Best of Blog in France
A pick of posts from this popular blog about ex-pat life in France
by
Stephanie J Dagg
Published by Stephanie Dagg at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Stephanie J Dagg
Lots more blog entries to read at http://www.bloginfrance.com/
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Introduction
Five years ago we left our large, brand new house in Co. Cork, which we’d built ourselves, for a two-hundred-year-old hovel in Creuse, France (actually, two, plus a crumbling barn, and not forgetting 75 acres of land and lakes).
Why, oh why? Why did we aspire to go down in the world, to leave the country where we could communicate successfully and actually use our painstakingly acquired professional qualifications to make a living? Why did we abandon all that and go abroad where, at least at first, we would be scratching a living so far below the poverty line as to be complete out of sight of it? Insanity? Bloody-mindedness? Misguided romanticism? The spirit of adventure?
None of the above. Quite simply - necessity. It was the only thing to do.
We couldn’t carry on in Ireland the way we were. After fifteen years there, it was time to go before Chris’s work-related stress made me a widow and the cost of living got any worse. And so we changed our lives by moving to rural France to run a gîte and carp fishing business and do a little llama farming on the side.
We are: myself, Stephanie, author and freelance editor and now also llama farmer and gîte cleaner; Chris, ex-quality assurance in the chemical industry, now carp lake manager, DIY expert and mole hater; three totally Frenchified children, namely Benj, currently nearly 20 and at University; Caiti 17 who regularly wins national school awards, and 10 year-old free spirit Ruadhri; Nessie our dog who came with us too, but all the other animals – alpacas, carp, cats, goats, guinea pigs, hens, llamas, rabbits, turkeys – have been accumulated here.
Moving abroad is tricky at the best of times. With kids of 14, 11 and 4 at the time it became even more of a challenge. But with persistence, a positive attitude and, let’s face it, no alternative, we’ve made a success of it. It’s been far from easy though. Many people harbour notions of an idyllic rural French ex-pat lifestyle, sipping wine and watching sunsets. That rarely exists. Reality is French bureaucracy, exploding composting loos, leaking roofs, viciously cold winters without central heating, living off savings, self-doubt, frustration and depression.
I began my blog in July 2009. With its honest view of what it takes to get established abroad, my blog, http://www.bloginfrance.com, has encouraged and educated current and would-be ex-pat families, as well as entertained everybody, or at least I hope it has. The overall tone is optimistic and light-hearted and variety is the key. I’ve picked what I think to be a nice selection from the first couple of years’ worth of entries, which I’ve arranged by months. So from January to December, you can see what living in rural Creuse is like for an Anglo-Irish family who took the plunge and have never looked back. (OK, maybe just the odd glance!)
Enjoy!
Stephanie Dagg
January
Wood and Green Living
1.1.2010
We’ve spent the morning replenishing our firewood supply.
At the moment, we’re using up all the old beams we salvaged during renovation work. So I drag them out of the stable to Chris and Benj, who are waiting outside to slice them up with the chainsaw. Then I load up the wheelbarrow and squelch down to the woodshed with the cut pieces, helped by Caiti and Ruadhri. We get through roughly a barrowful of wood on a cold day I would estimate. But that’s pretty much all we use for heating. We have central heating but run it as little as possible – maybe an hour in the morning so there’s a warm kitchen for breakfast and hot water for washing. Then it’s off until evening when it comes on in the bathroom and bedrooms to take the chill off. We live in the living room in winter (easy to see where the name comes from!), only dashing to the kitchen to get meals and cups of tea. We wear two jumpers each as well.
And it’s bearable although not very convenient. So it really got my hackles up when the French government proposed to add 5 cents a litre to heating oil and the same per kilo of gas, as a so-called ‘green tax’. We couldn’t use any less gas than we do already. I turn the Antargas guy away several times a year. He appears every now and again, begging me to let him fill our tank up, but I say ‘no’ firmly! We need less than one tankful a year. We can’t afford to be tempted into using more than that. The price of petrol and diesel is going to be bumped up by the same tax. And again, I don’t see how we can cut down on our mileage any more. There are no local bus or train services, so we have to drive to get our shopping. Mondays and Fridays we make a 22 km round trip to get Benj and Caits to the nearest bus stop for their coach to lycée. We go into Boussac perhaps once a week for the grocery shopping, and maybe to Guéret or La Châtre every fortnight for a bigger food shop and other necessary items. I’ve cut out trips to the swimming pool and other such ‘frivolous’ jollies. Ruadhri takes the school bus now, even though that means a very early start for him with a lot of wasted time sat on the bus as it meanders along the country lanes. Up to now we either cycled or walked him to school, nine days out of ten. Sadly his school at St Marien is about 12 km away, too far for biking. And I recycle everything to the point of ridiculousness. How could we be more green? Frankly, until the government ministers are doing the same as we are (just keeping one room warm in winter and hardly using their cars) then they should stop hitting us with carbon taxes when we’re doing everything we can already.
Its manufacturers they should turn their attention to. A couple of reasons why: we had to saw our way with a breadknife to get into a few of our overpackaged Christmas presents this year. France seems to love that deadly, razor-sharp hard plastic packaging for everything. Way over the top. And then Chris bought a new electric screwdriver recently. He only needed a new battery for it but it proved impossible to buy that separately. So he had to buy the whole outfit, even though there was plenty of use left in the old screwdriver, battered as it was. That’s where resources are being wasted and huge carbon footprints left. Not by us huddled round our fire.
Put another jumper on, Sarko.
