Sarkosy Calls for more Rain

It rained last night - 5 mm- the first real rain for 28 days, we had half a millimetre fall out of the sky a couple of times last week as thunderstorms rolled by, but no real rain. The ground has cracks the size you normally see in August and France is entering a drought. We shouldn’t get too excited of course this 5mm does not come very close to making up for the 50mm shortfall in April.

Having said that it has been a fantastic April for the tourists to the area and the people in our gîtes have enjoyed sunbathing in temperatures of 27 degrees. I think the campers this morning were less grateful though. But one man is jumping with joy this morning and that is our wonderful leader Mr Sarkosy.

Why? I hear you say, because he is worried about the farmers? because he is worried about water shortages? Of course not – now he can try out his new umbrella. Yes the President has a new umbrella delivered at the end of March and it has hardly rained since.

But this is not just any old umbrella, this one cost €10,000 (yes, ten thousand Euros) and he didn’t just buy one either, he seems to have bought a whole bunch, but who he bought the others for was not reported in the papers.

The umbrella even has a special name to go with the special price it is called a ParaPactum. It weighs in at 2.2kg as opposed to 500g which a normal everyday umbrella weighs and it is made from Kevlar ! It is designed to protect our leader not only from the rain but from “falling rocks, knives, ice-pick blows and acid” according to news sources.

For the moment though, he will just have to be content with our measly 5mm of precipitation.

La Tuilerie Website

The Wedding

I just can’t miss a royal event, they really know how to put on a show. So as The Wedding approached, I definitely had to find a way to see it and not just a couple of dubbed clips on the news, no I wanted to see the whole thing.

To my amazement, France 2 was dedicating a full day to The Event, so a little piece of England was going to be filtering its way into Cormatin on Friday.

But just watching The Wedding on TV on your own (no, Cees was not going to watch) didn’t seem all that exciting and when I bumped into an Australian family that were in their maison sécondaire in Chazelle for the Easter week, my day was made. I’d supply the crément and cucumber sandwiches and they would supply the Pims jelly. We were all set.

In the lead up to The Big Day, I saw this video clip which inspired my Australian knitting friend. It was sadly too late for the Archbishop, but a couple of corgis would be fine.

So there we were Friday morning and late into the afternoon, all the female members of the Commonwealth present in Chazelle on that day, complete with a couple of corgis, sipping our crément and cheering on the happy couple.

Congratulations to William and Kate !

La Tuilerie Website

Easter in Taizé

The Easter Sunday service in Taizé is absolutely the biggest of the year, the number of people in the church is overwhelming. On a very full summer’s Sunday morning, there can be 12,000 people in the church, but this Sunday there were significantly more than that. I sat as usual near the emergency exits, but as all the aisles were full of people and the exits were blocked with people and wheelchairs, I didn’t fancy anyone’s chances if something had happened. The brothers must have put in place some sort of emergency plan as the church was constantly being patrolled by Red Cross first aiders in uniform with bags of equipment and there were a number of ambulances waiting outside, thankfully I don’t think they were called into action.

With so many people, the usually slick system did start to show signs of strain, even though I was ¾ hour early for the service I had to queue up at the door to get in and a girl was handing out the reading and extra song sheets, but she forgot to give out the normal song books (or they had run out), she also forgot to give out candles, but I spotted those and took one myself. It might have been easier if she hadn’t been there at all, but she meant well I suppose. Being so early I didn’t have to walk around too long before I found a square inch on the floor that I could worm myself into and wait until things began.

The start of the service saw the Easter candle being lit up by the altar, then it was carried around the church by two monks with the children and some other monks following and lighting the candles of the congregation as they went. I find the lighting of candles a very powerful symbol even if it was a mite dangerous in these over squashed conditions. I don’t know if they have changed their candle supplier, if these were special Easter candles or if my memory is not what it used to be, but the candles burned for much more than the six and a half minutes I mentioned in my Saturday night blog – this needs further investigation I think (wearing a watch might help for one thing.. ) In any case I figured out how the candle went out, but I will keep that secret for a future blog!

After a number of songs (fortunately, having no song book, I knew them all) the services moved into the usual Sunday Eucharist ending with the distribution of the wine and bread and this was where the biggest breakdown in the system took place. No monks came to the front left section of the church which wasn’t noticed for quite some time, so whilst the much larger front right of the church had all been given communion, we had not even started and it was only when some of the older monks were returning from the back that they noticed our lack of communion and they dived in to our rescue. So the distribution of communion took four or five songs instead of the usual two, but hey no one was in a hurry anyway.

We were then greeted in French with “The Lord is Risen” and as we all replied “He is risen indeed” and the bells started to ring out. The monks then continued to read out “The Lord is Risen” in a multitude of languages and the replies came from all the corners of the church, sometimes just one or two voices, sometimes large groups. It was obvious that there was a very large Germans contingent, but what some of the smaller groups lacked in numbers, they made up for in volume!

I finally made it back just before 12 o’clock - nearly 3 hours after having left home, but it was a most enjoyable and uplifting morning.

La Tuilerie Website

Missing Markets and New Monuments.

