We’re on the Map

We have been very active in the local business network now for about 4 or 5 years. This includes compiling and issuing a little brochure advertising all the businesses affiliated to the organisation and managing the triptych just next to Cormatin Château, which has a little explanation of each business as well as map locating each business.

A little team is responsible for keeping the brochure up to date, which we are part of and this year I helped to design the new cover - I think we did a very good job actually.

But the triptych has been the province of someone else in the organisation who seemed to make a meal out of ordering and placing new names as businesses came and removing old names as businesses went. We were promised that our business would be placed on the triptych as soon as we joined and whilst I don’t really expect anything from it, it has niggled me slightly that nearly 5 years later we were still not there.

Well this year, the “brochure team” was put on the case and we have come up with a new style triptych, to match the new style borchure. We have had many hiccoughs along the way, constant errors in the copy, chasing businesses for their details, inept printers and then the panels were delivered too small for the triptych (whoops! – who measured that one?) but last Saturday, we were up our ladders bashing the old triptych to bits and gluing the shining new ones in place.

So at last, La Tuilerie de Chazelle is officially on the map !

Our business website

Day out in the Brionnais

Last week we went to a client’s house to install a piece of equipment. To ensure it was working we needed to go back to their house after a few hours. Now you can’t charge someone for just sitting around waiting, so what better a chance than to just clock off and do some sightseeing.

First stop lunch.

Well if you are in the Brionnais, on a Wednesday, the only place to eat is Le Tour D’Auvergne in Saint Christophe en Brionnais. What a lunch - for what a price. We don’t even bother visiting the cattle market any more (which is well worth the visit by the way) we just go there for the lunch.

With hours to spare we went off on a Romanesque church tour. Along with the Clunisois, the Brinnoais houses a very dense population of Romanesque churches. This day we managed a whole host a little gems, but you can’t beat Anzy-le-Duc and Semur en Brionnais.

We had a great day out, but when you get down to it…. no day out is complete without a ride on a giant turkey.



La Tuilerie Website

Journées du Patrimoine

Every year on the second weekend in September, France (or at least Burgundy) celebrates its architectural heritage by opening buildings to the pubic that are not normally open. We love this weekend, as the local Office de Tourisme organises a walk on the Sunday to one of the villages in our canton and a local historian explains the history and heritage of the village.

Well this year it was Cormatin’s turn. The walk started at Saint Roch, via the church in Cormatin (not exceptionally interesting but there is a mediaeval Pieta that is worth a look) then on to Chazelle via L’Hermitage.

Chazelle on the other hand, has a lot to offer: the lavoir; the water mill (the first electricity generator for miles around); the church (a Romanesque church and part of the Clunisien order) and of course La Tuilerie. Yes this year we were part of the local heritage walk!

Because Paris has its Jardin des Tuileries, many foreigners (and possibly some French people too) think that tuilerie means garden. Actually a tuilerie is a place that make “tuiles” - roof tiles. In our case, this is a slight misnomer. as our little factory mainly made bricks and in fact until a couple of weeks ago we didn’t have any proof that any roof tiles had been made here at all. But now we are the proud owners of two roof tiles stamped “Noël Marembeaud, à Chazelles”, so we can officially claim the title of tuilerie.

The real significance of our property is, that it was pat of the mini-industrial revolution that took place all along the Saône valley, taking in much of the Grosne valley as well in the 1800s. There were numerous tuileries, briquetteries, water mills (for flour and electricity) and spinning mills. Many still exist in some form or another, but many have been lost to decay, which is why we love showing people around our tuilerie, because even though it is not in working order, there still remains enough to fully explain how it all works and it is preserving a bit of history that could so easily be lost.

So that was my bit of fun this morning, showing 20 or so visitors around our little piece of local heritage.


La Tuilerie Website

Taizé Beamed Across France

It is Sunday today. I always make a full breakfast on a Sunday and I wanted to be in Taizé by 09.00, so I had to get up very early, by my standards. This morning’s service from the Church of Reconciliation was to be televised live. The service was due to start on TV at 10.45 which I found a bit odd, as it normally starts at 10.00. Anyway, at 09.00 the place was heaving with camera crews and technicians. There were at least 5 big lorries outside the church and inside that were cameras, lighting, scaffolding and who knows what other stuff, not to mention the tons of extra equipment lying around waiting to be installed or waiting in the wings just in case.

On France 2, Sunday morning is dedicated to religion. The morning starts at 08.30 with Buddhism, it moves on to Islam, Judaism and then finally the programme I had been waiting for “Le Jour du Seigneur” which covers a Catholic mass from somewhere in France and a couple of short pieces of background. Today it was Taizé’s turn.