Llamaless fields
8.1.2010
For the first time in a long, long time there are no llamas or alpacas to be seen in the fields of Les Fragnes. They’re all indoors since we’re experiencing the worst winter weather we’ve had since we arrived here in 2006. Even the girls who can come and go as they like have stayed indoors all day, happily kushed down eating hay. Bernard and the two alpacas are in one stable, Oscar has joined the girls (he’s had the snip so no hanky panky), and Denis has joined Maisy the goat in her stable. The forecast is for minus 10 with strong winds and snow – that’s not weather to leave animals out in.
The poultry have been mainly indoors today too. The turkeys took up with the girl llamas, the chickens huddled up in their stable, and only the indomitable Sham (our white chicken) and the two ducks ventured very far. The cats are hanging round the house, hoping for us to show some weakness and let them in! Treacle has snuck in a few times, but not for very long. They’re just too naughty.
Benj and Caits have taken up snowboarding. Benj took the wheels off his ancient Star Wars skateboard, but it’s working very well. I imagine it’s a bit smaller than a proper snowboard, and not as grippy on the top. Both teens slip off a lot! But they’re enjoying themselves. We got them to come home from lycée on Wednesday as we were very worried about them getting stuck down in Gueret for the weekend. The bad weather hasn’t arrived yet, but it would have been difficult fetching them tonight in the dark and the freezing fog and on the slippery roads. Chris drove the car up to leave it by the gate, our standard procedure when it looks like our drive will get blocked by snow, and he had a tricky time of it.
So we’ll be hunkering down for the weekend. It won’t be just the llamas keeping a low profile!
Frozen Solid
10.1.2010
The temperature hasn’t gone above minus 5 for four days now. It’s certainly the longest cold snap we’ve had, although not the snowiest. (That was January 2007.) And we’ve had problems. Our pipes froze on Friday night, so on Saturday Chris was hacking holes in the plasterboard to locate the source of the problem. I was hair-drying one set of pipes while Chris set the electric fan heater up to warm another. We turned on the halogen floodlights in the loft to heat that up too.
So of course there was no running water in the house. Thank goodness we have the gîte. We were able to use the loo over there, and do the washing up and washing too. This morning we’ve got most of the pipes freed up. However, the kitchen sink isn’t draining outside – but into the bath! Clearly a bit more ice to deal with somewhere.
The fun thing about the snow is all the animal tracks we find in the mornings. Here are some ragondin (Coypu) tracks that we spotted on the big lake.
The animals are all snug and cosy. Denis the llama and Maisy the goat are getting on well, but Oscar is being a little bit henpecked by the females. He’ll survive! The cats are sneaking inside more and more often! As I type this, Treacle is sitting on my lap, having a good wash. She’s not that impressed with the snow. Nessie is as happy as ever.
The children are happy as there won’t be any school buses running tomorrow. That’s a relief – the roads round here are certainly not safe. We’ll have to wait and see what comes along weather-wise this week. It’s meant to warm up mid-week by a degree or two, but I’ll believe it when it happens.
Bare Cupboards
13.1.2010
We’ve been snowed in for a week now. The kids are convinced our food is running out. True, Caiti is out of ice tea, Benj has noticed there are just a few yogurts left in the fridge and Ruadhri’s chocolate breakfast cereal is dwindling fast. But it will be a long, long time before we starve. We can walk to Nouzerines, as we have been doing regularly through the snow and ice, to buy milk, bread, croissants and flour. The boulangerie is only small and doesn’t have a great range, but the staples are there. I haven’t noticed a fridge, but I’m pretty sure they must sell cheese and butter. I can’t imagine a small French shop that wouldn’t!
We have a freezer jam-packed with blackberries and chestnuts from our summer hedgerows and autumn trees, and apples and pears from a friend’s orchard. Not to mention well over a hundred frozen eggs from our chickens and ducks. There are plenty of frozen meat dishes too. Chris always cooks in quantity so there are leftovers to freeze whenever he’s been slaving over a hot oven. There’s a giant pumpkin that will make us a good few gallons of soup, nets of onions and a large bucketful of carrots in the kitchen, and several rows of potatoes out in the veggie patch still. And of course we have three turkeys, two ducks, half a dozen chickens, loads of rabbits (and a brand new litter has just arrived to our great surprise – we left the last litter in with momma bun too long) … and not forgetting the goat!!! (OK, we won’t be eating the goat unless we’re still snowed in come July.) It might not be the diet of choice for the kids, but we could keep ourselves fed for ages.
I guess that makes us partially self-sufficient, which is something to be very proud about. We also keep ourselves in wood as well, and my knitting and sewing kits us out with a few clothing necessities. I should have enough alpaca wool from now on to produce my own yarn. Chris can turn his hand to pretty much any job around the house and grounds. He’s done wonders in the last few days, sorting out our frozen pipes. But we’d need cows, pigs, fields of wheat, tea and coffee bushes, a private oil well and a windmill to be fully self-sufficient! We intend to increase our livestock this year, but I can’t see myself taking up milking. We thought about some dairy goats a year or so back, but since none of us like goat’s milk, and certainly not goat’s cheese, there didn’t seem much point! If we really wanted, we could start drinking llama milk – but I think Gabby would have a lot to ‘say’ about that. And I wouldn’t be the one to volunteer to milk her! Gabby is a super llama but doesn’t do the touchy-feely thing.
I think we’ll be able to get to the shops before the week is done. But I look forward to needing to buy less in the future.
Out, Brothers, Out!
16.1.2010
There have already been some strikes here in France in 2010 – and we’re only halfway through January! There has been a traindriver’s strike, a pilot’s strike and an air traffic controller’s strike, and next week there will be general strike in the French principality of Guadeloupe on the 20th , and then one here on the 21st, not forgetting the nurses who strike on the 26th.
