are attractively black and white, and fly fairly fast around their nest areas; the swallows have that splendid forked tail, and zoom around, often just above the ground, but for me the most appealing of the three are the swifts. They may be an unexciting colour, but the scimitar shape of their wings against the sky, the incredible speed of their flight, their noisy social groupings, and the shortness of their stay all make them special.

D-Day and onwards: Dragoon in the South

2009-09-17T13:01:00.002+02:00

The 15^th August was the 65th anniversary of the allied landing in the south of France – Operation Dragoon. This has not received much attention, primarily because, like all the Normandy beach landings except Omaha, it was a fairly straightforward operation, and unlike at Omaha Beach, the landings went according to plan and on time. By the time it took place, most German defences had moved north, so progress was fairly rapid through France.

The D-Day landings were an international effort with only a minority of Americans, but in the south this was a mostly American landing, though with extensive support from the RAF, British Paratroopers and the Royal Navy, and of course French commandos and other troops, especially the Free French 1st Army, under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.

Churchill had opposed the plan, because he believed it would have an impact on the main invasion efforts, but eventually agreed to it. Wikipedia has an accurate overview of the events here.

Although overall, there was not excessive opposition, there were still casualties. My father was one of those landing, as a Warrant Officer in the RAF, organising transport for the air operations. As he ran up the beach at St Maxime – just along from another fishing village called St Tropez – his friend running beside him was hit by an enemy bullet, and killed outright. A couple of feet to the side and I would not be here to write about it.

The full personal story of his war from 1939 until demob in 1946, is at www.LandinginNormandy.com/omw, although he doesn’t mention that – rather significant - incident! In fact, there are many other incidents that he doesn’t mention, mainly because the memoirs were written, as a therapeutic exercise, over a few days. There are however, many interesting and unexpected details.

There is a new book about the south landings, which was reviewed in a local paper. Unfortunately, I left the paper in a café, and now I cannot find any reference to the book anywhere……

Butterflies

2009-09-01T18:05:00.003+02:00

The first time we saw the house in Normandy that we went on to buy was in July 1990. After looking at the building, including the huge crack in the gable end from the ridge to the ground, we were taken through the fields that came with it. As we walked through the long grass we were surrounded by butterflies of many species. That was probably one of the underlying reasons we decided this was the right house to buy – it felt like a successful environment.

Over the years, we have seen many variations in the frequency and variety of butterfly species, but this year has had two successes and one failure. The failure has been the normally common small tortoiseshell (Nymphalis urticae), which this year has been very rare, none until late August, and then only one or two at a time. It appears that this species has been having a hard time generally, with bad weather affecting caterpillars and pupae.

A success has been the painted lady (vanessa cardui), which has been around in profusion for most of the summer: at one time there were over a hundred in a 10sq metre patch of long grass and knapweed in our garden. This is a migratory species, and appears in the north, as in Normandy and southern England, depending on the weather and other conditions further south.

This is usually rare in England, but there has also been a large influx this summer there too. The only time I have seen more than the odd one or two in England was about 15 or more years ago, at Thomas Hardy’s house in Dorset. The garden was full of them, and after a little shower, dozens of them landed on my blue plastic anorak (it fitted in a pocket, not something I would otherwise wear, honest)).

The other success was the clouded yellow (Colias crocea), which I have rarely seen anywhere. This year there were several in the garden at any one time throughout June until the end of August. In flight and at a distance they could be mistaken for brimstones, but are less lemon coloured than the male brimstone, but more yellow than the female. Up close, they have black spots on the outer wings, and a dark border around the inner wings, although they keep their wings closed when landed.

Most of the other commoner species have been around – gatekeeper, meadow brown, wall brown, marbled white, fritillary, red admiral, peacock and the common whites, but some, like the speckled wood, have been less frequent than usual. I have as usual seen the odd small blue, flickering through the undergrowth like a flake of the sky, and a couple of white admirals.

On balance, then, not a bad year. We have planted the usual butterfly attracting plants in the garden, and kept an area of about 15 sqm uncut, so that the meadow grasses and plants have grown quite tall. This area is now attracting goldfinches as well as butterflies.

The main paths from the lane are bordered by lavender, mint, lemon balm, oregano, marjoram and wild geranium. Throughout the summer walking along the narrow paths sends up hordes of bees, butterflies, moths – including the wonderful humming bird hawk moth – and the constant buzzing carries across the garden.

It was the Rev Sydney Smith (1771-1845) who once said that heaven is ‘eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets’, but for me a glass of cold Sancerre, a plate of charcuterie, and late summer sun, accompanied by the buzzing and flashing colours of hundreds of benevolent insects is as good as it gets.

Even the tramps have some class

2009-08-17T18:12:00.004+02:00

That the French in general have just a little more style than the rest of us is usually pretty obvious. It extends throughout the social classes. Unlike British street drinkers, who usually gather in small bickering groups, sipping constantly on cans of Special Brew, this chap – in Paris last week – carried around a proper glass with which to drink his wine. Not sure about the mobile phone though.

This weekend, at yet another vide grenier, we were preceded by a svelte and soignée older woman as we queued for our grilled saucisse et frites. She demanded a plate and cutlery, rather than kitchen roll and a plastic box, and of course she got a paper plate and plastic knife and fork. She sat beside us at a communal table and chatted away, asking us where we lived, what we thought of the event and so on. We asked her if she lived nearby herself, and she replied that she did, at ‘le chateau’. This is a genuine, 1760s, large and imposing chateau on the edge of the village, and of course not open to the public.

So, happy to mingle with the people, share the pretty simple food available, but she still maintained the minimum standards for civilised life, albeit with disposable stuff.

Back to school....

2009-08-15T12:28:00.002+02:00

By the second week of August, when many French people are just getting into the feel of their holidays, something changes. Every supermarket, clothes shop, and many others start hanging out banners and placards and advertising around ‘La Rentrée’ - back to school. Check this web site for an office supplies company, to get a feel.

The reason is that unlike in Britain, where all the essential materials like notebooks and pens are provided by the school, in France the child must provide his or her own.

And not just the simple things: folders, rulers, binders, plastic covers – an enormous range of things. And not just any old stationery. Every item is specified and specific – this brand, or detailed option, that colour, that thickness, this type of lines on the paper.

The stationery aisles in the supermarkets are hugely expanded for three or four weeks, and are full of anxious parents, distraught small children, and sophisticated older kids trying to beat the system by selecting personalised things. All of them have A4 printed leaflets from their schools specifying what and how many of everything they must have.

Seems dreadfully unfair to talk so much about back to school so early in the holiday break, and put so much pressure on children and their families. All part of a belief in education and involvement, I suppose. Better, anyway, than couldn’t care les kids always unprepared for their lessons, or indeed school in any way.

D-Day and on: 65 year commemorations

2009-08-15T11:26:00.001+02:00

With the commemoration of the 65th Anniversary of D-Day itself now past, there have been many other memorials, gatherings and other marks of respect and recollection around the progress of the Allied invasion in summer 1944. Here are a few of them, picked at random to illustrate the range and variety of events, and the reasons they were held.

Canadian cemetery at Cinthaux

This is one of a number of cemeteries for those Canadian soldiers who died during both World Wars. Cinthaux is for those who died during the Caen, Falaise, Trun and Chambois phase of the invasion. There are 2980 Canadians buried there.

The former French health minister Simone Veil attended a memorial service there on August 9th; a survivor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where she lost part of her family, she is the Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

Liberation of Alencon 12 August

This was the first town to be liberated by the Free French Army, under General Leclerc. The French had been part of the D-Day forces, along with Canadians and Poles, and with the British made up the greater part of the invasion forces. The fact of the French liberating part of their own country makes Alencon a very important commemoration for them.

Bailey Bridge at Pont Farcy

There were over 1500 Bailey Bridges in Normandy in 1944, and the last one still in existence is at Pont Farcy, over the River Vire. There bridges were easily assembled , in effect like IKEA furniture, and replaced all the essential bridges destroyed by one side or the other. There has been a campaign to preserve and commemorate the bridge, and details can be found here:

http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/baileybridge/baileybridgeappeal.html

Murdered family

One of the more moving ceremonies was that remembering the Lebailleux family, who lived in St Planchers, a village near Granville. At the end of July 1944 the area was still occupied by German forces. On the night of 30 July, German soldiers raided the house and found a transmitter hidden there. They took away all four members of the family in the house: parents Louis and Ludivine, and children Louis and Simone. The next day all four were found shot dead.

Coutances – liberated but lost

The town of Coutances had 8,000 people living in it. It suffered an enormous amount of bombing on 6 June, and subsequent days. Between bombings, almost all the population (over 250 were already dead) retreated into the countryside. When eventually they returned, about 70% of the town was rubble. Page 3 of this pdf file has pictures from the time. This year there were a range of services, parades, and other memorial activities. As with many Norman towns, liberation came at a high price.

Chateau reunion

A couple of years ago a couple called Simon and Kate Howard bought a chateau at Langotiere, near St Lo. In the archives they found a photograph from 1944, showing a number of schoolchildren standing 9on the steps of the chateau. They were from nearby schools, escaping the bombardment of St Lo. An article in the local newspaper found about 19 of them still around, and this month 10 of them gathered on the same steps.

Dancing in the streets

2009-08-01T19:14:00.003+02:00

treet

France in general receives more foreign tourists than any other country. Throughout the summer in particular, there are events, activities and attractions organised specifically for visitors. However, summer is also a time for all the people to want to spend time outside, and to make use of the warmer days and longer, lighter evenings. Many of the events (animations) are aimed also - or sometimes exclusively – at the locals. Tourists are obviously welcome too.

Some of the recent entertainments in Normandy have included a week of street performances in Vire (sadly, mostly destroyed in 1944, so not much else to go there for), a series of street events in Coutances, regular weekly free concerts in Villedieu-les-Poeles and St Martin de Brehal, and more formal concerts in the abbeys of Lessay, St Sever Calvados and La Lucerne d'Outremer.

In Villedieu, as an example, there is a programme of Tuesday evening events in the main square, ranging from folk dancing, through rock music, to accordion. The rock and pop was a local semi-pro band, four kids and their uncle on drums. They travel with their own fan club, mostly their grannies and mums. And why not. Next week, there are folk dancers from North Ossettia (look it up, its one of the old USSR countries near Ukraine), and a promise of English Morris dancers later.

