George East's Blog

Signs of the Times

georgeeast@orange.fr — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:57:00 GMT

As a motorist, the thing you have to remember about French road signs is that they are there to confuse rather than inform. This may not seem a logical approach, but then who ever accused the French of being logical - except themselves? But why would they do it? Ill thought-out malice or just sheer incompetence? I think it is a bit of both, and whether deliberate of not, the effect is to give foreign road users or anyone who is not local a hard time.

I have driven the equivalent of to the moon and back a couple of times on foreign roads and am thus no Little Englander who thinks that nobody knows how to stick a road sign up like us Brits. I am also allowing for the fact that all motorists complain about road signage in their own as well as other countries. Like accusing your wife of holding the road map upside down, blaming misleading or non-existent road signage is a convenient way of shifting the blame..

But, in France, it does seem that the authorities responsible for telling people where and where not to go on the roads must have a special sub-committee charged with ensuring that all signs either mislead or completely confuse those they are meant to help.

A classic example is what I call the Primrose Path Syndrome. This is where you are assured every fifty metres that you are on the right road to your destination, then the information is suddenly withdrawn when you get to a roundabout or crossroads or the rural French equivalent of Spaghetti Junction. Why do they do that?

Probably even more annoying is when there is a sign, but it can’t make up its mind which way to point. It must take ages to fiddle with all those millions of directional placards until they are in exactly the right position to seem be directing you to go straight on or at a complete tangent. Why do they do that?

Another extremely irritating thing is the way that more means so much less understanding in road sign terms here. If there is the slightest excuse to put up a superfluous sign, the French will take it, especially if they work for the Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious Where else would you have a sign showing a left-angled arrow with a line through it which is- wait for it- warning drivers entering a motorway that it would not be a good idea to do a three point turn and then drive in the opposite direction against all the oncoming traffic on your side of the crash barriers? By the way, the authorities also think it necessary to put a mirror image sign up to tell those already on the motorway that it does not recommend them doing a sudden U-turn and driving up the slip road against any oncoming traffic. Where else would you have a picture of a car with a line through it as you are about to enter a motorway slip road? This is not ( as you could be forgiven for thinking) to tell you that cars are banned from using the motorway, but that, surprise, surprise, you are not allowed to park your car on the slip road.

As if it weren’t bad enough having to contend with confusing and misleading road signs, the equivalent of the Highways and Byeways Department in Brittany also has a nasty habit of moving small towns while one’s back is turned. Or at least that is what they seem to be doing. There is a town in our neck of the woods called Plouz’ch, which is enough of a mouthful in itself if you want to ask someone how to get there. It is one of those place names which you think the locals must have made up just to brass off visitors or people from outside the area. It is also a place which seems to like getting around a bit. There are five roads into the burgh, and each of those roads has countless tracks and lanes leading to and from them. Some of the roads are signposted and some not, and some appear to be leading you to the church steeple, but actually take you out of town and dump you in a farmyard just as the chickens are coming home to roost. And that is not an uncommon phenomenon in our bit of Brittany. So it seems to me there are only two choices. Either Brittany is full of villages that mysteriously move while your back is turned, or the French really are that bad at signposting.

The Wrong Sort Of Snow

georgeeast@orange.fr — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:57:00 GMT

February 9th:

I found it wryly amusing to tune in to home news from abroad on the BBC and be told that the UK is the laughing stock of Europe because the nation has come to a full stop as a result of a bit of snow. Increasingly from this perspective and distance, I have observed how good we Brits are at beating ourselves up; this will be the sixth time this month that we have allegedly been the prime source of derisory amusement for our fellow Europeans

If our self-flagellating social commentators think we are bad at responding to adverse weather conditions, they have clearly not been out and about in northern rural France when it snows or rains a bit. Or at least in our part of Brittany, where it snows and rains about as frequently and heavily as it does in the south of England.

What is most noticeable when the weather changes for the worse here is how the local drivers go from being absolute lunatics to real scaredy-cats, and none more so than the usually oh-so macho (and madly bad) lorry drivers.

Just like southern Britain, northern Brittany got a heavy dose of snow overnight at the beginning of last week. Snug and warm in our mountain fastness, we had not run out of any vital provisions and had no real excuse to battle our way into the nearest town. But it was our big chance to try out the new second-hand 4x4 we bought a couple of months ago mainly to explore all those interestingly mysterious dirt tracks in our neighbourhood, and to get through the swamp that used to be our driveway.

Accordingly, we took to the road across the moors and found ourselves coming up behind what we at first thought was a funeral procession. Then we realised it was a queue of normally completely bonkers Breton motorists, driving as if on eggshells rather than a bit of slush and snow. The weather conditions had obviously brought out the innate love of high drama lurking just below the skin of all French men and most French women. All the cars in front had their head, fog and hazard lights on, and it would literally have been quicker to walk than stay in the queue. Overtaking to a symphony of hooting, hi-volume shrugging and general gesticulating and interesting comments, we arrived at the main road and found the situation even worse.

We were on the chief thoroughfare from all parts of Brittany to the ferry port at Roscoff, and it was almost at a standstill. Finding the road conditions not to their liking, the drivers of at least a hundred giant euro-lorries had just bottled out and unilaterally decided to stop where they were. I suppose it is second nature to the average French lorry driver to park in the most awkward situation and position possible or to deliberately form a blockade, and I think some of those in the little huddles alongside their vehicles must have thought they were on strike rather than a slightly snowy road.

As we threaded our way though the stranded juggernauts to more choruses of hooting disapproval, we actually saw a man in a hi-visibility jacket, waving a red flag at the line of cars crawling towards his lorry. Then three carloads of gendarmes arrived with suitable blue light- flashing and siren-sounding accompaniment, and the scene was set for some real drama. As the cops adjusted their gun belts lit up their fags with cool and practiced menace and started their arm-waving and whistling routine to ensure a complete snarl-up, we slipped trough a handy gate, across a field and onto a lane which we knew would take us home without let and hindrance.

As I have said before, the French may be great at lots of things, but driving and making sensible use of the road in any conditions definitely ain’t one of them. Though when you think about it, what can you expect from a nation of drivers who call a sparking plug a candle, and the rear window a toilet seat?

Cafe Society

georgeeast@orange.fr — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:25:00 GMT

I am writing this as lunchtime looms in a typical bar in a typical Breton market town at the end of the week before Christmas. A lot of people would think it not a bad place and time to be in my shoes and seat. Especially with lunchtime as well as Christmas looming.

If I seem to have overused the word ‘typical’ it is because I can think of no better word to say what I mean and feel in this instance. I do not like it when people try to impose their stereotypes or prejudices or misconceptions on to others (and particularly me), but some things are so, well, typical that the use of the adjective is truly justified. My thesaurus offers plenty of alternative synonyms for the word, but I think ‘ordinary’, ‘unexceptional’ or ‘common’ would be an insult to the typical rural French institutions I am attempting to describe.