Do the French strike more than other countries? It certainly seems so. However, a quick poke around on the net reveals that it’s the Canadians who down tools most often. Between 1995 and 2006, the number of work days lost through strikes per thousand employees was 203.4 in Canada, 134.8 in Spain, 91.4 in France and 74.3 in Norway. The country that had the fewest strikes was Switzerland, with 2.8 days lost. (These figs from www.metiseurope.eu.)
The rivalry between unions is one reason for frequent strikes in France, apparently. Each union must be seen to be at least trying to outdo the others!
I’m not generally in favour of strikes as they inconvenience the wrong people the most. I mean, is Sarko going to care particularly that my two teens are having to come home on Wednesday afternoon now instead of being able to stay at school? Their ‘internat’ (boarding facilities) will be closed on Wednesday night because of the strike. Does it bother him that they’ll be using two extra bus tickets each this week, that I’ll have to get up at 6am on Thursday to get them on their bus (usually I only have to do that on Monday and once a week is enough, believe me), and that I’ll be making two extra journeys of 22km each to get them from and to the bus-stop? And Benj and Caits won’t be getting two meals each that we’ve paid for as part of their fees? They’ll be eating here instead – two teas and two breakfasts. It’s not a colossal sum of money involved, I know, but it’s a good few euro, and it all adds up. And do I have any influence on whatever it is the strikers are striking for? Unlikely.
However, workers have the right to strike so I must respect that. But it would be nice if it didn’t mean I had to get up early two mornings and have more washing up to do …!
January Blues
20.1.2010
I’ve read in several places that round about now (the 20th or so of January) is the most depressing time of year. It’s a month since Christmas, it’s the middle of winter and there’s nothing much to look forward to in the immediate future. Except, perhaps, more snow.
The very worst day is so-called Blue Monday, usually the Monday of the last full week in January. There is actually a specific formula for working it out which involves time since Christmas, post-Christmas debt level, time since breaking all New Year’s resolutions, and motivational levels. It doesn’t stand up to close mathematical scrutiny, being very tongue-in-cheek, but it makes you think!
But this Blue Monday idea is a very pessimistic view. There are a few things to brighten the dull days. There’s a strike tomorrow here – a good, brisk march through the sunshine should lift the spirits! And the sales are on. I’m not a great bargain hunter and the sales at this time of year seem to be mainly of bedding and curtains and towels. There’s a limit to those of what you can buy. However, there are other things on sale too. Gifi is full of cheaper than ever bling, and the clothes shops have reductions, so that’s more interesting. The supermarkets have some bargains as well, sometimes rather strange ones, but bargains nonetheless. Caiti is impatient to have a trawl round the shops in Gueret as soon as she has some free time between lessons.
And more fun things coming up are Burn’s Night next week. We love haggis and make our own (not going for the sheep’s stomach, you may be pleased to hear), and follow it with tipsy laird. We’re not Scottish, but we like to celebrate with the Scots. My brother in law is from Aberdeen and I spent a year at Stirling University so that’s a good enough reason. Then Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year arrive together on 14th February. It’s not too early to start planning for those to give you something enjoyable to do.
So don’t be downhearted. There may be two months of winter left – and here in Creuse it may be more than that. Our winters are long. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Every day is a few minutes longer and spring really is on the way.
Censused
26.1.2010
The census taker came yesterday. It’s our turn to be counted. Unlike the UK and Ireland, France carries out its censuses on a rolling basis. Communes with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are censused (that’s a real word, honestly) every 5 years, but not all in the same year. For example, Nouzerines is subject to a census this year, but neighbouring Bussière St Georges will be dealt with in 2012. Communes larger than 10,000 are censused every 10 years, but not in one go. A proportion of each of these communes is processed every year. This seems a sensible way of doing things. Maybe it doesn’t give a snapshot of exactly how many people are living in France at an exact time and date, like the UK one does, but is that a particularly useful measure anyway? There can be large, rapid fluxes in population which won’t be reflected in that figure. For example, the recent sudden arrival of tens of thousands of Eastern European people in Ireland was followed by an equally rapid exodus when the economy took a nosedive. A system like the UK’s wouldn’t ever register those people if it occurred between census dates, but the French system would at least take some account of it.
The form wasn’t too complicated, and anyway, the census-taker, our neighbour Jan’s daughter Gaëlle, was extremely helpful. Ruadhri’s was the quickest to fill in. Caiti and Benj, being over 14, required a few additional sections to be filled in, and Chris and I had the most. There was also a questionnaire about our house to complete too. Gaelle wasn’t quite sure if we needed to complete one for the gîte, since although it’s a furnished house, no-one lives there – but we filled one out just in case!
Gaëlle was reckoning it would take her the full month she’s allowed to collect all the information. Our commune only has a small population but it’s quite widely spread and is out and about a good deal too. Catching people in is going to be tricky. Gaëlle had left us a note informing us when she’d be calling in our mail box at the end of the drive, which we hadn’t discovered. But we’re usually in so she found us anyway. So we’re all done for another five years and France will officially acknowledge us as being here in its facts and figures from now on!
The last official figures are for 2007 and show a population of 252 full-time residents in Nozuerines with 9 part-timers. This group includes people who, for example, have a family home in another department, but spend long periods in Nouzerines for education or work purposes. Creuse as a whole has a fixed population of 123,861 with an extra 5,000 part-time residents. It will be interesting to see which way the figures move with this census.
Firefighters versus Posties!