These town concerts start of with an audience, on seats in some places, or in Villedieu sitting on the steps of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall), but by the second number a few people start to dance. For the non rock evenings, it is almost always the older people who get up and dance in the street first. It's strange, but every time there is dancing, old people hobble and creak their way to the dance floor, and then take off as if they are on wheels, gliding around without touching the ground. And they all know how to dance properly: it used to be part of the school curriculum, but I don't know if it still is). And they keep it up for hours. And they laugh a lot.

Younger people join in, and the little kids start to run about, sometimes dancing formally with their mothers or fathers, sometimes with each other, more often just running and running. Rarely, but definitely sometimes, even I join in.

These events are advertised in small posters in shop windows, or tied to street furniture, and mentioned in the local papers, but you have to look around to find them. Apart from the events themselves, it is fascinating to see the real French people at play. Not just those whose living involves tourism, but the farmers, the men who work at the abbatoir or the local factory, the wives who make the most of an evening out, the old folk who only come to the market once a week. They all have fun, and even if the accordion is not exactly what you would chose to listen to, you can have fun too.

There will be fireworks

2009-07-31T13:51:00.001+02:00

The French do like their feux d'artifice – fireworks. Almost every village fête and foire ends the day with a grand firework display, and they are usually entirely free. Even the smallest display is pretty spectacular.

It used to be that the displays were set off by members of the comité des fêtes. This meant that the fireworks were arranged fairly haphazardly on the day, and then set off by a couple of blokes wandering around with cigarettes in their lips, which they used to light the blue touch papers. While there may have been some basic concepts behind the actual sequences of the display, they were often not much in evidence. The end was usually signified by one of the men waving a torch in the direction of the audience, rather than it being obvious from the final explosions of light and smoke.

Not unreasonably, there were some concerns about public safety, and the French equivalent of the UK Elfin Safety department issued guidance, as they say. Now the displays are professionally organised, by companies such as France Artifice, and much better. The ignition process is electric, which means greater control of timing and sequences, and thus the development of themes, and a much better sense of a flow of different fireworks, and a grand and obvious climax.

The presence of electricity on the site means that they displays can be accompanied by music. At its best, the fireworks and the music are integrated; and it is not always Handel. At its worst, as at a recent display I went to, the fireworks were set off to random, dreadful, right wing American country and western recordings. I am sure they were the personal choice of the organiser, who probably didn't understand the words, but for rational English speakers the music and lyrics were excruciating.

The other downside is that quite often the local maire uses the occasion to make a speech, or even worse the chairman of the comité des fêtes seizes his moment to congratulate himself. Neither type ever seems to have any microphone technique, so they usually shout into the mike and render themselves unintelligible because of amplification distortion, or they almost swallow the mike and everything is lost in the sound of their breathing.

Very often, the fireworks displays are preceded by une retraite aux flambeaux – a parade of children carrying flaming torches. There are two significant problems with this. Firstly, it is very difficult to organise a group of small children, and virtually impossible if they are accompanied by their parents, who always want their child at the front, or with a different torch, or with a specific friend, or whatever. This means that it takes half an hour longer to start the parade than planned, during which time some of the children start to cry, others lose their torches, or their interest.

The other problem is that usually the torches are Chinese paper lanterns with candles, often suspended from small branches cut from trees. Here we have two new problems. The children tend to swing the branches around, or get tired and let them droop. This results in the paper catching fire. This in turn often leads to the leaves on the branches also catching on fire. The children then start to panic, their parents wade in to put out the fires, and the entire parade descends into chaos.

This adds to the delays and explains why the grand spectacle usually starts an hour late. There are other causes of late starts. At one, at Christmas in the town square, the street lights were between the audience and the fireworks, which would have ruined everything. Unfortunately, the man with the key to the part of the mairie which controlled the street lights was on holiday. It took an hour to find a way in, and turn off the lights. At another, the delay was because the repas – the dinner in the marquees - was late starting and finishing, and the volunteers who organised the dinner had to finish clearing up the area for the subsequent bal populaire – public dance – and they were entitled to see the fireworks; the several hundred other people waited around in the dark until they were ready.

But the displays really are good.

Despotism moderated by riot

2009-07-23T20:59:00.003+02:00

In the UK, we elect a government, or to be precise a few of us who happen to live in the handful of constituencies that are not one-party fiefdoms, choose the party of government. The vast majority of members of Parliament are voted for not because of who they are or what they can do, but because they have been picked by the relevant party. In effect, most MPs are selected by the handful of party activists and then elected by a majority who would have voted for an ambulant green slime if it had the right party label.

The first past the post system results in hugely disproportionate results, where the great majority of votes are worthless. Perhaps the most appalling example is the 2005 election where two out of three people voted for parties other than the awful Blair and his NuLabour puppies, but he still won a large overall majority of parliamentary seats, and formed the government. The will of the people, that is the 75% who did not vote for him, was frustrated. Yet Blair's manifesto for the 1997 election promised reform and proportional representation. Not the worst of his lies and broken promises.

One NuLanour person has said that the elections are now really decided by a few thousand people in a few constituencies – and they know their names....

In the UK, MPs pass laws at the government's instruction, effectively. If the UK government proposes a new Act of Parliament it will almost without exception become law. This is because most MPs are now creatures of the Whips (the party officials in charge of discipline and control), and whatever objections they may raise to address the concerns of the people who elected them – and in very rare circumstances their own consciences - when it comes to voting they do as they are told. The term whips, incidentally is long standing and comes from fox hunting: the whips were the 'hunt servants' responsible for controlling the pack of hounds.

New laws that give this wretched government more powers, whether to increase taxes or restrict liberties, are usually applied at once. Laws that are intended to deal with issues of public benefit, such as drink driving and carrying knives, are assumed to be effective without any real enforcement. Using mobile phones while driving, for example, and other motoring offences are considered a success if about 80% of the population observe them, so there is no effort to enforce the law and prosecute those who ignore them. Most people grumble about laws they don't like, but do nothing.

France is different. New laws are enforced, sometimes with excessive zeal. But if the public, or an aggrieved sector of it, object, they take to the streets, and protest in various ways until the law is changed. Here in my part of Normandy, there are two developments that are attracting forceful attention at the moment. The first is the price of milk, which is controlled by a mix of state and commercial factors, and which is now believed by the farmers to be below the cost of production. This dispute involves a wider area than Normandy, and there have been a number of manifestations (demonstrations), some of which have been useless, such as ostentatiously pouring milk down the drain, and others quite imaginative, like the huge sculptures made from shopping trolleys they have used to construct blockades of the big supermarkets. Their next plan is to give the milk away: the public benefit, and the losers are the big dairy product companies and supermarkets. So if you see fairly rough hewn signs talking about 'Greve et don du lait', they are advertising a strike and giving away of milk.

The other issue is the creation of a very high tension power line (THT – Tres Haute Tension) from the nuclear power complex near Cherbourg down through the Cotentin peninsula to Maine. Some of those who are directly in or very near its path are furious. The agency responsible for the line are I think doing their best to involve and inform everyone. The sign in the photo above is a list of dates and villages where the detailed plans will be displayed in the Mairie, with people from the project in attendance to answer questions and explain issues. I went to one in a nearby village, and as a project manager (though not construction) I believe they are making a pretty decent fist of involving people, and planning around concerns. The line itself is going to run on the sides of hills rather than the top ridges, to reduce visual impact, and the route wobbles around to avoid villages and as many individual homes as possible. If the need for the increased power is accepted, and there may be long term arguments that it will not be needed, then the powers that control it are not doing badly.

This who object are only just getting started. Slogans, such as the one above, are appearing all over the place, signs are being knocked down, and action groups being formed, for example Un collectif d'associations locales mayennaises : "MAYENNE SURVOLTEE" s'est créé pour s'opposer à la ligne Très Haute Tension (THT) et au Réacteur Européen ... . Who knows how far some of them will go? In the last few years we have seen the local butter and cheese factory blockaded by tractors two or three times, parades of lorries blasting their klaxons and even a huge mountain of vegetables outside a larger town Mairie. There is no possibility of the THT not being built, and it is such a long term project that it will be impossible to keep up the impetus. Unless there is a huge majority against it, with massive protests, the opposition will slowly wither.

Essentially, government in France is despotism moderated by riot. The president and his ministers essentially make laws, their police and other agencies enforce them, until the public take to the streets and force the laws to be changed. The history of France since the Revolution is one of almost constant uprising, upheaval and protest.

A couple of years ago, we had a problem when a neighbour inherited a house and promptly turned the fields around it into a motocross track. The first day of practice, with three 500cc unsilenced motorbikes roaring a few yards past the front door on one neighbour, the noise drowning out a chainsaw, and echoing around the village, was enough. A few of us went to the gendarmes (you have to go to them rather than the maire for things like this), and it was stopped – for good. But before that known, I was talking to a friend from the other side of the village, a widow of almost sevety, about it, and she was furious. Now that she knew the source she said that 'il faut manifester' we must demonstrate. And many of the village would join in.

Are French kids happier than British?

2009-07-12T22:09:00.005+02:00

The other night I went to a bal populaire in a small Normandy town. A free event, in the local salle des fetes, with a three piece band, organised by the local comite des fetes as part of the summer activities. There was no bar, and not even the possibility of buying soft drinks.

There were I think about 150- 200 people there, including a couple of dozen children under ten. The kids spent the entire evening running around, across the dance floor, around the seats at the sides. If they bumped into someone dancing, or were knocked over, they just got up and kept on running. Nobody minded. When I left at 11.00, they were still running, and still laughing. They had been laughing all evening. I did not hear a single child cry, or whine, or have a tantrum all evening. They had no sweets, no fizzy drinks, no snacks, and never demanded any, or complained about anything. Their parents were there, but left them alone to play.

I have been at other fetes, dances, dinners and sports events, and it has always been like this. The children are happy, active, and, well, children.

At restaurants, the kids often discuss what they will eat with their parents, and evaluate the different dishes and their preferences, before making their choices, At school, even the under 10 group have a three or four course lunch every day, with sometimes choices of two or three dishes for each course.

Increasingly over the last few years, young British children seem to me to be becoming more unhappy, angry, needy and greedy. They seem to have a wealth of material stuff like computer games, TVs in their rooms, mobile phones and I-Pods, fancy trainers and brand name clothes, and all the other trivial things to distract them, but seem so miserable. They cannot go for more than a few minutes without a fizzy drink or a snack, and are constantly demanding something else or whining that they are bored.

