Remembrance day(s)

As it happens, this was the first year that I was in Normandy on the 11 November. In the UK, although the main Armistice ceremony, with the Queen and government at the Cenotaph in London, takes place on the preceding Sunday, many other ceremonies happen on the 11th itself. Of course there is the two minute silence at eleven minutes past the eleventh hour, which seems to be more respected recently than a few years ago.


It seemed a good idea to go to one of the local commemorations in Normandy. That proved very difficult. Last year, I was driving through Anglesey on the day, and most of the villages I passed through were getting ready for a small ceremony by their war memorials, and eventually, we stopped and joined one of them at eleven o'oclock.


But here, I could find little information in advance about what was planned, mainly perhaps because I could not get the Manche Libre local weekly paper, for various reasons, the week before. I have no idea why, but it is extremely difficult to find out much information about any events in the future, whether arts and entertainment, celebrations, or activities, locally. Presumably because everyone knows what happens, and news is passed by word of mouth in what are very sociable communities, there is no need. Certainly, when we do get to hear of an event in time to attend, it is usually a sell out.


Anyway, I found out about a ceremeony on the preceding Sunday, in Avranches, but that was all. On the 11th, we went to the nearest town, but absolutely nothing happened. No ceremony, no silence. Nothing. There were official wreaths and flowers on the War memorial, so something had happened at some time; the previous Sunday, it turns out. None of the villages we passed througn showed any signs of an event either. Very odd.


On Monday 16 I bought - belatedly, as it is published on Thursdays - the current Manche Libre. There I read about ceremonies everywhere, though virtually all of them were on the Sunday preceding or the Sunday after the 11th, so we missed them all.


Gratifying to see that many things were happening, and that here in France where the effects of the two world wars were most pronounced, they do still remember those who died.


Even more important was that many of the ceremonies involved those few people who experienced the last war, as combatants, and civilians.  Many villages especially commemorated those soldiers who had died locally, whether British, American, or French. For example, at Muneville-sur-Mer, a special ceremony at the graves of three English airman killed in July 1944 when their plane crashed to the ground.


Another special commemoration was of eight Moroccan soldiers, members of General Leclerc's Free French army, killed in August 1944 in the battle of the Percee d'Avranches, at the cemetary in Montjoie-Saint-Martin. It was not until 1999 that the soldiers were identified as from Morocco, and islamic gravestones erected. Outrageously, the headstones were defaced by some racist morons in October, an act condemned by Pesident Sarkosy and everyone else. I am sure that was a factor in organising a prominent ceremony, (link is video in French) local politicians, the Moroccan consul, and indeed, the sons of General Leclerc.


I hope next year to be better informed in advance.

Becoming French?

In the first of the pieces on this blog, I talked about how to get on with the French. Basically, the French are extremely formal and polite. Every encounter with every person begins with 'Bon jour' and ends with 'Au revoir' or similar. Failure to observe this politeness is seem as extremely rude and insulting, and this leads to French people being pretty frosty in return.


A couple of recent incidents make me think I am becoming French myself. The first was a visit to a small restaurant in a nearby village, with a couple of French friends. As we walked in, there were only two groups of customers already there. We all said 'Bon jour messieurs/dames'. The first group just stared at us blankly for a few seconds. So did the second. They then started talking amongst themselves, and of course both groups were British. Initially, I was annoyed on behalf of our friends, but then I realised that I was also offended.


The second incident was at the recycling bins in the village. As I was emptying three weeks of stuff into the relevant bins, someone else drove up, and got out of his car. I said 'Bon jour' as to anyone else, but he just looked straight through me. I was really annoyed, and thought how ill mannered that was. When he drove away I saw a UK registration number on his car.


At one time I would have just thought that this was typically thoughtless behaviour on the part of unaware Brits, but now it does actually offend me. I know that many British people seem unable to acknowledge others unless they already know them, but it seems to be getting worse. Walking around the reservoirs at Tring in Hertfordshire in the summer, there were a few other people passing by in the other direction. Some people said 'Good afternoon' but many others ignored me. For what it's worth, if there were two or more in a group, speaking to each other, who did not reply to a greeting, the accents were usually what one might tactfully call estuary, whereas those who spoke did so in a more home counties tone.


Human beings are a social species, and our survival and success has come about by being able to cooperate, and to find ways of adjusting our behaviour to those around us. Lately, in the UK, that seems to be disappearing, to be replaced by selfishness, individualism and every man for himself. Very sad, and perhaps a case of evolution going into reverse.


In France in general, respect for others, cooperation and living in a society seems to be surviving, at least away from the bainlieus (suburbs) of the bigger cities. 


Importantly, I think, it is still there with the younger generation. For example, the other day I was waiting at a red traffic light behind a boy on one of the low powered scooters made to look like real motorbikes that you can ride from the age of 14. He saw a couple of friends, both boys, parked his scooter, took off the alien space helmet they all have to wear, and greeted his friends. They were all about 15, but they all shook hands. Another example was a young teenage girl out with her family saw a group of schoolfriends on the other side of the road, crossed over, and kissed all of them twice. In both cases there were two or three minutes of chat, and off they went again. 


This formal greeting, involving physical contact, seems extremely important to the French. When I meet anyone local, whether for the first time or not, we all have to shake hands. If the other person has been working and has filthy hands, he might offer just a little finger to shake, or in extreme cases just his elbow. There is a book by an English business man in Paris, which talks about the etiquette of shaking hands and kissing all his colleagues at work every morning.


