It's that time of year again!

Week one and we're off

I couldn’t go the whole of December and not blog about the Taizé nativity scene now could I? So here you have it, the 2016 assessment of the Christmas Crib. As every year the nativity scene is managed by the permanents, so it changes each year as a new set of ideas and ideologies inspire its creation.

The whole advent period, there have been real live sheep in attendance next to the church, so no matter what day or what time you visited, there was always something to chat to. I think their last presence must have been Christmas Eve as Christmas morning they had gone. The theme this year was not as outspoken as previous years but was obviously influenced by the terrible situation in Syria. There is some beautiful Arabic calligraphy on the walls of the church, well done to whoever made those.

Week four- everyone is there except one person

Week one showed a near empty stable, a couple of sheep and the ox and ass were there. No sign of the (un)happy couple and no star. By the second week, the shepherds had arrived and the stall was full of sheep and I mean full, there has been some serious sheep creation going on by the permanents to get the numbers up. The star had made its appearance, shining over the stall.

Stunning Arabic calligraphy

The unhappy couple make their entrance in week 3 – oh dear did no one think to change those grimaces? The sheep gone and the ox and ass back - it was starting to look like Christmas. Finally in week four, the whole crowd was there, shepherds, sheep, ox and ass, empty manger and Mary and Joseph.

Finally on Christmas morning I saw the baby Jesus, snuggled in his manger. What I hadn’t realised before is that this is a double of the ox and ass model with the baby Jesus painted into the manger itself. This brought me to thinking of an idea for next year – permanents are you listening to my pearls here? You could make slip over faces or complete doubles of the holy couple giving them a smile after the baby has been born! That would brighten the thing up a bit.

Christmas Day - the main man makes his appearance

All in all, congratulations to this year’s group, you have created a lively story with interest throughout the advent period, thank you for that, it makes my weekly visits up the hill well worth it. I have one little request though, before you put them all to bed for next year’s team to use, please do something on the Mary and Joseph grimace issue. It may be a bit miserable giving birth in a cold stall miles away from home, but Jesus is the son of God and I really think that they should be happy to be the first people to see him.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Fun on the bus?

Torch bearing stilt walkers heralded the big event

The annual Cluny winter spectacle was held last week, it was freezing cold and foggy and not an evening I wanted to go out in, but as last year had been so spectacular, we felt it was worth braving the cold.

After a misunderstanding on our part about the time of the show, we arrived in Cluny far too early, we quickly saw the light and sound “happening”, visited the Christmas market and treated ourselves to a currywurst and chips from one of the stalls in the market square, which very good indeed. Still with time to spare and with feet that were starting to feel the beginning effects of frostbite, we set off to our favourite bar and quickly warmed up on mulled wine. When we heard the band leading the torch lit procession in the main street, we headed back to the market place for the main show.

Tightrope walking on top of a bus

This year the same performing troupe was being used under a different name, they were called the “Funambus” - a witty French name to show that they were using a bus to do their show. The show itself started off by the bus being “dragged” into the arena by a girl with a long pigtail (a bit bizarre but hey, live and let live) the bus then went totally crazy and started careering around its designated area, not much more than a meter from the audience and then it headed straight for a group of spectators, fortunately the brakes worked and it stopped about 1 foot short of them. Call me a kill-joy, but I felt it was a little irresponsible even without the ice that was present on the ground. It didn’t put me in a mood to really enjoy what was going on after that.

Human figurehead

Fortunately the bus then stopped and the human part of the show started. All of the action took place on a tightrope on top of the bus, it was without a doubt technically very skilful and very well executed, but for more than half an hour with temperatures at about minus 3 it was too much for a lot of the audience and numbers dwindled. We stayed to the bitter end and the finale was quite good with the tightrope walkers walking up and down while the bus was moving and the female performer acting like a ship’s figurehead, hanging on to the front of the bus.

I think that it is great that such a small town as Cluny invests in putting on a show at this time of year. It gets us all out of our houses, enjoying ourselves on a miserable bitter evening and we will certainly be back next year.