There must be tens of thousands of market towns in France, and all will be the same but different. The population will be numbered in a handful of hundreds to the early thousands, and the town will truly come to life on market day. People who could get the same goods at half the price from their local supermarket will descend on the market square to ingest the atmosphere, and to recall times long forgotten and never actually experienced by the modern French country dweller. Times have also changed in the nature of goods on sale, and nowadays you are much more likely to come away from a market with a set of hand carved African drums than a live sheep. But at some special markets, local farmers do still meet long before the stalls are built. There they will do their business and then retire to the nearest bar to pretend to be unhappy about the deals they have struck with farming friends and foes.

The bar in which I sit is not only the nearest bar to the action on market day; it is also a classic of its genre. The décor appears to have been modelled on or left untouched since the early 70s. This means that rather than an attempt at recreating ye olde country pub which never was or a garish imitation of what the owners think a trendy Paris bar would or should look like, the age of the tables and chairs and fixtures and fittings is about the same as the clothes of the oldest regular customers. Adverts will be of the same vintage, and feature drinks that are no longer available and cigarettes that may now not be smoked on the premises. To handle and make a modest profit from such a bar takes a firm hand, and I can see that this one is in the most firmest and capable of hands. They are as usual female. Madame is, like the advertising, of a past if indeterminate age, and it is possible she has looked and dressed as she does now for several decades. She floats effortlessly around the bar topping up glasses and taking orders and (especially) giving them to her husband, who is very much and very properly the support act. Madame is clearly in charge, but in no more a way than the wives of the exclusively male clientelle would be in charge at their homes.

At the moment, Madame’s attention is devoted to a large table surrounded by farmers who are obviously gathered for the après haggle session, and who represent a complete gamut of age and size variations. There are eight members of the clique in total, and they range from a downy-cheeked young man to a withered and frail oldster who must have spent at least eighty winters and summers working on the land with his now skeletal and shaking hands. All the men wear the all-season Breton farming uniform of peaked cap and bib and brace overalls under well-worn jackets, and you feel they would be unfamiliar if not unrecognizable to their closest friends if they wore civilian clothing. One of the men is the biggest Breton I have ever seen, and must weigh in at not much less than a slaughter-ready boar. Like so many hugely fat men, he is very precise and delicate in his movements, and lifts his thimble-sized glass to his lips with just two sausage-sized fingers. Madame is now circling the table, topping up glasses from the half-dozen bottles she effortlessly totes. As she reaches the end of the round, one of the farmers reaches for a small purse, unzips it, counts out some change and looks at the coins as if parting from a lover before handing them over. Her customers toast each other and the day, and it is good to see how the youngest man helps the veteran get to grips with his glass and makes a comforting remark when a dribble is spilled. It must be reassuring to know that in the still for him unimaginably distant future he too will be well looked after by the new members of this band of brothers.

Nodding to the group and acknowledging the incurious and not unfriendly looks, I seek out the toilet and find it to be as comfortingly dated as the rest of the premises. On return, I look through the plastic stripped curtain between passageway and kitchen, and see that the table is set for lunch. There are two plates skirted by knives and forks, a basket of bread and a bottle already opened and breathing in the delicious aroma of what is in the oven. Everything is so rigidly and somehow ceremonially in place and ready for the inviolable sacrament of lunch that is like looking at an altar piece set up for communion.

Back in the bar, the tables and chairs are emptying as customers take themselves off for their lunch at home. In Britain there would have been a call for last orders or a meaningful shuffling of chairs and clearing of tables, but here there has not been a word spoken. Everyone knows that Madame and her husband will be eating at precisely noon, and that they should be too.

As we pay our bill, I point out to my wife how the giant farmer is gently escorting the old man from the premises. I wonder if the big man is taking the little old man for lunch; my wife watches as the man mountain deposits the frail figure into the passenger seat of the battered van, then observes it might just be that the small man is the huge man’s lunch…

Animal Magic

georgeeast@orange.fr — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:56:00 GMT

Two of our hens have gone off lay, and the response from Breton friends and neighbours has been predictably true-to-type.

When he arrived on his daily visit to check out what townie/Brit madness we have been up to, old Alain said this was a signal that it was time to start eating our chickens rather than just their eggs. If we were too busy (which was code for ‘If you are too squeamish’) It would take no more than a minute for him to stretch the selected necks. If we were unfamiliar with the simple but delicious classic country dish poule au pot (code for ‘As you are British and thus not able to boil and egg properly’), he would be only too pleased to do the cooking and invite us over for dinner.

When my wife huffily explained that she had no wish to have her beloved Blanche foully murdered, let alone attend a dinner at which she was on the menu, our neighbor went into overdrive with his pantomime puffing-out-of-cheeks-rolling-of-eyes- removal –of-cap-and-scratching-of-head-before-a-final-exasperated-sigh routine. He then favoured us with his standard parting expression of pity mixed with incredulity, and stomped off to tell Jean-Yves about our latest demonstration of Martian-like behavior.

His departure was followed by the arrival of our friend Little Georges, who owns an entire hamlet on the other side of the mountain which his wife keeps fully inhabited with more varieties and numbers of animals than trooped up the gangplank of Noah’s Ark. They are also the only couple we know to own a bull called Lulu.

Though not much taller than our largest hen, Georges is another stereotype and comes straight from Central Casting as the alpha male French countryman who lives in an uncomplicated world where the male is the dominant species and any problems with the female of any species can be solved by a good rogering.

Thus it came as no surprise to learn that Georges’ solution was not to kill and eat our hens, but to get a rooster in. Having a hen house with no male chicken to keep the inmates in order was asking for trouble, he said, and became so excited at the prospect of a sorting out our temporary problem that I thought he was going to offer to do the job on Blanche and Whitney personally.

Jean Yves was not wearing his hearing aids when we met in the lane after lunch, so our conversation was limited to a mixture of me yelling in bad French, worse Breton and mediocre English, and both of us using universal sign language. When we had exchanged greetings, Jean said he had heard about our egg laying problems but did not think we should put a rooster in with the hens. When I asked why, he said that the crowing of a cockerel was the surest sign to Mr Renard that chickens were in the area. He knew about my arrangement with the fox family in the forest that I would feed them and they would not feed off our hens, but he feared any advertising by a cockerel might cause them to break our one-sided contract.

As we talked, Jean-Yves saw me watching Milly crouching on the verge, and asked why I always paid such keen attention to our dog having a bowel motion. I explained that, when Donella was not walking with us, she liked a full report on the texture, colour, consistency and overall appearance of Milly’s stools. As he leaned forward and cupped his hand around his ear as if fearing he had misheard and misunderstood me, I said that Milly cannot tell us how she is feeling, and studying her poo was a good way to check she was in good health. I realised that it might seem a little over-obsessive, but we were not as bad as a British couple in the next village. Because the wife suffers with her legs and is unable to walk the dog, her husband not only reports on the condition of their eight dogs’ poo, but takes advantage of the latest digital technology by filming it. When he returns, it is a simple matte to plug the camera into their wide-screen television so they can study the evidence together over breakfast. Another advantage of transferring the film to the big screen is that they can show the footage to other dog-loving visitors.