Whilst hanging out the washing in the garden, I heard the bells start at 10.00 and they rang until 10.10, so it appeared that the service had been slightly delayed by all the bustle. Off to the TV. I had to wait until 10.45 before the “live” service started - not so live then. But before the actual service, there was an interesting little film about Taizé, interviewing some of the young people who are there for a short stay, some young people who are staying longer - the so-called permanents and a couple of the monks.

The televised service was a normal Sunday morning communion service, but today everything was in French. One thing was different though. Frère Alois has taken to giving “meditations” during the Thursday evening services and he did that this morning as well. I am not sure that this really adds to the service, as in my view, it takes away from the international nature of the whole thing. If you speak French you are OK, but if not, you are excluded, which I would have thought was against everything the Taizé services stand for.

After the service, Frère Alois was interviewed outside the church. It was interesting to hear his views on various things and hear his memories of the earlier years of Taizé and there was some very nice old film footage.

All in all, it was fascinating for me to have an overview of the service and how things operate. When you are down on the floor, you only see your own bit of the church and you miss out on the bigger picture. So I am glad I watched it on TV and not in the church itself, even if I did miss out being on TV yet again.

La Tuilerie Website

Cormatin School Kids back to School Again

All the school kids in France return to school from their summer holidays on the same day “La Rentrée”. This year it was Tuesday 4th September. Not something I have ever paid much attention to.

But, we have been waiting for this particular rentrée for the last two years.

It was not far off two years ago that Cees was asked by the mayor of Cormatin to take photos of the new school as it was built and this week the school finally opened its doors. Cees has been taking photos at all stages and from all angles and has built a magnificent record for the village. I have just been tagging on for the ride and to play with some pictures.

So here you have it, Cormatin school rises out of the ground.



Happy new school year to all the kids in their new school.

La Tuilerie Website

Magic Cats

My Mum bought me a cat the other day. We were in Lys, a very small village just down the road and we were doing a tour of all the artisans. There is the lady who makes woven tapestries and runs courses, the guy who makes the weirdest shoes in the world, the man who makes sculptures for driftwood and silver, the man who makes both wrought iron and cast bronze sculptures and the potter. Not to mention the lovely little church with frescos on the wall, the swimming museum and one of the cleanest lavoirs around here. That is an awful lot to pack into a village that is probably smaller than Chazelle, but it makes for a very interesting visit.

While we were at the potter’s, I saw this really cute little cat in amongst a lot of mice and a piece of pottery that can only best be described as something you would not be surprised to see in a gynaecologist’s office. All that combined with the little notice saying “SALIÈRES … MAGIQUES” and I was hooked. You must admit that the cat is rather cute, but how many cute little ornaments does one need in a lifetime? Well this chap is a salt cellar and a magic one at that !

The rather weird looking, cut-through, piece of pottery explains how it works. You turn your cat upside down and he has a hole at the bottom of a conical chute. You pour salt into the chute and it fills the body of the cat. You then return your cat to the upright position and the salt settles in the body. If you want you use the salt you hold the cat hole downwards and you shake it up and down and salt jumps out of the body, through the hole and on to your plate. Now that’s magic!

Fifi is not so sure about this cat shaking business. I found her hiding in a barrel, poor little thing.











La Tuilerie Website

Sightseeing in our own Town.

If you are a member of the Rendez-vous de Cormatin association which organises the theatre festival every year, you are allowed to visit Cormatin chateau in the summer for free. It is something we delight in, because the chateau is a real gem.

The original castle (1280) was demolished in 1606 to make way for this marvellous chateau. The du Blé family were rather low ranking nobility, but they had loads of money and they wanted to create a impressive chateau to make up for what they lacked in class. Getting in with the royal family secured the future of the chateau and their nobility for many years.

Eventually though, they ran into hard times and they demolished one wing of the chateau and sold it off as stone (hence only two of the original three wings remain) and when the roof of the central wing burned down, they could not afford to repair it with the original slate, so it has a rather humble local tiles on the roof.

After the family du Blé, the chateau has passed through a number of hands and was eventually abandoned in the 1920s and fell into rack and ruin. In the 1980s three individuals came forward to buy the chateau and they started the restoration. Again it was due to links on high (the owners were friends with president Mitterrand) that the castle has been able to flourish. A lot of government money has been pumped into the restoration and they have truly done a magnificent job.

One wing is open to the public, showing the rooms as they were created including furniture. This is the only chateau I have visited that has sufficient furniture to actually live in. One of the rooms, which was redone during the 1900s and appears to be used today, has photos in frames and books on the tables making it easy to see how the room is part of a home.

The internal staircase is well worth a special mention because it was built to impress. Architecturally it was very modern in its time, being a crossbreed between the circular staircases found in castles and the Italian staircase style found in early chateaux. It is very simple, but very imposing using two different types of stone. Interestingly the pinkish stone came from the quarry in Ameugny, just down the road, which now houses a climbing wall and a children’s’ play area.