The writing’s on the floor

No parking between the 16th and 31st

Traffic in Cormatin has always been a nightmare on the 1st and 16th of the month. Why? Well that is the day the "Great Parking Changeover" takes place. What’s that? I hear you ask. The art of compromise has determined that cars will be parked on one side of the main street for the first half of the month and then on the other side of the road for the second half of the month. This means that no one has to have a line of cars in front of their door on all the days, but it isn’t half confusing for the non-regular parkers in town and most particularly for the tourists, meaning that on 1st and 16th cars are parked on both sides of the road and traffic comes to a standstill.

Someone's been writing on the floor

A couple of weeks ago we were in town buying a newspaper and fresh baguette and we saw some mysterious writing on the tarmac. What could be happening? I duly took a photo for posterity and we went home to contemplate this bit of exciting news. Was Cormatin finally going to have a sensible parking policy?

A few years ago it was decided that something had to be done about this silly parking system. No, we couldn’t all park on just one side of the road (why? – no idea) there had to be a system of alternate-side parking, but not changing twice month, a permanent alternate-side parking.

One car not in an official space..

Much debate in the council meetings has been devoted to this subject, and there has been much argument in town amongst main street and non-main street residents and even though the plans were published two years ago, no one could agree and nothing has been done.

But those little markings on the tarmac, did they mean that something might actually happen?

The diggers moved in the following week and caused a lot of chaos in town, pavements have been torn up and curbs lowered. And then they left….. those daft parking signs were still in place.

Finally last week, the painters turned up and have marked parking spaces and the parking signs have been removed. We now have permanent parking spaces, but we have far fewer than before and nipping in for your newspaper or loaf of bread isn't as easy as it was.

Another car not in an official space.....

But the big question is, has life been improved for the parkers, the residents or the traffic flow - the jury is still out on that one, but I doubt it. Parkers have already taken an anarchistic approach and are ignoring the painted spaces and parking anywhere which is blocking up the road and lorries are still thundering through town at an inappropriate speed. But we will see the real effect next summer when the campervans and caravans start to clog up our main street again. Watch this space for an update!

Les Oiseaux Rares

For the third year running “Les Oiseaux Rares” the group of artists and artistic tradesmen and women from Cormatin, have opened their “nests” to the public and have been giving demos and exhibiting their wares. The last weekend in November has become a popular fixed date on the Cormatin calendar.

This year as always, the standard has been very high. Each artisan invites someone from outside their group to display their items as well and it makes touring the studios very interesting. I could have spent a fortune in each location.

As every year, a soup bowl was on sale which entitled you to free soup at each “nest”, the soup was less obviously available this year compared to other years and so we only partook of Pascale’s (the silk painter) soup, but we did go to see her both days. The bowls are made by Pierre (the town’s potter) and as usual, they are lovely items to have in your cupboard, I am only sorry we missed the first year, so our collections is not complete.

This year the church was opened up for the two days and the display of Patrick’s paintings, Silvyane’s wire sculpture (both from our very own Chazelle) and someone else’s pottery - sorry I didn’t find out whom. The beautiful items on display did not feel at all out of place in that building.

For those hungry punters, a mobile burger van had been invited to provide food for the two days. We decided to support this initiative and so we ordered and paid for our burgers and chips and then we were told to come back in 20 minutes!! Excuse me? A snack bar that takes 20 minutes to make two burgers and chips when there are no other customers? If we hadn’t already paid, we would have walked away. Fortunately we hadn’t finished our tour of the nests and so we went off to see some of the other artisans during our wait.

When we got back after 20 minutes we still had to hang around for another 10 minutes before our “food” was available. The chips were the most horrible things I have ever had the misfortune to be served, they were overcooked, brown and soggy, now being English I like my chips soggy, but floppy, squishy and falling apart go way beyond my taste. The burger was edible, I must admit I didn’t spot the bacon that was supposed to be in it, but Cees assured me that it was there. Summing up the burger wagon - a serious disappointment on an otherwise super, successful weekend.

I am happy to say that loads of people visited our little corner of Burgundy this weekend, despite the weather and the artisans involved did good trade and the village was once again put on the map. I can’t wait for next year, I think we’ll be eating at one of the restaurants in town.