Underlining our ambivalent attitudes towards the animals we keep or eat, I got a panicky e-mail this morning from a friend who lives in Normandy and says she is in a sticky and potentially very bloody situation. She and her husband decided recently to share the cost of a whole pig with another pair of expats. It works out far cheaper by buying gros, as the French would say, and the meat will be really fresh as the animal will be slaughtered to order.

But there is a problem. Tradition in her corner of France demands that one member of the buying syndicate has to attend the ritual stunning, hanging, killing, bleeding, disembowelling and dismemberment of the pig. As the husbands have done the unmanly thing and refused to volunteer, the two couples have agreed to draw straws to select the execution witness. Although my correspondent says she is a committed carnivore and hopefully not a hypocrite, she cannot stand the thought of watching the animal’s death throes. It is strange how so many enthusiastic meat eaters (including me) do not want to be reminded of where the piece of meat on our plate began its journey. I will write back and suggest that the lady either pulls out of the deal, bullies her husband into volunteering, or quite simply cheats by ensuring that she is in charge of the draw - and therefore who will end up with the short straw.

Taking The Medicine

georgeeast@orange.fr — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:21:00 GMT

Surveys repeatedly confirm that the main reason Britons like the idea of living in France is the quality and pace of life.

But here’s the curious thing: The French take more anti-depressant pills than the inhabitants of any other European country. To be fair, it may of course be that the natives are depressed by the statistics regarding the ever-growing number of Britons who live in their country… and the even more mind-boggling number who say they would love to adopt la vie francaise.

However, I have always believed that most stereotypes must have something going for them to have become stereotypes, and over the years it has seemed to me that the French do their best to live up to their reputation as a nation of hypochondriacs. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they enjoy all things connected with ill-health and its treatment more than most races.

Any nation whose people regularly visit their local pharmacy like the British go to their favourite pub must appear to have a healthy interest in ill-health. I have French friends who go to their nearest chemist almost on a daily basis, even where there is nothing wrong with them.

To understand this apparent idiosyncratic behaviour, you have to appreciate the differences between a British chemist shop and a French homeopathic pharmacy. In a typical chemist’s shop, you scurry in and out to have your prescription made up or buy some headache pills, and the surroundings and décor ( and usually the manner of the staff) are not intended to encourage you to linger.

In a typical small-town high street pharmacie, there will be soft lights and sometimes even soothing music, with television sets a to allow visitors to see the latest fashionable ailments and their cures. Some of these extended and very unsubtle adverts take the form of ongoing mini-dramas which are followed as keenly as TV soaps. In the average French pharmacy there will also be all sorts of interesting medical appliances and contraptions to tinker with, and easy chairs so those with the time to spare can relax and take in the action. So far I have not seen any enterprising managers selling popcorn or ice cream, but that is probably only because the French do not, as a rule, snack.

At the business end of the shop, there are usually privacy lines some distance from the counter, but they are usually ignored; if not, the patient and pharmacist will often raise their voices sufficiently for the case notes, symptoms and solutions to be heard at all points. Experienced observers will nod or frown at each suggestion of treatment, and there may even be a round of applause when the pharmacist has come up with a particularly inspired proposal.

But what really marks the difference is how many customers go in for one item and go out with much more. I can understand that in a supermarket or clothes shop, but in a pharmacy? The customer may have gone in for a corn plaster, but will often go out with a trolley load of impulse buys of anything from a kilo of throat pastilles to a prosthetic limb.

I suppose another reason that the pharmacie is such a popular venue may be that a visit to the doctor can be so time-consuming, costly and confusing. I have spent many years observing this area of Gallic womb-to-grave community care, and concluded long ago that the French do not understand how their own health service works. And that includes medical practitioners and administrators, and especially those initially responsible for constructing an edifice which makes the Tower of Babel look minimalistic. In brief and very general, French citizens pay for their health care through a system of levies based on their age, situation, income and health. This will establish them on a sort of health care star rating level, which seems to govern how fast the ambulance will arrive when you have an accident. But, with (of course) a number of exceptions, they will still have to pay to see their doctor, then claim anything from seventy to a hundred percent of this cost back. This system also applied to foreign residents with all the right pieces of paper, but the system and process is naturally much more complicated.

So far I have generally avoided becoming embedded –or rather enmeshed-in the French health care system for resident aliens, but having infected a finger while cutting down a tree this summer, I called in to make my first appointment at the surgery in a nearby town.

To my surprise (makethat shock), the receptionist said the doctor could see me at noon. Assuming that he or she was either on a fasting regime or not French, I turned up at the stroke of lunchtime and found four other patients sitting glumly in the waiting room. After a while, a man with a nasty-looking boil on his nose enquired of an elderly lady when she was seeing the doctor, then asked the rest of us for our appointment times. In each case the answer was the same. We all had a date with Doctor Felix for noon, a time which was by now a mere memory.

An hour or so later, and it was my turn to be shown in to the good doctor’s examination room. The finger was looked at, anti-biotics prescribed, and a consulting fee of 22 euros politely required. When queried, the good doctor gave a small cough, then said cash would be most convenient. Peeling off the readies, I decided to get my money’s worth and told him I had put on at least ten kilos since stopping smoking earlier in the year. When I asked if I should try and lose some weight, he said it would be better if I did. But, as he continued with a fatalistic shrug, most sensible people would agree it was better to risk one’s health and life by putting too much good food in one’s mouth rather than too many cigarettes.

Looking at his watch, he said that he did not wish to be rude, but he had a table reserved at a rather good restaurant in town, and it was close to last orders. As it was obviously far too late for us to find a similarly obliging establishment, perhaps we would like to join him for a late luncheon?

We would and did, and thus established and ticked off reason 987 for living in rural France…

Food for Thought

georgeeast@orange.fr — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:12:00 GMT

One of the biggest and truest differences betwixt us and our Gallic neighbours is our attitude to food, cooking and eating.

I realise that that statement may appear to be a bulletin from the Department of the Absolutely and Completely Bleedin’ Obvious, but I chose it carefully (for me).

There are lots and lots of misconceptions, prejudices and old chestnuts favoured by residents on both sides of the Channel. In general and despite what some Brits believe, French people do wash regularly (and even use deodorant), and rarely in my experience mistreat or eat horses and dogs. Conversely to what some French people think, Britons do not generally mistreat or eat children.

But there are some long-held credos ( like all French adults being genetically incapable of driving safely) which do stand up to the closest scrutiny. The one about male French lovers being so good at it is obvious rubbish, but all the stuff about the French attitude to food is absolutely true. Whether it is nature or nurture is not the point. Without argument it exists. By this I do not mean how rabidly our self-hating middle classes buy into the fallacy that everything cooked and put on a plate by a French chef must be better than any Brit cook could manage. What I am talking about is the basic French relationship with food, and how it reaches into their very souls and is much part of their lives as the air they breathe. The old axiom about an Englishman eating to live and a Frenchman living to eat is no longer as accurate as it was, but there is still a huge, huge gulf between us as to what we put in our mouths and why…and how much we are willing to pay for it.

I set to thinking about this when talking to a French friend yesterday and she casually mentioned she had just bought a nice roasting joint for eighty euros . Yes, that’s right, this ordinary working-class mum had laid out more than £60 at today’s prices for a piece of meat… to go in the oven.