After the one hour’s guided tour of the chateau, we wandered around the gardens and had a real feeling of being tourists in our own back yard. This won’t be the last time we will use our membership cards, that’s for sure.


La Tuilerie Website

Local Delicacies

The French are very proud of their culinary heritage and want to share it with the world. Each area has its specialities and this area is no different. Everyone is very proud of what they make and they want to show off what makes their area different from any other. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we have set up a stall outside the “Office de Tourisme” in St Gengoux le National every Sunday morning in July and August to do just that.

We have goats’ cheese from La Truffiere in Lys (just down the road), we have jambon parsillée from the butcher in St Gengoux, Gougères from one baker and delicious ham/cheese/olive bread from the other baker in St Gengoux, Scottish salmon smoked in St Gengoux, spices and amazingly flavoured jams from Joncy, wine from a number of producers here in the area and fruit juices from Parfum de Terroir in Taizé, a cooperative of fruit growers.

We have been blessed with good weather for all our Sundays so far and the last one will be this weekend, so fingers crossed. The initiative has been very popular with the tourists and volunteers alike and it has given us all the chance to taste some very good food. Whilst I will be sad to stop, it will be a relief not to have to get up so early to cut up the ham and cheese !

I have managed to find a recipe for jambon persillée which is well worth a try.

Ingredients

2 ham hocks roughly 1 kg each
1 large onion, stuck with 3-4 cloves
3 cloves of garlic
fresh tarragon
fresh thyme
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1.5 litres dry white wine
large bunch fresh parsley, chopped very finely
1 packet gelatine
50ml white wine vinegar

Soak the ham in cold water over night.

The next day, change the water, then bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. Discard the cooking water.

Run the ham under cold water, then put it back in the pan and add the onion, garlic, a few sprigs of tarragon & thyme, peppercorns and wine. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 2½ hours covered.

Take the ham out of the pan, but keep the cooking liquid. Remove the skin and excess fat from the ham, then using two forks, break the meat away from the bones. Gently crush the meat with the forks.

Cover the sides and bottom of a loaf tin with cling film, then pack a third of the meat in quite tightly. Use half the parsley to make a generous layer on the meat. Pack in another third of the meat and then the rest of the parsley. Finally pack in the last layer of meat.

Strain the cooking liquid through cheese cloth or an old tea towel at least twice, but in any case until the liquid is clear, as this will be used to make jelly. Reheat the liquid if it has gone cold.

Soak the gelatine in a little white wine, according to the instructions on the packet. Whisk the softened gelatine into the clarified cooking liquid, while it is still hot. Add the wine vinegar. Pour this liquid over the ham.

Chill in the fridge until set, then turn out on to a plate and serve in slices.

A meal fit for a Burgundian duke or duchess.

La Tuilerie Website

White Lace and Satin

I love weddings. All that fuss and white fluffy dresses, young girls in what they consider to be their finery, middle aged ladies in their full glory and old ladies with hankies and tears. I am happy to wait outside any church for the bride to come out, just to see the the young couple even if they are complete strangers to me. So imagine my excitement when we came back from shopping the other day to find a wedding invitation in our letter box ! Our first French wedding.

Our neighbours (I use that term loosely, as our nearest neighbours are one kilometre away) had invited us to the church service and a “vin d’honneur” for their daughter's wedding. Only one hitch, the wedding was at 15.30 and we had gîte guests arriving. The Dutch are not a problem as they arrive late, but we had French guests too, so I crossed all my fingers and toes and waited. The French gîte guests turned up early 14.20 to be exact and after showing them around, I rushed around to get dressed and we were soon on our way into Cormatin. Not a parking place to be found, but we squeezed our car into a gap and were at the church on time.

The groom and his mother, then the bride’s mother and the groom’s father came down the aisle followed by the bride and her father and doesn’t she look just lovely ! A nice traditional wedding march was used, Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and the service was on a roll. I was surprised at how many people talked through a lot of the processional and it was a good job the priest had a microphone or we wouldn’t have heard the opening words at all.

Whether is a Catholic thing, a French thing or a modern thing I don’t know, but I do find it difficult to follow a French service. As an Anglican I am used to the Book of Common Prayer whereby you follow what’s going on, but here, you get handed a printed sheet that fills in the pertinent details (bible readings, special prayers and fortunately this time Our Father in French), but anything the priest is saying is either left up to him to make up as he goes along or it is deliberately left a mystery, so there was no:

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God and in the presence of these witnesses to join this man and this woman …. If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together – let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” And after the traditional pause “Who is here to give this woman to be married to this man?”