Parcel Delivery

One big parcel

The other day we had popped out for a few minutes and when we came back we found a note from La Poste telling us that we have a parcel waiting to be delivered. I hadn’t ordered anything, had Cees? It is not our birthdays and still too early for Christmas – a bit of a mystery. Cees was convinced that I had ordered something and forgotten about it, I know I am a bit forgetful, but a parcel??

There is a brilliant system here by which you can go on-line and reschedule your delivery date (next day possible) or have it dropped off at a post office or other accredited shop - newsagent, garage you name it they are all on the list, if I did nothing the parcel would go to Cormatin post office and I could collect it any time after 11.00am the next day. As the next day was Saturday and the post office closes at 11.30, I decided to have the mystery parcel delivered here the next day.

Address "corrected" by Mme La Poste

On a Saturday Madame La Poste comes before 11.00m but at 11.00 there was still no parcel, so at 11.00 I went off to the post office to make sure it had not been delivered there – no, no parcel there either. I then set off on a tour of the villages around here which I know are on her round trying to find her, as we had to go out. After travelling more than 15km I decided to give up and head for home, the parcel would have to wait until after the weekend. What did I nearly bump into as I rounded the last corner on my way home, Madame La Poste’s little yellow van!

She greeted me with a cheery “what a coincidence I have a parcel for you”. I explained that I was driving around the countryside looking for her which caused some amusement. She opened the back of her van to show a huge parcel. “Funny thing though”, she continued, “they put the wrong address on it.”

As I have said before, addresses can be a little vague around in this neck of the woods, everyone who lives in Cormatin has the address Cormatin, no road name or number, just Cormatin, so the postman or woman has to know where everyone lives. We are supposed to have our name on the letterbox, but not everyone complies with that rule and even though we have now been given “proper” addresses with road names and numbers, no one uses them, so even with the modern world encroaching on our little bit of rurality, the postwoman still has to know her stuff.

An added facilitation to post delivery is of course the post code. In the UK and in The Netherlands this postcode will narrow the address down to about 5 houses. Here the postcode narrows it down to about 10 villages.

So with that little bit of background in mind, let’s get back to my parcel. This parcel was indeed addressed to Madame La Tuilerie de Chazelle with our postcode, but there was a road, house number and village name, which were not ours, in fact the house in question is about 10 km from La Tuilerie and not even on our postlady’s round. But at that moment, the mystery was solved.

With its rightful owner

Having a small business, I receive all sorts of offers from suppliers, from paperclips to cars and other useful or semi-useful items. Not so long ago I received an offer for coffee pods. Not using the things, I passed it on to some friends who do buy them. They actually read the offer properly and it wasn’t for cheap pods at all, it was a free coffee pod machine with your next order of pods! As their machine is a few years old and a new one costs in the region of 80 Euros, this was an offer they couldn’t refuse.

So they placed an order in the company name La Tuilerie de Chazelle, with their address but they just happen to have the same post code as us. As I mentioned earlier, Madame La Poste knows darn well where La Tuilerie de Chazelle is, so instead of delivering it to the “wrong” address in a village about 10 km away, she decided to deliver it to its rightful owner ME. What a woman, what a service and what proactivity.

Nuts, nuts and more nuts.

Walnuts to keep us going through the winter

The first full autumn we were in France, a friend and I spent an hour or so collecting walnuts. There had been high winds during the night and she had seen that masses of walnuts had been shaken out of the large tree in her village. Between the two of us we collected 25 kilos. It was only when my back started to tell me enough was enough, that I convinced her we should stop. Offering to drive her home with her share, she promptly told me that she didn’t want any! What was I going to do with that many walnuts??

Well times have changed and now every year I go scavenging. We have grown used to having walnuts available all year round – for free. We put walnuts in salad, I make walnut tart, we eat walnuts in all sorts of yummy dishes or we just nibble at walnuts straight from the shell.

Misty morning

I returned the following year to the 25 kilos tree only to find that it was gone, it had made way for a car park. But over the years our own trees have started to produce and I have found some great spots in nearby villages where I can get my annual autumnal fix.