When I came to, I learned that there would be six people at dinner, and it was a piece of beef from a renowned Aquitaine beef farm near her home. The real point is that she was not showing off in the way that a British man or woman would drop the price of their car or underwear into the conversation. She was merely mentioning the price and provenance en passant as evidence that it would be a corking bit of meat. Mind you she was also seeking my approval of this evidence of her passion for buying the very best for the table, but more of that later. Speaking as a man who would not dream of spending eighty euros on a whole meal for six at the snottiest restaurant in Brittany, I was –even after all these years - still shocked. But I was not actually that surprised.

The other day I was shopping in our local branch of Super U and saw they were doing a special offer on saucisson sec. This, as you will know , is a spicy dried sausage along the lines of a midget Italian salami, and can be a bit of an acquired taste for a lot of Brits. I like it very much, but not at the usual price.

When I saw that the offre special was a staggering one euro a piece, I grabbed a big handful. ( It keeps, of course, as that is what it was made to do). As I was about to chuck the delicious sticks in the basket, I saw that they were not all the same. Two of the sausages were wrapped in very classy wrappers and had the over-the-top names signaling that the product is going to be expensive. Looking at the shelf, I saw that the own-brand sausages were indeed a euro a piece, while the la-di-da ones next door were, wait for it, a snip at 23 euros. Each, that is.

That there could be such a range in price for the same products of the same size and containing the same materials is very French. It is also very French that the posh sausages and its poor relations were displayed alongside each other. Most of the older women in our area obviously come from a country peasant background, and are very prudent with their spending. Except when it comes to fine food.

Like a typical Brit let loose in a duty-free wine and beer store, I had grabbed a handful of the cheapo-cheapo special offer dried bangers because I like the taste and it was a very, very special offer. But most French women- and men- I know genuinely believe that the more an item of food costs, the better it will be. In some case, of course, they are right. But my bank manager actually makes a once-yearly 900 kilometer trip to and from Rochefort to pick up his shipping order of cheese of that name, for God’s sake. He pays through the nose in the town where it is made because he truly believes it tastes better than the same, much cheaper stuff in the supermarket. And of course, he will lose no status points when friends and customers find out about his devotion to buying the best.

Again like a typical Brit boasting about how little he had paid for his bottle of mediocre Cotes du Rhone in the duty-free, I did not care what the other shoppers at the checkout would think about me stocking up on the special offer saucisson But the ladies behind me with their chariots full of posh nosh would definitely not wished to be associated with cheap grub.

That is why so many French people are more than happy to visit cheap relais routiers –style restaurants at lunchtime, but opt for fifty-quid-a-head joints when eating out in the evening. It is also why my wife and I, being of Scottish and Welsh descent, would never ever darken the doorway of any restaurant with a pretentious name, damask tablecloths.. .and napkins pretending to be swans or scallop shells.

Friends and Neighbours

georgeeast@orange.fr — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:12:00 GMT

November 11th:

Reason 986 for living in rural France (Reason 985 was not being in the UK for Guy Fawkes night-and the month either side of that yearly orgy of sending money literally up in smoke).

Late Sunday morning, and we were returning from the now-traditional weekly morning French/Breton/English conversational classes at our local (all very informal and a good excuse to knock back a few glasses of everyday red wine, or as our Breton professor would say, gwyn roux).

Passing a field above our hamlet, we saw the diminutive form of a friend washing the very large and impressive bottom of a bull called Lulu. This sort of cross-gendering name is unusual even in rural Britanny, and perhaps explains why the great beast looks so maliciously at us each time we pass. Actually, as our friend the full-time stonemason and part-time farmer Little Georges said, his plaisanterie may have spurred Lulu on to greater sexual endeavours to prove his maleness, and the love machine has now impregnated half the cows in our area.

Shaking hands (after he had politely washed his in the water trough), we invited our chum back to Little Paradise for a chat and a pre-prandial beer. Coming in to the kitchen, he noticed my latest chainsaw in bits on the table. When I explained the machine was not working and I feared it was dead, he set about re-assembling it with the speed and confidence of a 12-year-old Rubik’s Cube grandmaster. Yanking the cord and finding it still unresponsive, he disassembled the machine in a trice and spent the next hour tinkering with its innards. After five beers (I find most Breton countrymen work best at a rate of three bottle of beer an hour. Any less and they get dehydrated and fretful, and any more and they can become torpid or a danger to themselves as well as the job in hand) he strolled out into the yard and set the machine running with a single, casual hip-high heave. Knowing our way around country mores and social niceties, my wife spent the next ten minutes telling Little Georges how wonderful and manly and strong and clever he was, and that was all he wanted for saving us hundreds of pounds. But he did suggest a trip with a bottle of gywn roux and the chain saw across the lane so that he could demonstrate his achievements to our neighbour Alain.

Of course, we realise not everyone might think that sitting in a French countryman’s kitchen with a glass of wine, plate of pot au feu and a chainsaw running at full belt as a perfect way to spend a Sunday lunchtime, but as my dear old dad used to say, it’s a good job we aren’t all the same…

Burning Ambitions

georgeeast@orange.fr — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:10:00 GMT

November 9th:

It is a truth universally acknowledged by all owners of log - burning stoves that there is no such thing as free wood.

Like lunches and love affairs, there is almost always a hidden cost to pay.

In theory, all our winter firewood comes gratis, as we are lucky enough to have our lovely landlady’s permission to cull the dead pine trees in the three acres of woodland surrounding Little Paradise.

Finistere has pine trees like other counties have grass, and the foresting of every available hectare in the department coincided not unsurprisingly with the arrival of a EU tree- planting subsidy. Farmers and land owners competed to squeeze the most pines on to any otherwise useless bit of land, then generally left them to rot. The sort of pine trees most common here grow very tall very quickly, then die from the ground up. In our patch of woodland there are many dozens of pines reaching up to fifty feet, and a good percentage of them are technically dead. A strong wind could cause them to topple, which is why the owner is happy for us to cut them down and chop them up.

So far so good, then. We clear the dead wood, and our reward is free heat.

It takes around 7,000 split logs to see us through a long winter here in the Brittany mountains. That would cost us around five hundred quid’s worth of euros, and the thought of saving that sort of cash for the outlay of a few gallons of sweat and perhaps the odd lost finger was most attractive. Until we started counting the true cost of all that free wood.

Our first chain saw imploded after a month. The English expat dealer who sold it to me said it was because I was using it incorrectly, but I think it was just not man enough for the job. In truth I think it was a hedge trimmer in disguise rather than a full-on ferocious tree destroyer. So we took a deep breath and bought a proper job in the shape of a second-hand but top-of-the range model, as seen in those TV documentaries about butch blokes clearing whole forests in Montanna in the space of a single afternoon.

But with the fearsome tool came other expenses for which I had not allowed. The machine gets through more petrol than the average 4/4 gas-guzzler, and needs constant attention in the shape of regular and expert repair and maintenance, such as chain sharpening, declogging and the replacement of broken bits. During the summer and autumn I sometimes saw more of the owner of our local chain sawery shop than my wife, and Patrick and I have become close friends.

