Dinner With the Mayor – Conspiracy Theory?

Last night we had dinner with the Mayor, well you are either on the A-List or not as I always say. OK to be fair we actually had dinner with Jean-François and his wife Monique and he happens to live almost next door (well as next door as anyone does around here) and just happens to be the Mayor of our enormous metropolis Cormatin, which in the census this year counted more than 500 inhabitants - yes it is a BIG town.

Along with a couple of other neighbours we were treated to an exquisite meal. After some delicious chorizo and cheese puff-pastry nibbles with Kir Royale we were ushered to the table and an amuse-bouche of warm creamed pumpkin topped with small pieces of foie gras. The entrée was snails (caught and processed by Monique herself) and for the non-snail eaters (eg me as I don’t dare to eat them because of my shell fish allergy) there was a wild boar pâté made by Monique of course and the boar had been shot in the local woods by Jean-François himself. The main course was chicken in a light creamy morel sauce served with rice portioned into ramekins and presented as a little perfectly formed cylinder on the plate. The chicken certainly came from a shop, but whether the morels came from the forest opposite us, is a little bit of a mystery, I must admit we got rather lost in the discussion about the origins of the morels. Whilst their origin may be in doubt, their excellent taste was not. This was followed by the last of the “fresh” goats’ cheese of the season from the lady in La Bergerie and the meal was capped off with homemade lemon sorbet on top of warmed pineapple cubes lightly flavoured with cinnamon placed beautifully next to a small glass of mousse au chocolat and some almond wafer biscuits. Each course was served with the appropriate wine which prompted discussions of flavours and vintages. All I can say is - wow what a meal!

It was fun to have an evening out, discussing local issues, who’s who in Cormatin, amusing past and present stories (Jean-François is a master at story telling) and of course there was the inevitable discussion about the most important event in all our lives since anyone can remember - the transfer to digital TV.

Since my last blog on this topic, Cees and I have been phoning round and visiting anyone we can find who can help us. No one is available until mid-December, the whole change-over has been one huge fiasco. Because no one had had the opportunity to check out their digital receiving equipment prior to cutting off the analogue signal, it would seem that at least 50% of the local population (Cormatin, Cluny, Ameugny, Taizé, Salornay-sur-Guye) have poor reception, partial reception or no reception at all. Every single transmitter in the area was switched over at the same time which is leaving the poor (or soon to be stinkingly rich) aerial installers with more problems than they can possibly deal with. On Saturday morning one chap said: “Why couldn’t they have switched the transmitters off one by one? Then I could have at least made an attempt to keep up with requests for help!” In our tiny village of Chazelle everyone has a problem of one sort or another except one person - the Mayor - he has perfect reception, which is where the conspiracy theory of another friend of ours comes in. No names will be mentioned, but a friend of ours has a thing about Mayors and other persons in positions of authority and it does seem that she might have a point, why out of all the 30 odd houses in our village is he the only one who has perfect reception? Does he have so much power in the locality that those guys at Mont Saint Vincent have redirected our signal to his house? Well no not really, it seems that he is the only one who had the foresight to see the chaos that was on its way and he had a satellite dish fitted a couple of months ago. So should I call that conspiracy theory or strategic planning?

Our gites are in Chazelle, near Cormatin to see more detailsclick here.