13.1.2011
It’s the battle of the calendars. France is the land of calendars and the most important two are the Sapeurs- Pompiers calendar and the Post Office calendar. These are brought round by members of the relevant profession and you give a donation according to your means for your copy. I’m not sure that refusal is an option!
But which is the better of the two? Let’s take a look.
First up the Sapeurs-Pompiers calendar. This is a locally-based one, ours is the Boussac version, which immediately makes it very relevant. There’s a lively photo on the cover of firefighters spraying their hoses at the École Maternelle, fortunately not on fire. The water spraying theme is recurrent – unsurprisingly – with a factory, a wedding, a playground, and a couple of other places being dowsed. There are lots of photos – fire engines, members past and present, the batterie-fanfare, and training action shots.
The calendar relies on advertising to make it viable and so there are handy ads by local firms on each month’s page, always useful. There’s the obligatory summary of the year’s saints on the back cover. The calendar comes with pre-punched holes in each page so it’s easy to hang up. All in all, a colourful, practical item.
Now for the La Poste calendar. This is regional, but only half of it – the inner 4 pages which relate to Creuse with local maps. The outer pages this year consist of a desk diary at one end, and general info about France at the other end. I use ‘ends’ rather than front and back, because this is one of those slightly confusing publications where some of it is upside down. Are you with me? Open the end with the summary of saints for January to June and you have the desk diary part, right way up. Flip the calendar over and open it like a book from the other end, with the saints for July to December, and the info part of the calendar is now the right way up. Complicated!
The calendar comes with a metal hook on the spine for hanging purposes, but if you hang it up by that, then it’s closed. Hmm. Also, with it being a desk diary this year i.e. the months are presented two to a page, portrait layout (rather than landscape), you can’t really hang it up anyway. There is very little room to write anything in the gap for each date so not very user-friendly. It’s good that La Poste are trying something new, but I preferred the old more traditional style of previous years’ calendars. That said, it’s a good quality item with stiff covers that come in a variety of designs so you can choose your favourite. The choice covers fluffy kittens, ferocious-looking boar, pretty scenery and cute kids, you can imagine the sort of thing. I plumped for Mont St Michel this year (and a cheery pic of fishing boats on the back).
So, very different, both in a good cause, but the prize this year goes to the sapeurs-pompiers. However, both calendars will get good use. The longer I live in France, the more the calendar culture takes hold and the more I need!
Log Blog
20.1.2011
January is all about keeping warm in chilly Creuse. This year’s winter started earlier than usual, but hasn’t been too bad overall. However, another cold spell is looming and our woodpile is a bit on the small side now. Two cordes didn’t go as far as we thought. (A corde of wood is roughly 4 steres, with a stere being a square metre. The size of a corde varies according to the region of France you live in!) So we’ve been slicing, lugging and splitting logs. OK, Chris has been doing all three, I’ve participated extensively in the last two, and even nine year old Ruadhri has helped with splitting. We treated ourselves to a secondhand log splitter this year, and it’s a dream come true. Instead of Chris having to spend hours belting the heck out of logs with an axe, and breaking a couple of handles in the process each year, now, at the touch of a button, this wonderful machine does it for us. Awesome. Here’s a picture of Ruadhri at work.
Other cosiness-on-the-cheap tactics are that we all wear an extra layer or two in winter and keep just one room heated all day with the wood stove. We only have the central heating on briefly in the morning and evening. It would be way too expensive to keep it on all day, and unnecessary anyway. We live in the lounge, with brief forays into the cold kitchen to get meals ready.
Long-term, though, we need to bump up our insulation. We thought we’d put plenty of glass wool in, but you can never have too much in this part of France! Chris has repointed the exterior of our house on the north side to help keep the wind out, but with an old building, there’s always going to be nooks and crannies that winter can creep through. The wildlife creeps in too. Shrews and mice skitter across the floor every now and again. The cats studiously ignore them, despite the fact that all three of them are mean mousers outdoors. However, once they get indoors into the warm, they slump into a blissfully cosy coma.
We’ve got to the toughest part of the year. Late January and February tend to drag bleakly by, but spring isn’t so very far away and, when it comes out, there’s warmth in the sun. I was sat outside on Monday soaking it up. But today I’m back in furry boots. A typically crazy Creuse winter.
Why Learning French is Better than Sex!
27.1.2011
1. You don’t have to hide your French language magazines from your partner.
2. You won’t go blind if you learn French by yourself.
3. You can learn French in front of the children.
4. You won’t catch a disease learning French.
5. It’s quite acceptable to pay someone to teach you how to do it.
6. You can learn French for hours on end.
7. Once you’ve learnt, you can try it out with everyone you meet.
8. It’s OK to do it online.
9. No-one is going to post embarrassing videos of you learning French on Youtube.
10. People don’t think you’re a pervert if you learn French in a group.
February
February Sayings and Traditions
2.2.2010
Here are a few wise old sayings from the February 1932 edition of La Prospérité à la Campagne:
Chandeleur noire – hiver a fait son devoir. Chandeleur trouble – l’hiver redouble. Black Candlemas – winter has finished its work. Unsettled Candlemas – winter will redouble its efforts. (I guess that by ‘black’ candlemas it means cloudy and not snowy. Candlemas is 2 Feb.)
Si janvier fait le février, février fait le janvier. If January is like February, February will be like January. (This seems to be a bit of a cop-out saying, since in our experience so far, the two months are very similar weather wise!)
Quand le soleil à la Chandeleur fait lanterne – quarante jours après il hiverne. When the sun shines brightly like a lantern at Candlemas, forty days later it will be wintry.