This year it has been a different story, I have searched everywhere. The trees in our garden yielded a total of 6 nuts (we have 6 trees but all the nuts came from just one of them) and my usual trees only yielded a few more. So this year, instead of 25 kilos we got about 25 nuts.

Chainsaw art

Having said that, the hazelnut trees in the garden have yielded a bumper crop, instead of the usual zero nuts we have a box full of them, they are a bit on the small side, but yummy none the less. Definitely no where near 25 kilos, so this was going to be a lean nut year - that was until we visited some friends in the Vendée.

As we parked our car at their house, we immediately spotted a huge quantity of walnuts on the ground and we joked with them that we would pinch a few. Their response was, take as many as you like, we have enough. Looking in their store, we saw that they had already harvested about 25 kilos and so we set to.

I do like to be beside the seaside

A big thank you to our friends Steve and Jane, the owners of a glamping site (if you don’t know what that is check out this link) who allow people who stay with them to learn a few self-sufficiency skills. Not only did we have some lovely totally home grown meals (including one of Flopsy’s offspring reared in one of their rabbit runs) we managed a trip the seaside (something truly lacking in Burgundy) we saw some fantastic Romanesque churches (what is a trip out without one?) and we came home with enough walnuts to keep us going for another year.

Winter can now begin.

Trauma in the New Theatre in Chalon

The new theatre, in the dark depths of an industrial zone

After a summer chock-a-block full of concerts we were entering autumn, winter and spring with only two concerts in view. The first one was last week - a Fado singer in Chalon.

I am not a fan of Fado, but Cees is, so we bought tickets. As we were on our way through Chazelle, I had a sudden light bulb moment and remembered that the theatre, where all the concerts are normally given, was closing down for a two year renovation as of September – so where the heck was our concert going to be? An emergency three point turn followed by a racing start and screeching halt at La Tuilerie, to check out the theatre website. Of course both of us had switched off our computers (bloomin’ energy saving ideas) and so our departure was somewhat delayed. Good job I did think of it in time, as the new theatre is completely on the other side of town and not at all where I thought it was even when I had remembered it had moved – if you get my drift.

Inflated tarpaulin 

No problem, we are chronically early for everything (too long in The Netherlands) so we were on time for the concert. People were going into the auditorium when Cess handed over our electronic tickets that he had printed out, no cheery beep for us from Ticketman’s scanner we got a blurp – tickets not valid! What?? Ticketman then looked at the tickets and said “these are for an orchestra in May”. Oh no…. someone had brought the wrong tickets with him. There was no way we could get home in time to get the right tickets and still see the concert – “what a pity” I was secretly thinking. Ticketman suggested we talked to Ticketlady, maybe something could be done.

Rplacement ticket

Ticketlady smiled when we told her our story and said “Quelle catastrophe !” and then tick, tick, tick on the computer, we were found and real cardboard tickets were printed out for us. Phew – “this concert had better be worth the hassle” I was thinking by then.

The new temporary theatre is a wooden base structure with an enormous red tarpaulin over it which seems to be inflated by a massive ventilation system. Inside there are 18 rows of 32  seats seemingly sloping up to the sky. When we got to our seats in row O, I felt like we had climbed half way up Mount Everest, but we had an impressive, towering view of the stage. My only concern was the lack of emergency exits. There were two for roughly 600 theatre goers and both of those were meters below us at row A. With only two narrow, steep staircases to get everyone down and out, I wasn’t sure what would happen in an emergency.

Gisela dances an encore, high heels gone,
time to seriously get dancing

The concert however, was fantastic. The singer (Gisela Joao) was quite superb and the musicians were even better. Gisela didn’t only sing Fado but she sang jolly, dancey songs and she was so enthusiastic about the songs that she jumped and danced all over the stage like a little girl. She insisted on trying to translate the words of each song, but her vocabulary let her down somewhat, so the Portuguese speakers in the audience had to shout out the missing words every so often. All in all she charmed the whole audience and her rendition of La Vie en Rose brought the house down.