Partly I suppose because the young couple were in fact already married, they had just come from the town hall which is the only place you can actually get married in France, but I really had the feeling that the priest actually had an enormous amount of freedom to say what he wanted, even the vows were significantly briefer than an Anglican wedding, but the biggest difference, I have noticed before (when hanging around outside churches to see the bride) the guests leave before the couple, which I find most peculiar. At the end of the service we all kind of sauntered out of the church and when we had all gone, the couple finally came out to very loud applause, throwing of lavender and blowing of bubbles. Sadly being too far back, the photos of this were not very effective which is a pity as it was a lovely sight. There was also an interesting twist to the traditional recessional music, they chose Bob Marley’s “One Love” followed by “Is This Love”, very nice walking music though.

Before we headed off into the French countryside to get to the “vin d’honneur” venue, we were given a lace bow to tie to our car. I have seen these for years in France as ex-wedding guests leave the lace on their car until they fall apart - the bows that is, not necessarily the cars. I am so excited that I am now the proud owner of a French wedding lace bow and it will stay attached to the drivers’ door for as long I can keep it there.

La Tuilerie Website

A Day out in Paray-le-Monial

The week before last, we went to Paray-le-Monial for the day. I don’t know why we went, we just fancied a day out and even though our plans were completely different when we left home, we ended up there anyway. We both really like the town, it has a nice “feel” about it. The Basilica is a wonder and a small version of the now destroyed abbey church in Cluny. When you walk around outside, you can really imagine how impressive Cluny III must have been, as this is just a baby version of it.

I have mentioned before that Paray-le-Monial is a pilgrimage destination and hundreds of thousands of people visit it every year. I knew that Marguerite-Marie Alacoque had had “visions”, but really how significant she was or why so many people come to visit, I had no idea.

We went into the pilgrim gardens and visited what they cutely call a diorama, which was a slightly kitsch series of little tableaux depicting the life of the famous Marguerite-Marie. There was a computer silently lurking near the doorway and after pressing all the buttons we could find on it, we managed to get the diorama to start up. We were treated to the story of her life. The whole thing was painfully long and very boring, but it did enlighten us to who she actually was and I was rather surprised.

Not being a Catholic I am not too au-fait with saints, I know all Anglican churches have saints’ names but I always considered who they were and what they did, as being totally irrelevant. In France you cannot escape the massive influence saints have on the population, for many of whom their worship borders on idolatry. The Sacred Heart is another Catholic invention that I have never understood, other than the fact that you see a picture of Jesus with his heart hanging out in Catholic houses and I must admit I find the pictures a bit ghoulish.

Well it turns out that our Sainte Marguerite-Marie was in fact very big in popularising the Sacred Heart. She was the first person to make an image of it and to pass on messages from Jesus about sharing the heart with the world. I also discovered that the Sacred Heart is not actually a body part at all, it is an image or a symbol of God’s love for us.

All our previous visits to Paray-le-Monial have been in the autumn, winter or spring and so we have missed the crucial summer “pilgrim period”. When we actually saw just how many people there were, attending the international pilgrim convention, that was underway when we arrived, I started to realise just how “big” this thing is. And despite it being a little too much hocus-pocus for me to get my head around, there are thousands of visitors who obviously do not share that opinion. In any case, I can now understand why Pope John-Paul II visited Paray in 1986 and why it appears that Pope Benedict XVI is planning a pilgrimage himself in the near future.

La Tuilerie Website

The Washing-up Fairy is on Strike

I must admit I believe in anything that makes life pleasant or easy. Father Christmas is great; I learned to love Saint Nicholas when I lived in The Netherlands; the tooth fairy was a wonder when I was a kid and I soon would like to believe in her again. The Easter Bunny is a bit vague for my taste, but given enough chocolate, I am sue I can believe in him too. But in my life I have learned that there are other fairies too. For instance, since I moved to France I have had a washing-up fairy. Amazing, particularly as I HATE washing-up, all the dirty dishes of the day get stacked neatly by the washing-up area (by me I might add) and when I get up in the morning, they are all gone, washed, clean and mostly put away. It is only the complicated things like oven dishes that the washing-up fairy can’t cope with finding a home for.

When Cees was in hospital for three weeks, a couple of years ago, the washing-up fairy was so upset by his absence that she didn’t do her work, but hey, it was only me, I could cope. But since Saturday she has gone on strike. Now I realise that she is French and that this is the summer, but what am I supposed to do??? To make matters worse, Cees has a problem with his Achilles tendon and can hardly walk so he can’t do anything the kitchen either. So here I am stuck with washing-up, cooking, cleaning the toilet block (yes that fairy is on strike too!) and also doing my own chores.

If anyone knows of a fairy looking for household work, PLEASE send her here..

La Tuilerie Website

The Concert Series Comes to an End

After more than a month and five concerts, our music festival has at last come to an end.

