by Jean Gill
I survive Rhws and Charles de Gaulle, and sleep on the train to Valence, despite a free-for-all over luggage storage. Because of the latest terrorist threats, the baggage compartments are all closed and as we all got on at an airport, the competition for putting large cases into small overhead racks is fierce and muscle-wrenching. I don’t play. I wait till the war is over then politely ask someone opposite if I can put my case in the empty seat beside her. This is not popular but, with the proviso that I will move it if someone gets on at the next stop, it is accepted.
The train is a French T.G.V., Train à Grande Vitesse, fast and efficient with few stops, and I get my sleep, sharing a few words with an amazingly polite young Frenchman, who even asks me if I mind if he eats his sandwiches. He lives in Paris and is spending a few months in Valence apprenticed to a journal, to learn the trade.
The French seem to have a very well-organised system of ‘stages’, vocational placements which provide in-depth experience of the chosen job. My companion was given advice about living out in the wilds and he shows me the outdoor clothing he has brought – padded anorak, wooly hat, gloves...
The atmosphere has certainly turned chilly at home. John is stressed out and I must do something straight away about the illegal sink, the illegal septic tank, the unfinished staircase... I explain that Cardiff Airport is really not a good place to sleep and at 2pm I am unconscious as soon as my head touches the pillow.
Within a day after my anguished (but restrained) phone calls, the plumbers arrive (it is serious enough to need two plumbers’ brains) and find ‘une solution’ (our favourite word) which only means moving the oil tank temporarily, drilling through the concrete under the base of the new staircase and completing the hole for the waste pipe by drilling through from the oilshed. No problem.
The septic tank? That can wait. The plumbers go and an hour later a joiner arrives and announces ‘I’ve come to finish your staircase’ and he does, working until nearly nine o’clock on a Friday night and smiling when he finishes. We smile too, having delayed our evening meal until the joiner goes, and we are starving. We eat, we don’t think about drilling through concrete and we start to relax.
John has recorded my favourite TV detectives while I was away and tells me there is one I must watch. Wary, I am presented with the detective, the ‘flic’, trying to win attention from his wife by swotting up on ... Gerard de Nerval. He quotes That Poem and I see one of our moments broadcast to the whole world on popular French television.
‘No,’ I say, wondering if I’ve written a French detective episode and it’s escaped from the manuscripts moldering in my desk drawers, or whether there is some kind of French Jean Gill live-alike.
‘Never did trust their relationship,’ says my husband.
Kiwi-fille empathises by phone about Bristol and sympathises about drainage.
‘We have mushrooms in the cellar’, I tell her.
‘No’, she says, appalled. I put her right. We finally found mushroom spawn, after searching the Internet (which offered many interesting but unwanted halucinogenics) and even pleading with visitors from the UK to find some for us. It was only a matter of waiting for the correct season and then our local garden centre offered a full range from champignons de Paris (button) to shiitake. As a major attraction of the house in the first place was that the wine cellar offered the ideal environment to grow mushrooms, we would have felt cheated if we hadn’t found this precious box of mould. Into the cellar it goes, to be sprayed with water daily (but not soaked) and we have three weeks to wait for the ‘white filaments’.
I am delegated to tend the mushrooms as we have had too many gardening disappointments recently for John to want another one. I was impatient to get tomatoes growing, moved them outside too quickly and they now look like cooked spinach. I am now in charge of planting more tomatoes. We found what we thought was a cold frame (and now know was used to make honey), put carefully nourished seedlings outside under its glass top, forgot to remove the top on a sunny day and fried the contents. I am now in charge of planting more basil too.
On the other hand, I have taken one critical comment too many on my accuracy (lack of) with paint. I have no idea how green gloss paint appeared a foot above the shutters I was painting, on the bathroom sink and nail brush, and on my stomach. And yes, I was being very very careful. I hate gloss paint and John is now in charge of painting the rest of the shutters.
14.