As many of my blogs have gone on about markets, my trusty readers will know by now that I love visiting markets, but what I love even more than a normal market is an animal market. The smells and sounds take me back to my summer holidays in South Wales as a child at the cattle market in Camarthen with my maternal grand father. So when we heard that there was a cattle market in Charolles, still in the old style, we just had to go. It took some finding out which day it was on, but eventually we found reference to it being on the second Wednesday of the months January, February, March and April. We had missed the January and February days and I was in the UK in March, so this week was our last chance for the year. Off we went. On entering Charolles, a suspect building was sited just opposite La Maison du Charolais (a “museum” dedicated to this wonderful breed of cattle) but as there was not a farmer or cattle truck in sight, we dismissed it as the wrong location. We asked an elderly couple a little further along the road and they sent us back to aforementioned empty market building. Not one of the people wandering around the building knew anything about a cattle market and although the poster on the wall (dating from several years ago) said the market stated at 10.00 there was nothing there at all.

We went into La Maison du Charolais to find out the truth. The truth is that the market shut down years ago. Being so close to the market in St Christophe en Brionnais one of these markets had to go and it was Charolles. Ah well, it was a nice trip on a sunny day and it was almost time for lunch so we went in search of a restaurant. We knew of one in

Beaubery so that’s where we headed. The fondly remembered restaurant had turned into a café but we had a little stroll around the town any way. The main car park has a spectacular view over the countryside and as the sky had not yet turned hazy we could see literally for miles and miles. We had work in Beaubery a few years ago and had driven through the town on many occasions noticing that there was a monument to the Résistance. As the job entailed trailing a trailer, heading up to the monument was never an option, but today it was possible and as we had all the time in the world that is exactly what we did. What an impressive sight, a huge cross of Lorraine, the symbol of the Résistance dominates a summit way above the town so the views from up there are even more amazing than from the town itself. The names of the local Résistance fighters killed during the war are listed on the memorial along with the words: Croire, Lutter, Vaincre. Believe, struggle, succeed.

Our day was starting to have the theme “views”, so after a superb lunch in another restaurant just outside Beaubery centre, we went to Suin, a place we have heard about but never got round to visiting. Now if you are looking for a 360 degree view, this is it. It was quite mesmerising being that high up and yet still on the ground, it was almost as if you were looking down into the valley from an aeroplane. There is a little non-descript church just below the summit but on the summit itself there is a viewing platform and a very pretty Madonna. This is the place people come to fly in their hang gliders, it was too windy on Wednesday sadly as it must be a real sight when there are people literally just walking off the edge and catching a thermal.

Even though we didn’t see the market, we enjoyed some unexpected sites on our day out.

For details of our holiday accommodation see La Tuilerie Website

Lake Geneva in Cormatin and a Souq in Chalon

Big excitement in Cormatin this Monday evening as a fountain the size of the one in lake Geneva was spotted on the road to Chapaize next to the old well. Soon a whole lake rapidly getting to the size of Lake Geneva was forming. As it was a warm evening and bedroom windows were open, everyone came out to look and of course discuss the happening. “Ooh look at all that water”, “gosh the water main must have sprung a leak”, “hey we could all collect some free for our gardens”, “I hope my house doesn’t flood” etc etc etc, but not much action. Eventually it was decided that something should be done, well who would you ring if you saw a 5 meter fountain where a road should be? No not someone useful like the water company silly, this is France, it was the Mayor that was telephoned out of bed so that he could have the honour of letting the water company know there was “a bit of a leak”. Sadly I missed the event myself, but I was entertained to all the details by the twins who live next door to, but fortunately up-hill from, the great event.

With the barbeque weather we are having at the moment, my spice cupboard is running a bit low and as most spices are very expensive in the shops around here (basically because it is only the really adventurous that cook food outside of the standard French repertoire) we are always on the lookout for new places to buy - the UK and The Netherlands are a long way to go just for some coriander! So yesterday morning we headed off for

Chalon-sur-Saône where we had heard there was an Arab market “out near the stadium”. Not really expecting too much, we planned the trip to coincide with lunch time so that we could go to the new Indian restaurant we have found.

The market was amazing. There was hardly a European face to be seen and not much French being spoken. It was like being dropped into a market in Marrakech. Arabic music blasting out of the music stalls and with all number of head scarves and long Arab dresses, I felt decidedly underdressed in my shorts and tee-shirt ! The market was big and diverse, in fact it took us nearly an hour just to walk round all the stalls. I found a fantastic spice stall and stocked up at bargain basement prices, for instance I managed to buy 500g of ginger powder for the same price I had paid in Cluny market for only 50g just a couple of weeks ago - having said that when you add the cost of petrol and the price of a lunch, it wasn’t so cheap after all, but it was a great morning out.

Click here for the website about our gites.

Summer has Officially Arrived

I declare summer open. Our first gite guests arrived yesterday, the streets of Cluny were drenched in sunlight and there were loads of foreign tourists, the brusque man on the vegetable stall in the market gave me a smile (first ever!), we ate our Saturday lunchtime kebab at Le Bosphore on their freshly installed summer terrace, it was 26 degrees in the shade while I was mowing the grass, Fifi did nothing all day except move from one shady sleeping place to another and we had our first barbecue of 2011 last night.