If you go to the cinema, they have huge buckets of salty popcorn and enormous paper cups of fizzy caffeine and sugar. Even apparently leftish parents are part of this: a Guardian commentator complained that the cost of popcorn and coca cola in cinemas was so high it made it an expensive visit with just one child. Seemed not to occur to her that it is weird that her child could not go an hour and a half without unhealthy artificial snacks and drinks. In restaurants they have no idea of how to behave, or awareness of other people, screaming, throwing food and running around, and their ridiculous parents just indulge them and become seriously aggressive if you say anything.

Many of their parents hover over them all the time, and seem terrified that some huge disaster will happen if they lose sight of them for a second. They exercise no control or influence over appalling behaviour, but intervene to stop their children doing anything fun and childish. They won't let them play in the grass because they will get dirty, or their clothes will be stained, or there might be insects, climbing anything is too dangerous, running involves a risk of falling over, and every adult male is a proven child molester and every adult woman is a probable kidnapper, so they can't move more than a few feet from their parents.

There are middle class parents with children called things like Persephone and Hector who manage every second of their children's lives, who have become intimidated by everything, have no initiative or energy, and have never made a decision themselves, or those with kids called Demi-Jordan or Tyson (or is that just the pit bull dog?) or some other invented and hyphenated name, who alternate between yelling at them or stuffing crisps and chocolate into them. Either way, it is hard to find English children behaving normally, such as having fun or playing.

Is this an over-simplification? Maybe in some ways, but every time I go to England I am more appalled by the sad state of the children.

A National Trust survey this week finds that 'eight out of 10 (British) youngsters feel they spend too much of their time indoors' which suggests that the children are aware of some parts of their lives which are wrong. But the same survey also found that 'about 87% of (British) parents wished their children spent more time outside, but one in four would not allow them to because of safety concerns'. Seems that the parents are clearly part of the problem.

Fetes, foires and food

2009-06-26T16:54:00.002+02:00

The summer fêtes are starting. The comités des fêtes in most communes arrange some sort of annual summer event, ranging from small fairs and a few stalls, to quite significant undertakings. Most of them this being France, include either lunch or dinner in the open or under marquees (sous chapiteau). Many also finish with free firework (feux d'artifice) displays in the evening, and free dances (bals publiques) in the village hall (salles des fêtes), with live music. Many events also include specialist entertainments, and many have the same type of entertainer each year.

These fêtes or foires are usually advertised by leaflets in the windows of local shops, especially boulangeries and bouchers, presumably because everyone goes to them regularly. There are often series of A4 posters on sticks around the villages of the commune, though you have to drive fairly slowly to read them.

Eating at fêtes is an interesting experience. Communal tables under huge marquees, first come first served benches to sit on, and as wide a cross section of French country people as you could wish to see. You usually have to reserve in advance, but many will still have places on the day. The food will not be haute cuisine, but good basic bouffe. There will be a starter, often country pates or terrines, followed by a main course of something like moules frites – mussels and chips – or entrecote steak, followed by cheese, and then dessert. In Normandy the cheese is almost always a wedge of camembert.

Typically, everyone queues and gets a canteen style tray with the food (all the courses) put on it, and then finds a place to sit and eat it. Wine is usually available at about 3 euros the bottle (five for the better stuff), or cider, or mineral water.

Things that always amaze me are how they manage to prepare freshly cooked hot food for several hundred people all at once, and how the peaches or other soft fruit are always ripe, soft and delicious. In the UK supermarkets and greengrocers seem to believe that all soft fruits such as apricots, peaches and nectarines should always be as hard as granny smith apples. If I go against my own experience and buy what looks like a nice ripe peach in Tesco or Sainsbury, it is as hard as the outside of a melon, and stauys that way for five days, after which it turns into rotten liquids and mould in about ten minutes, without warning.

The last time I ordered a starter of mussels in a London restaurant, I got six of the little fellows. Six. And they were all overcooked and had the texture of a tractor tyre. Yet in these little villages huge great steaming cauldrons of mussels are produced one after the other, perfectly cooked: tender and juicy.

Last year I went behind the scenes at one foire, to see how they did it. There was a huge refrigerated lorry, full of sacks of mussels, with the back doors open, and someone inside handing down another sack every three or four minutes. Lined up were a dozen portable high powered gas burners, with the huge cauldrons on top, and each with a cook managing it. Into a cauldron went several big handfuls of chopped onions, a big scoop of chopped parsley, a prodigious quantity of white wine, and as soon as it was all boiling away, in went the mussels to nearly fill it. Three minutes shaking and stirring, then a bucketful of creme fraiche. A strong woman then came and took the cauldron into the marquee, where it was served up to the waiting queue. As soon as it was empty, it was replaced by another. This went on for a couple of hours.

The secret of cooking shellfish like mussels is speed. And of course freshness of the shellfish to start with. In this case, they mussels were harvested from a mussel farm at Coudeville-sur-mer, kept in sea water overnight, then picked over by hand, beards removed by a machine, and put in sacks in the lorry.

The other surprising thing is that the people doing all the work for the meals were all the locals – peasant farmers ladling out food beside the bank manager, and the lady who runs a till at the nearest supermarket by the doctor. Egalité, fraternité, liberté, still means something.

Salamanders and toads

2009-06-24T19:25:00.001+02:00

One of the creatures we used to see quite often – sometimes alive, often as roadkill – was the fire salamander. This is a form of plump lizard, with a short thick tail, and is very slow moving. It is black, with yellow (broken) stripes down its length. Black and yellow usually serve as a warning that the creature concerned is either dangerous, unpalatable to eat, or both, and this is so with the salamander, which has venom glands all along its body.

Over the years we saw fewer and fewer, and none at all for the last several years. However, this year when digging around the base of a hedge, I inadvertently came across the one shown in the photo above. It does not appear that black, because it is still covered with earth. The salamander is mostly nocturnal, and spends the days underground, usually in a hole previously occupied by a mouse or other rodent. They are harmless to people (unless you ate one, which I don't recommend and have never seen a French recipe for doing so), but not harmless to invertebrates such as snails and worms: see this video of a salamander eating a worm.

They are supposed to be still quite common throughout Europe, but I have never seen one in England. Nor have I ever seen a slow worm in the UK, although they are supposed to be common. I have seen two in our Normandy garden in the last year, which is very encouraging.

We also used to have a fair number of toads. In fact, our elderly neighbour used to laugh at me for going into the garden with a torch in the evening looking for them. One regular visitor was about six inches/14 cm, and we called him Bertie, because he looked like the young King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. The first time we met Bertie was at dusk one August, as we were finishing dinner and the last of a bottle of wine outside the front door. He appeared on the far side of the lawn and marched purposefully, and with dignity – or as much as is possible for a fat warty creature – towards the door, and into the house. I had to remove him to the far end of the garden, but a couple of evenings later he returned, and again went into the house.

Haven't seen him for a while, and there have been very few other toads recently, or frogs, even though I built a pond. Three frogs appeared for a while, but there were no tadpoles. It seems the amphibians are much reduced, by virtue of habitat, climate and weather changes, and I believe some virus.

Birds in the house

2009-06-17T16:05:00.000+02:00

Apparently, having a bird come into the house is a sign of good luck. We have had this happen three times, and all we have received is bird poop. Still, perhaps that avoided something worse, like a wild boar in the kitchen, or a hang glider on the roof.

The first bird came in, very unexpectedly, three or four years ago. My wife, Averil, was alone here while I was away in London. It was a hot summer evening, and she opened the bedroom window wide, and also the tilting Velux window in the roof above the bed. She had just got into bed when the Velux window suddenly swung over , and a large tawny owl landed on the bed beside her. She looked at the owl, somewhat surprised. The owl look at her, equally surprised. Then they both shrieked and waved their arms – or wings. The owl flew out through the other window, only just fitting through the opening. Just as well, they have pretty monstrous talons and beaks. The lesson, I suppose, is that the tilting mechanism on Velux windows is not stiff enough to bear the weight of a large owl, though I am hard pressed to think of many circumstances in which that knowledge would be useful.

The second bird was much smaller. One of the prettier little migrant birds that arrive each spring is the redstart. Two years ago, one had obviously just arrived from Africa, and was exhausted. It had perched on the lamp outside our back door, which I discovered when I turned on the light. The bird panicked, and flew into the house. It flew around, went upstairs, and because it was dark outside never found a way out. Trying to catch it was at first impossible, because it took off as soon as I got close. However, it was clearly extremely tired, and flew less and less, before eventually giving up and just sitting on a beam. I was able to pick it up, take it outside, and leave it in a bush. A pair of redstarts nested in an apple tree that year, though I have no idea if it was the same bird. The lesson here is that tired small birds at the end of their migratory flight have not eaten much for a while, and do not drop a lot of poop when they are frightened.

Yesterday, it was a blackbird. I was reading a newspaper at the kitchen table. When I turned the page, I was surrounded by flapping black feathers and squawking. I didn't hear the bird fly in, though it may have just hopped. It obviously didn't see me until I moved and in effect flapped a huge white wing in the air. The creature flew at a window, banged its head on the glass, bounced off, whizzed around as I tried to open the window, and then flew at me to get out. It hit the glass gain, and then started to fly upstairs before seeing an open door to the outside and flying through it. What I learned from this is that frightened blackbirds contain a prodigious amount of poop, and have the power to squirt it everywhere. I also learnt that it irrevocably stains white painted walls, which have to be repainted.

I am still not ready to talk about the mice invasion of a few years ago.

Vide grenier - junk and bargains

2009-06-09T17:22:00.002+02:00

A sign that summer is really happening, despite the weather, is the appearance of often amateurish signs advertising Vide Grenier events. These are the equivalent of British car boot sales – the name means 'empty the attic' – and can be very strange. The bigger and better ones are often called Braderies or Brocantes, meaning in effect second hand or antique, but not junk. Definitely not junk. Some, like at Granville, La Haye des Puits or Hambye, can be enormous with hundreds of stalls, thousands of punters, and even two or more days long.

The one in Hambye was early, in May, and coincided with the first warm Sunday. The result was thousands of people in this small village, stalls in every street and alley, and half a dozen fields dedicated to car parking on all roads leading to the village. Still nothing to buy though. That's not actually true, my wife bought a sort of billhook, called apparently a Leicestershire slasher in the Midlands, well rusted and mounted on an old piece of tree branch for a handle. Ancient and blunt, but she wanted one and new ones were 35 euros, but this was only three. It turned out to have been hand forged, and a neighbour sharpened it to such a fine edge that you could carry out delicate operations such as spleenectomies with it. Probably.