Toulouse Rugbymen beat the Scarlets
‘No, we don’t get the rugby.’ The barman at le Pub shrugs and returns to his other customers. This is a disaster; we had planned to watch the Quarter Final of the Heineken Cup on le Pub’s television, complete with French atmosphere. All of this by special request of my rugby-fan friend who still cannot believe she is in Dieulefit to see me while the Scarlets are playing Biarritz at Llanelli’s home ground, Stradey Park.
Her mobile phone is hot as she texts the ground to ‘check everyone has got there all right’. Whether she means her mother or the team is unclear but her need to be there sends static around the sitting-room where we are trying to create a suitable atmosphere – or at least not to add to the tension.
‘It doesn’t feel right without singing.’ is the next complaint as she stands up and sits down yet again. I offer a rendition of ‘Penblwydd hapus y ti’ (Happy Birthday to you) as it is the only Welsh song I know all the way through, but this is rejected with one glare.
When I was a Headteacher, I learned the whole of ‘Mae’n hen flad’ for those occasions when I was facing a hall-full for concerts, prize-givings or even St David’s Day, but I am back to singing the first two lines, a few mutters, and then an enthusiastic ‘Gwlad, gwlad’ (because we’re all glad to be Welsh and singing what is, viewed objectively, the best national anthem of them all).
I nearly offer the unofficial Welsh anthem but I know that neither John nor my other visiting friend will join in a rollicking version of ‘Delilah’ and I get the feeling I’m making myself unpopular with Scarlet friend.
If you have ever been in a Welsh pub when someone has started off ‘Delilah’ you will appreciate how contagious it is but why a song about adultery and murder should be so close to Welsh hearts is a mystery. The Welsh Assembly Member for Llanelli even attempted to have the song banned as ‘inappropriate’ which embedded it even further in the local psyche. If only I knew the whole of ‘Sospan Fach’, the ‘little saucepan’ song which is Llanelli’s own, I might redeem myself.
I was better off in the hotel restaurant at Charles de Gaulle; when ‘Belle’, a popular love song, came on the loudspeakers, I was one of those singing along. Waiters, customers queuing to pay their bills and busy travellers were all mouthing romantic snippets as they went about their business – all those who spoke French, that is.
I sit very quiet in the rugby lounge, the only one who doesn’t know the rules; John was once a player and horse-whispering friend has rugby in the bone although she no longer goes to matches. She whispers in my non-equine ear what is about to happen and it does. At half time, mobile-to-mobile enables Scarlet friend to hear the atmosphere and share the angst. Things are not going well. I am dislocated by the mobile. Among the sounds of Stradey will be my son, shouting himself hoarse, so far away, so close.
The Scarlets attack, the room explodes, we can’t see the screen as Scarlet friend tries to enter the TV and run for the line and John’s foot twitches as he joins in but our efforts are not rewarded. The defence holds – they are all built like tanks – and Llanelli fights its way to a loss. I am ashamed. I am a bad host and I have allowed my friends’ team to lose while they are guests in my house. If I were Japanese I would unsheathe the sabre and die honourably but I’m not, so I get some more wine. I have been cheerfully drinking and nibbling throughout but Scarlet friend has not risked distraction.
I am no stranger to supporting – or losing – but football (the kind with the round ball) is my sport of choice. France is close to heaven for an Arsenal supp
orter (by marriage, fickle woman that I am). The commentators support the team with unashamed bias and they can even pronounce most of the team’s names correctly, apart from the English ones). The days of hearing from Manager ‘Arson’ Wenger or ‘Robert’ Pires are long gone and I am amazed to hear how articulate and fluent are Arsène and Rrrrobair in interview – in French.
Of course I knew that English was their second language but I never really took in how much someone’s personality is disguised by his level in a second language, even when this is competent. In my own second language, I can now give a passable match commentary, including frequent emotional outbursts, much laughter and occasional comments on the oddity of British behaviour.
One match was played in Portsmouth in the pouring rain and much of the commentary was along the lines of ‘Typically English weather...look at those supporters – they don’t even have hats on! But what can you expect – they are English’.