The concert of Georges Brassens music was very well appreciated by the audience. During most of the second half and certainly by the time he got to "Les Amoureux des bancs publics", almost everyone was singing along and the artist Blahat really seemed to appreciate the interaction. The concert did though, leave me wondering what it was all about. If you read the programme, his aim was to bring the beauty of Brassens poetry and music to a new generation, but if you looked around the audience and you heard people talking after the show, these were all teenagers when Brassens was at the height of his career and whilst they may appreciate the poetry now, when they were kids, they liked the music because their parents disapproved of the lyrics! Not exactly bringing his music to a new generation.

What also disappointed me a little was that he didn’t interpret Brassens music, he played it as Brassens would have, but obviously not as well as the master himself. He kind of struck me as one of those Abba homage bands that sprung up in the nineties, but without the humour of it all. He was really was serious about what he was doing and talking to him (or to be more precise listening to him talk for hours) after the show, all he could talk about was anecdotes of when he met Brassens, and then anecdotes of what Brassens had done or said throughout his life and career. And talk he did, non-stop, for two or more hours. Not one bit of personal chit-chat, not one anecdote about his own life as a professional pianist and later as a music teacher, just anecdotes of Georges Brassens’ life and I was a left with the very sad feeling that he was living his life by proxy, but maybe that’s my psychology degree coming out in me.

In summary: a fun concert, good music, but I wish I had not spent so much time with him afterwards.

The last but one concert was Marielle Nordmann, an internationally renowned harp player. And boy could she play the harp - fantastic ! Cees has a hang-up about harps, saying all you hear is ripple, ripple, ripple and it is true, the harp lends itself to that, but coming from a Welsh background and having been to many Eisteddfods as a child, I knew the harp was much more than that. The title of the concert was “Homage to the Guitar” and she played many well-known and some less well-known guitar pieces from Spain and South America and they were quite beautiful. She used Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” as a background theme to her set, quoting from the story and playing music she felt matched the various stages of the story. Not at all to my taste, particularly as I was very disappointed - when I read the book - at the apparent shallowness of its theme, but that’s just me I think. In any case, it was an original approach and the music and her playing more than compensated for that particular irritation.

The final concert was yesterday afternoon at the Plan d’Eau, Cormatin’s fishing lake and park and was a group of youngsters from Paris – OMMM. I am struggling to find words to describe them, but I’ll try. They had no instruments, so all the instrumental bits were supplied by their voices. One guy was the human beat-box (and very good he was too) and the others sang or made musical sounds, with the help of some clever sound mixing. The second guy in the group did a wonderful bagpipe version of "Ode to Joy" but sadly, he only did that during the sound check and not during the concert itself. Their music was very techo-ish/rap with some jazzy overtones, but I am sure that says more about my inability to define them, than that it gives a clear description of their music! The audience, at an average age of 60 – 70 and mostly locals, had never heard anything like it before, but rather surprisingly, the comments were positive. My feelings were that this group was out of place in our concert series, but having said that we did bring a different type of music to the population of Cormatin and that is one of our aims - so we succeeded there.

Overall the concert series has been declared a success, not one concert failed to bring a positive reaction from the audience. I am struggling to decide which was my favourite concert. It is a close run thing between the young Czech musicians in the first concert and Marielle Nordmann. I think I’ll plump for Marielle Nordmann - I really do love the harp when it is played well.

La Tuilerie Website

Theatre in the Open Air

We were very dismayed this spring when we heard that the theatre company Studio Théâtre d’Asnières, who do all the performances at the Rendez-vous de Cormatin theatre festival during the summer, had gone into liquidation. That meant that the festival was cancelled. Many of us in town have a lot of work to do, to get the whole thing running smoothly during the summer and so the cancellation left a real hole in our little community. We are hoping that the theatre company can get over their financial difficulties (this is not the first time this has happened) and get back on their feet in time for next year. In any case all the members of the association who had paid their dues, were offered the chance to go to a little lunch time performance given by the company’s remaining actors.

We signed up for the play which was last Sunday, but there were so many people who wanted to go, they organised a second showing on the Monday. We duly went to the Plan d’Eau (the local fishing pond) where there is a covered area suitable for sitting. We arrived at 12.30 (after my bike had a puncture – good job I am excessively on-time for everything, at least I was still on time even after having to walk the last kilometre or so). After an aperitif of white wine and little biscuits, the theatre production started.

The performance was originally designed for the gardens around the Château de Rambouillet but it worked very well in Cormatin’s park too. The first part was under a beautiful, old weeping willow, the next on the bridge over to the island, then on to the island itself and then we followed the “faires” back to the last piece on the grass in the shade of a spreading chestnut tree.