With women, after the first meeting, it is usually two kisses on the cheek. In Normandy it gets a bit more complicated. I think the rules are: acquaintances two kisses, friends and family three, close friends, and immediate family, four. At Fetes de St Sylvestre - New Year's Eve - dinner dances, everyone kisses everyone else four times, or shakes hands, at midnight. At larger events this can take quite some time. But it all seems to mean that people are more respectful of each other, and reduces the possibility of antagonism. And that cannot be bad.

All hallows, chrysanthemums and tombs

This last week of October has seen here in Normandy an extraordinary profusion of pots of flowers, almost all chrysanthemums, in all the markets, supermarkets and other shops. It seems that everywhere you go is barricaded by masses of huge colourful pom poms. I have no idea how the producers manage to grow theses flowers so perfectly round, and so entirely covered in blossoms, and it must involve a fairly large industry.

This is all part of the preparation for the catholic festival of Toussaints, or All Saints, which is on the 1st November - and has been since the ninth century. It is one of the main religious observations.

The flowers are for dressing the tombs of deceased relatives. Toussaints, or All Hallows (hallows is the old English for saints), is the day of the dead, the time to remember those who have died. On the day, all the cemeteries are crowded with people coming and going, placing these enormous flowers, or other arrangements, on the graves of their relatives.


Unlike the UK, almost all French people are buried rather than cremated, and have marble memorials, not just headstones, erected over them. It seems that every town, and many villages, have their what used to be called in England memorial masons. There are few such enterprises left in Britain, but they seem to thrive in France. Our part of Normandy is rich in granite, so there are even more firms than usual, cutting and polishing granite tombs, headstones and other memorials. In our village over the last fifty years all of the retail activity has dwindled, so that now there remains a small grocers plus everything else, a butcher two mornings a week, a depot de pain (not even our own boulanger any more). The one thriving business is the funeral director, which has its own granite tomb making arm.


It would be harder to have the same sort of festival in the UK, not only because the catholic influence ended 600 years ago, but because, simply, there are no tombs to visit and leave flowers.


For some reason, chrysanthemums, particularly white ones, are associated with the dead, not a major component of most bouquets of decorative flowers as in Britain; if you are invited to dinner at a French home, do not take chrysanthemums as a gift.


The night before All Saints day was of course 'All Hallows evening' or hallowe'en for short. Whilst there are many who dispute the non christian origin of a celebration at that time of year, there is some evidence of an Irish festival, and certainly most early societies celebrated the end of the harvests, and the preparation for winter around the equinox. That detailed written evidence does not survive is of course because the christian churches suppressed and/or absorbed all the old festivities. 


What we can see is that there are remnants of common primitive practices. People dressing up in various ways, the presence of or driving out of spirits, the use of lights and candles, rituals not used at other times, are all pretty standard. As is the use of severed heads in one form or another. Real heads, freshly cut off, are I believe no longer that common, but the use of substitutes such as hollowed turnips or pumpkins seems to be increasing.


Halloween used to be a minor regional activity in the UK. In Somerset in the 1940s and 50s it was never mentioned (we had wassailing, much more important, and effective). It was more of an event in the North of England – probably the Norse connection – and Scotland, the Celtic/Gaelic history. Those groups seem to have taken it to North America, where it was expanded and commercialised out all sense.


Twenty years ago, there was no mention of it here in Normandy, but the growing influence of the supermarkets, and their desire to sell more and more of more and more to the public has resulted in halloween becoming a big marketing event. Sadly. The same with Christmas, which was  a minor celebration, with a big family meal on Christmas Eve, and not much else. Some churches and civic buildings such as mairies might have been outlined with a string of white bulbs, but now every town tries to outdo its neighbours with the ostentation and in my view vulgarity of its municipal Christmas lights.

Autumn mists, mellow fruitfullness, and road works.

Now the holiday season is well over, there is a huge number of maintenance road works all over France: in addition to the existing longer duration road building projects, everywhere is subject to resurfacing, widening for cycle lanes, and similar short works.  These seem to be carried out quicker, more efficiently and with less disruption than similar jobs in the UK.

Yesterday, in a 35km drive, I passed through five different circulation alterné (one way) stretches. The basic resurfacing process operates in the same way at each. Firstly, there are warnings and speed restriction signs long before the works. At the start of the action, there is a man with a stop/go board, and usually a walkie-talkie to communicate with the other end of the works if there is a bend or other obstruction. 50m behind him is one of those big road plane machines, which moves very slowly forwards, scraping off the top 15cm or so of the old surface, which it conveys into the back of an attached lorry. As soon as the lorry is full, the plane stops, the lorry unhooks itself and drives off, to be replaced immediately by an empty lorry already waiting. About one minute of stoppage.

Behind this assembly is a tanker full of hot liquid tar, which sprays a thin layer of the tar on the newly scraped road. Next is a tipper lorry full of gravel, attached to a machine full of tar, which moves forward at the same speed as the plane. The lorry slowly raises its load, which drops into the machine, which mixes it with the tar and lays a 15cm even spread. When the lorry is empty, another is waiting to be hooked up and start delivering its load. Behind that are two large or three medium rollers, which roll backwards and forward compressing the new mixture into a hard surface.

