The Circus Came to Town

Every year a travelling circus visits Cormatin. We see the posters go up a couple of days in advance, then the trucks roll into town and the tent goes up. It is a family affair, Mum, Dad, the kids and the grand kids and it is very small-time. Due to an overabundance of embarrassment at not having small children to take with us, we have never gone, but this year we steeled ourselves and decided to go anyway and see what they had to offer - we weren't disappointed.

We parked near the Plan d'Eau (the fishing lake) and walked towards the circus tent. The first thing we saw was a small hump-backed cow (a miniature version of the ones you see in India) a very long horned cow, a lama, a goat and lots of chickens. My mind boggled what they were going to get the chickens to perform, or maybe they were just there to feed the other animals?

There were 36 chairs set out in the small Big Top for the audience, so the circus company obviously didn't have great expectations as to the crowds they would pull. We took our seats and waited. Some friends, who had come with their 4 year-old grandson, told us it was only for little people, which prompted a remark from Cees about my height, which I won't repeat. Indeed we were the only adults that turned up without very small children, the average age of which was about 3.

The show opened with a horse, who trotted round the ring in one direction, then the other, then the other, then the other etc etc, then it left. Next were little girls who did a little bit of tumbling. I must say that if they were my kids or grand kids I would have been very proud, but... The whole thing then started to really hot up, on came the ferrets, who wiggled in and out of some sticks and up and down a tube. The hula-hoops next - that girl really shouldn't wear a leotard it is not very flattering... On to the tightrope walking cat - oh yes this circus had it all ! The belly dancer (with as much belly as me to dance with) invited the local nurse to join her in the act, something she came to regret, when a boa constrictor was put round her neck. Then the finale, the goat who climbed to the top of a tower.

Absolutely brilliant, I haven't enjoyed so much in a long time.

La Tuilerie Website

Crime-Free Zone

One things we love about living here is the total lack of crime. We have been away on holiday and forgotten to lock our doors and indeed we have some friends who didn’t have any locks on their doors at all for the first five years they lived here, they only went out to buy some locks when they were going away for a month and thought it prudent not to leave the house open for that long ! We don’t have a policeman in town and we rarely see the boys in blue, except when they set up a speed trap by the chestnut tree. So imagine our surprise when we saw three policemen, two police cars, a security agent (identified by the word SÉCURITÉ in huge letters written on his back), a security agent’s car and lots and lots of people milling around late on Tuesday afternoon.

We were on our way to the library where Mlle B, the mayor’s secretary, manages the town’s motley collection of books. So we asked about the heavy police presence in town. Mlle B looked baffled, this is not an unusual reaction from her, we do seem to cause more than our fair share of confusion for her and the other town hall workers by asking weird questions. Fortunately the deputy mayor was there and he chipped in, quite disappointed that Mlle B did not know about the hottest gossip in town in the last two hundred years. Some one had tried to rob the new bank machine, the previous night.

The bank machine is Cormatin’s pride and joy, or should I say the mayor’s pride and joy, as he had been trying to get one installed in town for the last 10 years and finally succeeded just two years ago. We were all so proud of this achievement that a party and opening ceremony was held in its honour, with a representative from the French government in attendance, yes it was THAT big an event.

Anyway, the bank machine is installed in the wall of the town hall and the money is held in a locked room where the town jail used to be (maybe there was crime around here once upon a time). The town hall is in a relatively uninhabited part of town, except for Monsieur M, the recently retired Guard Champetre, who lives in a flat above the town hall itself. He was woken up at about 1 am by the sound of an angle grinder, he looked out of his window and saw some guys trying to break into the bank machine, he called the gendarmes, but the thieves escaped empty-handed (in a dark coloured car) before they arrived.

For whatever reason the bank were not been able to remove the money from the machine on Tuesday or Wednesday and only managed to send someone to empty the machine about mid-day Thursday. So what do you do if you have thousands of Euros in a damaged bank machine in the criminal capital of Burgundy? Yes that’s right, you put a plastic garden chair next to the machine and you hire someone to sit there day and night, with SÉCURITÉ written in big letters on his back, just in case the bad guys come back. If the security guard needs to go and have lunch or just to stretch his legs, what does he do? He leaves the chair and the thousands of Euros unattended and un-amazingly they are still there when he gets back. I love this town.

La Tuilerie Website

Roche de Solutré

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in the month and this is when lots of museums are free or have reduced entry fees. One museum in particular we have wanted to go to for ages is the Museum of Prehistory at the base of Roche de Solutré. The temptation of a free visit has kept us from going during the week and for whatever reason we have never managed a first Sunday in the month until this weekend.

The rock never ceases to impress me, as you stand at the base looking up. Since our last visit, they have built a nice new car park, even though it is a bit difficult to get in and out of and to be honest it is nowhere near big enough.