It was lovely to sit in the garden, nice and warm and not wrapped up in our winter woollies, sipping wine whilst eating chicken saté fresh from the barbecue, accompanied by crocking frogs and chirping birds. Paradise in the sun!

La Tuilerie Website

Frère Roger’s Murderess is Murdered?

On 16th August 2005 Frère Roger, the founder of the Taizé community, was stabbed to death in the Church of Reconciliation by a mentally unstable Romanian woman, during evening prayer. Such a violent death for such a gentle, peaceful man was, and still is, shocking and the news sent ripples across the Christian world.

When I saw the news today I was shocked to learn that Luminiţa Solcan, the lady in question, hangs between life and death having been stabbed by her roommate in the mental hospital ( in Dijon) that she has been confined to since that fateful day.

Some would say that Ms Solcan deserves what she has received, comments on newspaper sites that have run the story go along the lines that she deserved it, that you reap what you sow. But whilst those people are saying “an eye for an eye” I would agree more with Mahatma Gandhi when he said "An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye ... ends in making everybody blind". She should be brought to justice, she should be made to accept what she has done no matter her mental state and that she should apologise and ask for forgiveness, she shouldn’t be stabbed to death.

What will be in the minds of the brothers of Taizé as they hear this news, will she be in their prayers at the moment? Will they be able to repeat the prayer spoken by Brother Alois at Frère Roger’s funeral: “God of goodness, we confide to your forgiveness Luminiţa Solcan, who in an act of illness put an end to the life of our Brother Roger. With Christ on the cross we say: Father, forgive her, she does not know what she has done.” I hope so.

The photo is from the Taizé website. Copyright © Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 71250 Taizé, France.

La Tuilerie Website

Getting ready for our guests

The season is nearly upon us, every day we notice more and more tourists in Cormatin and Cluny, the big tents have gone up in Taizé as they are preparing for the huge influx of people for Easter and we are busy preparing our gîtes to receive the first guests this coming weekend. The last couple of weeks have seen us plastering and painting, measuring and mending, hoovering and polishing, gardening and making sure that everything is in working order and clean and ready to roll. The septic tank will be emptied on Thursday and then everything is done (I hope).

It is a busy time, but exciting as well, as our sleepy winter life turns into our busy summer life, meeting new people, many of whom will become our friends and greeting returnees to both the gîtes and campsite.

The last few days have been dedicated to digging out the drainage channel alongside the campsite. It is two years since we first cleared it out and there has been a build up of mud again so that the water has not been running off well. The final stretch through the hedge at the bottom was this morning’s job. When you are bald working in a bramble hedge is a painful operation, so we borrowed a hard hat from our friends Chris and Mary and in Cees went to cut through the hedge and clear the last bit. Done and working - bravo !

By the way this is what happens when you drop your glasses in the mud !

La Tuilerie Website

Sunday Drive

The weather was beautiful on Sunday and combined with receiving two free entries to the “Salon des Vins et Produits Régionaux” (a regional food and wine show) in Paray-le-Monial from our friends Suus and Paula van der Linden, it meant we just had to go out and enjoy the Brionnnais for the day.

First order of the day was to visit the food and wine show where we tasted some superb wines that we could only dream of affording - Pommard, Beaune, Mercurey 1er cru just to name a few and where we sampled dried sausage (pork and bison), tapenade, escargot pâté, exquisite chocolates and of course cheese from our favourite supplier! After spending a small fortune to stock up “essential” regional delicacies, we headed off into town for lunch and a chance to revisit the sites.

Paray-le Monial is a nice smallish market town with a town centre well worth a wander around, a very fine Renaissance town hall and a superb Basilica built in the same style as Cluny’s Maior Ecclesia with a well-preserved cloister attached. It is also a place of pilgrimage and people come from far and wide to visit the place where Saint Margaret-Mary saw her visions of the Sacred Heart and the place where she was under the spiritual guidance of Saint Claude de la Columbière. Pope Jean-Paul II visited Paray-le-Monial in 1986, when he visited Taizé as well as a number of other places in France, but of particular note is that his visit to Paray-le-Monial was announced as a “pilgrimage” not just a simple visit. This injected much needed re-interest in Paray-le-Monial and since then the town has seen (and continues to see) a dramatic increase in visitors. The shops in the town are heavily influenced by this label and almost every other shops sells rosaries, crucifixes and statues of the Madonna, but fortunately the religious memorabilia remains tasteful, unlike some other pilgrim destinations I can think of.

After a couple of hours, we left Paray and went into the Brionnais itself. As anyone who has read our blogs will know, we are Romanesque church fans. We have visited almost all of the churches round here, but the enormous number of Romanesque churches in the Brionnais (more than 100) means that we have had to visit those on a carefully dosed basis to prevent overload. Yesterday we went to Neuilly-en-Donjohn in Allier a super little church and worth the trip, one tip though if you do go, don’t miss the exit off the N79 as we found out that now that the road has been improved there are limited exits off this section and missing the right one adds a 40km roundtrip.… Then on to St-Martin-du-Lac, Baugy, Bourg-le-Comte, Montceaux-l’Etoile, St-Yan and the not to be missed Anzy-le-Duc one of our all-time favourites with its superb tower.