The men with the stop/go boards are advancing another few metres each time they reverse the signs, so that there is minimum disruption of the traffic. And because they communicate, they can reverse their boards according to the volume of traffic in each direction, and as soon as one direction has passed, they can start the opposite lot going, rather than inflexible traffic lights. As the whole works moves along continuously, the single lane traffic stretch is always short.

Each team seems to be able to resurface about a kilometre every day, in both lanes.

In the UK, the same work takes days, with diversions, long contra flows managed by traffic lights, and days and days when nothing happens at all. If they use road planes, they always stop and wait for a lorry to be summoned from somewhere, rather than having one waiting. They seem to run out of tar and gravel, the rollers are off on another job somewhere. When one lane is finished, there can be a week or two before work starts on the other.

I think part of the problem is that the UK local authorities have no concept of negotiation, or how to manage contractors. They do not understand that time has a cost and a value, nor do they really consider the needs of the public. I can say this because I have seen them in action, both as a management consultant working for both sides in different deals, and as a resident. I have seen the inadequacy of their contracts, their failure to demand deadlines and penalty clauses, and in short, they are eaten alive by the professional negotiators from the contractors.

On occasions when I have discussed this with them, one of their arguments is that if they are too demanding none of the firms will bid for the work, to which one can only despair. These firms have to keep working, and the public sector represents a huge part of their business, if not all for some of them. They are bluffing. And if all of them refuse to bid, or submit silly bids, then they must be operating a cartel, which is unlawful. All a UK council has to do is phone Rol Normandie or one of the other French engineering firms, and get them to do the work. As we have seen with electricity and gas provided in London by Electricité de France, and rubbish collection, street cleaning and much else carried out by Véolia, the robber companies in the UK cannot compete on price or quality.

UK authorities are utterly in the hands of the contractors, across the board. I once saw McDonalds take a cleared site, erect one of their dreadful food shops and open for business, in three weeks. At the same time, the council contracted to build a similar size set of basic offices beside a school. Six months later it still didn’t have a roof.

In France, contractors seem to be more honest, the public sector more competent, more determined to get value for money, and actively supervise and manage the projects.  Part of this might be because funding comes from several sources in most cases.

You will see signs at the start of most works showing that the project was financed by any combination of the European Union, the state, the region(s), the department(s), the town(s). Taxpayers see where their money is going (the signs often show the amounts from each source), and how they are benefiting from larger sources. In general, the French citizen knows what happens to his or her taxes, and what they get for them, and for that reason do not have the ludicrous uproar about tax and spending that permeates British politics.

However, as an example of something weirdly French, I once saw a very bizarre method of managing the road works in the south. Driving from Nîmes to Arles, in August, in the heat, there was a traffic holdup. As we crept forward we eventually came to the cause of the delay: line painting. This was being carried out as follows.

On either side of the road was workman, joined by a string tied to the left foot of the right hand man, and the right foot of the left man. There was a piece of cloth tied exactly in the middle of the string. The two me simultaneously took four steps forward and stopped. Behind them came another man with a machine like a slightly more sophisticated line marker on sports grounds. The machine stopped at the central piece of rag, the men walked forward another four paces, and the machine put down a metre dash of white paint. It then moved on to the string, and so on.

Every four of five dashes, the string was allowed to touch the ground, and some cars allowed to pass. Clearly easier and quicker than measuring, but just a bit, well, quaint.

The fast birds have gone..

Although I like watching birds, and have all the usual guides, I can't identify with the twitchers and list compilers. The pleasure is just in the observation. I have been reading a new book, called Birdscapes by Jeremy Mynott, which tries to explain birdwatching in all its forms. It is, in fact, a fascinating and, to use an old fashioned word, learned work with references to everything from John Cage's 4'33” to Beaudelaire, Greta Garbo, Hilda Quick and Kevin Zimmer; it has added a lot to my knowledge and understanding of wide areas beyond birds.

Anyway, the house martins that have been twittering and twisting around the sky here for the last few weeks in increasing numbers, have now disappeared back to Africa. This is later than usual, and is probably because of a prolonged warm spell. Although they are amusing, agile little things, their mud nests under the eaves of houses do end up surrounded by large amounts of caca, dripping down the walls and in mounds on the ground.

In some of the ancient bastide towns of the Dordogne, they have nested under the roofs of the medieval market arcades. On ordinary days, they happily fly in and out without a problem, but on market days when the arcades are full of stalls, smoke and smells, and the cafes have tables full of people, they get rather twitchy, and desperately avoid flying directly to their nests. Instead, they fly around – at high speed – or perch in odd corners, before dashing to the nests. Their desire to hide the locations of the nests is defeated not only by the obvious crap around them, but by the squeaking cries of their young.

The swallows went early in September. One day we were at a vide grenier in a small village. Most of the houses were eighteenth and nineteenth century, but a couple were modern pavillons, and it was on these that about 200 swallows were gathering. Too many for the roof ridge, they were landing on the individual tiles, hanging on for a few moments before starting to slide down the roof, when they would take off and fly about for a minute or two, before trying again.

They were all continuously chirping, and every so often about half of them would take off at the same moment, whizz around a bit, and land again. Then without any apparent signal, the entire group took off, flew twice all the way round the adjacent field, and then headed off towards the south. Within twenty seconds they were invisible, and there was no more sound of cheeping and chirping.