When we entered the museum, we were given a audio guide device, which you can have in any language. We really like these gadgets as they allow you to get in-depth information about the exhibits at your own pace. On this occasion, the English voice was a female non-native speaker who stumbled over a lot of words, and words like Palaeolithic and Neanderthal caused serious problems, which is not too clever when those are the sort of words used rather a lot in a museum of prehistory. Another very annoying thing, is that the everything in the museum is laid out right to left so 2,000,000 BC is on the right and 1,000 BC is on the left, it took me ages to match the commentary to the exhibits, it just shows how pre-programmed we all are at reading everything from left to right.

The museum continued outside, quite why I am not sure, as there was nothing in the commentary that had to be said outside. The dreadfully small steps (shorter than the length of my huge size 2 ½ shoes) that undulate up and down outside did not help our mood or enjoyment of the views, constantly having to watch our feet so that we didn’t fall over.

Back inside and I had given up on the irritating woman doing the commentary and I went to play in the kids’ section, which was actually fun and interesting.

Overall, I am glad it was free, but to me the whole thing was a missed opportunity, far too much boring detail on what is actually a very interesting subject. Our mood dampened by the cool and cloudy weather and the uninspiring museum, we put off the walk to the top of the rock and went back to the car.

As we walked along, we were greeted by a paraglider who was swooping over the rock. We had more fun watching him zipping back and forth, catching the thermals, than in the whole of the museum. We went to retrieve our car, as he landed nearby. Having seen signs to a different car park, we decided to have a look at it. This second car park is much bigger and nicer and has a stunning panorama over the area and it is only 200 metres further away from the rock. It made me laugh that all these visitors preferred to park on the side of the road, half in ditches, or in the cramped car park, rather than walk the extra few metres, when the whole reason they had come here was to walk to the top of the rock !

The paraglider had actually landed in this second car park and as I took a photo of the magnificent view of Roche de Solutré and Roche de Vergisson, he was packing up his kit in the foreground.

Next time we come, we will choose a sunny day, we will avoid the museum and we will climb the rock.

La Tuilerie Website

Pruning Roses

I love pruning roses, I don’t know why, as they are tricky, prickly little devils, but I enjoy it anyway. Hybrid tea roses are the ones I am most familiar with as this is what we had in our garden in Ickenham, when I was a kid. Now I have quite a selection of different types, scattered all over the garden and I have never been too sure what to do with some of them, particularly the climbing and rambling roses.

The beautiful, red, persistent flowering, climber by the entrance to the toilet block (in the photo) has been a worry to me as it only seems to flower at the top, but over the years I have slowly got it to flower lower down, by guessing at what I should do. So imagine my excitement when there was a FREE rose pruning course at the rose garden in Cluny last weekend.

The poster said that there were two courses, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, bring your own secateurs. It was obviously a way to get all the roses pruned in as short a time as possible. A case of “We tell you how to do it for free, then you prune our roses.” Not a bad idea I thought.

I arrived with my secateurs on the dot (I know I should have learned by now that all things start late in this country, but I am chronically “on time” - I just can’t help it) and then the few of us that were there, hung around getting cold, until the bulk of the people turned up. A rose grower and breeder had come up from near Marseille to do the pruning session and he had other ideas about using amateur, slave labour to prune the precious roses he had supplied to the rose garden. He did all the pruning himself, talking as he went, explaining what he was doing and giving loads of tips along the way.

It was a cold morning and many people drifted away, perhaps bored by the lack of action, but I was transfixed. I told him about my climbing rose and what I had been doing to get it to flower lower down and to my great surprise and pride he told me I was doing exactly the right thing ! I was also thrilled to find out that all my rose pruning techniques (mostly based on gut feel rather than anything else) were the text-book French way of doing things, so now I can confidently prune our clients’ roses without feeling that I might be doing it wrong.

Even though I do look rather cold in the photo, I really enjoyed those couple of hours. Thank you Mr Rose Man.

Film and TV Awards

With the Césars yesterday and the Oscars tomorrow, film and TV awards are very much in the news, as are we I might add. We are getting very used to being followed by TV cameras after my recent blog and so it was no surprise, when I was collecting tickets at Mâcon station, that the TV cameras were there to register the moment. After I had discovered that I had brought the wrong reference number and retreated in embarrassment from the ticket office, the cameras decided to move on to the platform and film people getting off the train.

As I was being filmed on the platform, watching people getting off a train, a rather handsome, slightly tanned gentleman said “Bonjour” to me and I replied with “Bonjour”. All of this was caught on film, for posterity.

Last night we watched the news and there we were again, not quite shown on the TV. However, Monsieur Jean-Pierre Bel (the chap who was filmed with me on the platform and who just happens to be the president of the Senate) was shown drinking wine in a local wine cooperative, walking round Cluny and then laying a wreath on Madame Mitterrand’s grave. The cameraman must have followed the wrong car because he missed us having lunch in the Chinese in Mâcon and our meeting of the Guitares en Cormatinois last night.