Candlemas on 2 February traditionally marked the end of Christmas. It is the midway point between the winter solitice and the spring equinox. Candles were taken to Church to be blessed. They were incredibly important items in days gone by, not only because they were the main source of light but also because many people believed they had beneficial properties. In Ireland, to this day, candles are used to bless the throat to protect it against infections.
It’s traditional to have pancakes at Candlemas. Now that’s always good news in our household.
February 2nd is also groundhog day. In German tradition, it was the badger who predicted what the weather would do. If he stuck his nose out and found snow, he’d come out because he knew winter would soon be over. But if he saw sunshine, he’d go back down his burrow and go back to sleep because he knew more bad weather was coming. I hope our ragondins (coypu) will go back down their burrows!
And it’s your last chance to take down the last Christmas decorations. If you missed the twelfth night deadline, this is the next one. Miss that and bad luck could be in store. You’ve been warned!
Nodes and Nudes
6.2.2010
I’m going to be gardening by the moon this year. I have my trusty handbook by my side – Mieux Jardiner avec la Lune – and I’m ready to get started. But will it really make any difference?
Gardening by the phases of the moon stretches back thousands of years. Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) wrote about it. Benjamin Franklin did it. Now it’s my turn to do both. The idea behind it is that when the moon is waxing, the water table rises so plants absorb nutrients more quickly. This is especially helpful to young plants. As the moon wanes, the water table drops so this is a better time for weeding and harvesting. You should prune then too as the cut shoots lose less moisture.
There’s a bit more to it than that – a few complications like the apogee (when the moon is its furthest away from earth), the perigee (when it’s at its closest) and the lunar nodes. These I’m still slightly confused by, but I believe they’re when the moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic i.e. the sun’s orbit. There are two each month, and they usually mean you can take some time off gardening. That’s the great thing about the lunar gardening system – there are certain times when it would be a complete waste of effort to do any gardening, so you can put your feet up guilt-free.
It will be interesting to see if we get better harvests this year. Pumpkins, potatoes and courgettes are the only veg that really seem to thrive in our garden, but mainly because we surrounded them with plenty of llama manure. The soil is surprisingly poor, but only we think because of being over-farmed by our predecessor. We’ll give it plenty of TLC this year – i.e. Tons of Llama Crap – which should it do it no end of good.
And a date for your diaries while on the theme of gardening. This year Naked Gardening Day is on Saturday 8th May. I’m very tempted but there will be both teenage children and gîte clients around on that day so it might cause too much shock, upset and/or hilarity. Shame!
Le Pub
10.2.2010
Tuesdays is pub day. No, not the day we head off to our local for a drink , but the day the postman leaves a pile of advertising brochures – le pub – in the mailbox with our letters. We refer to it all as the weekly pictures of meat since invariably all the brochures from the supermarket chains have a good few pages devoted to – you guessed it – pictures of meat. I can’t see the point, I have to say. One bit of meat looks very much like another in my opinion. Are there really people who will see the photo of, for example, viande bovine a bifteck (beef steak) or porc: foie, coeur et rognon (pig’s liver, heart and kidney) and leap from their chair to rush to the shops to buy it, unable to face life without that for dinner?
Sometimes we get two lots of pub. I suspect we might be at the end of our ever-changing postie’s rounds, so if anything is left over, we get it. No problem, it all gets recycled chez nous. Either it’s used for starting the fire, although we find the coated, shiny paper that’s used in le pub isn’t brilliant. The rest goes to the nearest local à papiers (paper recycling point), although at present we’re saving it up for our raised beds. Just as soon as Notaire’s house if fully finished, we’ll be taking to the garden to build these. Our veg get easily swamped by weeds, plus the soil needs some serious improvement, so we’ve decided raised beds are the answer. Le pub will form a thick layer over at the bottom of each bed to stop the weeds growing through. Aptly enough, a lot of manure (a good mixture of llama, alpaca, chicken and rabbit droppings and bedding) will go on top of the brochures. (Ironically, this week the Leclerc pub has ads for horse manure – fumier -in it!) We’ll mix soil in with that too and are confident our veg yields will double this year.
The hardware and garden stores are the next most persistent producers of pub, closely followed by clothes shop. Those brochures get more attention in this household than the supermarket ones. Being a so-called ‘hard discount’ family, we don’t buy top name products but live off supermarket own-brand produce. They don’t feature in le pub at all!
Is le pub effective? It must be since it’s continually churned out. Or is it just the case that no supermarket dares make the unilateral decision to stop? Le pub is a huge industry. A lot of precious resources go into filling France’s mailboxes every Tuesday and then France’s bins every Wednesday, since the majority of it must get thrown away. This isn’t a nation of recyclers yet. However, look carefully and you’ll see the ecofolio logo on the back of a lot of the brochures. When organisations sign up for this, they commit to pay 37 euro per tonne of paper they produce to acknowledge their ‘responsabilité elargie de producteur’ i.e. a recognition of their wider environmental responsibilities. They must also provide facilities for recycling paper. There’s also the ‘imprimvert’ logo on some pub. This encourages greener printing practises and certain standards have to be met to be able to use the logo on a publication. Steps in the right direction at last, but not everyone’s taking them.
So even though for now le pub is getting greener, I hope its days are numbered.
Sex it up the French Way on St Valentine’s Day
13.2.2011
There are plenty of aphrodisiacs to be found lurking amongst food items that we consider to be typically French. Here are a few to try out on February 14th.
Aniseed (anise) has been used as an aphrodisiac since Roman times. Sucking the seeds was thought to increase desire, and there’s truth in this as they contain oestrogens. It also gives you sexy fresh breath! Pastis and Pernod contain aniseed so share a glass of this with your Romeo or Juliet on Valentine’s Day.