The swifts were the last to arrive, and the first to go. In London, where I live near Hampstead Heath, the arrival of the swifts in May is the sign that summer could now begin. Some years they are late, and there are never many of them, just a dozen or so. But the first sightings, often high in the sky, accompanied by their high pitched screaming and high speed diving, is somehow very reassuring. Over two or three weeks as they pair up they perform some major aerobatics, especially when two start high in the sky and loop in opposite directions down to nearly ground level, at what must be an approach speed of well over a hundred miles an hour, and banking slightly at the last second to pass within inches of each other, screaming all the while.

By the second week of August the young are flying too, and although the groups seem to split up during the day, as dusk begins they all seem to gather and fly screaming around the sky for half an hour, just for the fun of it. Or so it seems. Occasionally, on hot days, parties will fly at maximum velocity along busy roads, at just above head height, again screaming all the time. The suddenly, around mid August, they have all gone. That, like the flowering of the rose bay willow herb, is the mark that the best of summer is probably over.

The martins are attractively black and white, and fly fairly fast around their nest areas; the swallows have that splendid forked tail, and zoom around, often just above the ground, but for me the most appealing of the three are the swifts. They may be an unexciting colour, but the scimitar shape of their wings against the sky, the incredible speed of their flight, their noisy social groupings, and the shortness of their stay all make them special.

D-Day and onwards: Dragoon in the South

The 15^th August was the 65th anniversary of the allied landing in the south of France – Operation Dragoon. This has not received much attention, primarily because, like all the Normandy beach landings except Omaha, it was a fairly straightforward operation, and unlike at Omaha Beach, the landings went according to plan and on time. By the time it took place, most German defences had moved north, so progress was fairly rapid through France.

The D-Day landings were an international effort with only a minority of Americans, but in the south this was a mostly American landing, though with extensive support from the RAF, British Paratroopers and the Royal Navy, and of course French commandos and other troops, especially the Free French 1st Army, under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.

Churchill had opposed the plan, because he believed it would have an impact on the main invasion efforts, but eventually agreed to it. Wikipedia has an accurate overview of the events here.

Although overall, there was not excessive opposition, there were still casualties. My father was one of those landing, as a Warrant Officer in the RAF, organising transport for the air operations. As he ran up the beach at St Maxime – just along from another fishing village called St Tropez – his friend running beside him was hit by an enemy bullet, and killed outright. A couple of feet to the side and I would not be here to write about it.

The full personal story of his war from 1939 until demob in 1946, is at www.one-mans-war.com, although he doesn’t mention that – rather significant - incident! In fact, there are many other incidents that he doesn’t mention, mainly because the memoirs were written, as a therapeutic exercise, over a few days. There are however, many interesting and unexpected details. The memoirs have been published as an eBook titled One Man's War:in the RAF from 1939-1946 for Kindle and other eReaders, details on the website.

There is a new book about the south landings, which was reviewed in a local paper. Unfortunately, I left the paper in a café, and now I cannot find any reference to the book anywhere……

Butterflies

The first time we saw the house in Normandy that we went on to buy was in July 1990. After looking at the building, including the huge crack in the gable end from the ridge to the ground, we were taken through the fields that came with it. As we walked through the long grass we were surrounded by butterflies of many species. That was probably one of the underlying reasons we decided this was the right house to buy – it felt like a successful environment.

Over the years, we have seen many variations in the frequency and variety of butterfly species, but this year has had two successes and one failure. The failure has been the normally common small tortoiseshell (Nymphalis urticae), which this year has been very rare, none until late August, and then only one or two at a time. It appears that this species has been having a hard time generally, with bad weather affecting caterpillars and pupae.

A success has been the painted lady (vanessa cardui), which has been around in profusion for most of the summer: at one time there were over a hundred in a 10sq metre patch of long grass and knapweed in our garden. This is a migratory species, and appears in the north, as in Normandy and southern England, depending on the weather and other conditions further south.

This is usually rare in England, but there has also been a large influx this summer there too. The only time I have seen more than the odd one or two in England was about 15 or more years ago, at Thomas Hardy’s house in Dorset. The garden was full of them, and after a little shower, dozens of them landed on my blue plastic anorak (it fitted in a pocket, not something I would otherwise wear, honest)).

The other success was the clouded yellow (Colias crocea), which I have rarely seen anywhere. This year there were several in the garden at any one time throughout June until the end of August. In flight and at a distance they could be mistaken for brimstones, but are less lemon coloured than the male brimstone, but more yellow than the female. Up close, they have black spots on the outer wings, and a dark border around the inner wings, although they keep their wings closed when landed.

Most of the other commoner species have been around – gatekeeper, meadow brown, wall brown, marbled white, fritillary, red admiral, peacock and the common whites, but some, like the speckled wood, have been less frequent than usual. I have as usual seen the odd small blue, flickering through the undergrowth like a flake of the sky, and a couple of white admirals.

On balance, then, not a bad year. We have planted the usual butterfly attracting plants in the garden, and kept an area of about 15 sqm uncut, so that the meadow grasses and plants have grown quite tall. This area is now attracting goldfinches as well as butterflies.

The main paths from the lane are bordered by lavender, mint, lemon balm, oregano, marjoram and wild geranium. Throughout the summer walking along the narrow paths sends up hordes of bees, butterflies, moths – including the wonderful humming bird hawk moth – and the constant buzzing carries across the garden.