Sadly Monsieur Bel’s real 5 minutes of fame - talking to me on the platform of Mâcon Loché TGV station - was left on the cutting-room floor.

I am putting myself forward for the next film and TV awards, as the most almost on TV person of 2012.

La Tuilerie Website

Friday Night Reflections in Taizé

With the French half term holidays upon us, Taizé has sprung into life again. The last time so many people have been on the hill, was the half-term holiday in November. In these two half-terms they have special short weeks for the younger school children attending, to give them their first taste of what Taizé has to offer.

It has taken me back in my thoughts, to the very first service I attended at Taizé, way back in 2006. One of the campers wanted to go to a service, but didn’t dare go alone (her husband wasn’t interested) and I also wanted to go, just to see what it was, but also didn’t dare. So the two of us went one Friday evening. I had no idea what was going to happen and of course I didn’t know at the time the significance of this service, it was all so new and strange.

So what is Friday evening about? The service is a normal Taizé evening service, with a little extra at the end. After the service is over, the iconic cross is laid flat on the floor in the brothers’ “garden”, the brothers gather around the cross to pray, then exit as usual. At that moment, gaps are made in the hedge surrounding this area and anyone who wants to, can go up and pray at the cross, next to the cross or laying their head on the cross. For my first Taizé service, I had dressed in a smart skirt, well I was going to church wasn’t I? I hadn’t realised that church wear in Taizé is rather casual and I regretted my decision when this point of the service arrived. Basically you queue up on your knees and effectively crawl towards the cross. I must say it was rather painful on the rough carpet, so for anyone planning to do it, my advice is to wear trousers.

But where does this idea come from? Apparently on Good Friday in Russia, it is a common practice to hold a prayer vigil in front of a cross. At Taizé when there were Russian youngsters present, the brothers noticed that on every Friday night these Russians would gather and pray around the iconic cross. On questioning them, the young people invited the brothers to join them, saying that they were praying for their friends in prison. The practice of praying around the cross was officially adopted into the end of the Friday night service in the mid to late 70s. The cross was originally vertical and people used to walk to the cross. The young people started crawling to the cross in the early 90s, why I am not sure and why the cross is now horizontal is also a mystery, but it certainly makes the whole thing a unique experience.

So with the introduction of Prayers Around the Cross, a Good Friday had been introduced into every week. What was more logical then, than to introduce an Easter into every week? Hence the birth of the Saturday night candle service. Both of these services are special in their own way and I can well imagine that they give a very special and reflective ending to a week in Taizé.

La Tuilerie Website

We were on TV….

…and it is all to do with the snow.

OK I’ll explain. As I have written numerous boring times, we are creatures of habit. We do our shopping on a Tuesday. We go to Cluny late Tuesday morning, we do our shopping in the supermarket and then we do various other tasks (Post Office, bank etc) in Cluny high street and then we have lunch at the Petite Auberge. Well this week, with the onset of the thaw, it started to snow and it snowed a lot on Tuesday, no trip to Cluny - we are not braving our track and the road into and out of Chazelle in the snow - so we had to go shopping on Wednesday instead - the plot thickens.

On Wednesday the Petite Auberge is closed, we could have chosen the Bosfore kebab shop but we didn’t, we went to Café du Centre (Chez Sisi) instead - don’t worry I will get to the point in a minute. We sat down, ordered our lunch and one of the owners came in with two men and they started talking - I know it is getting a bit too exciting isn’t it? Then a woman came in with a camera, a big TV camera with France 3 written on the side and she started filming. So there I was eating my quiche Lorraine and chips and being filmed !

Last night we watched the local news and yes there we were, well there you could imagine we were, after all that filming and interviewing, there was a 2 second clip of the outside of the Café du Centre and we were inside at the time.

Now, isn’t that a brilliant claim to fame?

La Tuilerie Website

Freezing Churches and Big Lunches

After Fifi’s proclamation last week that spring is nigh, the temperatures have plummeted and we are freezing cold here. Night time lows of –14 and daytime highs of –5.

Last weekend was the local celebration of Saint Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers. The parade was due to kick off at 10.00, but by 09.30 our thermometer was still at –14 and even though the wind had calmed down from the day before, it was not a temperature we wanted to be out in for too long. We decided to wait a while. At 10.15 we thought we would set off for the church, where the parade was due to end and a mass was to be held, rather than following the whole procession. I went prepared - two tee-shirts, one fleece, pyjama trousers under my normal trousers, two pairs of socks and a ski jacket. After 10 minutes outside the church, I wimped out and went in, ostensibly to save us a pew (very thoughtful of me) but Cees, being made of sterner stuff, waited outside the church to take photos as the whole concoction arrived.