It was great evening out, it was certainly worth the price of the tickets, the hassle of finding the place and the trauma of having the wrong paperwork with us, but I’m still not too sure about the safety of the theatre itself. I am hoping our seats for the next concert are a bit nearer the exits.

Autumn Holiday

View from our accommodation in 's-Hertogenbosch

Just as we thought that summer would never end, we had a sudden heavy frost. Autumn has arrived in style this year.

Even though end of summer always surprises me, I think it is our strange gite season that has really confused my seasonal clock this year. We do not normally have many guests in September, we wind down gently from the busy summer months into the autumn and then we close for the winter. This year the guests have kept coming and coming. The later in the season it became, the more people we have had visiting us. Everything has been so much later this year, including the hot weather and this has all compounded to profoundly confuse me!

Typical "street" scene in Amsterdam

Being fully booked for September (the first time ever in the ten years we have been open) there was no holiday for us during that month, so a two week visit to The Netherlands was planned for October. Nice and relaxed this time, to enable us to visit everyone we wanted to and not have to rush around like lunatics from one place to another. But the gite bookings just kept coming, a couple of days were initially shaved off the end of our holiday and then some more days were shaved off the beginning and so our two weeks ended up as four days.

What is The Netherlands without a windmill.....

... or bicycles and canals?

The great thing about living here is that we can just pop to The Netherlands for four days without too much trouble and now that there are fewer tourists on the road, the journey is really quite relaxed.

So there we were last weekend, as our guests left the gite on Saturday morning, packed and ready to go. We were easily in The Netherlands in time for dinner.

That evening we went to see a light show in 's-Hertogenbosch, part of the year of Hieronymus Bosch. We missed the light show when we visited during the exhibition of his work back in May as one of the buildings it was to be projected on collapsed a few days before we arrived. We were very disappointed at the time and so it was a pleasant surprise to be able to actually see it this time and it and gave a very holidayish feel to start of our short break.

Amsterdam flower market in autumn.

The next day on to Amsterdam and a chance to see old favourites including the Van Gogh museum and just to wander around and enjoy the sites and sounds.

So that’s it for our autumn holiday, hopefully we will have better luck organising our spring holiday, but on the other hand if we fail to do that one, it means we have an excellent start to our renting season – difficult choice!


For information on holiday accommodation within one day's drive of The Netherlands click here.

Finally a reason to visit Montceau-les-Mines

The sign says it all - La Douce Heure Antillaise

I have been very rude about Montceau in a number of blogs, basically because it is a bit of a dump. No more or less so than any other industrial town which has lost its industry and is trying to redefine itself, but Montceau seems to think it is above the rest of them, which is why I think I have a bit of a downer on the place. We have visited the town a number of times now and to be honest I have found nothing of any interest there, apart from the occasional event in the theatre - we once saw a fantastic Chinese opera. Don’t get me wrong it is not a “bad” place, it is just not got anything good going for it – or so I thought.

I am going to back track now to May when we went to an Antillean mass in Cormatin church see here for the reason why - it is too long a story to tell again. The person behind the Antillean week is Christiane Mathos and we discovered (OK Cees discovered) that she runs a restaurant in Montceau, La Douce Heure Antillaise. We have been meaning to visit the restaurant a number of times and finally looked up the website. Lunch is by reservation only, so we tried to make a reservation. To cut a long story short, we finally went last Thursday.

A touch of the tropics in Montceau

The interior of the restaurant gave a clean, simple and “Caribbean” impression and the menu looked interesting. Starters were a problem for me as everything except the black pudding was fish, fortunately I love black pudding so the choice was simple. The main course proved to be more difficult as there were a number of things that sounded as though they were worth a try, I plumped for Chicken in coconut milk. Cees chose the Antillean starter mix and he went for the only item on the menu which had a chilli-heat warning - Civet de Chatou (pieuvre). Not knowing what either chatou or pieuvre were, I asked and the owner said it was like calamares – octopus! Yum. When Cees said he wanted it really hot the owner said ah ha you want “rougail” which was obviously the Antillean word for “super hot”. So the octopus was ordered and a new word had been learned.