The vast majority of stuff in small vides greniers is utter rubbish – not even worth picking up to throw away. Yet people buy some of it. There was one stall I saw recently which had only old pieces of defunct electrical and computer stuff – odd circuit boards, chips, cables, Sinclair software and other long gone components. There were always five only slightly geeky men around it, usually rummaging through a couple of boxes of old transformers, clearly looking for specific items.

Often there are professional stalls, whether someone selling cheap watches, or higher quality near antiques, and maybe a few specialist such as window replacement firms, but they mostly only go to the big events. The majority of stalls are just as the name suggests, individuals selling off the accumulated odds and ends they no longer want. At one small event in a nearby village I bought a pick axe/mattock tool that I couldn't find in any of the shops, a new pair of binoculars and a new cafetiere coffee maker both of which appeared to be unwanted gifts and were still in their boxes.

Most of these events are organised by the local comités des fêtes, which most communes have, and vary in the quality of their organisation as well as the effectiveness of the event itself. Some show that Monsieur Hulot is still around, but they can be an excellent way of passing some time, of seeing a wider range of French people in their own habitat, and just occasionally, finding a bargain.

D-Day 65 controversies?

2009-06-05T20:10:00.004+02:00

So, here we are at D-Day plus 65 years, and there are two controversies. The first is the lunatic assertion by President Sarkozy that 'D-Day is traditionally a Franco-American event'. That is admirably demolished by the writer Agnes Poirier, in a piece in the Guardian newspaper. All the French people I have spoken to are outraged. Not only has Sarkozy now had to back down on inviting the Queen by French pressure, Barrack Obama also told him he was wrong, and has since refused a dinner invitation from him.

The second, which is discussed on the BBC website, is what they are calling 'revisionism' – the idea that not all was wonderful about the original D-Day and the following events. I have made the same points before on this blog - here and in particular here. One only has to look at photographs of utterly destoyed towns where the sole standing building is the church steeple, preserved for aiming and range finding, to understand the horror of the process, never mind the fact that civilian deaths outnumbered those of the military.

Perhaps a good summary of how we should mark the anniversary is the 6 June editorial on the front page of the local Ouest France newspaper: after referring to Churchill'S determination, and the role of the then Queen, it goes on to say: Rendons hommage aux soldats des États-Unis, blancs et noirs, aux Canadiens, à tous ceux du Commonwealth qui vinrent mourir pour nous, loin de leur pays. Rendons hommage aussi aux forces armées libres comme les Forces françaises combattantes ou les brigades polonaises, à tous les résistants des pays européens occupés qui avaient poursuivi leur combat malgré la défaite de 1940 ; mais aussi aux armées de Russie dont, en débarquant ici, les alliés ont voulu soulager la peine. (Render homage to the soldiers of the US, white and black, to the Candaians, to all those of the Commonwealth who came to die for us, far from their countries. Render homage as well to free armed forces like the French figting forces and the Polish birigades, to all the resistance of the occupied countries who continued their fight after the defeatb of 1940; but also the armies of Russia, who by landing here the allies relieverd their suffering - my translation).

The real point, surely, is to recognise and respect the terrible realities of the time, and learn not to repeat the horrors. To do that we need to remember exactly what happened. Not a Hollywood version, not an edited by special interests version, but the horror, the mistakes, the failures and bad behaviour, as well as the heroism of ordinary civilians and armed forces.

I previously mentioned my father's memoirs of his time in the RAF throughout World War II: these can now be found as a collection of pdf files at www.landinginnormandy.com/omw

Visiting Normandy for D-Day +65

2009-05-12T13:52:00.003+02:00

A few helpful quick tips for people planning to visit Normandy for the 65^th Anniversary of D-Day. From the UK, look at the British Legion site, and from the overall French perspective, check the official programme of events here.

Firstly, make your cross channel ferry reservations as early as you can. Now that P&O no longer travel the western crossings direct to Normandy, the remaining services – Brittany Ferries and LD Lines - will fill up quickly. There is not likely to be a problem on the short crossings to Calais and Boulogne (unless the French fishermen blockade the ports again, which is always possible – but to get to Caen (Ouistreham) on the north coast nearest the landing beaches, or Cherbourg for the second phases of the invasion, or Le Havre for the consolidation, early booking is probably a good idea.

Hotel bookings will be essential. Try Logis de France for real independently owned hotels (see this blog item). Reasonably priced chains include Mercure, Ibis, Accord.

There are also some very cheap hotel chains, such as Formule 1, which are acceptably comfortable at very low prices. I prefer independent, quirky, little hotels which are usually cheap, in interesting towns, and all very different. Speaking as little French is probably essential, though.

A useful initiative is the Normandie Pass, which for a one off fee of one euro, provides reduced admission to museums, events and non D-Day attractions, products and services. If you want to see as much as possible, it can save you a fair bit of money, as well as lead you to some unexpected places and events.

There is a very large number of events being planned throughout the region. To find out details of what and when, visit any local Tourist office – Office de Tourisme, or Syndicat d'Iniative - where you will usually find English speaking staff, large volumes of usually free leaflets, guides and other materials. Look for the 'i' symbol on signs and streets.

None of the organisations mentioned here have paid anything to be named. Alas...

Coastal foraging/peche a pied

2009-05-12T12:09:00.001+02:00

A new book from the chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall called Edible Seashore – River Cottage Handbook 5 talks about foraging for shellfish, seaweed and other splendid foodstuffs on British seashores. His article in the Guardian introduces the book, and includes some decent recipes.

He is talking about a rare activity in the UK. In France, on the other hand, seeking out food on the low tide beaches is pretty much a standard practice. Here in Normandy, la Peche a Pied is hugely popular on the major low tides of the year. In the Bay of Mont St Michel, where the beaches slope very gently, the four lowest tides, at the equinoxes and solstices, reveal huge expanses of sand and rocks normally covered. People descend by the thousand, carrying buckets, rakes, spades, diggers, nets and very often uniquely personal implements, and spend as many hours as the tide allows digging, sieving, poking around, netting and generally foraging and fossicking. Whole families, from toddlers to great grandparents work together to gather enough for a good meal.

The beach at St Martin de Brehal, for example, is more crowded at the December solstice low tide than it is in high summer.

All the major beaches where it can be worth foraging have regular updates on water quality, wildlife

health and populations, so that everyone can know what is safe to eat, and what to leave alone to protect the species. This is if course available at the mairies, but also on signs at the beaches, usually on the life guard station. There are many guides, such as this local official site, and many books and other sources of information.

Generally, most areas have limits on the number of each species any one person can collect, and for many there are minimum sizes to ensure that the young have time to grow and reproduce. The main species are much as in the UK: crabs, shrimps, cockles, mussels, whelks and so on. Many beaches are sites of shellfish farming, and the relevant species should not be collected from there. Most common are oyster farms (ostreiculture) and mussels (conchyliculture).

D-Day +65years: personal connection

2009-04-27T16:56:00.005+02:00

This year’s 65^th anniversary of D-Day is a couple of months away, and sadly, will probably be the last significant anniversary where there will be more than a handful of survivors able to attend. My own father is 88 this year, and there are now only one or two of his former comrades from the RAF still around.

He will be coming to Normandy, as usual, this summer for a visit. He did not land in Normandy in 1944, but in the south of France in August, near St Tropez, in what was called the D-Day of the South, but which is now almost entirely overlooked. He had been fighting in Corsica before, so it was an obvious outcome as the northern invasion was making progress. It was no easy trip: landing on a beach under fire. His best mate beside him was shot dead as they ran; could have been him.

As the participants fade away, the facts become increasingly lost in the fog of Hollywood films and inventions. Few people, for example, seem aware of the tremendous importance and breathtaking innovation of the floating Mulberry harbours, which made the invasion possible, or know that of the five landing beaches only one was not an immediate success.

For the 60^th anniversary of D-Day, we took my father to the extraordinary and moving Memorial museum at Caen. This is dedicated to peace not war, and puts the emphasis on the people and not the hardware. When the staff knew he was an ancien combattant (veteran), we were all given free admission, and the constant help and attention of the incredibly soignée hôtesses who are the guides and attendants.

At one point, one of them kneeled beside him – he has to use a wheelchair these days – and said ‘Merci, merci pour tout vous avez faites pour la France’ – thank you for everything you did for France. As she said it the other people around were in tears, she was in tears, and though he tried hard not to let it show, so was my father. Later he said that this was the first time anyone had ever thanked him personally, and it was the first time he had realised that no one ever had.

Many of the exhibits in the museum are around the occupation, not just D-Day and its aftermath, with documents such as death sentences for resistance members, photographs of events, people and hardship – everything from death to starvation, and the resistance. My father also said later that this was the first time he had ever had to think about the occupation and the lives of the people they were invading, effectively to rescue.

We now rarely think of the reality of those days, or of the people, particularly civilians, who died during the occupation and the liberation. The photo at the top of this page is of the war memorial at Ouistreham, where all the western crossing ferries now land. It is outside the wonderful Romanesque church that you can see at the end of the road to the centre of the town as you drive out of the port. The names are categorised: soldiers, deported to the concentration camps, shot, and just ordinary civilians killed (this group of names is continued on the other side of the memorial).

I hope that those who visit Normandy for the anniversary will see the events for what they were, and not just the raw material for another wretched shoot-em-up computer game. There were no second lives, no-one got up and had another go. The dead from the invasion and the war overall are still dead.

The Caen Memorial is off junctions 6 or 7 of the peripherique nord, the northern ring road, and there are good public transport links from Caen. It is imperative if you want to understand the reality of war and D-Day.

My father has written his memoirs – not badly, as it happens – and there are copies in the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum. I will soon* add them to a website for more people to read. Click on the Comments button if you want to know more.

* June 2009: memoirs added as to this website as a series of chapters in pdf format.

Funerals, Easter and France

2009-04-18T17:16:00.002+02:00

Traditionally, Easter Sunday is when everyone goes to the cemeteries to visit the graves of their deceased relatives and friends. It is a time to tidy up the tombs and graves, lay new fresh flowers, and replace plastic ones. Often, because now families are distributed all over the country rather than staying in the same village generation after generation, it is also an opportunity to catch up with old friends and neighbours. And, being France, a day of very large family meals which last all day and evening.

Graves and cemeteries are still very important, particularly to the older generation – and not just because they might soon be there themselves. Keeping graves tidy, visiting for may years, is part of the way of life. In most rural cemeteries, at any time of day or season of the year, there will almost always be people tidying up, walking around looking at tombstones, and often with cars registered in other departments.