The service was as strange as I remember last year’s, not like a CofE service where you are given full instructions about what is supposed to be going on. Round here you are just given a few hints on a piece of paper, as to what might possibly happen, no prayer book, no hymnal and I have now decided (after being to a few masses) that basically you have to be psychic to fill in the gaps. It was not helped by the fact that the priest didn’t bother to follow the order of service we had been given anyway. The singing bits were very short, fortunately, as they were all in a very uncomfortable key for me and to be honest they lacked a followable tune. Give me a gusty version of anything in the English Hymnal or a simple gentle Taizé song any day. The “pièce de résistance” in the service, is the opening and closing where the hunting horns play a loud, long and very rousing tune, to welcome us into and guide us out of, the church. Knowing that this would happen, I positioned us well away from them so that we could enjoy them this year, without damaging our hearing !

After the church had truly frozen our bones, we skipped the glass of wine in the village hall and went home to warm up and change out of our excessive amount of clothing, ready for lunch. We arrived on time for lunch. I know, I can’t help it, I am incurably “on time” and I really can’t cope with arriving late, even after all these years here. Lunch was due to be served at 13.30 and so we arrived at 13.00 to make sure we would get a place next to our friends and as you can guess, there was no one there. There were so few cars in the car park, we genuinely thought we had the wrong venue and started to panic a bit. But no, the hall was decked out for about 200 diners, just no diners in sight yet. By about 14.00 most had arrived and our aperitif was served at 14.30.

I did ask what was in the aperitif verrines (little glass cups), but the waitress didn’t know however, she assured me there was no fish. One had tuna in and the other was crab, fortunately my next-door neighbour has good taste buds and she stopped me eating either of them. The starter was pâté en croute de chevreuil, not bad, a bit too much croute (pastry crust) and not enough pâté de chevreuil (venison pâté) for me, but tasty enough. The next course was a ramekin of frogs legs with mussels in cream. A strange combination to say the least and very tricky to eat, if the messy attempts of my fellow diners was anything to go by. I had a sort of chickeny thing which defies description. After that, the meal really picked up, it was time for the Trou Bourgingnon. This is sorbet ice with the local firewater (Marc) poured over it, to drill a hole (trou) in your stomach to make room for the main course - very nice indeed.

The main course was veal in a Gaston Gérard sauce and potatoes “macaire”, both of which I had never heard of before. It turns out that Gaston Gérard is an ex-mayor of Dijon and like another famous mayor of that town (Kir) he has a recipe named after him. What else would the sauce be but Aligoté (local white wine), mustard and cream and it was truly delicious. The potatoes also turned out to be quite exquisite, but I have failed to find a recipe that vaguely resembles what we were given, which is a great pity. The potatoes we received were like potatoes dauphinoise with pieces of chestnut crumbled between the layers - truly divine. All of this was followed by cheese and then panna cotta as dessert and, as you would expect, every course had it own matching wine.

We finally finished our lunch with coffee at 19.00 and rolled home, not noticing the cold so much any more.

La Tuilerie Website

Spring is on its way

Yesterday was Candlemas, French pancake day or more commonly known in the English speaking world as Groundhog Day. I didn’t realise that Groundhog Day was taken from Germany to the United States and the original tale was that if a hedgehog can see its shadow on February 2nd then there are 6 more weeks of winter to go. According to the English weather lore:

If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, winter will have another bite.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, winter is gone and will not come again

Yesterday was cloudy, so hooray !

It is a bit difficult to believe that spring is on its way when it was –10 degrees last night and it is not predicted to go above zero until mid next week, but you either believe or you don't.

Sadly we are rather lacking in the hedgehog department (they are all still hibernating) and in the groundhog department (we don't have any), so we have to trust our cat and she could definitely not see her shadow on the 2nd so I believe her. Roll on spring !

La Tuilerie Website

Bingo and Bugnes

This weekend was the annual bingo weekend in Cormatin. The Saturday is the day we play all the “external” cards (a BIG thank you to everyone who contributed by buying cards from us) and Sunday is the day of the real bingo, when more than a hundred people, who travel from near and far, come to play for some very nice prizes. It is a big event financially for our little club and one we needed to be a success as our finances are getting quite precarious.

We have had an unusually warm January this year with no snow and precious little frost (only 7 days as opposed to the usual 25), so imagine our thoughts when we awoke on Sunday morning to see it was snowing. Are the weather gods out to destroy our club ? How many people were going to turn up for the bingo if it was snowing ? The prizes cost about 1,700 Euros, the ladies had spent all Saturday afternoon making 1,000 bugnes (small deep fried doughy things, a speciality of Lyon), so you can just imagine how much money we stood to lose. Memories of the October organised walk ran through my mind. Just to remind you of that dreadful event: the day of the walk was the only rainy day in October and instead of 300 people coming as usual, only 23 turned up, which meant we made a huge loss.