The starters were a great success and then my chicken arrived and Cees’ king prawns??? I thought it was supposed to be octopus – ah well, lost in translation again. I half expected someone else in the restaurant to say “hey you have my food” but no one did, so Cees ate the king prawns which were very nice, but not very hot, fortunately the owner had given him a pot of scotch-bonnet sauce, very tasty and very hot and that livened it up.

Simple, colourful and waiting for the lunchtime guests

So our verdict, firstly take a dictionary with you and read the menu properly. Rougail is a type of spicy sauce and in this restaurant it is served with king prawns, Civet de Chatou is octopus in a spicy oniony sauce, which Cees will definitely be trying if we go again. It is still not clear to us how he ended up with the king prawns, but he did like them so it wasn’t the end of the world. My chicken was good enough to want to return and try out the other offerings on the menu. The meal was not cheap but also not super expensive, however price-wise it isn’t a place to eat at every day, which is just as well as the owner is the waitress and chef, so don’t expect to get out quickly, having said that, the music and general ambiance were chilled out enough to let you sit there and not worry about the passing time.

We’ll definitely be going back; my only worry is that the owner has just celebrated 30 years of running the restaurant and who knows how much longer she will keep going – why didn’t we find this place when we first came here? We could have had years of culinary enjoyment.

Journées du Patrimoine

Moss has taken over the crumbled towers

Last weekend were the Journées du Patrimoine – the European Heritage Days. This weekend, towards the end of September, is always a feast for us perpetual tourists as they are the two days in the year that some special places are open and it is the weekend that entry into the large attractions is free or at a reduced price.

Cees is the senior tourist and he pours over the pages of the newspaper (aka Le Journals de Saône et Loire) and spends hours trawling the internet to find out exactly what is going on. Priority is given to places that are rarely open and a couple of days before the Saturday, a proposed visit plan is presented to the junior tourist. She then scrutinises, criticises and adjusts the programme and we come up with our final plan of attack.

The largest part of Lournand castle that is still standing

Sadly this year, the weather, which has been hot and very summery, decided to break on the Saturday morning. The day started grey so that the flypast I mentioned in my last blog was cancelled. Not a good omen for the weekend. But even faced with such adversity, we were not downhearted and we moved from the non-existent fly past to our next destination - the castle at Lournand. This castle is only ever open to the public on the Journeés du Patrimoine and so it is a must see. The site is large and rather dangerous for those who do not know their way around, so it normally locked and the public is kept away except for these two days when guided visits are available. Saturday we were there for the first tour after lunch and we were not disappointed.

Trees growing into the stonework

The site is much larger than I had expected and we were escorted around by the president of the association that has dedicated itself to rejuvenating the site. They won’t be rebuilding the castle, but they are restoring it into a safe state. To rebuild would be an impossible task and would take away from the beauty of the place in my opinion. I was fascinated by the way nature had taken over this ancient structure during its years of neglect. Where the towers have collapsed, moss has covered the stones in a brilliant green carpet and where the walls are still standing, trees have grown into the stonework creating a feast for the eye.

It started to drizzle as we went round, but we completed the whole visit (not far short of two hours) relatively dry.

We then moved on to see a small chapel that is never open - not really exciting, but it was turned into a post office for the weekend, so we bought a postcard and mailed it to ourselves.

Sunday dawned even more miserably than Saturday and by the time we set off (09.30) it was chucking it down. Knowing that it was likely to rain, we had reserved the indoor sites for this day. We went to the Doyanée at Bezornay, which has been split into four residential properties and is therefore never open to the public. It was a real treat. We had visited the site many months ago, but of course we could only see the outside and not all of that either. Seeing the place from the inside gave us new insights as to how the whole was in its heyday.

Imagine a living room like this

The chapel, which has just been restored and is now someone’s living room was spectacular, the attention to detail in the restoration process and the enthusiasm of the owner, made that for me the highlight of the weekend.

Despite the horrible weather, it was a very successful weekend.

Monday dawned sunny and we are now back to the Indian summer we have been enjoying for the last few weeks - long may it last.