Neither have we left Beckham behind, or rather Bay-kam. Real Madrid often appears on the screen and Beckham is as much a focus for commentary as Zidane. Off-pitch Beckham stories are a wonderful opportunity for the French press to both report the story and mock the British press – always an open goal.
Our local paper gleefully reported that ‘that typical British paper’ the News of the World was reporting the supposed French view of Beckham’s alleged infidelity as being an ‘admirable’ quality. In one swoop, le Dauphiné managed to titillate us with some Beckham gossip and give us French a wonderful feeling of superiority over these British with their stupid stereotypes.
Perhaps Dieulefit’s lack of top class rugby is not such a bad thing, given Llanelli’s result. It is certainly good to be a very long way from Biarritz and all wounds heal in time ... with some retail therapy involving soap, flavoured oils and nougat. We are starting to establish our own tourist route, which includes one of Montélimar’s many nougat producers.
I know that Montélimar is The Place for nougat, and that top quality nougat has to meet standards for the ratio of pistachios to honey, but as far as I’m concerned the crucial word is ‘tendre’. Nougat which is not ‘tendre’ should be used for road repairs and certainly leads to dental ones. In contrast, ‘tendre’ melts in the mouth, evokes Montélimar’s Moorish past and makes a moreish present.
In the seventies, when the main holiday route, the N7, ran through the centre of Montélimar and blocked solid for hours on end, the nougatiers would run out to the cars, take the orders, and deliver the nougat to the frustrated families whose cars had moved fifty metres – if they were lucky. When the autoroute was built, Montélimar became somewhere you whizz past on your way south and there was a trade crisis. Advertising campaigns, and marketing ploys such as tourist promotion exhibitions in Amsterdam, have brought back the visitors and Montélimar makes the most of its proximity to the Ardèche.
More than that, despite its Drômoise status, Montélimar only seems to acknowledges the Ardèche as a neighbour and there is not a trace of Drôme provençale publicity in the Tourist Information Office. The intellectual, pottery and good air centre of Dieulefit might as well not exist for all you can find out about it in Montélimar. I scent bad blood and my instincts are confirmed by the Dieulefit column of le Dauphiné.
Montélimar is holding a pottery fête and the Dieulefitois committee members have demanded of our Mayor how the usurper has got away with this travesty. Our Mayor is embarrassed and wriggles but admits that there was no consultation and that none of the potters invited are from Dieulefit. Double horror.
To add insult to injury, our wise Committee decided to preserve the quality of our Pottery Fête, and public interest in it, and so we are only having a biennial celebration. Montélimar’s Pottery Fête just down the road in the year Dieulefit has none, is a ‘bitter pill to swallow’ and it is clear from the article that all good Dieulefitois will boycott this declaration of war. We dutifully avoid Montélimar for two days, wondering if perhaps next year will see the Dieulefit Nougat Festival?
The orchard turns impressionist painting and for the first time we truly experience a ‘carpet’ of flowers. Instead of a parasol and a small child, it is with a large dog that I float between the trees, wearing combats rather than a crinoline. First the grass shimmers blue with wild grape hyacinths, then a week later the yellows of celandines, dandelions and delicate frothy unknowns take over, to mix another week later with white stars. Strange stalks sprout and, on the principle that if there’s only one, it must be an orchid, I identify orchids with equal certainty and error. I finally hit gold, or rather pink, when the brown speckled balls at intervals amongst open-mouthed sprays convince me that I have found a bee orchid.
The real things are buzzing around first the white pear blossom and pink peach, then the white apple. The wisteria, which I now know for sure to be over a hundred years old, is a canopy of scented purple cones and you stand underneath it at your peril, auditioning for ‘Attack of the Killer Bees’. The zooming shadows make you itch and swat instinctively but if you look up, you freeze; the biggest blackest buzziest bees you have ever seen are harvesting the wisteria. You don’t need to be warned that they are dangerous; ‘Bees and wasps – they sting you and - ‘ shrug - ‘that’s all . These ...’ we look up at 633 Squadron overhead, ‘these are dangerous.’ I look up the French word I have been given for ‘these’ – it translates as ‘bumble bees’. Let me tell you now, there is absolutely nothing in common between cute yellow-and-black fuzzy fatball insects that star in children’s picture books, and these monsters.