But, at a rough tally, the cost of our friendship and his goods and services, the write-off of the old machine and the purchase of the new one comes out at about twice what I could have bought the same amount of wood for, and without getting out of my armchair.

But then as my wife says, a year’s subscription to a gym would have cost at least that sort of money - if there were a gym in this neck of the woods. And how many couples can say they have brought down and sliced up the corpse of a fifty foot fir tree while a lot of people their age would be pleased with managing to cut the grass at regular intervals?

Out to Lunch

georgeeast@orange.fr — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:12:00 GMT

29thOctober:

A very, erm, French day.

Our elderly Renault’s windscreen wipers refused to budge yesterday just as the heavens opened. We were far from home, and in what could be fairly called the middle of the middle of nowhere.

After initially honeyed words leading to threats of extreme corporal punishment and even torture had failed to move either our RenauIt or his blades, I said to my wife how annoying it was that windscreen wipers always break down when it is raining.

With a deep sigh, she explained as if to a child that, in the same way as misdialled telephone numbers appear never to be engaged, normal motorists usually only try to use their wipers when it is raining, which is why it is then they discover a problem.

I do not know if you have ever tried to drive in heavy rain without windscreen wipers, but in case not, here are a couple of important tips, the first and last being the most important:

Don’t do it.
If you must, drive very, very slowly.
Do not ask the person sitting next to you to help navigate, or ructions, violence or divorce is likely to follow.
Don’t allow your wipers to cease to function in France.

One of the 873 (and counting) most annoying things about French drivers for me is their contradictory attitudes to driving in wet weather. If there is so much as a cloud passing across the sun, all French drivers will switch their lights on. At the first drop of rain, they will turn their headlights to full beam, and switch on all fog lamps and spotlights and searchlights which may be mounted on their vehicles for the purpose of looking butch and blinding oncoming drivers.

Now here’s the really amazing and infuriating bit:

Having totally overreacted to the conditions, they will proceed to drive even more insanely than before.

Indeed, the lunacy of their actions will relate directly to how bad those conditions are. The wetter the road becomes, the closer the average French driver will come to your back bumper, as if seeking comfort and company in the inclement conditions. Also, the faster he or she will take corners and bends awash with more surface water than you will find gushing down the biggest, baddest flume at AltonTowers. But from their perspective, their lights are on and blazing, so all is well and they are secure in the knowledge that they are acting like responsible road users.

Given that prior knowledge, I suppose it was extremely irresponsible of me to try to drive home without windscreen wipers. Especially on an expressway. It was not until we entered the N147 that I realised that the faster one drives without the wipers on, the more blurred the screen becomes. I also forgot the way the French motorist’s mind works, and the first giant euro-lorry loomed in my rear mirror within minutes of our speed dropping under 90kph.

I still do not know how we saw the escape route reserved for lorry drivers whose brakes fail, but we did and I took it. A bonnet full of sand was better than a juggernaught in the boot.

Next day, we arranged for the car and us to be taken to the garage where we bought it. The manager was most sympathetic, and invited us to take a complimentary coffee while his top windscreen wiper man investigated. Within an hour, the manager returned to say that the wiper motor was kaput, but it would not take long to fit a new one as we had been put into the priority lane.

The American writer and philanthropist Gertrude Stein spent much of her life in Paris and counted Matisse and Picasso as chums. In one of her pithy critiques, she acknowledged that France had scientific methods, machines and electricity aplenty, but claimed most French people did not really believe in these things. For them, the real business of living was about tradition and human nature. In that and even after all the intervening years and technological advances in France, Ms Stein and I are as one.

It was another two hours before our windscreen ace arrived to say there was (surprise, surprise) a small problem. He had not thought to ask earlier, but it now transpired that the store was bereft of windscreen wiper blades. As he spoke, I noticed he was pulling on his coat, and that what seems the entire staff of the garage and showrooms were flooding from the building. At first I thought from their concerned expressions that there was a bomb scare, then looked at my wrist and saw it was a minute to noon. The concerned expressions were because they might be late for lunch.

As we sat like the band on the Titanic, the manager was the last to abandon ship, shouting over his shoulder that the car would be ready by Monday, but there was no problem for us, as Martine would organise us a hire car for the weekend. When I asked where Martine could be found, he looked at me as if I was mad, pointed at his watch and said she would be back from her lunch at 2.30pm. Precisely. Obviously, we would have made arrangements for our lunch.

With that he was gone, leaving us in charge of around ten million euros- worth of new and used cars, the keys for which were conveniently dangling from a giant board near the (open) automatic doors to the workshop.

A despairing call to a French friend’s mobile revealed that he had been on his way to lunch, but would come and pick us up. Nobody should suffer the cruel and unnatural punishment of going without their lunch, no matter how responsible they were for a lack of foresight and planning.

An hour later and we were racing down a highway, desperately seeking sustenance before the witching hour of 2pm. Our chauffeur was not familiar with that part of town, and things were looking grim. Then, just as I was about to suggest a singalong to keep our spirits up or picking straws to see who amongst us would make the ultimate sacrifice and become lunch, my wife spotted the magic sign of the crossed knife and fork. Within minutes we were parked, in through the door and seated with another hundred diners, all well into their meals.

In the way that these things happen to us in France, serendipity had come into full play. Not only had we chanced upon a much-respected ouvrier (cheap lunch) restaurant, but it was owned and run by someone we knew. We regularly take our dog for walks around a lake near our mountain home, and in summertime our host runs a busy creperie on the shore. As he explained, he had one business for the good weather, and one for the bad. As Donella pointed out while we attacked the first of four courses for less than a tenner a head, it also appeared that the boss had a new wife. The lady who had served us and been given an affectionate squeeze in passing was not, she said, the same woman whose waist the owner had regularly encircled at the creperie during the summer.

When my wife asked our French friend’s opinion. he looked surprised that she was surprised, and neglected his fillet of coley fish in cream and white wine sauce long enough to give a puzzled Gallic shrug. It was, he opined, obvious. The owner had the more svelte lady of the lake for summertime, and the larger lady of the town for when the winter winds blew.

What could be a more sensible working and living arrangement than that...?

Market Forces

georgeeast@orange.fr — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:14:00 GMT

Thursday 22rd October:

A thick coating of ice on the windscreen of Reggie the Renault this morning ( I know, I know, but my wife insists on naming all our cars. I too give them names, but only when they will not start on a frosty morning), so a wake-up call to action. I need to spend more time in the woods with my chain saw and chopper, and we need to find a wood- burning stove pretty pronto.

One of the most significant changes to come over most Brits when they move to or buy an old property in rural France is how obsessive they can become about heating -and firewood. Where to get it, how much to pay for it... and how to burn it to best effect. When we first came to live in France, I wondered at the sheer size of all our neighbours’ ostentatiously displayed log piles, and why they spent the best part of the long summer days growing and tending them like British gardeners fussing over their entries into the giant vegetable competition at the village fete. When we had our first winter in a stone walled and floored farmhouse with no insulation or double-glazed windows, we realised why good quality firewood can have a price above rubies in the mind of the rural homesteader.