It was the Rev Sydney Smith (1771-1845) who once said that heaven is ‘eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets’, but for me a glass of cold Sancerre, a plate of charcuterie, and late summer sun, accompanied by the buzzing and flashing colours of hundreds of benevolent insects is as good as it gets.

Even the tramps have some class

That the French in general have just a little more style than the rest of us is usually pretty obvious. It extends throughout the social classes. Unlike British street drinkers, who usually gather in small bickering groups, sipping constantly on cans of Special Brew, this chap – in Paris last week – carried around a proper glass with which to drink his wine. Not sure about the mobile phone though.

This weekend, at yet another vide grenier, we were preceded by a svelte and soignée older woman as we queued for our grilled saucisse et frites. She demanded a plate and cutlery, rather than kitchen roll and a plastic box, and of course she got a paper plate and plastic knife and fork. She sat beside us at a communal table and chatted away, asking us where we lived, what we thought of the event and so on. We asked her if she lived nearby herself, and she replied that she did, at ‘le chateau’. This is a genuine, 1760s, large and imposing chateau on the edge of the village, and of course not open to the public.

So, happy to mingle with the people, share the pretty simple food available, but she still maintained the minimum standards for civilised life, albeit with disposable stuff.

Back to school....

By the second week of August, when many French people are just getting into the feel of their holidays, something changes. Every supermarket, clothes shop, and many others start hanging out banners and placards and advertising around ‘La Rentrée’ - back to school. Check this web site for an office supplies company, to get a feel.

The reason is that unlike in Britain, where all the essential materials like notebooks and pens are provided by the school, in France the child must provide his or her own.

And not just the simple things: folders, rulers, binders, plastic covers – an enormous range of things. And not just any old stationery. Every item is specified and specific – this brand, or detailed option, that colour, that thickness, this type of lines on the paper.

The stationery aisles in the supermarkets are hugely expanded for three or four weeks, and are full of anxious parents, distraught small children, and sophisticated older kids trying to beat the system by selecting personalised things. All of them have A4 printed leaflets from their schools specifying what and how many of everything they must have.

Seems dreadfully unfair to talk so much about back to school so early in the holiday break, and put so much pressure on children and their families. All part of a belief in education and involvement, I suppose. Better, anyway, than couldn’t care les kids always unprepared for their lessons, or indeed school in any way.

D-Day and on: 65 year commemorations

With the commemoration of the 65th Anniversary of D-Day itself now past, there have been many other memorials, gatherings and other marks of respect and recollection around the progress of the Allied invasion in summer 1944. Here are a few of them, picked at random to illustrate the range and variety of events, and the reasons they were held.

Canadian cemetery at Cinthaux

This is one of a number of cemeteries for those Canadian soldiers who died during both World Wars. Cinthaux is for those who died during the Caen, Falaise, Trun and Chambois phase of the invasion. There are 2980 Canadians buried there.

The former French health minister Simone Veil attended a memorial service there on August 9th; a survivor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where she lost part of her family, she is the Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

Liberation of Alencon 12 August

This was the first town to be liberated by the Free French Army, under General Leclerc. The French had been part of the D-Day forces, along with Canadians and Poles, and with the British made up the greater part of the invasion forces. The fact of the French liberating part of their own country makes Alencon a very important commemoration for them.

Bailey Bridge at Pont Farcy

There were over 1500 Bailey Bridges in Normandy in 1944, and the last one still in existence is at Pont Farcy, over the River Vire. There bridges were easily assembled , in effect like IKEA furniture, and replaced all the essential bridges destroyed by one side or the other. There has been a campaign to preserve and commemorate the bridge, and details can be found here:

http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/baileybridge/baileybridgeappeal.html

Murdered family

One of the more moving ceremonies was that remembering the Lebailleux family, who lived in St Planchers, a village near Granville. At the end of July 1944 the area was still occupied by German forces. On the night of 30 July, German soldiers raided the house and found a transmitter hidden there. They took away all four members of the family in the house: parents Louis and Ludivine, and children Louis and Simone. The next day all four were found shot dead.

Coutances – liberated but lost

The town of Coutances had 8,000 people living in it. It suffered an enormous amount of bombing on 6 June, and subsequent days. Between bombings, almost all the population (over 250 were already dead) retreated into the countryside. When eventually they returned, about 70% of the town was rubble. Page 3 of this pdf file has pictures from the time. This year there were a range of services, parades, and other memorial activities. As with many Norman towns, liberation came at a high price.

Chateau reunion

A couple of years ago a couple called Simon and Kate Howard bought a chateau at Langotiere, near St Lo. In the archives they found a photograph from 1944, showing a number of schoolchildren standing 9on the steps of the chateau. They were from nearby schools, escaping the bombardment of St Lo. An article in the local newspaper found about 19 of them still around, and this month 10 of them gathered on the same steps.

Dancing in the streets

treet

France in general receives more foreign tourists than any other country. Throughout the summer in particular, there are events, activities and attractions organised specifically for visitors. However, summer is also a time for all the people to want to spend time outside, and to make use of the warmer days and longer, lighter evenings. Many of the events (animations) are aimed also - or sometimes exclusively – at the locals. Tourists are obviously welcome too.

Some of the recent entertainments in Normandy have included a week of street performances in Vire (sadly, mostly destroyed in 1944, so not much else to go there for), a series of street events in Coutances, regular weekly free concerts in Villedieu-les-Poeles and St Martin de Brehal, and more formal concerts in the abbeys of Lessay, St Sever Calvados and La Lucerne d'Outremer.