Whilst St-Martin-du-Lac had in my opinion a totally out of place Gothic apse and choir, its outside was lovely and all the rest of the churches we saw were little gems.

All in all we had a fantastic day out. The Brionnais is not that far away (only 45 minutes from Cormatin to Paray-le-Monial) and we still have lots of churches to visit, so it certainly won’t be the last time we will visit the area.


Our website has details of the gites we rent out as holiday ccommodation in Cormatin.

Names and Addresses

I can remember an advert in the UK in the 1970s for the Royal Mail and the punch-line was “we know all of our customers by name”. Fancy advertising, but of course it wasn’t true. In the UK post is delivered to an address. The first sorting is on the post code which narrows the property down to about half a dozen houses, then the house name or number and road name are used. The village or town and county are just there in case someone has used the wrong postcode. This is in sharp contrast to around here because our post lady really does know everyone by name and she knows where they live and she delivers the post accurately and effectively to probably about 500 people who live in a dozen or so small villages, every day. What’s the big deal? Well French addresses are not all that specific. Our post code narrows the location down to about 34 small towns who all have dependant hamlets, approximately 7, 000 people. OK so the French post code is not that effective at locating an address, but it gets all so much worse. Most places have no

road names, no house numbers and no house names, most people just live in a town (le Bourg) and the person delivering the post has to find out exactly where.

When you visit someone for the first time, you get a long string of instructions as to how to find the relevant house, mentioning the colour of the gates or the shutters or a bend in the road. One of the first couples to stay in one of our gîtes asked us for the road name and the house number so that he could type it into his Tom Tom, after we stopped laughing at the thought of such silly accuracy, we directed him to the detailed instructions on our website so that he could find us. We have since found out through trial an error on the part of family, friends and other visitors, that as our house has a truly unique name in Cormatin, ours is one of the few properties that can actually be found by a Tom Tom without having to fill in the coordinates, you just use La Tuilerie as the road name and Cormatin as the town and you end up in front of our blue gates. Sadly this uniqueness is soon to be over, Monsieur Sarkozy is determined to “modernise” France and has instructed that roads shall be named and houses shall be numbered meaning that one day soon everyone can be found by a Tom Tom. Of course the real reason is that he wants to privatise the postal service and there is no way all those budding entrepreneurs are going to be able to learn 60 million names and then find the right letter box!

Ah well, that’s progress for you. So slowly and surely in each little village and town round here, road names are appearing and house numbers are being attached to gateposts. Cormatin, Ameugny and even Taizé have all fallen and Chazelle is one of the few still not numbered, but for how long? This is bound to have a knock on effect as to the colourfulness of villages round here, no longer the need for orange shutters or purple gates to differentiate yourself, everyone can be the same, how sad…

So our clients are all having to comply by numbering their "maison sécondaires". In fact that means we have been collecting numbers from town halls around the area. One client living in a hamlet asked us to collect their number, number 15. Simple request, just pop into the Town Hall when they are open and collect. Well the Town Hall isn’t open every day, in fact it is only open for about 4 hours a week, so several weeks went by before we could make it at the allotted time. Not here, they said, Monsieur de la B. has the numbers for that hamlet, go and see him, back and forth to the Town Hall eventually yielded a number 15 from the bottom of a hidden drawer in the Town Hall with the irritated Mayor’s assistant muttering away – hopefully she was cursing Monsieur Sarkozy’s daft little plan and not us.

We put the number up this week and it does look very smart indeed, however, I am convinced that our clients' address will remain “la maison des Anglais à côté de Monsieur C”. And rightly so, that has been their address since they bought fifteen years ago and why should some government directive change all that? I was very pleased to be witness to the fact that the Town Hall mentioned earlier is only paying lip-service to this silly directive as well, they didn’t use the road name or number for Monsieur de la B when telling us how to find him (we asked but they didn't know) they gave us his real address and it was very easy to find “he lives half way up the hill in the house with the straight stone stairs and the wrought iron balcony” – thank goodness some sanity is still around!

La Tuilerie Website

Carnival Time

This weekend is Carnival, celebrated throughout the Catholic Christian world. Everyone is having their last partying fling culminating in Mardi Gras (Tuesday) and then into the fast of Lent starting on Wednesday. Being rather practical the French have an interesting approach to carnival, ie if one village is celebrating this weekend, we will have our party next weekend so we can have two parties even if that does push the second one into Lent - somewhat missing the point I think. I discussed this anomaly with a friend of ours a couple of years ago and she replied that is was in fact allowed to have your carnival celebrations any time up to half way through Lent – very flexible indeed!

Our first Carnival parade was in Chalon in 2006 when we went out in freezing weather to see it, whilst it was quite fun, it was so cold we didn’t stay long. This year the weather was great, still a bit cold but no rain and no frozen feet whilst waiting for the parade. Almost all the same people were there as 5 years ago, they were just in different costumes, but it was fun none the less and we enjoyed our afternoon out.