This can sometimes become a bit of a fetish. One little old lady, a frail birdlike creature reaching her eighties - Tante Denise, the aunt of a neighbour – visited the grave of her husband, often for hours at a time, every day since he died over 50 years ago. There are many others who spend more time than most of us would regard as entirely healthy at the grave sides of spouses, parents and sometimes children.

The need for a grave, with a headstone, is imperative for most French people. Being British, this seems to me faintly odd, as does the American way of death, with burials in expensive coffins. Every small French town has its memorial mason business, with exemplars of all sorts of headstones displayed. As with everything else, there seem to be fashions. 30 years ago, headstones started to become more curvy at the top, with swirls, cut outs, and many varying details. They also became more ornate, with carved illustrations of not just religious themes, but aspects of the life of the deceased; not as special as those seen in the non royal tombs of Egypt, but sometimes quite fancy. The last few years have seen the introduction of colour to the carvings, letterings and other details.

Our neighbour and very good friend Robert died a couple of years ago. His was the first funeral I had experienced in France. Unlike in England, most people turned up in ordinary clothes, rather than dark suits and ties. Because Robert had served in Algeria, he had a guard of honour from the veterans' associations – les Anciens Combattants. Around the department, there are still many local associations, who have enough active members to be able to produce a reasonable showing at funerals. The secretary of the local society organised it, discussed all the details with the widow, including how to display Robert's medals (he wanted a closed coffin, and the nature of the anciens combattants' participation.

At the funeral, there were two rows of anciens – and sadly increasingly ancient – combattants in military uniform, with regimental flags which they lowered in unison as the coffin passed between them. Quite touching, and unexpected. Like all Algerian war veterans, Robert never discussed or even mentioned that time. Both sides did some terrible things, and it is probably right that there is now not much to be gained by revisiting the details on an individual basis.

The other aspect of strangeness was that there was no equivalent of the British hearse, which is normally a black stately limousine (ordinary not elongated absurdly), or horse drawn carriage favoured by East End gangsters, followed by close family in other black limousines. Instead, the coffin turned up in a standard Renault Espace people carrier – pale grey, with the funeral company's name in discreet print at the bottom of the door.

Robert did not want his wife and other family members to mourn and mope over his grave for years to come. He therefore requested that he be cremated. This is very, very unusual. In the event, it turns out that there is no crematorium in the whole of the Manche Department. The nearest is in Caen, which is in Calvados. Toe enable a manchois to be cremated in Calvados required permissions from the prefects of both departments, and as always, revealed the thoroughness and implacability of French bureaucracy. The funeral took place in the local church, after which close family went with the coffin to the private ceremony at the crematorium.

I have been to number of funerals in the UK, all of which involved cremations, including one jolly humanist ceremony, and one for an uncle who would have enjoyed it if it had been someone else's. He had been a lifelong active socialist, but had a church funeral, but with a wicker and cardboard coffin.. He had become quite large in his last, very ill, years, and it was very difficult for the four pall bearers to lift his coffin, especially as they were not that young themselves. As they carried the coffin, its flimsiness became almost too obvious, as the whole thing began to buckle in the middle, and then sag at one end. The quick intervention of a couple of other – younger - mourners avoided the complete disintegration of the coffin, and the dropping of Ray on to the church aisle. He would have loved that.

Franglais et Anglish

2009-04-10T11:45:00.000+02:00

Here are a few more strange usages of English words within France. A common development is to take English present participles and use them as nouns: le camping, le parking, le shampooing and le brushing (wash and blow dry hair) and le pressing for dry cleaning. This also means that they can have plural forms, such as les parkings and les campings.

Recently, I have seen two such words. The first was in a fashion magazine – where else – where at the end of features the 'where to buy' section was called Les Shoppings. The same magazine was divided into sections with names ending in Book, such as TrendyBook, for new fashions. It also described adding a belt and a scrap of tartan to an outfit as making it punkifié. The other example was the use of the word 'lifting' meaning having a face lift, in the headline of a local newspaper article about a corner of a town left damaged by a fire some years ago now to be improved: 'la vielle ville attend son lifting.'

At one time, the verb flasher meant to fall in love suddenly, but these days it has another meaning as in '20 vehicules ont été flashés pour des excés de vitesse', although it does not exclusively mean by a speed camera: any radar or other equipment counts.

Finally, for this time at least, the word 'snob'. As a noun, it means the same as in English, that is 'posh', someone who looks down on those less fortunate. As a verb, snober, however, it means the same as the English 'snub', to ignore or reject. Here is an example: 'Obama snobe Sarkozy: en plusieurs occasions,,,Obama est passé devant Sarzozy sans le saluer, et Sarkozy a reagit par une frustration visible' (Obama snubs Sarkozy: on several occasions O. has passed in front of S. without greeting him, and S has reacted with visible frustration'. So much for US gratitude to the French for winning their war of independence for them in 1776.

Coming events...again

2009-03-26T12:47:00.001+01:00

Every year, in general, there are four major cultural (in the widest sense) events in Normandy, and another accessible in Brittany. They are a jazz festival, a rock festival, a celtic music festival, a horse show, and a sheep fair. Of course there are a huge number of smaller events – shows, fetes, concerts, fairs – throughout the region, but these are the big ones you have to plan for if you want to be there. And of course, 2009 is the 65^th anniversary of D-Day, and I will put more about that in a later bg.

The annual Jazz sous les Pommiers (jazz under the apple trees) is held in Coutances. This year, the 28^th time, it is on the 16-23 May, and full details can be found here. The performers include well known international jazz musicians, such as Andy Sheppard, Django Bates and Branford Marsalis, plus world music stars and French heros. Many of the events are in the theatre, or other halls, but many are in the streets and other outdoor and indoor venues. You will need to book soon for some of the performances. Coutances is worth a visit at any time: its cathedral is one of the most exciting anywhere, and being on the high point of the town is spectacularly visible from every approach.

The rock festival is Papillons de Nuit, literally butterflies of the night or moths, and is held in a small village called St Laurent de Cuves, on 29, 30 and 31 May. Locals say that there are some problems with huge crowds of young people descending on a small rural area, but there seem to be no major crimes or unpleasantness. The biggest issue is camping sauvage – people pitching their tents in the wrong places: private property, growing crops, fields with livestock. This year the festival features the Kooks, the Ting Tings, Keziah Jones, and djs, rap acts, and who knows what. Well, the yoof know what, but most of the names are a mystery to me. Full details here. Includes a video introduction.

The third major musical festival is in Brittany, and is all Celtic music – not just Brittany, but Ireland, Wales, Scotland. This year is the 38^th Festival InterCeltique, and the main focus this time is Wales (Pays de Galles). The event, – from 31 July to 9 August - details of which can be found here, takes place in Lorient and surrounding villages, much of it in the open air. Details of performers, and full programme, will be available on the official site from 31 March. There are also smaller events (fest-noz) throughout Brittany in the summer. I once followed the sound of Breton pipes after dinner in a small Breton town, and eventually found three blokes rehearsing in the local recreation ground, as darkness fell. Magical, the Breton pipes are like bagpipes, but smaller, only two pipes, and can have I think a sadder sound.

Something that happens every August, and is a prime date for the horse community, is the Normandy Horse Show (in French, la Normandie Horse Show, honest). This is several days of horse things, such as le jumping, the sale of les yearlings, and all sorts of other things that really, really interest the people who are really, really interested in that sort of thing. You may deduce that I am not one of them.

Even more specialist is the annual Foire de La Sainte Croix, or Foire aux Moutons (Sheep Fair) at Lessay, near Coutances, every September.. This attracts 400,000 visitors every year. The foire takes over a large area on the edge of town, and has competitions, and sales of sheep, pigs, goats, horses, ponys and no doubt many other species of domestic animal. It is accompanied by an enormous market, selling goods of all types, agricultural machinery, diy and home improvements, and enormously varied objects that I do not know how to use, or indeed how to want them.

Lessay itself is well worth a visit at any other time, for the Abbey. This was built not long after the conquest of England, and the exterior is one of the nicest examples of Norman architecture to be found. Inside is a wonderful simplicity, with plain white painted walls, and modern stained glass in the small windows. In 1944 the Abbey was effectively destroyed, and there are pictures of what was just a pile of rubble. Amazingly, it was rebuilt after the war, using the original plans which had survived, and using as much of the original white Caen stone (as used in Westminster Abbey) as possible, but facing most of it with new Caen stone. I saw it first a few months after the restoration was completed. I didn't know it existed, but driving through Lessay on a summer afternoon I stumbled on this wonderful blindingly white Norman masterpiece, and had to stop.

Just because Normandy is rural, part of la France Profonde, doesn't mean there are no major events. But there is also a huge variety of local fairs, celebrations, fetes and so on throughout the year, but especially in summer. Every village has its Comité des Fétes, charged with organising these events. Look for signs, ads in papers, posters in shop windows.

Easter holiday in France?

2009-03-23T21:23:00.005+01:00

Easter is an interesting time in France, at least for your run of the mill English atheist like me. More than at Christmas, the fact of being in a Catholic country is very obvious. As Easter is a series of timed events – even if the key event wanders around the calendar – there are many opportunities for the church to make its presence felt. With thirteen different days having some significance in la culte catholique, there are things for priests and congregations to do almost six months. If you want to find what happens in any area, ask at the tourist office, any open church, or get the local paper which has the dates and times of masses and other church events.

However, the good old fashioned non-christian parts of Easter are also represented, with Easter eggs and rabbits, lambs, flowers, and general commerce and fun activities more and more common. See here for a summary of Easter dates and other stuff. Many shops decorate their windows and displays with hand painted scenes, as in the photo above.

Perhaps of most significance to many people is the this is the first chance in the year for a longer break. Five days off are long enough for a quick trip from the UK to France, and for those of us in France a visit to another region.

I think the best way to have a short holiday anywhere, but France and Normandy in particular, is not to book a stay in one place, but to wander where inclination and curiosity takes you. I have done this many times, and the two important aspects are that I have always found interesting places about which I knew nothing, and had experiences or met people that were quite unexpected.

Here are a couple of valuable and proven tips. Firstly, many hotels will be busy, and may tell you they are full if you just ask of a room for one night; but if you say you want dinner, and a room, they often miraculously expand to accommodate you. This is because dinner and room is what most French people will want, so they often prefer to take their chances of selling two things. Because of this, you should.choose your hotels by their menus! Look for somewhere you would want to eat in if you weren't looking for a room.