The performances were quite exquisite, the actors to my mind performed much better than I had seen them perform on stage, perhaps it was the close intimacy of the pieces that gave them their charm. No props except some trees and a bench, really well done. I really hope it works out for them and I hope that we can have our festival back next year, Cormatin is definitely a lot quieter without it.

After all that culture, we started our pre-packed, picnic lunch not much before 2 o’clock and the dessert of a really yummy fruit tart from Delices de Cormatin was finally served around 3 o’clock. After lunch the two chiefs of the Studio Théâtre d’Asnières, had chosen some readings for us and they presented those - very entertaining. After leaving my bike with a friend to be collected the next day, we finally made it home not far short of 6 o’clock. An excellent day out.

La Tuilerie Website

Back in Business !

We have just received an email from a couple wanting to book for the campsite, they were concerned that our website said we were closed???

It took me ages to figure out they had read my blog. So to all you campers out there, WE ARE OPEN !!!

Well openish, you might not be able to park your car on the campsite if it rains too much in the next few days and we are down to three spaces because we can only accept as many cars as parking spaces that we have available off the site, but we have campers and we even have cars today and here's a photo to prove it!

How to Cheer Yourself Up

This summer continues to be strange weather-wise. For the people in the gîtes, the weather has been quite kind, the rain is keeping itself to concentrated periods, with hot sunny weather in-between, but for the campsite, every drop of rain, whether it falls in the daytime or during the night, whether it is drizzle or in a downpour, is a drop too much. So, with a very heavy heart, we decided to close the campsite temporarily, because the ground is just too wet. We managed to find spaces for everyone in local campsites, not as quiet and secluded as here, but still within the area. The same day we decided to close up, poor Fifi was bitten by a vicious insect that looked to me like an earwig (I didn’t know they bit and hung on for grim death) and we had an emergency dash to the vet to get her sorted. So this last week hasn’t been all that great to be honest.

Sunday morning, feeling a bit down, after yet another night of thunder storms and rain, we headed into Saint Gengoux le National where a free glass of wine and little snacks were on offer to tourists. I do voluntary work for the Tourist Office and not having ducked quickly enough at the last general meeting, I have ended up as the head of the committee for holiday accommodation, arts and crafts and other commercial activities. Don’t ask me what I am really supposed to do, but we have at least had one committee meeting. At that meeting we decided to jazz up the “welcome to our region” drinks. The drinks for the last three years have been a spectacular flop. No tourist seemed to want to have a free drink and brioche (which I detest) at 5pm on a Monday and so we thought Sunday morning, just before lunch, might attract more customers. The wonderful Marilyn in the Office de Tourisme has managed to get some of the local food and drink businesses to donate their produce to offer to the tourists and this morning was the first event of the season.

Cees and I tried to arrive on time (French time that is) but we arrived just before 11 for an eleven o’clock start. Surprisingly the place was a hive of activity, dozens of volunteers crashing into each other, spreading pâté on toasts, cutting up goats cheese and generally flapping about. Even the local journalist had arrived. A table had been set-up on the pavement outside the office and the president of the Office de Tourisme was trying to stop the table cloth from flying away by finding little stones from here and there. I felt rather guilty at not helping, but it was so French in organisational terms, I felt it would be better to give everyone a wide berth.

Finally at 11.15 our President started the speeches and then he said that “La Responsable de la Commission Hébergeurs, artisans d’art et activités commerciales” would like to say a few words, yikes that’s me ! Thanks for the warning Monsieur C. I managed to stumble a welcome and a little description of the delicacies that were before our noses and then invited everyone to a get glass of wine, but no, Monsieur C - the master a long speeches - felt that mine had not been long enough and continued for me, telling everyone what he thought I should have said. We finally got to have a glass of wine just before half past.

The snacks were very tasty and worthy of a mention. Smoked salmon (not tasted by me because of my allergy to fish) and smoked duck breast smoked in St Gengoux by a Scotsman, goats cheese and goat terrine from La Trufière in Lys where we buy our cheese, some delicious bread from the baker Gelin in St Gengoux, jambon persillée (parsley ham - a regional delicacy which I am personally not too keen on, but most people love it) from the butchers Guillemin in St Gengoux, fruit juice from Parfums de Terroir just down the road from here in Taizé and the wine was from the Vignerons de Buxy, which runs the wine merchants in St Gengoux where we buy most of our wine.

All in all not a bad way to cheer yourself up and there were even some tourists who joined our little party as well.

La Tuilerie Website

The Inauguration

There is nothing the French like more than a good excuse to celebrate, so this week we organised an inauguration at La Tuilerie. We invited the Mayor and two members of the council with their partners and all was set for The Inauguration.