In Villedieu, as an example, there is a programme of Tuesday evening events in the main square, ranging from folk dancing, through rock music, to accordion. The rock and pop was a local semi-pro band, four kids and their uncle on drums. They travel with their own fan club, mostly their grannies and mums. And why not. Next week, there are folk dancers from North Ossettia (look it up, its one of the old USSR countries near Ukraine), and a promise of English Morris dancers later.

These town concerts start of with an audience, on seats in some places, or in Villedieu sitting on the steps of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall), but by the second number a few people start to dance. For the non rock evenings, it is almost always the older people who get up and dance in the street first. It's strange, but every time there is dancing, old people hobble and creak their way to the dance floor, and then take off as if they are on wheels, gliding around without touching the ground. And they all know how to dance properly: it used to be part of the school curriculum, but I don't know if it still is). And they keep it up for hours. And they laugh a lot.

Younger people join in, and the little kids start to run about, sometimes dancing formally with their mothers or fathers, sometimes with each other, more often just running and running. Rarely, but definitely sometimes, even I join in.

These events are advertised in small posters in shop windows, or tied to street furniture, and mentioned in the local papers, but you have to look around to find them. Apart from the events themselves, it is fascinating to see the real French people at play. Not just those whose living involves tourism, but the farmers, the men who work at the abbatoir or the local factory, the wives who make the most of an evening out, the old folk who only come to the market once a week. They all have fun, and even if the accordion is not exactly what you would chose to listen to, you can have fun too.

There will be fireworks

The French do like their feux d'artifice – fireworks. Almost every village fête and foire ends the day with a grand firework display, and they are usually entirely free. Even the smallest display is pretty spectacular.

It used to be that the displays were set off by members of the comité des fêtes. This meant that the fireworks were arranged fairly haphazardly on the day, and then set off by a couple of blokes wandering around with cigarettes in their lips, which they used to light the blue touch papers. While there may have been some basic concepts behind the actual sequences of the display, they were often not much in evidence. The end was usually signified by one of the men waving a torch in the direction of the audience, rather than it being obvious from the final explosions of light and smoke.

Not unreasonably, there were some concerns about public safety, and the French equivalent of the UK Elfin Safety department issued guidance, as they say. Now the displays are professionally organised, by companies such as France Artifice, and much better. The ignition process is electric, which means greater control of timing and sequences, and thus the development of themes, and a much better sense of a flow of different fireworks, and a grand and obvious climax.

The presence of electricity on the site means that they displays can be accompanied by music. At its best, the fireworks and the music are integrated; and it is not always Handel. At its worst, as at a recent display I went to, the fireworks were set off to random, dreadful, right wing American country and western recordings. I am sure they were the personal choice of the organiser, who probably didn't understand the words, but for rational English speakers the music and lyrics were excruciating.

The other downside is that quite often the local maire uses the occasion to make a speech, or even worse the chairman of the comité des fêtes seizes his moment to congratulate himself. Neither type ever seems to have any microphone technique, so they usually shout into the mike and render themselves unintelligible because of amplification distortion, or they almost swallow the mike and everything is lost in the sound of their breathing.

Very often, the fireworks displays are preceded by une retraite aux flambeaux – a parade of children carrying flaming torches. There are two significant problems with this. Firstly, it is very difficult to organise a group of small children, and virtually impossible if they are accompanied by their parents, who always want their child at the front, or with a different torch, or with a specific friend, or whatever. This means that it takes half an hour longer to start the parade than planned, during which time some of the children start to cry, others lose their torches, or their interest.

The other problem is that usually the torches are Chinese paper lanterns with candles, often suspended from small branches cut from trees. Here we have two new problems. The children tend to swing the branches around, or get tired and let them droop. This results in the paper catching fire. This in turn often leads to the leaves on the branches also catching on fire. The children then start to panic, their parents wade in to put out the fires, and the entire parade descends into chaos.

This adds to the delays and explains why the grand spectacle usually starts an hour late. There are other causes of late starts. At one, at Christmas in the town square, the street lights were between the audience and the fireworks, which would have ruined everything. Unfortunately, the man with the key to the part of the mairie which controlled the street lights was on holiday. It took an hour to find a way in, and turn off the lights. At another, the delay was because the repas – the dinner in the marquees - was late starting and finishing, and the volunteers who organised the dinner had to finish clearing up the area for the subsequent bal populaire – public dance – and they were entitled to see the fireworks; the several hundred other people waited around in the dark until they were ready.

But the displays really are good.

Despotism moderated by riot

In the UK, we elect a government, or to be precise a few of us who happen to live in the handful of constituencies that are not one-party fiefdoms, choose the party of government. The vast majority of members of Parliament are voted for not because of who they are or what they can do, but because they have been picked by the relevant party. In effect, most MPs are selected by the handful of party activists and then elected by a majority who would have voted for an ambulant green slime if it had the right party label.

The first past the post system results in hugely disproportionate results, where the great majority of votes are worthless. Perhaps the most appalling example is the 2005 election where two out of three people voted for parties other than the awful Blair and his NuLabour puppies, but he still won a large overall majority of parliamentary seats, and formed the government. The will of the people, that is the 75% who did not vote for him, was frustrated. Yet Blair's manifesto for the 1997 election promised reform and proportional representation. Not the worst of his lies and broken promises.