Chalon-sur-Sâone 2006

Chalon-sur-Sâone 2011

Our second ever carnival was in Cormatin in 2007. It is scheduled so as not to clash with the parade in Chalon (no doubt at the request of the Chalon committee who are afraid it would take away too many spectators) and its timing can vary from two weeks before lent to a couple of weeks into lent, which was the case when we saw the parade in 2007. To make sure we didn’t have problems parking, we walked into town to have lunch before the parade which was due at 2 o’clock. Unfortunately we were a week early, so we had to go back the next week, but at least it gave us two lunches at La Terasse! On the second visit, after lunch, we strolled down to Café de la Poste to bag a road-side table to make sure we had a good view and we waited, and waited, and waited. At about 3 o’clock and getting rather cold, we were still the only spectators waiting in anticipation so I nipped across the road to check one of the posters to make sure we were there on the right day and yes indeed the parade was due and there it was coming down the road ! I will end my description here as my inadequate words cannot do it justice.

Cormatin 2007

We missed the parade this year.







La Tuilerie Website

Saturday Night

A week in Taizé starts on a Sunday with the huge morning service (Catholic eucharistic with a Taizé twist) and the week ends with the same service the following week. But the last real day of the week is the Saturday and that is the day that prepares people to go home. The final Bible explanation and the final discussion groups are in the morning and the last evening service starts at eight thirty. This service often goes on until very late in the night - as long as there is even just one singer left, some monks will always stay behind to accompany them.

Whilst the Saturday evening services are like all the rest of the evening services in content (songs & silence) they culminate in the lighting of candles, a gesture that has is roots in the lighting of the Paschal candle on Easter Sunday.

For most people who come to spend a week in Taizé, Saturday evening is the last time they will be with their newly found friends, people they have spent a week with, people they have shared their beliefs with and people they come to know and trust. This service is the real end to their week, a parting of the ways - but it is also a new beginning.

At the end of the service the candles of the people at the edge of the central “garden” area are lit and then the light fans out into the whole church as everyone with a lit candle lights the candle of their neighbour thus passing the light on until everyone in the whole church is holding a flickering candle. Whilst as I said, this ceremony has its origins in Easter (the risen Christ as the light of the world) I believe that the act of passing the light on to your neighbour is more about passing the message on, passing the light, that your week has given you, on to your home community when you return to “reality”. For many it is a very moving and emotional end to a week’s stay in Taizé.

It must be said though that the thought of 6 thousand candles burning in such a tightly packed environment put me off attending that service for a long time, what would happen if……….? My factory, engineering and safety background sent chills down my spine at the very thought and when I did pluck up the courage to go to the service, I made sure I was close to an emergency exit. But as ever, the amazing organisation up on top of the hill has come up with a solution - candles that self extinguish. The candles are in fact quite thin (about 6 mm), they are non-drip but more cleverly they can only burn for 6.5 minutes, leaving about 14cm of un-burnt candle, then they go out and they cannot be re-lit. There is enough time for all the candles in the church to be lit and to have a very stilling and stunning effect, but it is not long enough for people to start walking around with lit candles, possibly tripping up or causing some other accident. I did once discuss the safety aspects with one of the brothers and he said that in all the years they have been doing this, there has never been an incident, yet another testimony to the sense of responsibility of the young people that attend.

In any case, it is a very special service to attend, certainly in the darker months when there is no additional light from outside and the church just glows with candle light.

Two of the pictures are from the Taizé website. Copyright © Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 71250 Taizé, France and the other one is an old postcard also from the Taizé Presse.

Our website describes the accommodation we offer near Taizé. La Tuilerie Website

Spring is in the Air

France is starting to wake up after its winter sleep, not only will the jonquilles (wild daffodils) be in full bloom soon, this is the weekend of the Mimosa festivals.

Mimosa at Cluny Market

Whilst the mimosa is not native to these parts it didn’t stop Cluny market being full of the stuff this morning. Almost everyone leaving, had a bunch of these fluffy yellow flowers, giving the whole town a yellow spring glow to it.

At this is the time of year, when nature starts to get on the move, it is obviously time for the national agricultural show in Paris. The fact that this most prestigious of shows is held in Paris shows that the French still hold agriculture in high esteem. The president visits the show every year and samples the farmers’ produce from wine to beef to lamb to cheese, jams and jellies, fruit and veg, everything needs to sampled and almost every exhibitor needs to be spoken to. Well that was how it used to be done until a tee-total, almost vegetarian, Spitting Image puppet took over the job that is. The previous president, President Chirac, went every single day of the 9 – 10 day show but President Sarkosy attends for about half an hour, normally on the last day and only if he cannot make an excuse to be somewhere else. Such is his apparent disinterest in the industry that still employs more people than any other in the country.