I am proud of all the careful pruning I did over the winter and when Monsieur Dubois comes to tend his orchard, I show him my handiwork. He brings over his secateurs and lopper, and reduces my vines to firewood.
When he is happy that I have understood what needs to be done, he repeats this process with the kiwi fruit. We patrol the garden and I get full pruning instructions but I have missed the time for the roses, which should have been laid low in autumn and pruned again in February. I did prune them, I start to explain but I know the answer – I have to cut more off, hack them to bits in fact.
We inspect the olive tree and I am told that I can only cut it back when the moon is young. This I do not understand; my very scientific, very practical French gardening book is also full of instructions as to which phases of the moon are appropriate for which gardening operations and it all strikes me as superstitious gobbledy-gook.
I remember a neighbour in Bancffosfelen, a science teacher, finally succumbing to folklore as he waged war against moles in his garden, so that he laid his beer traps according to the tides. Did it work? As far as I remember it was no less effective than his other ‘solutions’ – and no more; the moles moved on before he found the final solution.
It is nerve-wracking, like going on interview, to show someone around his own family home, currently being destroyed by the electricans, the plumber et al but it is also fascinating to accumulate the stories, of the house – still known locally as ‘maison Dubois’ - of its people and of the village.
My tales of French bureaucracy are nothing. I hear of planning permission rejected for a villa in the orchard – but granted for a retirement home ‘down in the river’ where the old people have to sit ‘with their feet actually in the water’; after accepting for twenty-five years the annual payment for two plots with planning permission, when actual building rights were requested, the mairie turned the request down because there the area was ‘thirty square metres of land short of what was necessary’.
On another occasion, Monsieur Dubois found that, since his last visit, a water reservoir had appeared – on his land. No notice, never mind consultation. And as for us telling him that our council visitation had suggested that we find a safer exit from our property than our driveway onto the main road; he had applied to access his own property, at his own expense, from an existing lane – refused.
Our neighbour had asked to move his private drive further onto his own property s
o his exit view would not be obscured by a house – refused. Safety? They don’t know the meaning of the word, they certainly don’t know what they want and as long as they make more paperwork they’re happy. ‘Usually, we can arrange things between ourselves’.
Not that it is any better in the Alps, Monsieur Dubois’ main home nowadays, where his attempt to set up a petrol station led to a Paris tribunal. I learn that service stations in the mountains have to be equipped to fuel rescue planes and helicopters, with the special fuel and safety regulations this necessitates. A neighbour’s appeal against the planned business led to requests for more and more detail, engineers’ reports and feasibility studies; ‘You are asked for twelve things and you always have eleven of them’.
We must have done something right as Monsieur Dubois brings his wife to meet us. She peoples the house with the loved ghosts of her in-laws, who saw no need for central heating until in their eighties – and even then were found at Christmas by their son ‘not cold enough’ to switch the heating on; a couple who made wine and verveine liqueur in the days when there were indeed truffles to be found under the oaks; who produced honey from the beehives still up in the woods behind our house; who kept a donkey in the workshop, and a goat in the cellar; who remembered stories of the days when silkworms lived in our mulberry trees; and whose melons were the sweetest ever tasted (unlike their wine, which according to their grandson, was undrinkable).
I already know about the two dogs buried in my garden, one a much-loved fourteen-year-old, going blind and deaf, who strayed onto the main road, probably tracking a badger scent. It’s not a bad way to go, a dream of the chase and then – oblivion. I am comfortable with ghosts and graves – it wouldn’t be a home without them - and I feel they are comfortable with me.