The second tip is to avoid expensive modern chain hotels, and seek out smaller, independent places in smaller towns. They are usually cheaper, friendlier, and much more interesting – sometimes even weird. Every small town in France has its hotel, partly because France is a physically large country, and in the days of horse powered travel it was not possible to go from city to city in one day, and partly because every French town needs a big restaurant for big family celebrations.

Many independent hotels are part of the Logis de France network: all are unique, and mostly two or three stars, with prices around 50-70 euros per room (not per person). The link above is in English, and includes an online hotel search and booking facility that is very good. (This is an honest opinion, not a paid for puff).

Most people will know about the Michelin Green Guides, which have details of history, places of interest, hotels and most other things. There is one for each region of France. They can be a bit idiosyncratic (or to put it another way, French) in terms of what they see as important, but they can point you to fascinating places you might otherwise drive past.

One thing to remember is the catholic connection again: there are many, many pilgrimages over Easter, and some places can become very busy. If you Google 'pelerinages paques' you will find a lot of them going on, short distances and long. One place I had a huge problem in finding accommodation in a few years ago was Lisieux. which was the home of the famous Sainte Therese, who had some visions there around 1900. Frankly, the whole saint stuff is more than a bit odd to me.

The year I was there coincided with a special anniversary, and the hotels were full. Eventually, I went to the tourist office (called Syndicat d'Initiative in some places), who told me there were a couple of rooms left in a five star place – well outside my budget – or cheaper rooms 75 kilometres away. However, because so many pilgrims were arriving, the nuns at a local convent had gone on a different pilgrimage somewhere else, and were letting out the cells of the convent to visitors. We grabbed them. They were indeed cells: single iron bed, wash basin, crucifix, but clean and not designed for abject suffering like with some sects. My girlfriend and I had different rooms, naturally; the cells were even smaller than cross channel ferry cabins. There was a simple dinner in the refectory, and it all cost about the price of a cheap bottle of wine in England.

The normal residents all being female, the showers were open to everybody, with no private areas. This proved an excellent example of the fact that French people do not have the horrors of nakedness and the in built shame about their own bodies that we English seem to suffer from. Everybody just showered together - women, men, children, young, middle aged and elderly, and no one though it even worth a comment.

Another Easter, in a fairly unpopulated region, we could not find a hotel with a room anywhere. Having gone past several with Complet signs, we saw a battered signboard pointing to a hotel 3km up a lane. Nothing to lose, and it was getting dark, so we went in search of the place. Turned out to be a small chateau, on the edge of a small village.

The patronne said they had a big wedding party in, but there were some basic rooms in the old stables for a few pennies, and we could eat in the family dining room. We took the offer, and had a really nice country four course dinner. The room was large, and the bed enormous, with at least four mattresses. It looked as if over the last couple of centuries, as the mattresses sagged they just put another new one on top. Getting out of bed actually risked a bit of a tumble, because it was so high. The toilet was at the end of the block, and one of those two footprints and squat that have now virtually disappeared. It was quite amusing, and the chateau itself was an intriguing building.

A couple of years later, we were in the same region, and decided to go the the hotel to see if we could stay in the big house. We could, but the dining room was again closed to us because it was the chef's night off and the hotel was empty, so we ate alone in a small dining room. The owner, who was a woman in her thirties, had seemed a bit afraid of us at first, but as we chatted over a dinner that she had cooked, she began to relax. With our main course, she very shyly offered us some samphire, saying that she had collected and pickled it herself (the place was not far from the coast). Delicious.

The bedroom was one of the state rooms of the chateau: a huge cube with enormous windows and curtains that were almost too heavy to close. The en suite component was a washbasin and toilet behind a two metre screen in the corner. All through the night, a large flock of white geese walked around the large garden, in a very precise route, squawking loudly: Wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah. As the route took them behind the house, the squawking would get fainter, then silent and then start again, building to maximum volume before the cycle started again. In the morning we could see that they was a clear bare earth path all the way round the perimeter of the grounds, with a few corners cut for no apparent reason. As I mentioned above, some weird experiences to be had.

Spring at last

2009-03-09T18:38:00.003+01:00

Some of the things that indicate spring is arriving (not the weather which is staying dreadful) include daffodils and crocuses in gardens and parks, bouncing lambs in the fields, and a lot of ploughs in fields. But for me, the main and most welcome sign is the appearance of primroses in the hedgerows, embankments and roadsides, throughout Normandy. And here they are, as in the photo above.

In England, the primroses – the primavera of Italians - that I saw as a boy in Somerset have virtually disappeared: they might occasionally be seen beside a railway line, or motorway, but never in the profusion that used to occur. The cause is mostly the use of herbicides, that kill everything apart from tough grasses.

Primroses grow wild only in grass on well drained places. The grasses die back in winter, so that in early spring the primroses can grow their leaves, and then their flowers, quickly and freely. Too much undergrowth and they cannot push their way through; clear earth and they do not have the protection they need through the winter. The ideal is for the undergrowth to be cut in the autumn, leaving short grasses only. That happens as a result of the annual fauchage – the cutting of the roadsides, hedges and bocage facing the roads by the local councils. In the countryside, a tractor with a hedge/grass cutter attachment passes along the roads giving everything a neat, but short trim.

One can see the effects every spring: masses of wonderful pale yellow flowers everywhere. At the height of their short season violets appear in the same places, to be followed by early spotted orchids, purple spikes of little orchid flowers.

What does not happen in France is the extraordinary seas of bluebells that we get in England. The same flower can be found but it only seems to grow as individual plants; the Spanish bluebell is paler, weaker and and also grows alone. The photo of bluebells above was taken last year in Ashridge Forest in Hertfordshire, and happens every year. An odd thing about bluebells is some people, like me, find their scent overwhelming and almost sickly, whereas others, like my wife, cannot smell them at all. And one thing about primroses is that some of them are not yellow, but white, or as some in the picture above, pink in various shades.

Shakespeare used the term 'primrose path' to indicate the pleasant route through life, of pleasure and dissipation, but perhaps leading to damaging and dreadful outcomes. Just a metaphor, the flowers are wonderful, and their return each year signifies that everything is going to get better.

Dirty Mary has gone away

2009-02-23T12:22:00.003+01:00

One of the local characters is Marie la Sale – Dirty Mary. She lived alone, near us, in one of two small houses she owned. She may or may not have had running water and electricity in operation, although they were connected. She tended to wear several skirts, one on top of the other, numerous sweaters, all of them pretty filthy. And of course, she smelled. Hard to say exactly how old she was, but anything from late fifties upwards seems likely.

She was not, in any real sense, mad, but she was a bit odd. In a city, she would have been a bag lady, in the country she was just a bit stranger than most. People knew her, she was polite, friendly within her own terms, but largely in a world of her own. We were introduced to her by Mme Laforet, our neighbour, on one of many occasions when Marie called in on her. She would sometimes offer to help with the chickens and ducks, or some gardening activity, but she was never much use. Mme Laforet tended to get a little exasperated with her from time to time, but to be a good neighbour felt she had to put up with her ocasional visits.

If we saw her in the village or the lanes, we would always stop for a short chat, and she remembered who we were, how we usually got to France from England, and other details, so she was never entirely confused.

Over the years she became progressively smellier, stranger, and harder to talk to. For a while she would appear wearing bright red boots she had bought from somewhere, another time she had a small dog for a year or so. She would talk more to herself, and retreated progressively further into some other world. Once, I encountered her in the lane from the village, and for over 100 yards we walked towards each other. When we were a few yards apart I said 'Bonjour, madame'. She squeaked, and jumped back a couple of feet. She clearly had not noticed me and was utterly surprised by my voice. She regathered herself, and we had the usual brief conversation, but it was all a bit odd.

Now she is in a retirement home, having been taken very ill. I hear that she is doing quite well. She probably never asked for, or would accept, help from the social services, but really would have benefited from some support. Now that she is getting it I hope she is more content. He history is quite sad. Clearly never the brightest of people, she married a local man. A few weeks later he was killed in a traffic accident, and she never really recovered her equilibrium.

Now her houses are beginning to decay; they were never in a particularly good state, but being empty for a year or so the wind has had an effect. Even the old animal feed container tied to the gate as a letter box is now broken.

In our street in London, there is another little old lady who lives alone and has some bizarre behaviour from time to time. The street is three story, late Victorian terraces, many, like ours, converted into flats. Her house is occupied just by her. A couple of windows on the upper floors are blocked off with plywood, and there are other signs of decay and lack of maintenance. The house next to hers has just been renovated completely, and then sold for over £1.5 million.

She used to be a teacher, someone told me, and when she retired her house needed work. She gave all her money to a builder to do it up, and of course he promptly disappeared, leaving her with nothing but a small pension. She is still fit, and rides a bicycle around the neighbourhood, although she looks seriously weather beaten and in need of a bit of maintenance herself.

A few years ago, mysteriously, many of us discovered the steps and porches of our houses were wet in the mornings, even though there had been no rain. Strange, but not a problem until the weather turned cold, and the water froze. A couple of people slipped, and it was clearly dangerous. Turned out that this woman was going out in the middle of the night and washing everybody's porches. No idea why. Some people had a word with her, and she stopped it.

At one time, these old ladies might have been seen as witches. Now they are just lonely, confused, and often in need of small forms of support that bureaucracies find difficult to deliver.

Abbaye de la Lucerne d'Outremer

2009-02-16T13:45:00.004+01:00

Not far from La Haye-Pesnel, near Avranches, is the Abbey of La Lucerne-d'Outremer. Built in the twelfth century, it has recently been restored, and there is even talk of installing a new religious order there.

The name Outremer means overseas, as in the DOM, les Départments Outre Mer, the former colonies of France. It earned the name because during the Hundred Years War the abbots generally sided with the English. This was part of the long lasting connection – and confusion – between what was French, what was English, in the land we now call France.

Whilst probably every British person remembers the basic facts of 1066 and the Norman conquest, the following two or three centuries of war, alliances and occasionally peace, is rarely taught these days. Yet the whole of the more romantic parts of English history that people know from classical novels, folk tales, and not least Shakespeare's history plays still has some bearing on how the two countries developed.

If you have heard of Robin Hood, the Black Prince, Richard the Lionheart, Henry V and Agincourt, you have heard something of the time and its characters and events.

After 1066, William the Conqueror's grandson, Henry was still Duke of Normandy as well as King of England. The France of the 11, 12 and 13C was a small area, mainly around Paris, with some feudal overlordship of other parts, but not direct control. Affairs were managed by wars, alliances, and especially marriages. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Duchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Poitiers etc etc, was the wife firstly of King Louis VII of France, and then Henry II of England. The daughter of Phillip IV of France, Isabella, married Edward II of England, and was the mother of Edward III; and she was the sister of Kings Louis X, Phillip V and Charles IV of France. Family gatherings for these families at the beginning of the 14C would have been a a bit fraught.