In 2008 he showed up on the last day and such was the contempt that some of the farmers felt for him, when he tried to shake the hand of one of them he was rebuffed with “Don’t touch me, I’ll never feel clean again”. Being an eloquent man our wonderful president replied with “Casse-toi alors, pauvre con !” not too far from “F.off you bastard” – very presidential and all caught on video. This phrase has since followed him around and was used on a banner last week by a French teacher in Cairo during the demonstrations in Tarhir Square. The teacher claimed that this was the message that Sarkozy should be sending to Mubarak – maybe he did send it, as we all know Mubarak did step down.

This incident is just one of many that has embarrassed Sarkosy since that episode a few years ago, but this year he seems to have set out on a charm offensive regarding the farmers, he has actually officially opened the agricultural show in Paris and has spent a significant amount of time talking to farmers and apparently listening to their concerns. One farmer is even quoted as saying “this was just like a visit à la President Chirac”. A far cry from the headlines in 2008. So it looks like spring fever has come to Sarkosy as well as the rest of us and it really is just a coincidence that there will an election next year.

La Tuilerie Website

Thanksgiving for the Wine

Saint Vincent of Saragossa is the patron saint of winemakers and his day is 22nd January, he is BIG in Burgundy. His day has been celebrated since the middle ages but for some reason the celebrations gradually dwindled in popularity in the late 19th early 20th centuries. In 1938 la Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin (the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Wine-Tasting Cup) an exclusive Burgundian club for wine connoisseurs decide to revive the tradition. Amongst the aims of their club are:
"To hold in high regard and encourage the use of the products of Burgundy, particularly her great wines and her regional cuisine. To maintain and revive the festivities, customs and traditions of Burgundian folklore".
So thus began La Saint Vincent Tournante. One town in Burgundy is chosen to have the official Saint Vincent party each year, this choice rotates around the great winemaking areas and around the Départements of Burgundy. This year was the turn the Département of Yonne and the Chablis wine area.

But not to miss out on the fun, this area also has its own mini St Vincent Tournante covering 12 villages in the South Chalonnais and North Maconnais winegrowing areas. This year it was to be held in St Ythaire, a village that some friends live in and we have been hearing about the preparations from them for ages. Every Thursday evening since late November they have been making paper flowers. Not just one evening but probably about 10 evenings with the whole village involved. Countless thousands of flowers have been made. Each evening was dedicated to a different flower. Some roses, carnations, daffodils, tulips, wisteria, forsythia, apple blossom, you name it they made it. These flowers were finally used on the weekend of 5th/6th February to decorate the village in preparation for the parade on Sunday morning which we were to attend.

We arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed at 09.30 to find loads of people sampling the local produce. Some where dressed in medieval outfits, some in brightly coloured cloaks and funny hats and then there were the rest of us, dressed suitably against the cold. We set off up the hill for the 15 minute walk to the church with a horse and cart carrying barrels of wine in front of the parade. Each village had their own banner and small statue of Saint Vincent that two men carried on a carrier balanced on their shoulders. It was quite a site as the parade wound its way through the vineyards past hedgerows full of a dazzling array of very realistic paper flowers.

The church was packed leaving standing room only for those at the back of the parade, we fortunately managed to get a pew not realising that we were right by the hunting horns which were to herald the start and finish of the service. They nearly blasted us out through the stained glass windows! (The photo shows how close we were). The parade then continued on to the war memorial where a wreath was laid, I won’t mention the rendition of La Marsaillaise, suffice to say it was very memorable mostly by not really resembling the national anthem – must be all that wine so early in the morning. Then of course on to the Town Hall for more wine and nibbles.

Ah but you can’t just stop there - no the day has only just begun. Everyone jumped into their cars and off to Saint Gengoux le National for lunch. What a lunch !

Pâté de canard avec son foie gras, dôme de sole, queues d’écrevisse sauce du chef avec riz et fleuron, trou Bourguignon, souris de cerf braisé, fromages plateau, mignardises, café. Roughly translated as heavenly food presented beautifully with a different wine for each course all exquisitely matching the flavours of the different dishes and everything efficiently served to 220 people simultaneously. What an organisation!

There were speeches and awards, new Knights were named and each was duly knighted by using a huge corkscrew in place of a sword. By 19.00 the coffee had arrived (don't forget this was a lunch!) and the dancing had begun, at that point we beat a tired retreat back home and left the revellers to it, we heard later that they carried on until midnight when they had soupe à l’oignon and then they carried on some more until the early hours by which time this pair of wimpish foreigners were long in bed!

La Tuilerie Website

Is Winter Over?

As in most countries, the weather is always a topic of conversation when bumping into friends and neighbours. Not normally noteworthy discussions, but I was intrigued when a neighbour said to me on Tuesday that winter was over because it was a cloudy miserable day. The logic baffled me somewhat and to ascertain how he “knew” this interesting fact, I asked for clarification and he explained that the 2nd February was La Chandleur (Candlemas) and

Si la Chandeleur dégoute, l'hiver est passé sans doute.

Well it was a pretty disgusting day so he may be right.

When I got home I looked around on the Internet and I found an old English saying:

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

Over and above that, I was reminded that Candlemas is also “Groundhog Day” and anyone who has ever seen the film with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell will not be able to forget Punxsutawney Phil poking his head out of his burrow to see if he casts a shadow or not. Truly inspired I decided to put all this to the test.