One NuLanour person has said that the elections are now really decided by a few thousand people in a few constituencies – and they know their names....

In the UK, MPs pass laws at the government's instruction, effectively. If the UK government proposes a new Act of Parliament it will almost without exception become law. This is because most MPs are now creatures of the Whips (the party officials in charge of discipline and control), and whatever objections they may raise to address the concerns of the people who elected them – and in very rare circumstances their own consciences - when it comes to voting they do as they are told. The term whips, incidentally is long standing and comes from fox hunting: the whips were the 'hunt servants' responsible for controlling the pack of hounds.

New laws that give this wretched government more powers, whether to increase taxes or restrict liberties, are usually applied at once. Laws that are intended to deal with issues of public benefit, such as drink driving and carrying knives, are assumed to be effective without any real enforcement. Using mobile phones while driving, for example, and other motoring offences are considered a success if about 80% of the population observe them, so there is no effort to enforce the law and prosecute those who ignore them. Most people grumble about laws they don't like, but do nothing.

France is different. New laws are enforced, sometimes with excessive zeal. But if the public, or an aggrieved sector of it, object, they take to the streets, and protest in various ways until the law is changed. Here in my part of Normandy, there are two developments that are attracting forceful attention at the moment. The first is the price of milk, which is controlled by a mix of state and commercial factors, and which is now believed by the farmers to be below the cost of production. This dispute involves a wider area than Normandy, and there have been a number of manifestations (demonstrations), some of which have been useless, such as ostentatiously pouring milk down the drain, and others quite imaginative, like the huge sculptures made from shopping trolleys they have used to construct blockades of the big supermarkets. Their next plan is to give the milk away: the public benefit, and the losers are the big dairy product companies and supermarkets. So if you see fairly rough hewn signs talking about 'Greve et don du lait', they are advertising a strike and giving away of milk.

The other issue is the creation of a very high tension power line (THT – Tres Haute Tension) from the nuclear power complex near Cherbourg down through the Cotentin peninsula to Maine. Some of those who are directly in or very near its path are furious. The agency responsible for the line are I think doing their best to involve and inform everyone. The sign in the photo above is a list of dates and villages where the detailed plans will be displayed in the Mairie, with people from the project in attendance to answer questions and explain issues. I went to one in a nearby village, and as a project manager (though not construction) I believe they are making a pretty decent fist of involving people, and planning around concerns. The line itself is going to run on the sides of hills rather than the top ridges, to reduce visual impact, and the route wobbles around to avoid villages and as many individual homes as possible. If the need for the increased power is accepted, and there may be long term arguments that it will not be needed, then the powers that control it are not doing badly.

This who object are only just getting started. Slogans, such as the one above, are appearing all over the place, signs are being knocked down, and action groups being formed, for example Un collectif d'associations locales mayennaises : "MAYENNE SURVOLTEE" s'est créé pour s'opposer à la ligne Très Haute Tension (THT) et au Réacteur Européen ... . Who knows how far some of them will go? In the last few years we have seen the local butter and cheese factory blockaded by tractors two or three times, parades of lorries blasting their klaxons and even a huge mountain of vegetables outside a larger town Mairie. There is no possibility of the THT not being built, and it is such a long term project that it will be impossible to keep up the impetus. Unless there is a huge majority against it, with massive protests, the opposition will slowly wither.

Essentially, government in France is despotism moderated by riot. The president and his ministers essentially make laws, their police and other agencies enforce them, until the public take to the streets and force the laws to be changed. The history of France since the Revolution is one of almost constant uprising, upheaval and protest.

A couple of years ago, we had a problem when a neighbour inherited a house and promptly turned the fields around it into a motocross track. The first day of practice, with three 500cc unsilenced motorbikes roaring a few yards past the front door on one neighbour, the noise drowning out a chainsaw, and echoing around the village, was enough. A few of us went to the gendarmes (you have to go to them rather than the maire for things like this), and it was stopped – for good. But before that known, I was talking to a friend from the other side of the village, a widow of almost sevety, about it, and she was furious. Now that she knew the source she said that 'il faut manifester' we must demonstrate. And many of the village would join in.

Are French kids happier than British?

The other night I went to a bal populaire in a small Normandy town. A free event, in the local salle des fetes, with a three piece band, organised by the local comite des fetes as part of the summer activities. There was no bar, and not even the possibility of buying soft drinks.

There were I think about 150- 200 people there, including a couple of dozen children under ten. The kids spent the entire evening running around, across the dance floor, around the seats at the sides. If they bumped into someone dancing, or were knocked over, they just got up and kept on running. Nobody minded. When I left at 11.00, they were still running, and still laughing. They had been laughing all evening. I did not hear a single child cry, or whine, or have a tantrum all evening. They had no sweets, no fizzy drinks, no snacks, and never demanded any, or complained about anything. Their parents were there, but left them alone to play.

I have been at other fetes, dances, dinners and sports events, and it has always been like this. The children are happy, active, and, well, children.

At restaurants, the kids often discuss what they will eat with their parents, and evaluate the different dishes and their preferences, before making their choices, At school, even the under 10 group have a three or four course lunch every day, with sometimes choices of two or three dishes for each course.

Increasingly over the last few years, young British children seem to me to be becoming more unhappy, angry, needy and greedy. They seem to have a wealth of material stuff like computer games, TVs in their rooms, mobile phones and I-Pods, fancy trainers and brand name clothes, and all the other trivial things to distract them, but seem so miserable. They cannot go for more than a few minutes without a fizzy drink or a snack, and are constantly demanding something else or whining that they are bored.