One interesting little fact is that there was a successful Normandy invasion by the English in 1417, when Henry V took Caen, and later Rouen. Throughout the Hundred Years War, Normandy changed hands fairly regularly, English at first, then French, then English, then French again.

During this time, there were obviously many divided loyalties. Some parts of Normandy were owned by what had become English nobility, who expected loyalty to England, other parts had owners, and/or feudal overlords, who were French. And of course many families, as with the two royal families, had complex connections by marriage with both sides. The Abbey of La Lucerne was just a forceful example of being ultimately on the wrong side.

The Abbey itself is worth a visit – it reopens on March 15 for the summer. The church is still largely Norman, or Romanesque, style, with thick walls and columns, and round arches. Now that it has been patched and cleaned it is rather splendid.

We went on a tour guided by a young French girl: many historic sites seem to have tour guides who appear to be students earning some money, and usually they are very well informed and interested in the place.

The acoustics inside are dramatic. She pointed out a number of the features inside the church, and her voice was amplified with extraordinary clarity by the building. Far clearer than any public address system I have ever heard, and with that wonderful resonance and almost echo that you can only get from reality rather than technology. No wonder the peasant populace were terrified of the priests: voices louder than anything heard anywhere else, resounding around them, and with no apparent effort by the person speaking.

Some of the monastic buildings remain, with a number of interesting details, such as carving in some of the roof beams in the refectory, and a splendid large dovecote. This is now empty, (there is a photo in the album top right), but there is another dovecote at the Chateau of La Lande d'Airou (privately owned and not open to the public normally), which has a restored circulating ladder assembly inside. This is so finely balanced that a child can move it, but is allows someone to reach every nesting hole in the walls without effort. Well worth a visit.

Don't mention the war

2009-02-06T16:24:00.006+01:00

In the same way as the disaster of Omaha Beach means that the other four invasion beaches can often be overlooked, the enormous importance, and overall success, of the D-Day landings obscures the fact that for the preceding four years, France was occupied by foreign soldiers.

The occupation had many implications for ordinary people. Some were active collaborators, as in Vichy and the Petain puppet government, some were passively cooperative, some avoided the German rule as much as they could, and of course some joined the Resistance. Every town and village had people in all these categories, and even now there are sensitivities and undercurrents not obvious to outsiders.

Many people do not want to talk about the war and the occupation, including those who were not born then, but who know of aspects of that time and how what members of their families did, or did not , or were suspected of doing. Who knows how we would have behaved in that situation? Certainly, the example of the occupation of the Channel Islands shows some of the issues.

If you look carefully in many of the towns in Normandy, you will find the occasional plaque on a wall stating that the person named was shot by firing squad at that place, or hanged, or otherwise killed. Many people were taken away, to prison, forced labour, or worse.

If you visit St Lo, you will find the centre, where the Saturday market takes place, inside the wonderful medieval ramparts, but completely destroyed by the American bombardment in June 1944. All that remains of the old town centre is the church tower, deliberately not repaired, and part of the gatehouse of the old castle. In the gatehouse is a large brass plaque, recording the names of everyone from St Lo who died during the war. It starts with French soldiers killed in action during the defeat by Germany, then has members of the resistance killed in action, resistance members executed, and all those deported to concentration camps: many of these are just the family name 'and 4 children'. The last two categories are civilians killed during the bombardment, and members of the resistance held in the prison. Liberation was not cost free.

My now deceased neighbour, Madame Laforet, was one person who had lived through the occupation, and able to talk about it. She mentioned that her eldest son had to be hidden in effectively a pig sty at the bottom of a distant field for some months, because the Germans were rounding up all the teenage boys for slave labour in Czechoslovakia; virtually none returned. She talked of other occasions when animals and crops were taken, of people disappearing.

She also talked about the invasion itself, pointing out where an allied bomb had fallen just the other side of the garden, and how a German sniper had killed two British soldiers in the lane. The sniper was killed by a German tank, commandeered by a young woman from the village.

Some other people, mostly women, who were children during the war, have memories of fear, hunger, and people vanishing, some to other areas to resist, some to prisons, some dead.

By the time the invasion moved away from Normandy, many towns were completely destroyed, many people had been killed, and a few scores were settled.

A French politician, I believe – I can't trace the quote – said that after the war, there were more members of the resistance than there were people. Human nature being what it is, I don't find that surprising, and there could have been few people who did not emotionally support the resistance, even if they like most of us lacked the courage, or the freedom from responsibility for others, or the right opportunities, to participate actively.

The Memorial museum at Caen is a museum to peace, not like the Imperial War Museum with its toys for the boys, and has a hugely moving range of displays of life under the occupation. It is at junction 7 on the Caen Peripherique (ring road) and is informative, sad, and ultimately I think encouraging, and an excellent antidote to many of the other commercial museums which glorify the fighting, the weapons, and the glamour of combat which is experienced only by the uninvolved, the uncaring and the unimaginative. It has produced a film of the D-Day events, with archive film from both sides shown on a split screen. One side shows the landing craft, the other the blockhouse and gun emplacements being manned. Where one side shows soldiers being machine gunned by planes, the other shows the view of the piloy=ts at the same moment. More reality.

Winter with a vengeance

2009-02-05T13:11:00.006+01:00

Following the unusually miserable cold Christmas and New Year, as shown in the two pictures above, I started this post on the weather in Normandy. However, it has rather been taken over by the snow in London: back for a meeting which was cancelled.

Generally, the Normandy climate is not much different from southern England: Rouen average temperature 9.9 C, London 11.0, Caen 10.9, rainfall 26 inches, 24 inches, 25 inches, even though being further west and further south one might expect a little improvement. Not exactly the South of France, but a typically temperate climate.

My house turned out to be sitting at the top of a range of hills, and at 300metres above sea level is high enough to be on average about 1 degree cooler than the rest of the region. The other effect is that as this is the first real range of hills inland from the Atlantic, we get quite a lot of rain. Normandy in general is pretty wet – there are postcards and tee shirts on sale which make fun of this – but we seem to have more days damp than dry. Sometimes it is just the usual crachant Normand – Normandy spitting – of somewhere between fine spray and very damp air, sometimes we are actually inside low clouds, and sometimes it is just this side of total immersion.

We have learnt that we are in a micro-climate, and that whatever our weather, it is usually better at the coast thirty kilometres away – more sun, warmer, less wind. But in general the weather is mild, and short of extremes.

This winter, though, has been colder for longer than any other. Twenty days where the temperature was below zero. The saving grace was no rain or snow, and most days were ultimately bright and sunny, even if too cold to do much. A key problem was dense freezing fog in the mornings, with visibility just a few feet. We have had worse.

Three years ago there was very heavy snow, and we were in fact stuck in the house. I tried to leave, because we were to collect a couple of friends arriving on foot at Ouistreham to stay over New Year with us. The road at the end of our drive is a bit of a hill: down ends in a cross roads, up is a t-junction. About thirty five metres up, the car just stopped moving up. I put the hand brake on and the gear in park, and got out to see how to rectify the situation. As I was standing behind the car, it seemed to give up on adhesion all by itself, slid towards me, and then into the ditch. I had left the door open, and that jammed against the hedge so that only one wheel was in the ditch. Still took three hours to get a tow truck to rescue me. And every passer by (four in two hours) who kindly stopped their car to help couldn't get going again either. A snow plough attached to a lorry made things worse by compacting the snow rather than moving it; eventually salting did the trick.

A few years earlier, there was another severely cold spell. We were leaving for the ferry back to England when our neighbour, Madame Laforet, came out of her housing waving and shouting. Turned out that she had a burst pipe pouring a lot of very cold water all over her spare bedroom, just behind the living room. Apparently the mains tap lived in the cave under the house, which itself was built just before the revolution. Mains water did not get connected until the sixties, and electricity a year or two later.

This cellar contained an illegal still, a couple of very large, in fact huge, barrels of cider and a lot of unidentifiable stuff. All over the ceiling were pipes, running in every direction, and up and down the walls, with taps everywhere. It seems that every time a new water using facility – a sink, a shower, a wash basin, a toilet etc – had been installed, a new set of pipes were laid.

The ceiling was the floor of the room with the leak, and consisted of very old floorboards which had shrunk over time, and had big gaps. The cold water was therefore falling on me all the time, and it was very, very cold. It was also running over the electric wires, which may or may not have been live. I went around with a torch, turning off every tap I could find, and nothing stopped the leak. Finally, I found a tap under some sacking and other rubbish in the far corner, and that stopped the water.

La Mere Laforet was cold and wet, and for the first time since we had met her she looked old, frail, and depressed, poor thing. We had a ferry to catch, all my clothes were in a suitcase in the boot of the car, and I was soaking wet. However, we phoned her son to come round to help her, drove off calling in at the village plumber to get a repair organised, and then crept very slowly over black ice to St Lo and the dual carriageway to Cherbourg. Passed six other cars in the ditches on the way.

Health and Efficiency in France

2009-02-03T14:16:00.002+01:00

Unsurprisingly, the French health service is different from the British. This blog is not meant to be a practical guide to anything, but you can find a useful overview of how the service works here. The French journalist Agnes Poirier who writes in English for the Guardian and other UK papers, did an intriguing piece about the differences between British GPs and their French equivalents recently.

Fortunately, I have not yet had to make much use of the health service in France personally, but I have had some dealings with it. The first occasion was with an emergency, involving my neighbour Mme Laforet, who was then in her late seventies. I knocked on her door one morning to see if she needed anything from the village, and found her standing over her sink, looking pale, and with a tea towel wrapped around her left hand. She said she didn't want anything, but I noticed blood dripping from the towel. I asked her what had happened and she said that she had been cutting weeds with a sickle and had cut her hand. I insisted on looking at the injury, which turned out to be a dreadful slice virtually cutting off her thumb, and bleeding very badly.

I found a new towel and wrapped it tightly around her hand, and said she must go to the hospital at once. She wasn't keen, but eventually I persuaded her to phone the clinic in the nearby town, the nearest place where she could get suitable treatment immediately. This being France, and the time a little after noon, the clinic was about to close for lunch, but a doctor said he would wait till we got there.