Anyway, we took all the prizes over to the bingo hall in the morning as planned and crossed our fingers as the sky went very dark. Fortunately, in the end, the bingo addicts did turn up, not as many as last year, probably only about 90, but we made a healthy profit over the whole weekend.

Interestingly one of the big success stories was the bugnes that we had made. They sold like hot cakes and by the second pause we had run out. All thousand of them went and people kept coming back for more. They actually contributed 50 of the 750 Euros profit we made during the weekend, not bad for a lump of dough !

Michèle our Bugnes Baroness from Lyon has kindly given me the recipe for me to share with you all. Try them covered in lots of icing sugar, the more the better.

For roughly 300 bugnes.
1 kg flour
8 eggs
150g melted butter
120g castor sugar
4 ½ sachets of baking powder (approx 45 grams)
3 sachets of vanilla sugar (20 – 25 grams)
2 pinches of salt
small glass of rum
milk

Mix all ingredients except the milk together, then add milk, whilst kneading, until the whole mix makes a firm, but flexible homogenous ball. Leave the mix overnight at room temperature, in a bowl covered with a tea towel. You will then have a sticky and difficult to handle blobby mix.

Flour a kitchen surface generously and break off about a quarter of the mix and roll it in the flour until you can handle the mix enough to roll it out. Roll it out until it is about 2 – 3 mm thick. Then using a pastry cutter, cut the pastry into diamonds about 8cm long by about 2 cm wide and roll the cutter down the middle of the diamond to cut a hole in the middle.

Deep fry in hot oil until they are golden brown. If they don’t puff up pretty quickly the oil is too cool and if they go brown quickly the oil is too hot.

Let them drain on kitchen paper and serve covered in icing sugar. They can be kept until the next day after frying if required, but if you do that, make sure they are not stacked too densely otherwise they will go a bit soggy.

Now doesn't that punnet look rather yummy? Enjoy !

La Tuilerie Website

The Deed Is Done

We knew it was going to happen, but it still came as a sad surprise on Thursday when we were travelling in the car to the post office (an unenviable task at the best of times) and we were greeted in Chazelle by men with screwdrivers putting a road name on the wall of a house. They told us that they were on their way and would be at La Tuilerie any minute.

Cees walked home despondently and I went on to the post office with a heavy heart as I knew I would have no time to say goodbye to our beautiful plain concrete gate post.

The men turned up and proceeded to measure and drill and screw and now it is official, we have been “Numbered”.

By the way, please note it took four men to put the number 10 on our gatepost: one to hold, one to drill, one to watch and one to take photos.

Despite my reservations though, they have done a nice job and it does look quite smart I suppose.

Click here for 10 Route de Chazeux Website. Doesn’t have the same ring about it as La Tuilerie, does it ?

Again : a call for help

This is a copy of Cees' blog, if any of you feel like helping please let us know, a big thank you in advance!

Just like last year we received a number of bingo (or loto) cards from the Amicale de Cormatin, which we were asked to sell. The proceeds of these cards are used to finance the yearly dinner for the aged of Cormatin (April) and for Christmas presents for all kids in Cormatin between 0 and 10 years old.

At the beginning of 2011 I placed a call for help in my blog, begging my readers to donate something to this fund raising event. I got quite a few positive reactions, and we managed to sell our 40 cards quickly to some expats and friends around here, to some guests who stayed previously on the campsite or in the gites and to friends and family abroad (the second prize fell on one of our cards!)

Because over time we have gathered some more friends and acquaintances among the French population of Cormatin, we made the rounds in Cormatin and environs, and we managed to sell all our 40 cards in no time. No call for help on my blog or on Facebook required, or so it seemed...

Until Sue spoke to some less pro-active Amicale members; they had been “unable to sell any cards at all”, and on top of that they possessed a box with more than 60 unsold cards! She will be on the road this afternoon, to try to persuade the shopkeepers in Cormatin to flog off some more cards. At the same time I will try to interest some of my readers in again buying some cards off us through my blog and through Facebook. Who says that social networks are useless?

I ask those who are willing to invest some of their hard earned money for this good cause, to send an e-mail to this address cees.sue@latuileriechazelle.com, specifying the number of cards requested à € 2 (or £ 1.70) a card.

The potential benefactor will receive our bank details; continentals my (Dutch) BIC and IBAN numbers, islanders who want to pay in sterling will receive Sue’s account number and sort code.

On Saturday 28 January half the population of Cormatin will play bingo on your behalf for 3 prizes well worth the money:

1. a Techwood 32 “ flatscreen TV-set (PAL & SECAM)

2. a Life’s Good home cinema

3. a ham

None of these goods will go off shortly!

I hope this call for help will have the same effect as last year; all contributors receive a well meant “thank you very much” in advance.