In the UK, most people simply turn up the heating thermostat when winter approaches. In rural France, any form of central heating can be as rare as a French vegan/ animal rights protestor. Paradoxically, using wood as a main or supplementary form of heating is usually both a delight and a drawback for the average Brit. There is all the romance of being ensconced in front of a blazing fire as the rain lashes down outside. The exquisitely fragrant smoke curling above the rooftop as one trudges back to home and hearth still makes my heart sing, but there is always a price to pay for living the good life. For a start, you have to clear up and lay your fire or wood burning stove every morning, and you obviously have to keep it supplied with fuel. And we are not talking here about a purely cosmetic and very twee fireplace or stove that Brit townies often like to have on show in their otherwise completely heated and insulated home.

Without getting technical, when it is the main or only form of heating, a single stove or fire can consume several cords of wood through a long and hard winter, and we have very hard and long winters up here in the Monts d’Aree area of Finistere. In Little Paradise, with its hundred square metre lofty sitting room, our single open fire can get through three cords of split logs over the seven months winter hangs around in this neck of the woods. And that is after rationing the fire to evenings only.

As to how much wood that is, it is a bit of a ball of string situation. A cord can contain any number of logs, as it is a measurement rather than a quota. Suffice it to say that a cord is the amount of logs/faggots which would fit into an invisible box eight feet long by four feet high and four feet wide. That is if you have an honest wood seller, of course. As with most things in life, you pay for what you get, and it is a general rule that the harder the wood the better and sweeter it will burn..and the more it will cost. There is a delightful and very accurate poem which describes the virtues and drawbacks of wood for burning, and I particular love the line which claims that elm wood burns like churchyard mould, and even the very flames are cold. A bit imaginative perhaps, but it does have resonance. For those of you interested, I will reproduce the poem below.

In the meantime, we are off to find a cheap, second-hand wood-burning stove. As I write those words, I realise they are self-contradictory. ‘Cheap’ and ‘wood-burning stove’ is a classic oxymoron. At this time of year, any second-hand stoves on sale will be even rarer than that rural French vegan animal rights activist. In fact, ‘cheap’ and ‘second-hand’ are words that do not naturally go together here, but more of that later. The reason for our reluctant decision to invest in a wood-burning stove is primarily that we rent and not own here, and also that we are admitting defeat by buying one.

The arguments as to the vying attractions of an open fire and a stove are several, but basically it comes down for us to an open fire looking much more attractive but sending most of the heat straight up our cavernous chimney, while a capacious stove will blast the heat directly into the room and save on wood consumed, but cost several hundred Euro to buy, let alone fit with al the pipes and metal sheeting required for the chimney. That is why we are off to scour the local depot ventes, though as the winter winds come scurrying across the mountains, the cost factor is becoming less and less a factor...

Friday 24thOctober:

As usual when visiting a depot-vente, we went shopping for one very specific item and came back with something completely different.

The thing one needs to understand is how uniquely the French approach disposing of their unwanted or out-of-date goods. Unlike in Britain, second-hand shops in provincial and (especially) rural France are abut as rare as the aforementioned vegan activist. I don’t know why this is, but it is. You do see the odd bric-a-brac or quasi-antique furniture shop, but they are generally run by Brits (the clue is always in the clever or punny title). In the main, the French dispose of their goods at a braderie, marche au puce, brocante or vide grenier event, or for larger items at a depot-vent or troc establishment.

Very broadly, the first four are either open-air boot sales without the cars or boots, or indoor events at the local hall. A brocanterie may also be a junk or bric-a-brac shop posing as a fine antiques outlet. At a typical braderie, an area of the town will be taken over by those with a piece of old furniture,broken seed drill, wooden leg or WWII German trooper’s helmet ( if not his hand grenade) to sell. As well as a treasure trove of household and agricultural artefacts across several centuries, there will be professional traders playing their wares, the ubiquitous frite vans, and even entertainment acts like a group of locals dressed up as South American pan pipe players, miming to a suitable track from Music of the Mountains part IV (and I kid you not about that). When the French go in search of a bargain or to dispose of the late Uncle Eugene’s dentures, they like to party down as well.

For more serious and specific shoppers, the depot- vente or troc is the place to go. And for all Brit home owners in search of furniture and furnishings.

Depot Vente speaks for itself as to function, while troc is a noun for swap or barter. In both cases, the system is that people bring their unwanted household and garden goods to a warehouse and demand what they see as a suitable price for them. The manager of the depot will then slap on a commission and display the item in a suitable section. There, it will either sell quickly or hang about until the owner sees sense and adjusts the price. What is so fascinating about a visit to one of these depots is not only the range and condition of items on sale, but the insight it gives the foreign visitor as to Gallic ideas of taste, style and sense of value.

I could and often do spend hours wandering and wondering around the average depot –vente, and when you are after something as rare as a wood-burning stove at the onset of winter, you have a perfect excuse for haunting all the local outlets.

We have two prime examples in our area. One is quite posh, while the other is a real people’s palace of bygone treasures and once-loved goods, where you can see anything from an almost complete crica 1980s bathroom suite in avocado to a magnificent 19^thcentury buffet or wardrobe. In general, the bathroom suite will be gloriously overpriced, and the hand-carved solid oaken furniture will be a quarter the price you would be asked to pay in a trendy antique shop in Britain.

This morning, we scoured both premises, fell over at the 500 Euro price tag on a battered old wood-burner without even a flue pipe, and stood spellbound before a bedroom suite made entirely of silver painted bamboo, complete with drapes around the bed depicting scenes from Jungle Book. Wow.

We also literally stumbled across and could not resist a period double-handed tree saw. It is nearly six foot long and must be at least fifty years old, and is one of those impressive rural tools you see being hefted by heavily moustachioed workers in early black and white photographs. The handles are shiny with age and riddled with worm, but can easily be replaced( my wife is a dab hand at whittling), and the savage teeth looked as good as the day they were forged, given a bit of attention with a file and some oil.

Best of all, the asking price was just fifteen Euros. I could see by the look on the face of the man in the cash box that he thought us another pair of Brits who for some strange reason would be painting the blade of the piece of junk black, then displaying it artfully on the whitewashed wall of the former byre we had doubtless paid a king’s ransom to make habitable for humans instead of cows.

Little did he know that the magnificent old saw was for using, not looking at. It will enable my wife and I to keep warm in several ways. The first will be in the cutting down of a goodly few dead pine trees in our landlady’s grounds. We have permission, and though pine burns too furiously and spits like an enraged cat, its big attraction is that it comes free.

The other ways we shall keep warm will be wheeling barrow loads of the hard-won fuel up the slope and to our open fire. A wood- burning stove would be much more efficient and labour saving, but it would cost a great deal more than fifteen Euros...

Beechwood fires burn bright and clear,

if the logs are kept a year.

Store your beech for Xmastide,

With new cut holly laid beside.

Chestnut’s only good they say,

If for years it’s stored away.

Birch and firwood burn too fast,

Blaze too bright and do not last.

Flames from larch will shoot up high,

Dangerously the sparks will fly.

But ashwood green and ashwood brown,

Are fit for a queen with golden crown.