Almonds are one of the oldest known aphrodisiacs and fertility symbols. The scent of the nuts and the tree blossom is very sensual. The nuts themselves are a protein powerhouse containing vitamin E, copper, potassium, selenium, iron and phosphorus and will give you plenty of staying power. No wonder dragées (sweet coated almonds) are so closely associated with weddings in France! In fact, in the old days these sweets would be thrown at the ceremony. Since they were known as confetti in Italy, then that’s where the name for the coloured paper shapes we throw today has come from. I think I’d have rather had dragées thrown at mine! Verdun is especially famous for their production, and this industry dates back to the thirteenth century. So, either dish up some dragées on Valentine’s Day or other marzipan confections that every confiserie sells here in France.
The Aztecs were the first to see the connection between sexual desire and the cocoa bean. Emperor Montezuma ate loads to fuel his love life! Scientists now know that chocolate contains tryptophan and phenylethylamine, both of which are chemicals involved in arousal and falling in love. However, many think the quantities are possibly too small to really have an effect. But chocolate is packed with energy which always comes in handy. So I would go with incorporating chocolate into St Valentine’s Day meal somewhere or other. A typical chocolate heavy French breakfast would be a good start – hot chocolate and pains au chocolat or one of the many types of chocolate enhanced breakfast cereals that are de rigueur over here! Chocolate mousse at lunch or dinner, and chocolate covered marzipan or almonds would be the perfect accompaniment to a cup of coffee, itself an aphrodisiac because of its stimulating properties.
Two other very French foods have love-enhancing qualities – mustard and truffles. Mustard is believed to stimulate the sexual glands. Monks weren’t allowed to have any in days gone by in case it set them on the path to ruin. And truffles? Pigs root them out because they give off scents similar to a porcine pheromone with a musky smell. But the effect on humans isn’t so clear. The Romans certainly thought they were aphrodisiacs and so did Napoleon. Possibly he had too many! But if they were good enough for him, they why not give them a go, that is if you can afford it.
So a few suggestions of French foods to serve your loved on St Valentine’s Day to make it a bit more fun!
Fête de la St Valentin
12.2.2010
St Valentine’s Day has lots of associations with France. It’s thought that the idea of sending Valentine’s cards started with the Duke of Orleans in the fifteenth century. He was captured during the Battle of Agincourt and taken to the Tower of London. He sent love letters and poems to his young wife. But even before him, French lovers had started celebrating around the middle of February, the time when birds began to pair off and build their nests.
But didn’t the whole thing start off with St Valentine? Actually, there are at least three St Valentines. Pope Gelasius 1 made the day official in AD 496 to honour Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni. They were both martyred horribly but not much more is known about them. A third Valentine crops up too, Valentine of Africa, referred to in various martyrologies (boy, those must be depressing to read). So there’s a lot of confusion as to who we should be commemorating on that day and what for. And an ancient Roman fertility ritual may have a bearing too. That happened on 15th February. It sounds rather fun. Priests sacrificed a goat (OK, it wasn’t fun for the goat), drank a lot of wine and removed at least half of their clothing and then ran through the streets holding bits of the poor goat’s skin. Young women were keen to be touched by this skin as it meant they’d be fertile and have easy labours. In a time before maternity hospitals, painkillers and antibiotics, you can see why they’d be prepared to be smacked with a bit of dead goat if that was the benefit.
However, we forget the martyrdoms and sacrifices and dwell on the fun stuff these days – the giving of flowers, presents and cards to our special someones. Valentines cards are called cartes d’amitiés here. The usual gifts to give on Valentine’s Day are flowers and chocolates, as in many other countries. Cadeaux personalisés ordered over the internet are becoming popular too. So although the whole thing began with a French connection, it isn’t anything particularly French about it any more. But that doesn’t make it any the less enjoyable. Happy St Valentine’s Day – Joyeuse Fête de la St Valentin.
Mardi Gras
15.2.2010
So it’s Fat Tuesday – that’s what Mardi Gras means. What a great name. Traditionally it marks the last day of the ‘carnaval’ period that began at Epiphany and which ends with Lent (Carême). Quite who would have been celebrating all that while I’m not sure. Certainly not the ordinary people who would have been battling with the hardships of winter. We’ve found this winter hard going with all our twenty-first century accoutrements – electricity, running water (most of the time), central heating to boost our reliance on our wood burning stove, supermarkets etc. It must have been really, really miserable in times gone by.
But Mardi Gras is an excuse for a knees-up with dressing up and tucking into nice rich food. There was a good reason for the latter in the past. The Church forbade people to eat rich food like eggs and cream during lent so they had to use these ingredients up before it started. Pancakes – crepes – we all know about, but bugnes are also very common. These are little fried doughnuts. There are regional variations on the precise ingredients that go into them. The French cookery website www.750g.com has 1276 different recipes for bugne batter! More than one way of making them.
Ruadhri has only been at school for one Mardi Gras (he’s been on winter holidays for the others). That year the children were asked to come along in their déguisements, so the tradition of wearing costumes for this day is still going strong, among children at least. Ruadhri went as an ankylosaur!
We’re hoping Mardi Gras will see the last of the cold weather. It hasn’t been above freezing for nearly a week now and we’ve had our deepest snow too. That’s the third time we’ve been snowed in this winter. The novelty’s wearing off!
Moles
17.2.2010
Moving to France as we did from mole-free Ireland, we were initially taken aback at the obvious national hatred of these little creatures that manifested itself in the large displays of mole eradication devices that we saw in every hardware shop. There were mole mashers, mole crushers, mole crunchers, mole blasters, mole manglers, mole gasses and mole marmalisers. All this because of a few tiny molehills – talk about over the top! We felt sorry for the persecuted moles.