Do a Good Deed Every Day

On the way back from shopping on a Tuesday, we normally stop at a friend’s weekend home and put their dustbin in their garden to stop it blowing away or filling up with rain, nothing special, it is not exactly a “good deed” as they look after Fifi very often when we are away and I wouldn’t ordinarily mention it, other than this simple act triggered off a rather unfortunate event. Had we not stopped at their house, then we would not have been stopped by a car with two gentlemen of North African extraction in it as we were pulling away from that house, and then we would never have been asked for directions.

The gentlemen in question explained that they were dreadfully lost, and did we know where “Parlayplay..” was? Ummm, not really. To be honest, thinking back on what happened, it is not a good idea for two foreigners with heavy foreign accents to ask two other foreigners with heavy foreign accents, for directions to anywhere, but that is of course said with hindsight. At that particular moment, I thought I knew what they had said. "Paray-le-Monial?" I asked with my perfect English accent, “Oui” they replied in chorus - phew got that one sorted.

Paray-le-Monial is 60 km from here, it is a lovely place with a superb Basilica and if you can ever get to a concert in there, it is well worth it as the acoustics are magnificent, even just a wander around the town is worth the effort, and for pilgrims it is a “must visit” destination, but I suspect that these chaps had a more mundane appointment than that, so another 60 km was not exactly what they were looking for. Breaking the news to them allowed me to use one of my favourite and very evocative expressions: “Oo la la” I said.

I just love this phrase, it says so much. A plumber arrives and sees a leak, “Oo la la”; an electrician arrives and sees some burned out wiring “Oo la la”; a builder arrives and sees a crack “Oo la la”; it says it all - “disaster!” The gentlemen in the car fully understood the severity of the situation and their faces dropped. We explained how far it was and then we told them how to get there and despite the extra distance, they left with smiles, a wave and a big “merci”.

Driving home, I suggested to Cees that these guys must be really, really lost to end up on our little road en-route from département 42 to Paray-le-Monial - where is département 42 by the way? After unloading the shopping, I checked a map of France. Our département (71, Saône-et-Loire) borders three départements on the south side, 01 (Ain) and 69 (Rhône) near us which I knew, then it borders 42 (Loire) further to the west, which I obviously didn’t know. Interestingly, the closest large town over the border from 42 when travelling into 71 is actually Paray-le-Monial, so these chappies would have already driven through the town once that day to get to Chazelle. I then had a little doubt in my mind, maybe they weren’t looking for Paray-le-Monial after all. Maybe they were looking for Prayes (5km down our little road) or Bray (3km down our little road)?

Whoops ! There goes my good deed for the day.

Ah well, my heart was in the right place, but next time I’ll just stick to dustbins or maybe give up being a Brownie altogether - the uniform doesn’t fit me anymore anyway.


La Tuilerie Website

The World Continues to Change !

Things are looking different around here. The Christmas decorations (all except the pretty lights) have been removed from Cormatin, the three kings have been and gone, which we celebrated with the traditional Galette des Rois Friday evening. But it is more than that, much, much more than that.

There have been some curious goings on in Cormatin and Chazelle this last week. Things that had never been seen here before have been appearing, unwelcome, insidious things, gnawing away at the very essence of French rural communities. Then, finally on Thursday we saw the men who were behind this act of vandalism. Monsieur G, Monsieur M and Monsieur V. armed with drills, cordless electric screwdrivers, a long stick and a step ladder, were defacing the centuries old properties of Cormatin.

With a jolly “Bonjour, Bonne Année et surtout Bon Santé” and two kisses each, we were proudly told they had done 60 houses already that day and that our house too would be defaced fairly shortly, they are heading our way !

Back in March this year I explained the joys of French addresses, but now that Spitting Image puppet, apology for a president, has finally got his way, the axe has finally fallen and we are all being reduced to numbers. No more need for the complex descriptions to make sure people find your house, just give the road name and number and you’ll get there – very sad indeed.

Having said that, I am not sure that calling us 10 Route de Chazeux will help anyone find us. We are one kilometre from the village where you will find numbers 1 – 9, 11, 13 and 15 and then 200 metres down a tiny farm track off the road itself. Do we really think this is progress ? I think we’ll stick with La Tuilerie, at least everyone knows where that is - even GPS systems.

The World Has Changed !

Yes, it is 2012 and the world as we know it in South Burgundy has changed.

OK I’ll grant you, the first change we noticed just before the new year but it was just an omen for great things to come. We found PARSNIPS in the Intermarché, not one or two, not manky looking apologies for a vegetable (which have been available every so often in the past) but nice juicy-looking, just-the-right-size parsnips.

I can see you are all very under-whelmed by my news, but today, today the 3rd of January, for the FIRST TIME EVER ANYWHERE WE HAVE EVER BEEN IN FRANCE, we have found red chillies !! Yeh !