I’m Back

Patrouille de France in action

After taking a holiday from blogging over the summer, I’m back in the saddle again. To celebrate, Mâcon organised a fly past from La Patrouille de France (the French equivalent of the Red Arrows) over the Saône on Saturday morning. The elite of the French air force in their fighter jets with smoke trails of red, white and blue over the river - just for me!

They must have known that when I was young I wanted to be a fighter pilot, I even managed to get an introductory interview with the RAF by not giving my Christian names and not saying I had an O’ level in needlework. They were surprised when a five foot nothing female turned up and rather patronisingly told me girls can’t do that sort of thing – born too soon - they do it nowadays.

The noise of the planes, the roar of the engines, the adrenalin rush as those machine race over your head, just what any red-blooded engineer wants. The closest I have got to that is watching Top Gun with quadraphonic sound and an enormous screen at the IMAX in Rotterdam, but that is a few years ago now.

So yes, of course I would be delighted to be the guest of honour, thank you!

James Bond comes in to land in his Republic Seabee in Mâcon

The fly past was due at 10.30 and when Cees confirmed the time with the organisers, he was told that it was set for 10.30 but it might be 11.00 or even 11.30 ummm….. Let’s get this straight, the Patrouille de France is manned by the crème de la crème of French fighter pilots who can be scrambled at a moment’s notice and are less than 20 minutes flying time from any point on the French mainland, how the heck can they be an hour late?? Ah well c’est La France, say no more.

Back to Saturday morning. Being genetically and psychologically Northern Europeans we turned up on time, ie we were in situ at just gone 10 o’clock. I know, I know I can’t help it, but at least I was dressed warmly for the hour and half wait - I even had long trousers and socks on - now that is a first!

Tom Cruise on his way for my fly past

While we waited, we were treated to a display of amphibious aircraft taking off and landing. One of the planes was a Republic Seabee which had actually been in a James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun, with Roger Moore. That was in the days when James Bond was real and was not one of those modern alternatives – am I showing my age?

So there we were, on the first cold day since mid July and just before the fly past was due to be late, an announcement came over the tannoy, the cloud cover was too low to fly, they weren’t coming. There went my first blog of the autumn!

Not to be defeated I found a nice photo from the Internet to show you what my fly past would have looked like had it been a nice day. I think I’ll stick with Top Gun next time, at least it starts when I want it to and I can watch it in the warm!

Music and food

Duo Duende performing

It is that time of year again when the guitar music festival takes place in our village. Last weekend we started with a charming father and son duo from Albi playing Spanish and Brazilian music. The members of the audience were tapping their feet to the interesting programme they performed.

The first concert in the series is often under attended, but we were pleased to see that Chazelle church was over half full. An excellent start to the series.

Dinner awaits

Sunday we had a local favourite Bernard Bruel who sings Jacques Brel songs. He normally sings to a taped accompaniment, but especially for our festival, he accompanied a number of the songs on the guitar. He should do that more often as it was a much more pleasant effect, than just a tape in the background, an accordionist would be even better, but that wouldn’t have fitted into the guitar concept! The church was almost full and everyone really enjoyed his interpretation of the songs, a selection of old favourites and lesser known Brel songs.

Bruel sings Brel

There are three more concerts in the series, Emmanuel Rossfelder, who appears every two or three years and is one of the “Godfathers” of the festival, a group of Corsican singers who will be performing a traditional polyphonic repertoire (something I have never heard before)and we will end the festival with a French, Irish music band, who were so popular last year, we had to turn people away at the door. All three of the remaining concerts have already sold more than half of the available tickets, so it looks like it will be a good year not only musically but financially, which will enable us to carry on after the last two lean years have rather depleted our coffers.

Superb buffet

After the concerts, the volunteers get together with the artists for a buffet meal prepared by Monique and Chantal in Monique’s house, conveniently located almost nextdoor to the church. They do us proud every time and these evenings were no different.

All in all, we had two very interesting evenings, with delicious food, the only downer was France losing in the Euro cup final – but you can’t have it all can you?