Not any more. We now hate, loathe, detest and despise moles. We have 75 acres of land. You’d think we could co-exist peacefully. But no. Out of that 75 acres, just a few hundred square metres is taken up by lawn. Can the moles leave that alone? They can’t. In fact, they seem to home in on it on purpose. Their life’s goal is to dig it up.
So reluctantly we’ve resorted to traps and deterrents. Our homemade molescarers made with plastic bottles upside down on sticks may have scared a few worms off but that’s all. So we’ve become more sophisticated and invested in items from the hardware stores. But the moles are having the last laugh. While Chris has deafened himself several times with the mole blasters and come close to losing his fingers, we still don’t have a confirmed victim. Despairing of that device, and particularly of its costs, we’ve invested in a little humane tunnel trap. So far that’s caught a mouse. The mole cruncher hasn’t caught anything. Moley has been round it, over it, under it and even through it a few times, but on each occasion he jams it open with earth. He’s also removed the trigger that holds it open.
The cats have been more successful than we have. They’ve presented us with a couple of dead moles which bizarrely they refuse to eat. Normally our garden tigers eat everything.
Moles are fascinating creatures, with their star-shaped noses and velvety fur. They are smart little animals and incredibly quick. They can catch and eat a worm faster than the human eye can see. Their saliva contains a toxin so that they poison their invertebrate victims and store them in a specially constructed larder for later. And they give each worm a good squeeze before eating it to remove dirt and grit from its guts. They may live in the soil but they don’t want to eat it! Males are called boars, females are sows and a group of moles is known as a labour. That’s a very appropriate name.
What hope for our lawn? Well, we’ll carry on our ineffectual campaign against our underground enemy. It seems to give them a good laugh and I’m not that sorry that we can’t catch them! Maybe I should drop maps showing the route to Germany down their holes. Moles are a protected species there.
Poo-stal Service
18.2.2011
Twice last year Chris, being just the wrong side of fifty, received very nice letters from the Association de Dépistage Organisé des Cancers en Creuse, at the orders of the Ministre de la Santé, inviting him to give himself up at the doctor’s so that fingers could be probed where no-one wants fingers probing to check on his colorectal health!
Needless to say, Chris didn’t feel terribly tempted by this and, although touched by the concern of the French government for the wellbeing of his intestinal tract, ignored the letters.
Well, the ADOCC are taking their duties very seriously. They’re not giving up. Chris obviously isn’t alone in his desire to have rubber gloves kept well away from the lower regions of his anatomy, so some dedicated individual has come up with the DIY colorectal kit. Its ultimate aim is to get three samples of you know what that can be sent by post for analysis to hopefully confirm the absence of blood. Here it is in all its glory.
Chris has to do three things.
1. Fill in a questionnaire.
2. Produce the samples and package and label them carefully.
3. Put the samples in the franked envelope – see, they’re that concerned, they’re springing for the cost of the stamp!
He’s still not feeling terribly motivated about the whole thing. Maybe it’s worth holding off a bit longer to see what or possibly who gets sent round next to ensure that ADOCC can cross his rectum off its list. (And yes, I really should take it more seriously. They’ll be coming for me in a couple of years’ time!)
Getting Plastered in France
23.2.2010
I’ve been painting and cutting plasterboard on and off for the last week now as we work on some ceilings. In our various renovations we’ve used vast quantities of plasterboard, and we haven’t finished yet. So I decided it was time I did some research on it.
Plasterboard, plaque à plâtre here in France, and drywall in the USA, is made from a layer of gypsum paste sandwiched between two sheets of thin cardboard. The central layer is made from ground gypsum mixed with starch, paper pulp and thickeners. The whole lot is then cooked at 70 degrees Celsius. At this stage the sheets of plasterboard are up to 450 m long! They’re cut to size once they’ve cooled, a common size here being 120 by 250 cm.
Plasterboard became popular after the Second World War, although it had been around since 1916. To start with it was thought of as a cheap and inferior substitute for traditional plastering and wasn’t popular. But when the menfolk went off to fight there were labour shortages and plasterboard proved its value as a low cost and quick method of construction. It was positively patriotic to use it!
Plasterboard is fairly green. Recycled materials are used in the gypsum paste and the cardboard casing is up to 100% recycled newspapers. However, there are emissions when the product is made, although in the USA the first zero emission drywall has hit the market. There are recycling centres where you take all those leftover offcuts. Lafarge in France has such a centre at Carpentras. And of course gypsum is a finite resource. It is mined out of the ground. Once a quarry is exhausted, it is made safe, landscaped and replanted and made as pleasant as it can be. French manufacturers have undertaken to do what they can to minimise negative environmental effects.
We couldn’t manage without plasterboard. It’s allowed us to do our renovation work ourselves – the only way we could afford to do it. As well as being reasonably priced, it’s relatively easy to handle, can be cut to shape, paints up well and has fire-retardant qualities. A pretty useful material. However, I shall be quite happy not to see another sheet of it for a long, long time…
Why Winter Holidays?
23.2.2011
The two-weeks winter holiday break is the most annoying one of the school year. If you’re not a skier who’s heading delightedly off to the mountains, then there’s pretty much nothing else to do! It’s February, it’s cold, it’s grey, not many tourist attractions are open (we’re not, that’s for sure) and all in all, it’s pretty depressing. The Point Info Jeunesse in Boussac has organised some kids’ sporty activities – sessions of handball, volleyball, cycling, basketball and gymnastics, among others, so there is one ray of sunshine. Rors will be going to gymnastics to try and master forward rolls.