Hold on, hold on, don’t get too excited we thought, these could just be sneaky wimpy little chilli-like things that just lead to dreadful disappointment, which has happened before. So we put just one, ever so carefully, in a plastic bag took and it to the checkout. Hoping that this would indeed be a fiery little soul. Before we reached the car Cees was so excited he couldn’t wait any longer and so he ate it. It is a real chilli and a pretty hot one at that. Hooray !

Buoyed up with excitement we went to see how the Nativity scene in Taizé is getting on. The wise men are still on their way, but one of them must have heard about the chillies in the Intermarché, because his umbrella has exploded and he has half fallen off his camel in surprise.



All we need now is for Barclaycard to get my credit card working again and I will truly be able to say “the world has changed”.

Happy New Year to everyone !

Merry Christmas !

For my Christmas Day blog what else could I write about other than Christmas cribs. I did the constantly changing Taizé Nativity Scene pretty much to death last year, so I thought I would give that one a miss this year.

Where I used to live in The Netherlands, in the Protestant north, Nativity scenes are not at all popular, but where we stayed at the beginning of December, in the Catholic south, they are Big Business. At the beginning of December, we stumbled across this amazing shop, completely dedicated to Nativity scenes. Now isn’t that worthy of a photo?

But the biggest and best was not to be seen by us this year, we were a week too early. The Saint Jan church in Den Bosch has reputedly the biggest Nativity scene in The Netherlands. My photo shows a tantalising glimpse of a star above the stable, but the other two (stolen from the internet) show it in all its full glory.

I must say though that I fail to understand why there is need for a lioness and a Chinese lady, but I am obviously missing the greater meaning behind it all.

That’s it for today it just rests for me to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and enjoy your turkey, I’ll certainly be tucking into mine pretty soon.

La Tuilerie Website

Run-Up to Christmas

Always a busy time of year, but this year seems to be more hectic than most. I don’t understand it, I have bought all my pressies and sent all my cards, so why, oh why is there so much to do?

Well the truth is that I didn’t realise that being the treasurer of the village committee was going to generate so much work, especially at this time of year. Whilst the village events usually last a day or part of a day, my work before and after each event comprises of ordering, buying and collecting items from local and some not so local suppliers, chasing up invoices, paying invoices, finding stock (where has the president put those 500 plastic cups I gave him for the last event?), counting stock (did we really drink that much wine??) and generally pulling my hair out (why won’t the figures balance?) and that all adds up to several days per event.

December is a heavy month for our little club, there was the Téléthon on 3rd December, the Christmas drinks and dinner for the volunteers on the 16th and the kids Christmas party on the 17th and I now have to get all the bingo cards distributed to the sales people before Tuesday. Making it almost a full-time occupation these last few weeks – good job we don’t have the gîtes up and running at this time of year.

All that doesn’t include the AGM of the Rendez-vous de Cormatin, the AGM for Guitares en Cormatinois and an insy-winsy bit of socialising that we have managed to fit in these last few days - where incidently I met up with someone who follows my blog which was a big wow for me, so here is a special hello to Ann(e) - sorry don't know your spelling.

Anyway, no wonder it feels so hectic !

Fortunately, most people will disappear out of sight by mid-next week, off to their little Christmassy nest to spend time at home with their families and I will sit back with my turkey and enjoy the peace and quiet !


La Tuilerie Website

The Light of Bethlehem

We heard last week that on Sunday afternoon the “Light of Bethlehem” would be arriving in Taizé. On further investigation it appeared that the Scouts and Guides of France, in cooperation with the Austrian Scouting movement, were bringing a flame from Bethlehem to France. This is the first time the flame has been brought to Taizé and the first time the flame has been in Saône-et-Loire. The flame was flown from Bethlehem to Vienna where it was distributed amongst various Scout and Guide movements in Europe. The French flame then went on to Paris and travelled by TGV to Le Creusot on Sunday afternoon and on by car to Taizé.

It was a chilly afternoon, but at least it didn’t rain while we waited, outside the church, for about an hour for the flame to arrive. While we were waiting we were able to look at the Nativity scene which has appeared again this year. It is a little less “flat” than last year and the wise men have moved out into the area in front of the church with their own little bit of desert,

just next to the live donkeys. Even the shepherds have their own space, appropriately near the live sheep pen.

Quite a crowd had turned up from all over the Département including as far afield as Autun and Paray le Monial, there were also some scouts from Nevers, but the scouts who had come all the way from Lebanon definitely had the longest journey. Before the flame finally arrived there was a little ceremony outside the church, then we followed the brothers in silence into the church itself to await the flame. A small group of young scouts came into the church with the flame and lit a lamp and two large candles at the front.

The little service that followed was a bit chaotic and lacked the slick organisation of the brothers, who I felt were left a little confused as to what was going on at times, but the scouts were very enthusiastic, which made up for it.

