Roses

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Friday evening, one week ago, and we were making paper roses in the village hall. Stacks of crêpe paper were put on the table along with little piles of wire and the lesson began. Fold and turn, fold and turn, go slowly to create a loose flower vaguely resembling a rose, too tight and you end up with a tulip! When the flower is done, you wind one of the little bits of wire around the base to secure, leaving a tail of wire for something or other. This is an annual occurrence and of course the old hands had brought their pliers, we just ended up with very painful fingers. 360 roses were created by the stalwarts of Cormatin that evening. It was however, a mystery to us what the roses were for, something about selling a real rose and getting a paper rose or visa-versa in any case I wouldn’t be too happy to spend 1 Euro on one of the paper roses we had just made…

Yesterday morning we turned up as instructed outside the church at 08.00 to erect stalls to be used to sell cakes, books, DVDs, Christmas flower decorations, mulled wine, waffles and of course roses. All in aid of the Téléthon, a nation-wide televised fund raising event for so called “orphan” sicknesses, ie illnesses that are rare and receive very little or no state funding, which surprisingly enough affect 1 in 20 of the population. We buzzed off homewards at 10.00, still none the wiser about the paper rose issue, instructed to return to help out after lunch. We popped in to get a newspaper so that we could sit down in the warmth at home, with our feet up, for a couple of hours. Whilst performing this usually simple transaction, we were confronted by the lady in the newsagent and told in no uncertain terms that we should buy some tickets off her for 5 Euros 50 each and go back to the Téléthon and collect two portions of “Petit Salé” - absolutely delicious she was having hers for lunch. Back to collect our food parcels and eventually we made it home.

As an aside the “Petit Salé” did indeed turn out to be delicious, mixed pork meats (two types of sausage, thick cut streaky bacon, slice of roast pork) on a bed of deliciously flavoured lentils. I’ll have to get the recipe and post it one day.

On our return after lunch, I was ushered behind the mulled wine stall where I spent the next few hours burning my hands ladling this boiling liquid into plastic cups, no wonder they talked us into this!

Cees however, had time to take photos for posterity and all was revealed about the roses. At last! I was even allowed a few minutes off from Mulled Wine duty to inspect the wonder myself. A giant Téléthon logo made out of florists’ oasis, was standing beside the stall selling roses. Every time a rose was sold, a paper one was placed in the logo as a measure of sales, with the aim to fill the whole logo by the end of the day. The little boy charged with the onerous duty of placing the paper roses had either misunderstood his task or got bored of standing around in the cold and he had filled the whole logo long before the roses had gone, ah well it made a nice photo.

After listening to the little accordion players who turned up to entertain the faithful, we left late-afternoon, relieved of our duty to dismantle the whole affair because of a previous engagement. Another successful Téléthon day in Cormatin and for us yet another enjoyable day with the people who are slowly becoming our friends.

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