When I was at school, we had gym at least once a week, although I think it was called music and movement back then. Everyone, but everyone, could climb ropes, do forward rolls and cartwheels, and go bright red standing on their head for too long. However, in Ireland and here in France, most schools don’t have a dedicated gym. Games lessons consist of running around outdoors, Irish dancing (horrors) or its French equivalent, and other fairly random activities. Caiti went to gym club for a year so at least she learned to do a forward roll. But my two boys haven’t. Rors needs to do them in judo but he’s very reluctant for me to teach him. And frankly, so am I! I can’t remember the last time I did one. Now, I’m a very active person, doing tons of walking and cycling and llama wrestling, but my days of earning BAGA awards are long done. I’m pretty sure I’ll do something nasty to myself if I demonstrate a roll. (I did a cartwheel last year for the kids and it took several days for my wrists to recover!) I only wish teachers did their jobs properly!
A week would be quite long enough for this holiday. I’d much rather have an extra week at Easter or a proper half-term during the summer term when at least the weather will be better. Unfortunately the forecast is wet and grey for the next ten days, so that limits what we can do even more. Not that the kids are complaining. After a forced route march each day, Rors is happy to play with his lego and read BDs (bandes dessinés – comic strip books), Caiti to cook and write Scratch programs on her laptop and Benj is up to his ears in revision.
So where did this holiday come from? In 1939 an arêté introduced four days of holidays around Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday). This has somehow evolved into a fortnight ski-ing break that is staggered across the country’s three school holiday zones to avoid clogging the slopes! I’m guessing a lot of government ministers ski.
Table Manners
28.2.2011
There’s a lot of advice on the web about table manners in France, many of them implying there’s a lot of formality. Possibly that’s true, I guess I just don’t move in those circles! My own experience has been much more of informality, particularly for the kids.
Now, in Ireland, cooked school dinners don’t exist. For ten years I made packed lunches every schoolday for first one, then two, then three kids. Man, that’s a lot of sandwiches. And as a result of eating out of plastic boxes during their formative years, a lot of Irish kids are a bit vague as to what to do with knives and forks, particularly when so much convenience food is served up at home. My own guys when they were little often ate their tea with a spoon if it was cheesy pasta or something with rice, or with just a fork.
Not so in France. From maternelle (nursery school) upwards, children have a four-course cooked lunch at school which they eat with all the correct implements. The dinner lady sees to that! So even if they live on crisps and burgers at home, they learn how to use tableware. But not in quite the same way as English or Irish people do. The difference lies with the fork. The English way is to hold your fork between your thumb and forefinger and delicately spear your food to hold it still for cutting. Now here Ruadhri demonstrates la mode française. The fork is gripped in a fist and plunged into whatever it is you want to cut up next. In her early days at school, Caiti would remark on this and think it was bad manners. But it wasn’t long before she was doing the same thing. So at our meals these days, Chris and I eat one way, and the three kids the other! Just another of those funny little cultural differences that make being an ex-pat so interesting.
March
La Mode Illustrée
2.3.2010
When we moved into Les Fragnes nearly five years ago now, the loft of what is now our gîte, Notaire’s House, was stuffed with treasures – clothes, tools, toys, books and journals. One of these journals is La Mode Illustrée. We have copies dating back to 1876. It’s a large format newspaper, obviously aimed at well-to-do ladies, and packed full of detailed black and white drawings of the latest fashions. Most issues include a detailed paper pattern and stories – and, as mentioned yesterday, a rebus! Amazon.fr even sells a book of 1,000 illustrations from this journal:
La Mode Illustrée was delivered to the homes of elegant ladies around France every other Sunday. Why one was delivered here is an enticing mystery I’m longing to solve. We think that a young lady called Genevieve, whose home was at nearby Les Combes, a very fine house, married the Notaire who lived here, possibly Marcel Beaufils. We have snippets of information amongst the things we found but not the whole story. I really must get down to the archives at Guéret for a lengthy browse through any relevant records.
So for now some pictures from this wonderful old newspaper. However, I am incredibly grateful that we don’t still wear clothes like that. I can’t believe they were comfy, and I certainly can’t see myself mucking out the llamas in one of those outfits!
Sorting shelves and cracking shells
5.3.2011
My quest to be better organised continues. The latest thing I’ve tackled is the ‘library’ in our holiday cottage. When we used to go on holiday, pre llamas, I was always delighted to find a shelf of books offering some entertainment for quiet half hours, or if the weather was bad. So we’ve filled three bookshelves with books for our guests, making sure there’ are plenty of children’s books (including some I wrote!).
But the shelves were constantly untidy and the books weren’t taken care of so I decided to create a more organised library. I’ve filled the shelves completely and put up book ends so the books won’t keep falling over and ending up in a heap. I’ve also labelled each book and given it a number – A1 etc for books by authors whose surname starts with A, and so on – and have an index book to record them all in. It took a lot of work, but finally, we know exactly what books we’ve got there! I’m working on the principle that if it looks like we value and take pride in our little library, then the guests are more likely to do so as well.
From shelves to shells. The hens are laying busily now that the sunshine has finally reached France. But, like every year, I was too parsimonious in my frozen egg usage over winter, not wanting to run out! So I have a lot of frozen eggs left, and now a new supply of fresh ones!
Freezing eggs works well. You can’t freeze them in their natural state though. You need to beat them for successful freezing. I do two at a time and store them in a yogurt pot with a plastic covering (cut from a bread bag or other recyclable plastic bag) held on by an elastic band. Lots of reusing there!
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-28 show above.)