Onwards and upwards to the next concerts - I can’t wait.

Nuts and Bolts and Road Signs

What are all these bits for?

All winter I have been on a committee to discuss and implement new road signage in Cormatin village – and who says life in rural France is boring?

The discussions were seemingly endless and mostly about the colour and shape and size, although we have taken a radical decision that I am sure no one concerned has fully understood. I am waiting for the flack we will receive when the new signs are installed and the old ones are removed, but I’ll keep my head down and plead ignorance on that one!

First the hammer then screw it into place

Saturday was the day that the new panels were to be put together. We turned out in force to help – umm well not quite in force, apart from us, there were Pierre the potter, Patrick the painter and Silvyane the sculptress. The ones without alliterating names and jobs didn’t turn up.

Cees and I are a whizz at Ikea kitchens and this should have been a doddle, but as non-fluent French speakers, we bowed to the superiority of our co-workers and even though I did my best to run around and pick up the multitude of fallen nuts and bolts, we still ended up with quite a few getting lost – to be blamed on the supplier of course.

In any case it was a good lesson in French, I have learned some new words even though the assembled troupe couldn’t decide whether the word for screw was masculine or feminine - une vis versus un vice. My word for the day is un écrou (a nut) not only because it took me the whole afternoon to remember it, but it sounds rather nice as well, although rather surprisingly it doesn’t go on a bolt (un boulon) it goes on a screw (une vis) – umm I not sure my teachers have been so accurate in their language usage here.

Just don't let it fall over

I have learned a bunch of swearwords which I won’t elaborate on, but they help when you are trying to hammer a self-tapping screw into a steel frame - lets not go there. My inability to pronounce the words “above” and “below” clearly enough to be differentiated from each other (they sound exactly the same to the uninitiated - read anyone who isn’t French and then not all of them either) caused endless hilarity, but we got there in the end.

Finally after 3 hours of work, four panels have been constructed ready to be “planted” on Tuesday and a fifth was mounted on the campsite wall. Fortunately we do not have permission to put up all seven panels as yet, so we have a chance to buy some more nuts and bolts to make up for the lost ones.

If I survive the fallout when certain people find out they no longer have their own personal sign, I’ll let you know how we get on with the installation!

Sad story

Sad, sad day

I’ve been rather down in the dumps the last few weeks; I put it down to the unusually wet and cold weather we have had in May and early June, but the scaremongering and Armageddon predictions tumbling out of my mother country have not helped my mood either. You see, I am one of the disenfranchised British citizens who stood to lose a lot with an exit of the UK from Europe, but who were not allowed to vote.

As it got closer to the 23rd (referendum day) I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I still hoped that (what I deemed to be) reason would prevail. As I got up in the early hours of Friday to watch live streaming of the results of the referendum, that sinking feeling proved to be justified. The British people, had decided that they wanted to leave the European Union.

The new Europe

It brought back a memory of my early days in continental Europe, when I would moan about Dutch bureaucracy or another “European” oddity that I couldn’t grasp and a colleague would say to me “why don’t you just f.. off back to your little island”. That was a cue to me to rethink what I was moaning about and see if maybe, just maybe, it was me and my way of thinking that could do with a tweak and maybe, just maybe I could learn something from another way of thinking.

Now the British population has spat out its collective dummy and f..ed off back to its little island and pulled up the drawbridge to boot. I fail to see how this will help them, but as I have come to realise, I am no longer really British and as I have felt more and more on each visit back to my homeland, I am well and truly out of step with this current British mentality.

I wish them well and as they sort out their messy divorce, I must now also start the process of extracting myself financially and emotionally from the island that no longer wants me or my kind.

Yesterday the weather was heavy and oppressive, matching my mood after the vote, and last night we had one humdinger of a storm. Scary though the storm was, it cleared the air and today has dawned sunny and calm. A new start for everyone. Let’s hope the British population does not live to regret its decision, but whatever happens to them, I am very grateful that I have a passport from a real European country and not just a British one, so that I can continue to live in a great community of countries, striving to work together to make a better life for all their citizens, not just the rich and petulant ones.