The whole story starts really from the time we opened the gîtes in 2007 - a year after the campsite was opened. We had always allowed the campers to use our washing-lines in the back garden, to hang their washing or their wet towels on, but on a Saturday (gîte change-over day) if I wasn’t very clever, I ended up with nowhere to hang the masses of washing. We stuck up signs, warned people and as a last resort even moved their washing to take up less space, so that I could at least hang up one or two of the sheets, but there is no doubt about it, it has been difficult at times. So we were always asking around, if anyone had any old washing-line posts that we could have, to put on the campsite.

Finally last year, our friends Chris and Mary, from Varanges, came up trumps and announced that they were removing their posts and we could have them. Well actually, they had already removed one post and the second was due to be removed shortly. Sadly, Chris had already chopped one of the posts in three bits, because he was preparing to take it to the dump, but the other one could be collected intact.

I may have followed a twelve week welding course back in my student days, but rather pathetically, I never mastered the art or science of electric arc welding and so I had to find someone to reconstruct the continuity-challenged post. At the village party last year, we asked the Mayor - after he had had a couple of glasses of wine of course - if he knew anyone who could weld and his immediate reaction was that he would do it for us – result !

A couple of days later we had two whole posts, but the problem did not end there of course. Anyone who has visited here will agree that, in the dry months, the ground is harder than rock-hard and Cees and I failed to even attempt to dig holes for the posts, but Cees’ daughter and partner are not the sort of people to be defeated by a little bit of clay and they dug the holes. After concreting the posts in place and putting up the lines, we had a washing-line on the campsite, for the first time in our 7 years of being in business.

But what is a washing-line without an official opening? So Thursday evening the Mayor was invited to pin the official sock, with the official peg on to the brand-new line. He then declared our washing-line well and truly inaugurated. Thank you Jean-François !

We then all retired to the back garden to indulge in the real reason for the gathering, a few glasses of crément and aperitif snacks, leaving our campers wondering why on earth we had left a sock hanging on the new washing-line.

For more information on our lovely peaceful campsite with a brand new washing line click here.

Audience Participation

Two superb concerts this last weekend, two violins and a piano minus one violin and the second was piano, trumpet and accordion.

The first lot of musicians were Czech. The violins were father and daughter, but father had fallen ill a few days before the concert. They couldn’t speak French so, I was asked to assist with communication. With a gîte changeover and Cees away at a family party, time was limited, this meant that misunderstandings were inevitably the order of the day. When I arrived at the concert I was met by the President of our club (the only one who has a smattering of English) who was very wound up. I need to put this in perspective, this guy is Mr laid-back-in-the-extreme, so “wound-up” was a bit alarming. He greeted me with “Did you know her father is dead?” I immediately felt guilty that I hadn’t asked after the father’s health when I had seen them earlier that afternoon and no, she hadn’t mentioned to me that he was dead. I was sent to ask. Now how do you ask if someone if their father has just died, a few minutes before that someone has to perform a demanding concert and needs all the concentration they can muster ? But I had been sent and so I gently asked after her father and was told that he wasn’t allowed to fly (well you wouldn’t be I suppose if you are dead would you?) but from the way she said it, it definitely seemed to me that the man hadn’t yet shuffled off this mortal coil.

In any case the change of program to a much more vibrant, dramatic show than had been planned, was well worth it and to be honest, father was most definitely not missed, dead or alive.

Sunday afternoon’s concert was accessible, toe tapping music (Gershwin, Bernstein) and the church was packed, all making for a great atmosphere. One of the players let the side down a bit by failing to properly polish his performance and whilst the other two were note perfect, he fudged a few bits and missed a few high notes. We had organised tickets for the people in the gites and one of them said that they thought it was the acoustics in the church that had squashed his high notes - strange that it only affected his instrument though. Having said that, the concert, as a whole, was top-notch and the whole audience was thrilled to bits with it.

As a volunteer, you get to sit right at the back in the last available chairs and I was squashed in next to an English tourist who hummed along to all the tunes - irritating. In the second half Monsieur P sat the other side of me and clicked his false teeth in time to the music – doubly irritating. But when they struck up “I Feel Pretty”, Monsieur P started to sing along and not that quietly either. I had visions of him dancing round a ladies dress shop - but that is an aside. Madame F, who was sitting diagonally in front of Monsieur P, was extremely irritated by his Natalie Wood (or Marni Nixon) impression and threw him one of her kill-at-ten-paces looks. But this man had spent 18 months in a German concentration camp and he can cope with the likes of her - he just kept going. Madame F always seems to get her own way and she is not known for the gentle side of her nature and so seeing her looking so cross, immediately took away any irritation I had with his singing and even though he murdered “Summertime” to the extent that I could hardly hear the musicians, I could tap my feet and sing silently along to the music myself.