The doctor spent a couple of hours cleaning the wound, stitching it up, and fastening a complex metal brace to keep the join firmly closed. He wanted her to stay overnight for observation, but she refused, because she had to see to her chickens, and the ducks. He made arrangements for a district nurse equivalent to visit daily to check her out, and we left.

A couple of hours later, I wandered down to see how she was getting on, and found her in the garden, with her sickle in her hand, and a plastic bag covering the bandages and metalwork on her injured hand. She said she was bored just sitting still, and the plastic bag meant there was no risk. I think an hour or so later the local anaesthetic wore off, because she went back indoors and just sat there for a few hours. The happy ending is that she made a complete recovery, although her thumb remained bent in a peculiar way.

My other experience had a more sad outcome. A good friend we had made in France, Jean, had some stomach problems that required an operation. We visited him in one hospital, then another, larger one after another operation, and then a third. Ultimately, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, from which he died.

Seeing him in the different hospitals did show that the standards of care and cleanliness were the same high quality in all three. The food, as one might expect, was pretty good, as always, three courses, with choices, ordered earlier in the day. It was always hot, properly prepared and edible. Unlike my local – teaching - hospital here in London, where half the time there is only cold food or sandwiches, where patients get the choices made three days earlier by the previous occupant of the bed, and where there have been instances of malnutrition in patients who have been unable or unwilling to eat the food, and where even if they have the nutritional content has been dreadful.

Whilst it might seem unfair to compare provision in smaller institutions in the less populated areas with a major institution in a huge city, I believe the French hospitals were infinitely better in terms of hotel facilities – all wards for example are rooms for one or occasionally two patients, with their own showers and toilets. To get to see a specialist seemed to be quick and easy, with no waiting list issues. Obviously, I have no way of evaluating the in patient hospital diagnosis, treatment and so on, but it was always easy to get a second opinion, and the issues were discussed with the patients and their families. I do not believe there is any satisfactory reason why this cannot be done in the UK. When the NHS is spending 12 billion pounds on a misguided IT project that is unlikely ever to be delivered completely, will still cost more than the latest budget, and will never deliver anything like the benefits needed to justify it, I do admit a small amount of despair.

A final example is a friend in London who developed the Dupuytens's Contracture and had waited for over 18 months to see a specialist, who then put him on a waiting list for treatment, which when it happened involved an operation to cut and slice his hands. And it made no difference. By chance, he heard of a specialist in Paris, who had trained under Dupuyten. He rang him, and was offered an appointment in a week.

At this consultation, the doctor explained that the operation was a mistake, and that effective treatment involved a local anaesthetic, and diminishing the calcium build up causing the problem by manipulating a needle in the finger joints. My friend has now had three or four treatments, at a cost of 60 euros per session which he intends to claim back from the NHS, and all bar the his little finger, which has been bent the most severely for the longest time, are virtually normal.

Having regularly been to my local hospital, as an out patient, over the last three years, I can say that in London I feel that this hospital feels full of illness and inefficiency, whereas in France the hospitals are less frightening, more welcoming, and seem to be more efficient. Of course, all this is merely anecdotal rather than evidential, but I have yet to encounter any problems.

If you go to France – or anywhere else in the European Union - make sure you have an EHIC card to get free or reduced cost healthcare. You can apply here if you haven't already got one.

God's Town of the Saucepans

2009-01-30T12:48:00.006+01:00

Villedieu-les-Pôeles has a long history, and is famous for three reasons. Firstly, in the 12C it was where the Knights Hospitaller – the Order of St John Of Malta – was set up in Europe, and secondly since the middle ages it has been a centre for copper working.

The third reason for fame, or rather notoriety, is that for the second half of the twentieth century it was one of the grands bouchons – the great traffic bottlenecks – of the French holiday season. The only major road from Paris and the north to Brittany went through Villedieu; unfortunately, at the edge of the town there is a major junction controlled by traffic lights. On the major holiday weekends of the summer, in July and August, huge volumes of traffic pass across France. The result was that every year there were long tailbacks from Villedieu, in one or both directions, sometimes up to 30 kilometres. The opening of the A84 autoroute from Caen-Rennes has bypassed Villedieu and ended the problem. In fact the old road now is effectively deserted even in high summer

It is an unexplained aspect of the French personality that in circumstances where the entire population takes to the roads on the same weekends, and when they know there will always be major traffic problems, both from known bottle necks, and from roadworks, accidents and other temporary events, they still all insist on driving on the same major roads and motorways, and spending lots of time stationary. They just will not use the lesser roads. If you want to progress through France in July and August, stick to the slightly smaller roads – the Routes Nationales, the N roads, or the Routes Departmentals, the D roads: little traffic, much more interesting, and stress free. The Michelin maps are good, and the Michelin Green guides will enable you to discover all sorts of fascinating places.

But back to Villedieu-les-Pôeles. Originally, it was a small village called Saultchevreuil (Deer Leap) on the side of a hill overlooking the valley of the small River Sienne. There is an old church there still, with the occasional little concert, but the village has effectively gone. For the usual reasons of family connections, politics and obligations that governed England and France at the time, Henry I Beauclerc, who apart from being the son of William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conquerant) was also Duke of Normandy, Anjou, Acquitaine and much else, gave the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, one of the two military religious orders of the Crusades (the other the Knights Templar) some land around the River Sienne, which became their Headquarters. That explains the very large church (for a town with a population even now of just over 4000), and the renaming of the place as Villedieu, Town of God. There is still a pardon, a religious parade and ceremony, every ten years (I think) where the remnants of the order reassert their rights etc.

It may be that the middle east connection with the Knights brought back metal working skills, but for whatever cause copper and pewter products became the main trade of the town from the early middle ages. The quality was famous, and the trade had three effects. One was the addition of les Pôeles – the Saucepans -to the name to distinguish it from the dozens of other Villedieus in France; such a godly lot before the revolution. The other was that the nickname for the population, who if not hammering away at metal themselves were surrounded by the noise, of les Sourdins – the Deaf ones.

The main street used to be nothing but copper shops, but many have now gone. There are still workshops, making things by hand, some of which are open to visits, and there is a market leading factory, Mauviel, operating since 1830, still producing excellent stuff. I have half a dozen Villedieu copper cooking pots, and they are extremely good. About a third of the price of the same items in UK cook shops.

Happily, Villedieu survived the second world war: the mayor was able to persuade the allies not to bombard it by driving safely through the centre. As a result, unlike Vire, Villers-Bocage, St Lo, Mortain and many others that were destroyed, the central late medieval part is still there. There are many ancient courts off the main street, a pedestrian street (Rue Dr Havard) runs parallel,and many very old homes with huge granite lintels over the doors, which are usually quite low.

I like Villedieu, it is still quiet, feels like a community, and even has its own group folklorique, Les Triolettes, who travel around fetes and celebrations with music and dance. Well worth stopping off on your way to Brittany or the South.

Coincidence, interesting, or boring?

2009-01-29T11:09:00.003+01:00

The piece below was posted yesterday afternoon. Last night, on BBC television, I saw a programme called QI, which included reference to the same stuff. Does that mean that I am connected to the zeitgest, or that my ideas are commonplace?

QI stands for Quite Interesting, and the programme is a panel game hosted by Stephen Fry, a British National Treasure. The idea is that the panel, of four comedians, discuss questions around a particular subject, and get points for answering specific questions correctly, and extra for mentioning something considered quite interesting by Stephen Fry. They also lose points for giving the obvious answers to questions, which are also wrong as common knowledge often is, which means that sometimes the final scores are all negative.

Last night's programme was around the subject of France, and part of it was done in rather poor French, but French nonetheless. Two of the specifics were around the stilt walking shepherds of Les Landes, who covered long distances on stilts to locate their sheep in the flat land of the Languedoc marshes, up to the mid nineteenth century, and the fact that at that time only about one fifth of the French population actually spoke French, the rest speaking Breton, Occitan, Basque, Provencal and other local languages, and extreme dialects.

As part of the discussion on language the panel were asked what they thought brushing and relooking meant. They were also asked what les people meant, which is a word I forgot to include. It is the French term for 'celebrities', the subjects of Heat and OK magazines, and the tabloid newspapers in the UK, so you will often see headlines in French magazines and newspapers talking about les people, with photos of actresses, singers, and usually Johnny Hallyday or Eddie Mitchell.

I think I have to assume that the timing was just coincidence.

Franglais and Anglish

2009-01-28T16:55:00.002+01:00

English words and terms seem to be becoming ever more common in France. Partly this is because of the general internationalism that affects every country. A lot of it is because television, films and DVDs are increasingly influencing everyone. In the UK, American terms, phrases, ideas and practices are being seen everywhere, particularly among children and young adults. Teenagers especially are it seems learning about the shallow culture of rich US kids, and the restricted views of small town American middle classes, at the expense of their own history and culture.

In France, the state requires a significant proportion of films, television and radio programmes to be made in French by the French, which is admirable and important. Nonetheless, English, and particularly American English, seems to be appearing everywhere. Incidentally, language school in Paris, and I imagine elsewhere, offer the choice of learning British English or American English. No doubt in another 50 years the two versions of English will be as separated as French and Spanish.

As with French words in English, English words contrive to acquire a slightly different meaning or use when transported. Some mean much the same, such as 'le Normandie Horse Show', with its auction of 'les yearlings' and its competitions in 'le jumping', some are the same, but with strange spelling, such as the advertisements in the dogs for sale classification for 'les bouldougs' – bulldogs.

Others are downright weird, and I thought it might be amusing to list some of those I have seen. This is the first of what will be an occasional series.

Relooking: A word that has recently crept in to common usage, for a new service offered by beauty salons and hairdressers, joining shampooing and brushing (blow drying). One of the local museums said in its annual report that visitor numbers were slightly down in 2008, in spite of the museum having been 'relooké'. It means makeover, or redesign.

Tweety Girls: this is the name of a magazine aimed at girls between ten and twelve. I have been afraid to look at a copy in the maison de presse to see if the term has any meaning, and I am certainly not prepared to ask a passing pre-teen girl.

Until a few years ago, French children could only have their births registered with an approved first name, mostly those of saints. Because of immigration and different names from different societies and languages, the rule was abandoned. One unexpected side affect has been the use of names from English, but with Frenchified pronunciation. Two examples I heard recently, both for girls: Shah-duh, which was written Jade, and Dacc-uh-tah written as Dakota. Ah well, there seems to be a trend in England for girls to be given invented, often hyphenated, names. And the American comedian Chris Rock asks why black American women name their children after the sounds they make while giving birth. Languages and cultures will always continue to develop and change.