As many will know I have a bit of an obsession with the weather, I write down every day what the weather is in the morning, in the afternoon and during the evening/night. I read off the maximum and minimum temperatures for each day as well as measuring the rainfall. Not extremely scientific but close enough to create an interesting record. So out came my spreadsheet and I set to work.

Weather on 2nd February whilst we have been in France:
2006 misty all day, under zero for another 12 days and snow was lying on the ground for 6 days only 4 days without freezing weather in next 60 days.
2007 cloudy all day, very little frost after this date.
2008 sunny all day, very cold until the end of March.
2009 sunny all day, very cold until the end of March.
2010 sunny all day, very cold until the end of March.
2011 cloudy all day, it has warmed up already but who knows what will happen.

So apart from 2006, which could of course have been a sunny day just trying to break through the mist, it seems like it works!

And with that exciting discovery my mind wandered on to Saint Swithun's day (July 15). The weather on St Swithun's day is said to continue for the next 40 days, so if it rains on that day, 40 days of rain will follow and if it is sunny, we will get 40 days of sun. Well without going into copious boring details, this does not work at all, not one single year whilst we have lived here comes anywhere near meeting the criteria above. However, I then spotted in Wikipedia that in France it is Saint Medard’s day (June 8), that influences the weather not old St Swithun from Winchester, logical really why would an English saint have any effect on French weather? Back to the spreadsheet.

June 8th - July 18th
2006 sunny. Apart from three late evening thunderstorms there was no rain and it was sunny almost every day.
2007 cloudy morning and sunny afternoon. We had changeable weather right through to 11th July then it was sunny.
2008 cloudy morning and sunny afternoon, cool weather. It stayed cool for another 2 weeks then hot and sunny for 2 weeks then cool and rainy.
2009 sunny morning and rain in the afternoon. Amazingly enough half the days until the 18th were very similar.
2010 drizzle all day. It rained for next 12 days, then it was sunny until after the 18th.

So how does St Medard fare? My unscientific analysis of this one is that he only seems to predict the weather for about 2 weeks, then the next 3 – 4 weeks of his prediction time are a bit hit and miss.

Anyway, back to winter - is it over or not? The spring bulbs are all poking out of the ground, Fifi is spending a lot of time outside and there is a lot of chattering of birds and frantic activity in the hedges, so maybe my neighbour is right and winter is in fact over. Time will tell.

La Tuilerie Website

Taxe de séjour

I am not a great fan of paying tax, taxes and other rather cutely called “social payments” are very high in France as it is, but the “taxe de séjour” (local tourist tax) has a real purpose and we have seen the benefits of it. In theory tourists who come to this area have to pay tourist tax when they stay in registered accommodation. So anyone sleeping on our campsite or renting one of our gîtes has to pay roughly 20 cents per person per night over and above the price we charge. However, the rules around this figure and the way to calculate it, are not as straightforward as one would imagine – this is France after all, why make something simple when you can complicate it? For instance if there are lots of children from the same family, the price per adult goes down according to a non-linear sliding scale, children do not have to pay the tax, it is charged only in the months of May to September, if you are accompanying a youth group you don’t have to pay anything at all and according to the type of accommodation you stay in, the price varies as well.. All in all, if we charged this tax on to our visitors it would be a mathematical nightmare for us every time someone came to pay. So Cees does all the wizardry in the background and we pay the tax out of our profits, not bothering our guests about it and significantly reducing the hassle factor for us.

However, all these little 20 cents add up, this tax generates just short of 20 thousand Euros a year for our “Communauté des Communes entre Grosne et Guye” (the local cluster of communes) and from the beginning, the president promised that the income would only be spent on things to improve the tourist experience in our area. He has really been true to his word. This money has been spent on maintaining the Voie Verte, the cycle path that spans South Burgundy giving easy access to many attractive towns and villages around here, it has been used to put up the signs which mark out the Balades Vertes, local walking routes that get you to some interesting sites in this area and this coming year it is being used to build a climbing “wall” in an old quarry almost at the end of our road.

We have cycled up and down much of the Voie Verte and we have done the local Balades Vertes, so now it is the turn of the climbing wall. To be honest, I didn’t even know there was an old quarry at the end of our road, it is overgrown and hidden by the dense trees and bushes, but the other day we went out to investigate and we were stunned to see quite how high it was in parts. This area is going to be converted into between 12 and 15 “climbs” with a separate area for children which is described as “acrobatic and fun” with a small climb for them too. We can only imagine what it will look like when it is finished but to give an idea Cees took a photo of me in the quarry. For those of you who know how well I do heights, there will be no doubt in your mind as to whether this photo has been “photoshopped” or not. In any case we are looking forward to the creation of yet another attraction for our guests and I will come back with a photo of the real thing as soon as it emerges from the undergrowth.

Having looked at the photo again, I think I might pluck up the courage to climb a ladder and put the TV aerial up now - maybe not.

Baby Boom?

In 2010, financial crisis or not, France was the most baby-productive nation in Europe, so said the national news last night. The population is growing and that is good news for those of us who will be drawing a pension when these little ones reach in the workplace.