The rest of the concerts in the series look as though they will as good as, if not better than, these two. One thing though, I will make sure I keep away from Monsieur P at the Georges Brassens concert, I can hear him singing already.


For our website with details of the gites click here.

A Woman’s Place..

I am a mechanical engineer, I have worked all my life with men, I may be physically weaker than them, but I can do blokey things within the limitations of my strength. I can put up marquees, I can change a washer, I can put a fuse in a plug, I can drive a ride-on mower, but that is behaviour that just doesn’t compute round here.

I remember the first time I turned up to help put up some marquees. Lots of strange looks and probably strange remarks, but my French was not good enough at the time to register them. To be honest I didn’t notice that I was the only woman there, and even when a woman turned up with something to eat and drink and gave me a weird look, I still didn’t register. Of course now I know better and when Cees went to put up a marquee the other morning and I had to deliver the cash boxes at 6 (yes six) o’clock in the morning, I just sat and watched. I did ask if I could do anything and our president said “Yes, you can sweep”, so sweep I did. Considering the guys were lacking in numbers and really could have done with the help, it struck me as daft, but hey I’m not French and it just confuses them, so I do it their way, well most of the time.

But sometimes I forget myself. The other evening when we were discussing who was putting out the plastic chairs in Chazelle church for the concert series Guitares en Cormatinois which starts this weekend, I suggested that I could help. “Great” said the mayor “you can sweep the floor, and get rid of the cobwebs”. So it appears that I am not even man enough to carry a chair, so sweep I did and de-cobweb I did. Everyone was very impressed with my long de-cobwebbing stick and it was declared “genial”. But again I was the one girl with the blokes and after a glass of wine I made my retreat, wishing them “bon courage” with shifting the piano, I could have helped, but I knew it would just cause tons of confusion.


Anyway, back to cleaning - a woman’s primary role. I often glean tips from campers or people in the gîtes, I have learned that the easiest way to polish a floor is to spray the cleaner on the floor then in bare feet with a duster under each foot shuffle around and there you have it, one shiny floor without an aching back. I have also learned how to keep an electric kettle looking as if it has just come out of its box, fill it with vinegar once a week or fortnight depending on use, leave it to stand for 15 minutes and empty and rinse, the vinegar can be reused. I manage to keep most things looking spick and span, but it is a constant struggle to clean the stainless taps on the campsite and to keep them looking nice. I go around with special anti-cal stuff every so often, but they soon return to “normal” with their high usage. The other day, we saw the taps in the toilet block were absolutely sparkling and we went straight to Mrs S, thanked her enormously and asked her how she had done it. She looked completely baffled. Her husband sniggered away, and then gave us his secret, put a little bit of toilet cleaner on a sponge and hey presto, no more streaks of lime on your taps.

One thing this has shown me is that maybe my thinking about stereotypes is not so different from the locals after all !

La Tuilerie Website

Eternity-Coloured Rose, Perhaps with Gold Reflections

Last weekend it was an open day for the Rosarie in Cluny. This was where I did my rose pruning course back in March. The garden is looking absolutely lovely and it reminded me that I did blog about its opening back in June 2010. A quick look at the blog and I saw the photo below, which I took and I was amazed at the difference that those two years have made. Now the garden is in full bloom, with not only roses, but delphiniums, ladies mantle and sedums waiting to give colour later in the year. It has turned into a really beautiful garden and an asset to Cluny.

As I wandered around and took pictures I noticed a plaque in memory of 22 women from Cluny who were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944. Ravensbrück, was a camp exclusively for women, figures vary but it appears that about 130,000 women passed through the camp during the war and estimates of between only 15,000 and 40,000 atually survived the experience. These kind of figures always pull me up short, especially today as we are going to a wreath laying in Cormatin this evening to remember the Appeal of 18th June, which was when Charles De Gaulle made his famous speech to the French people from London, rallying the country to back the Resistance.

There was no mention at the Rosarie if any of the Cluny ladies made it home, but there was a plaque with a lovely little poem written by Marcelle Dudach-Roset. I won’t take credit for the translation, I found this on a rose website:

“I am “Resurrection”
and all through the years,
all through the seasons,
I will remain a life witness
who will protect from barbarism
all the children of the world,
even when I have become a wild rose
lighting the way for everyone.”


Having searched around since reading this poem, I found out a little background. The survivors of Ravensbrück wanted to pay homage to those who had not survived and they came up with the idea of having a rose (which they saw as symbolising femininity) to become an emblem of peace and remembrance of the horror of the camp. They started lobbying rose breeders with their request for an “eternity-coloured rose perhaps with gold reflections”.

This dream came to fruition in 1974 when finally Michel Kriloff created “Resurrection, the Ravensbrück rose”. What a very special way to remember.

Our website La Tuilerie de Chazelle.