The young scouts with the flame then proceeded through the church lighting candles and lamps of the onlookers. Normally when candles are lit in the church, the congregation are given special Taizé self- extinguishing candles, but this time the vast majority of the candles were brought from home and quite frankly they were a bit dangerous to say the least. Can anyone explain to me why someone would get their baby, who can’t even sit up on its own yet, to hold a lit candle? Not to mention the father who had to hit the side of his toddler’s hair when the toddler set light to it with the candle he was wafting about? And why would you put a lit tea-light on the carpet in the church then walk away, leaving your crawling baby within inches of it? Good job someone else was on the ball to take the tea light away as the baby grabbed the side of the container. Do people lose their common sense on this type of occasion?

That aside, it was a nice idea, a sweet little ceremony and it was a different sort of afternoon out, but I don’t think I’ll risk it next time.

La Tuilerie Website

A New Career?

There is so much to tell about our week in The Netherlands I don’t know where to begin, so I will stick to the highlights. We stayed with Cees’ daughter on her ship in one of the old harbours in Den Bosch, we saw friends and family and we finally visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, something I have been meaning to do for years but never got around to and I must say it was well worth the visit; we did shopping to stock up on essential items impossible to find round here (chillies, sambal, brown beans) and we ate foods we crave when in France (kroketten, Surinaamse broodjes just to name two things); we tried to visit the Nativity Scene in the Saint Jan Church and failed but the highlight, the absolute highlight was something we had not planned at all.

Back in the summer Cluny had an exhibition of pottery in honour of Frère Daniel of Taizé who is 90 this year and those who read my blog will remember the afternoon we made a bowl. Well Cees’ daughter read the blog and she, being a very accomplished, amateur potter herself, decided that we should be shown how to really make a bowl. Saturday morning we were bundled into her car complete with overalls and a huge box of amazing looking tools and off we went through the rain to the pottery studio she goes to, where she had managed to convince them that we should be allowed to use their equipment, even though we were a pair of clay nincompoops.

First of all squeeze all the air out of your lump of clay, ummmm, not so easy as you would think and we haven’t got anywhere near the wheel yet.. I kept kneading it a bit like bread which seemed to be pumping more air in than out. Cees managed quite well but I was a lost cause, so Cees’ daughter did it for me, after all if she had had to wait for me, we would still be there.

Then on to the wheel. Throw your lovely ball of clay into the centre, splat! Wow, mine hit the centre, which anyone who has ever seen me try to throw anything will be amazed at. Then switch the thing on, fortunately it was an electric wheel so no confusion with the feet as well. Try and poke your thumb in the middle, NO, NOT THE SIDE - THE MIDDLE. OK I’ m doing my best, but it keeps wobbling all over the place, it's like trying to get a wiggling cat to swallow a tablet, it kept moving at random and it spat bits out of the side.

Finally I got the hang of it and I must say I am rather proud of my effort (pictured left). Not everyone’s creation was as successful though (someone else's attempt pictured right). I don’t think we will be trying to do this for a living so the local potters can rest easy, but we both had a great time, I can really recommend having a go.

Thanks Ljalja!

La Tuilerie Website

Keep the Home-fires Burning

Chimneys and wood-burning stoves have been the bane of our lives since we first arrived here in France. Our first chimney needed to be lined prior to use, so we were told - I am not so convinced about that now, but that's a separate issue. Anyway we had it lined and that nearly caused our house to be burned down. The builders at the time who were doing the renovations in the stables laughed and said “Well if you must employ cowboys…” OK so it was done by a friend that was not a builder and didn’t know any better and neither did we, but of course the builders knew how it should be done didn't they.

So when it came to installing chimneys for the stoves we were going to buy for the gîtes and the stove we had bought for our new living room, we asked the builders to install proper chimneys and we would have no worries. The stove installers arrived with the stove and they refused to connect it up. They condemned the whole installation. Not only

was it not conform to standards but incorrect materials (designed for low temperature gas flues not wood burning stoves) had been used, insufficient distances between the chimneys and the woodwork in the roof, lack of or insufficient insulation in the chimneys, horizontal chimney sections that could block and well - it was just pain dangerous. Who’s the cowboy now?

The incorrect materials were exchanged and installed at the builder’s expense, but we have had endless leaks in the roof where the flashing was never quite right around those chimneys and even after that we had a chimney fire which made me always very cautious of using the stove in the living room not helped by the fact that the stove made the room and chimney wall so hot we had to open the windows even in the coldest months.

Last year we got someone to remove the two gite chimney tops on the roof – leaks solved and this year we have bitten the bullet and bought a smaller, less powerful stove and had the remaining problems with the chimney sorted out. We are now nice and snug and safe. So a big thank you to our lovely stove installer and his friend, pictured carrying our old stove out of the house for ever.

Moral of this story although a chimney looks like a simple thing, you have to know what you are doing, as they say: “if you play with fire….”