So it was with great disappointment when I read the headlines of today’s newspaper “Pas de Baby-Boom Bourgogne!” Burgundy has traditionally been a big baby production unit, it was one way that money was brought into the region at the turn of the last century (18th - 19th that is) not by selling the babies, who were actually just a by-product of the real industry, but by exporting their mothers’ milk. The Morvan was famous for its wet nurses, they were used by the rich and famous all over Europe. The Jersey cow of the human world, their milk was said to be rich and nutritious, it is a pity their own babies didn’t get much of it. The women would have a baby, leave their baby with an old female relative and go and live with their new family for about 18 months, then they would return to their impoverished life in the Morvan for just enough time to produce another baby, then off again back to civilisation.

Leaving Burgundy seems to be as popular now as it was back then for the young. Which is what explains today’s headline. Work is not abundant and as more young people leave, the average age of the population goes up and the area becomes less and less attractive to the young. Without the young, babies will not be produced and even though the Burgundian women do their best and produce way above the national average, they apparently cannot keep up with this exodus.

Having said that, the women of Cormatin are made of much sterner stuff. The great announcement in the “Bulletin de Cormatin” (the annual review of all things important in our great metropolis) and also at the Mayor’s annual “meet and greet the population” last weekend, was that Cormatin is getting a new school. The infant/junior school which is split over Cormatin and Malay, is too small for the current number of school-age children and the projected numbers are even higher, so a new school is being built.



So our own little Baby Boom is bucking the Burgundy trend and long may it continue.

Visit La Tuilerie Website for more photos of what this area has to offer.

It's Official!

It is official! I am the new treasurer. I am not sure that the exiting treasurer who has done the job for about 10 – 15 years will be too pleased to see that she is my deputy, but hey all’s fair in love and journalism or maybe it is a case of don’t believe everything you read in the paper.

Here’s a link for all those who want to read the full details and I have stolen Michelle the journalist’s photo as well.

My claim to fame in Cormatin society!

Our website: La Tuilerie de Chazelle gites and camping à la ferme in Cormatin near Taizé and Cluny.

Annual General Meeting Time

Around the New Year (December and January) all the local clubs and societies have their annual general meetings. One way to fit into the local community is to join these societies, show your face and sooner or later you become part of the scene. From the beginning we wanted to be a part of “Guitares en Cormatinois” (a classical music festival in and around Cormatin) and we also tried to join in with the Amicale (the group that fund raises all year to pay for and organise the old people’s lunch and the kids’ Christmas party) but both of these wishes proved more difficult than one would at first imagine.

For a small community of 552 people (in the 2010 censor), Cormatin has a strong and relatively large group of volunteers and fitting in, when you don’t know how things work or you don’t understand the protocol, can be difficult. We have had a couple of false starts, but I am thrilled to say that we have finally made it into the inner sanctum of both the guitar festival organisation committee and the local Amicale.

The Amicale was the first group to open its arms to the two foreigners from La Tuilerie and we have been heavily involved in all events for the last year, most people “tu” us now and the vast majority can even pronounce Cees’ name! Our acceptance into the “Guitares en Cormatinois” group was finally sealed with us making the “mâchon” (an after meeting small meal) back in October and the samosas, chicory salad, selection of Dutch cheeses from Paula and Suus at Cluny market, the Dutch apple tart and cheesecake must have been up to standard because we were formally voted on to the “Connseil d'Administration” at the annual general meeting just before we disappeared for the Christmas break.

However, having poor French political skills and having a tendency to smile and nod a lot when asked a question can get you into trouble. Last summer Cees inadvertently stumbled into the “tent-putting-up-group” for the theatre festival “Les Rendez-vous de Cormatin” - a large theatre festival held in the Chateau’s two theatres (one open-air).
This honour involved him in hours of tent-putting-up over the space of about two weeks and seemingly endless tent-taking-down over about another week or so. But through that he has made friends in high places, none other than the Secretary and Treasurer of the “Guitares en Cormatinois” who very thoughtfully nominated Cees for a place on to the “Communication” committee and he is now charged with making all the publicity for the festival. I was a little quicker to see what was going on and I managed to just smile and duck at the right moment!

However, after being ambushed one day in November by one of the Amicale committee members when I was out for a walk and then after being almost bludgeoned into submission during the Amicale Christmas dinner in December by some other committee members, I have finally been outmanoeuvred by these French pincer-movement tactics. At the Amicale Annual General meeting last night, I think I have been made the treasurer, I say “I think” because I wasn’t given the books to study or given any explanation of what I would have to do, because I need to be made a formal signatory of the society first. I don’t know whether this will involve me in putting a knotted hanky on my head and rolling up my trouser legs and chanting or not, but I am sure I will find out soon enough. After the compulsory glass of Crémant and Galette des Rois, my photo was taken by the visiting journalist and so I await the newspaper article with interest to find out what I have let myself in for!

For information on the gites we rent out click on La Tuilerie Website.

6th January

And two of them thoughtfully left their camels outside!

Happy Christmas to all Orthodox Christians.