Oaken logs if dry and old

Keep away the winter’s cold.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke.

Elmwood burns like churchyard mould

E’en the very flames are cold.

Applewood will scent the room,

Pearwood smells like flowers in bloom.

But ashwood wet and ashwood dry,

A king may warm his slippers by.

(anon)

Walking on Water

georgeeast@orange.fr — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:23:00 GMT

Sunday 12th October:

Summer arrived in Finistere this morning. In a very French way, it was rather more than politely late, but so much more the welcome. Autumn will doubtless return tomorrow, so it was important to make the most of it and yomp the next stretch of the Nantes to Brest canal. It is our ambition to walk the whole length, but as with a superb meal or the last glass of a particularly fine glass of wine we are making it last and savouring every moment. In truth, the savouring bit is also a good excuse to keep the daily mileage down to a manageable level.

This most unusual collection of waterways takes more than 360 kilometres to get from the old capital of Brittany at the bottom right of the region to the north-western seaport of Brest, though the distance must be less than half that if it were to follow the straight line canals usually adopt.

Work on joining these two important towns started at the beginning of the 19th century after, again in a very French way, the authorities had been talking about it for around four hundred years. Problems with bad or non-existent roads and latterly the British raids on Breton ports were spurs to come up with a way of moving goods more efficiently and safely across the region. What makes this canal so unusual and attractive- if you are in no particular hurry- is that only around a fifth of the distance is made up of man-made cuts; the rest of the journey meanders alongside eight rivers on their eccentric way from the Edre at Nantes to the Aulne estuary at Brest. Because of the undulating countryside, it took more than 200 locks to even-out the watery highway, and what would be a formidable engineering task in any era was forty years in the making.

Dusk falls slowly over the glittering course of the canal as we break open another bottle of modest red. More savouring of the moment needs to be done, and there is still a smidgeon of saucisson to be paid due attention to. Interestingly, this almost addictive chopped meat dry sausage gets it name from a primitive explosive fuse of the same shape which was used to set off small bombs like the petards employed to blow up castle gates during a siege. Sometimes when too much wine had been taken by the bombardier, he would set the fuse wrongly and be blown up together with the fortifications under attack. Thus, he had been hoist by his own petard. I bet you always wondered where that expression came from, and so did I.

Today we have covered the best part of ten miles and met some interesting fellow travellers, as well as some bracing encounters with cyclists and a whole pony club. The fishermen we meet always smile and say hello and are pleased to have a chat about what they are not going to catch that day; many of the cyclists and horse riders look down their noses at pedestrians as if we were some inferior species. In my experience, there is nobody more courteous, considerate and friendly than a polite French man or woman, and nobody more pig ignorant that a rude one.

There was also the chance to stop for a drink and chat in our native language, as nearly all the former lock-keepers’ cottages along this stretch of the canal seem owned by Brits. Small, almost painfully quaint and even twee and in a perfect location for lovers of nature and tranquility, they make perfect second homes. I think the preponderence of Brit ownership also signifies something about our two races. As the relative price of river, lake, canal and coastal properties in Britain shows, we all love to live near water. Although it is a huge generality, Bretons seem to be broadly divided into two types in this regard. There are those on the coast of the Armor ( 'Land of the Sea') who work on the sea or love to live by it and will pay fortunes in property prices to do so. Then there are the inland Bretons of the Argoat ( Land of the Trees). They have the good earth in their genes as well as often under their fingernails, and are not fussed about living near any sort of expanse or course of water. In extreme cases, they dislike or even fear it.

Of course, more cynical observers might say that it is only Britons who would pay such outrageous asking prices to own a tiny, damp and liable-to-flooding cottage just because it is in such a twee location. The other factor is that all properties along the canal come under the control of SMATAH, the official body charged with looking after the canal and preserving its image. Given the standard level of French bureaucracy and regulations heaped upon houses in ordinary locations, one can see the problems of living in what amounts to a listed building in France. SMATAH makes the Heritage Trust look almost indulgent. The garden area around the cottages are designated as having the same cultural and historical importance as the environs of a church, which technically means you cannot even cut the grass without written permission. We looked at a stunningly attractive ecluse cottage at a reasonable price last week, but there was a major drawback. The unusually honest agent showed me a letter from SMATAH to the notaire handling the sale, which pointed out that any new owner was specifically forbidden to use a car or any sort of motor vehicle on the towpath to get to and from the nearest access point. Given that the nearest access point was almost a mile away, that would seem to be a bit of a problem. Especially when you consider that the local fishermen had awarded themselves special dispensation, and would regularly whizz by the home you would have to walk or cycle to.

For us, it is the end to a perfect day. Mind you, there are plenty of those to be had here in rural Brittany. Or for that matter so many other bits of our adopted country. It is a significant fact that seven times as many Britons visit France on holiday as the other way around. When you know what is on offer here, perhaps that is not such a surprising statistic...

Minding Your Language

georgeeast@orange.fr — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:39:00 GMT

Saturday 4th October:

A long, long, long lunch yesterday, and with it came further evidence of at least one truism I have proved conclusively as a result of messing around in France for more than twenty years: A foreign language is not absorbed by some sort of process of osmosis just by living in that country.

In fact, I do not think it would be going too far to say that there is often a law of inverse ratio at play when Brits go to live abroad anywhere that English is not the lingua franca. In short, I know of people who have lived in France for forty years and yet speak less French than when they arrived.

My personal theory is that it is not about the problem of teaching old dogs new tricks or some people being unable to grasp the basic tenets of speaking another language. Rather, I think it is all down to how much you want to learn a foreign tongue. The long-term expats who cant or refuse to learn French are prime examples. I think that their failure to pick up at least a passing knowledge of the language their neighbours speak is more to do with a mental block rather than an inability to get to grips with French. It is as if speaking only English is part of their Britishness and even their individual identities, and it would damage that shell of individuality somehow to realize what the lady at the checkout in their local supermarket is saying about the weather when they do their weekly shop safely within their force field bubble of ununderstanding.

But I am hardly one to talk, given that my command and control of the French language after two decades of using it regularly is put firmly in place and perspective by an English friend’s son, who is nine and been attending the local school for less than a year. Already, he can rattle away like a native, and -most importantly- his accent is so good that French people he meets think he is one of their own.

That’s my point really, and what nearly spoiled my otherwise wonderful relais lunch yesterday. Don’t laugh, but the restaurant is within the grounds of a now ( thankfully) redundant nuclear power station. Although the site is virtually deserted, at least a hundred office, building trade and farm workers descend on the place every day on the stroke of noon. It is that good, almost exclusively used by French people and certainly lived up to the recommendation we were given. But what upset me was how, when the waitress arrived and I said no more than two words – or you could say even no more than one( ‘Bon jour’), she responded in flawless English.