If you go to the cinema, they have huge buckets of salty popcorn and enormous paper cups of fizzy caffeine and sugar. Even apparently leftish parents are part of this: a Guardian commentator complained that the cost of popcorn and coca cola in cinemas was so high it made it an expensive visit with just one child. Seemed not to occur to her that it is weird that her child could not go an hour and a half without unhealthy artificial snacks and drinks. In restaurants they have no idea of how to behave, or awareness of other people, screaming, throwing food and running around, and their ridiculous parents just indulge them and become seriously aggressive if you say anything.

Many of their parents hover over them all the time, and seem terrified that some huge disaster will happen if they lose sight of them for a second. They exercise no control or influence over appalling behaviour, but intervene to stop their children doing anything fun and childish. They won't let them play in the grass because they will get dirty, or their clothes will be stained, or there might be insects, climbing anything is too dangerous, running involves a risk of falling over, and every adult male is a proven child molester and every adult woman is a probable kidnapper, so they can't move more than a few feet from their parents.

There are middle class parents with children called things like Persephone and Hector who manage every second of their children's lives, who have become intimidated by everything, have no initiative or energy, and have never made a decision themselves, or those with kids called Demi-Jordan or Tyson (or is that just the pit bull dog?) or some other invented and hyphenated name, who alternate between yelling at them or stuffing crisps and chocolate into them. Either way, it is hard to find English children behaving normally, such as having fun or playing.

Is this an over-simplification? Maybe in some ways, but every time I go to England I am more appalled by the sad state of the children.

A National Trust survey this week finds that 'eight out of 10 (British) youngsters feel they spend too much of their time indoors' which suggests that the children are aware of some parts of their lives which are wrong. But the same survey also found that 'about 87% of (British) parents wished their children spent more time outside, but one in four would not allow them to because of safety concerns'. Seems that the parents are clearly part of the problem.

Fetes, foires and food

The summer fêtes are starting. The comités des fêtes in most communes arrange some sort of annual summer event, ranging from small fairs and a few stalls, to quite significant undertakings. Most of them this being France, include either lunch or dinner in the open or under marquees (sous chapiteau). Many also finish with free firework (feux d'artifice) displays in the evening, and free dances (bals publiques) in the village hall (salles des fêtes), with live music. Many events also include specialist entertainments, and many have the same type of entertainer each year.

These fêtes or foires are usually advertised by leaflets in the windows of local shops, especially boulangeries and bouchers, presumably because everyone goes to them regularly. There are often series of A4 posters on sticks around the villages of the commune, though you have to drive fairly slowly to read them.

Eating at fêtes is an interesting experience. Communal tables under huge marquees, first come first served benches to sit on, and as wide a cross section of French country people as you could wish to see. You usually have to reserve in advance, but many will still have places on the day. The food will not be haute cuisine, but good basic bouffe. There will be a starter, often country pates or terrines, followed by a main course of something like moules frites – mussels and chips – or entrecote steak, followed by cheese, and then dessert. In Normandy the cheese is almost always a wedge of camembert.

Typically, everyone queues and gets a canteen style tray with the food (all the courses) put on it, and then finds a place to sit and eat it. Wine is usually available at about 3 euros the bottle (five for the better stuff), or cider, or mineral water.

Things that always amaze me are how they manage to prepare freshly cooked hot food for several hundred people all at once, and how the peaches or other soft fruit are always ripe, soft and delicious. In the UK supermarkets and greengrocers seem to believe that all soft fruits such as apricots, peaches and nectarines should always be as hard as granny smith apples. If I go against my own experience and buy what looks like a nice ripe peach in Tesco or Sainsbury, it is as hard as the outside of a melon, and stauys that way for five days, after which it turns into rotten liquids and mould in about ten minutes, without warning.

The last time I ordered a starter of mussels in a London restaurant, I got six of the little fellows. Six. And they were all overcooked and had the texture of a tractor tyre. Yet in these little villages huge great steaming cauldrons of mussels are produced one after the other, perfectly cooked: tender and juicy.

Last year I went behind the scenes at one foire, to see how they did it. There was a huge refrigerated lorry, full of sacks of mussels, with the back doors open, and someone inside handing down another sack every three or four minutes. Lined up were a dozen portable high powered gas burners, with the huge cauldrons on top, and each with a cook managing it. Into a cauldron went several big handfuls of chopped onions, a big scoop of chopped parsley, a prodigious quantity of white wine, and as soon as it was all boiling away, in went the mussels to nearly fill it. Three minutes shaking and stirring, then a bucketful of creme fraiche. A strong woman then came and took the cauldron into the marquee, where it was served up to the waiting queue. As soon as it was empty, it was replaced by another. This went on for a couple of hours.

The secret of cooking shellfish like mussels is speed. And of course freshness of the shellfish to start with. In this case, they mussels were harvested from a mussel farm at Coudeville-sur-mer, kept in sea water overnight, then picked over by hand, beards removed by a machine, and put in sacks in the lorry.

The other surprising thing is that the people doing all the work for the meals were all the locals – peasant farmers ladling out food beside the bank manager, and the lady who runs a till at the nearest supermarket by the doctor. Egalité, fraternité, liberté, still means something.