When we first went to live in Normandy in 1990, nobody in our nearest town- up to and including the bank manager- spoke a word of English. Or at least they pretended not to, and that also includes, wait for it, the bar owner who also taught English at the local primary school. We never knew whether this lack of usage of the Queen’s English by the good people of Bricquebec was all about a point of principal, or embarrassment at how they might sound when using our tongue. Nowadays, the reverse is true, or at least it is in every part of Brittany we visit. No sooner have you opened your mouth than the person you are addressing is responding in English. I suppose this should please us to see so many Bretons practicing their command of our language or being polite by speaking in our tongue, but, however perversely, I find it extremely irritating. Because, of course, it means that I, who have been cultivating a decent French accent for more than twenty years, betray my nationality so easily when I speak. A typical example is when dropping in to an unfamiliar bar for a coffee break. I will slouch up to the bar trying to look very Breton, and ask or rather grunt for two coffees. Without exception, the man or woman behind the bar will ask, in English of a varying degree of fluidity, if we want big or small ones. Often, they will go on to explain the difference. This is particularly galling, because, as you may know, real French people only ever ask for coffee when they want a small, black expresso. That is the norm, and they will specify if they want a milky or weak one or otherwise. So even though I am using local code, all my responders have indicated that they not only know that I am not Breton or French, but also that I am British. Or as they would have it, English.

This lead me to the inevitable conclusion that not only do I merely have to open my mouth to reveal my origins, but that, to all French people I must sound the equivalent of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, asking to see the minkey’s leesunce.. or the French-mangling British spy pretending to be a local policeman in ‘Allo Allo who would always enter with that immortal line: ‘I was just pissing by…’.

An interesting encounter in the car park at Super U this morning. About the only time when we are sure to be thought of as French is when we are in or around our car, which is a locally registered (29) Renault runaround of the sort much favoured by retired farmers or other older and staider Bretons. Curiously, when we swapped our British-registered Volvo for a French make of car that would indicate we are locals we thought we would receive better treatment from Breton road users. In fact, the reverse proved true, but that is another story.

This morning a British-reg car pulled up alongside us, and we were treated to that wonderfully singular and ingratiating smile which all decent francophile Britons in France reserve for the natives, and which roughly translates as: ‘Thank you so much for letting us be in your wonderful country and we promise to be no bother while we are here or try and change your culture or increase the price of property for young people too much.’

When I explained that we were British and living here more or less permanently, the smile disappeared and the couple gloomily explained they had a holiday home nearby, and were stocking up on goodies before the much resented trip back to Middlesborough and work. They could not wait, they said, to be our age and be able to retire to Brittany and live here all the time. I was about to point out that it was not all fun reaching retirement age, what with all the extra aches and pains and non-functioning bits, when I realized that they were, actually quite right. We at least have found that all the drawbacks of ageing are more than compensated for by being able to spend the autumn- and hopefully the winter- of our lives right here in the adopted country of our hearts…

Tour de Force

georgeeast@orange.fr — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:41:00 GMT

We are fresh back from our own Tour de France. Or rather, a good bit of that country. We cheated a bit by using the car and not our LeClerc special bumper bargain Road Eater pushbikes, but I reckon a tad over 3000 kilometres in just five days was not bad going. In spite of stopping at a lot of cracking chambres d’hotes, relais restaurants and even a Buffalo Grill ( much under-rated eateries as I recently discovered), we still managed to get through a goodly part of south and south-eastern France. Alphabetically speaking, just some of the towns we stayed at or whizzed by included Arles, Avignon, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Bourges, Grenoble, Lyon, Saumur, Toulon and Tours. Not the ideal way to properly visit any country or part of it of course, but the idea behind the trip was to take snapshot views of as many potential southern regions and departments as possible for the next book in my French Impressions series. Next month we will do the same sort of thing in the south-west, if my stamina and our bank manager permit.

Apart from being a total if expensive delight, the trip reminded me of two inarguable facts:

France is a huge and hugely diverse country.
French drivers are truly, truly crap.

With regard to (1), the thing most Brits get wrong when trying to demonstrate the comparative sizes of the two countries is by pointing out that France is a couple of times bigger than Great Britain and with only the same population. Quite true, but I reckon a better way of looking at it is to factor in the equation that eighty five percent of all the people in GB live in England, and France is actually seven times the size of the purely English bit of Blighty.

No wonder Brits find the roads so relatively empty and the streets so relatively quiet across the Channel.

Also, although we have our Lake District and Pennine Way, the truly awesome thing I find when travelling long distances in the southerly areas of France is how dramatic and changeful the French landscape can be, and how you can travel from vast plains to proper mountains in a day...or even less. And with each region’s distinct cuisine, customs and sometimes version of their common language, you might as well be travelling to and through different countries.

One morning last week we started the day in the Carmargue, with white horses and stunning flights of roseate flamingos as breakfast companions, spent the afternoon with knuckles white and eyes often shut (and that included me as the driver) navigating the winding and very narrow pass through France’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon ( the Gorges of Verdon)..and had dinner in a ski resort in the Alps. Now that is what I call variety. Having said all that, it was nice to chug back across the border into Brittany after our tour. It was market day in the small town of Jantze,and sitting round a table in the bar on the square were eight sturdy farmers of various ages and sizes, but all wearing the identical uniform of bib and brace overalls and flat cap. They were celebrating a good day at market or drowning their sorrows after what they claimed as a bad one, and a suitably motherly Madame was effortlessly whizzing around the table dispensing admiration or sympathy as she ensured their glasses were kept filled to the brim. The lovely thing about this little epiphany on our return was that I knew that scene would be being repeated all over rural France. A reassuring constancy in a very varied, and, for me, hypnotically appealing country.

Now on to point (2), and you have to realise that, when it comes to driving in France, I know my onions. I also know about driving in all parts of the UK, though am limited as to experience in other countries in or outside the EU. Over the best part of a half century as the wheel (Blimey, surely it cannot be that long?) I have clocked up the best part of a million miles behind the wheel of cars, brewers drays, monster lorries and even tanks, and a quarter of that distance has been on the roads of France. My French driving experience does not include tanks, though at times I reckon that would have been the safest and most apt vehicle in which to be.

I hate stereotypes, and especially the sort of dumb no-brained lack of thinking that glibly accepts and labels people and their countries. In my book, to say that everything in or about France is better than everything in or about Britain is as mindless and even fascist as claiming the opposite. I know some really rubbish French cooks, and lots of Brits who can’t make a decent cup of tea.

But, and it is a huge one, my simple and single view of the general standard of driving by the French is that they are totally and utterly hopeless and clueless. And before you jump to any conclusions about my age and likely pace of proceeding on the highway, you only have to look at my collection of speeding tickets to realise I am not yet one of the driving gloves and car coat brigade. My point is that the French are not fast and furious in a skilled way, or have a different style of driving than is found in the UK. They are just absolutely hopeless in all aspects of sensible and safe road usage.

If there were time and space I could give you hundreds of examples to prove my point. Anyone who has been tailgated by a French driver who is waiting for the next blind bend or hump-back bridge before overtaking will know where I am coming from. Suffice it to say that our recent tour of the south reinforced my opinions, and demonstrated that it is just not in Brittany where drivers are mad, bad and very dangerous. Finally, in a country which as mentioned is seven times the size of England and about the same number of drivers on all those empty roads, the French still manage to kill twice as many drivers as we Brits at home.

I rest my case...