D-Day +65years: personal connection

This year’s 65^th anniversary of D-Day is a couple of months away, and sadly, will probably be the last significant anniversary where there will be more than a handful of survivors able to attend. My own father is 88 this year, and there are now only one or two of his former comrades from the RAF still around.

He will be coming to Normandy, as usual, this summer for a visit. He did not land in Normandy in 1944, but in the south of France in August, near St Tropez, in what was called the D-Day of the South, but which is now almost entirely overlooked. He had been fighting in Corsica before, so it was an obvious outcome as the northern invasion was making progress. It was no easy trip: landing on a beach under fire. His best mate beside him was shot dead as they ran; could have been him.

As the participants fade away, the facts become increasingly lost in the fog of Hollywood films and inventions. Few people, for example, seem aware of the tremendous importance and breathtaking innovation of the floating Mulberry harbours, which made the invasion possible, or know that of the five landing beaches only one was not an immediate success.

For the 60^th anniversary of D-Day, we took my father to the extraordinary and moving Memorial museum at Caen. This is dedicated to peace not war, and puts the emphasis on the people and not the hardware. When the staff knew he was an ancien combattant (veteran), we were all given free admission, and the constant help and attention of the incredibly soignée hôtesses who are the guides and attendants.

At one point, one of them kneeled beside him – he has to use a wheelchair these days – and said ‘Merci, merci pour tout vous avez faites pour la France’ – thank you for everything you did for France. As she said it the other people around were in tears, she was in tears, and though he tried hard not to let it show, so was my father. Later he said that this was the first time anyone had ever thanked him personally, and it was the first time he had realised that no one ever had.

Many of the exhibits in the museum are around the occupation, not just D-Day and its aftermath, with documents such as death sentences for resistance members, photographs of events, people and hardship – everything from death to starvation, and the resistance. My father also said later that this was the first time he had ever had to think about the occupation and the lives of the people they were invading, effectively to rescue.

We now rarely think of the reality of those days, or of the people, particularly civilians, who died during the occupation and the liberation. The photo at the top of this page is of the war memorial at Ouistreham, where all the western crossing ferries now land. It is outside the wonderful Romanesque church that you can see at the end of the road to the centre of the town as you drive out of the port. The names are categorised: soldiers, deported to the concentration camps, shot, and just ordinary civilians killed (this group of names is continued on the other side of the memorial).

I hope that those who visit Normandy for the anniversary will see the events for what they were, and not just the raw material for another wretched shoot-em-up computer game. There were no second lives, no-one got up and had another go. The dead from the invasion and the war overall are still dead.

The Caen Memorial is off junctions 6 or 7 of the peripherique nord, the northern ring road, and there are good public transport links from Caen. It is imperative if you want to understand the reality of war and D-Day.

My father has written his memoirs – not badly, as it happens – and there are copies in the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum. The memoirs  have been published on Kindle as an eBook from Amazon, and more details including chapters to read on this website.

Funerals, Easter and France

Traditionally, Easter Sunday is when everyone goes to the cemeteries to visit the graves of their deceased relatives and friends. It is a time to tidy up the tombs and graves, lay new fresh flowers, and replace plastic ones. Often, because now families are distributed all over the country rather than staying in the same village generation after generation, it is also an opportunity to catch up with old friends and neighbours. And, being France, a day of very large family meals which last all day and evening.

Graves and cemeteries are still very important, particularly to the older generation – and not just because they might soon be there themselves. Keeping graves tidy, visiting for may years, is part of the way of life. In most rural cemeteries, at any time of day or season of the year, there will almost always be people tidying up, walking around looking at tombstones, and often with cars registered in other departments.

This can sometimes become a bit of a fetish. One little old lady, a frail birdlike creature reaching her eighties - Tante Denise, the aunt of a neighbour – visited the grave of her husband, often for hours at a time, every day since he died over 50 years ago. There are many others who spend more time than most of us would regard as entirely healthy at the grave sides of spouses, parents and sometimes children.

The need for a grave, with a headstone, is imperative for most French people. Being British, this seems to me faintly odd, as does the American way of death, with burials in expensive coffins. Every small French town has its memorial mason business, with exemplars of all sorts of headstones displayed. As with everything else, there seem to be fashions. 30 years ago, headstones started to become more curvy at the top, with swirls, cut outs, and many varying details. They also became more ornate, with carved illustrations of not just religious themes, but aspects of the life of the deceased; not as special as those seen in the non royal tombs of Egypt, but sometimes quite fancy. The last few years have seen the introduction of colour to the carvings, letterings and other details.

Our neighbour and very good friend Robert died a couple of years ago. His was the first funeral I had experienced in France. Unlike in England, most people turned up in ordinary clothes, rather than dark suits and ties. Because Robert had served in Algeria, he had a guard of honour from the veterans' associations – les Anciens Combattants. Around the department, there are still many local associations, who have enough active members to be able to produce a reasonable showing at funerals. The secretary of the local society organised it, discussed all the details with the widow, including how to display Robert's medals (he wanted a closed coffin, and the nature of the anciens combattants' participation.

At the funeral, there were two rows of anciens – and sadly increasingly ancient – combattants in military uniform, with regimental flags which they lowered in unison as the coffin passed between them. Quite touching, and unexpected. Like all Algerian war veterans, Robert never discussed or even mentioned that time. Both sides did some terrible things, and it is probably right that there is now not much to be gained by revisiting the details on an individual basis.

The other aspect of strangeness was that there was no equivalent of the British hearse, which is normally a black stately limousine (ordinary not elongated absurdly), or horse drawn carriage favoured by East End gangsters, followed by close family in other black limousines. Instead, the coffin turned up in a standard Renault Espace people carrier – pale grey, with the funeral company's name in discreet print at the bottom of the door.

Robert did not want his wife and other family members to mourn and mope over his grave for years to come. He therefore requested that he be cremated. This is very, very unusual. In the event, it turns out that there is no crematorium in the whole of the Manche Department. The nearest is in Caen, which is in Calvados. Toe enable a manchois to be cremated in Calvados required permissions from the prefects of both departments, and as always, revealed the thoroughness and implacability of French bureaucracy. The funeral took place in the local church, after which close family went with the coffin to the private ceremony at the crematorium.

I have been to number of funerals in the UK, all of which involved cremations, including one jolly humanist ceremony, and one for an uncle who would have enjoyed it if it had been someone else's. He had been a lifelong active socialist, but had a church funeral, but with a wicker and cardboard coffin.. He had become quite large in his last, very ill, years, and it was very difficult for the four pall bearers to lift his coffin, especially as they were not that young themselves. As they carried the coffin, its flimsiness became almost too obvious, as the whole thing began to buckle in the middle, and then sag at one end. The quick intervention of a couple of other – younger - mourners avoided the complete disintegration of the coffin, and the dropping of Ray on to the church aisle. He would have loved that.

Franglais et Anglish

Here are a few more strange usages of English words within France. A common development is to take English present participles and use them as nouns: le camping, le parking, le shampooing and le brushing (wash and blow dry hair) and le pressing for dry cleaning. This also means that they can have plural forms, such as les parkings and les campings.

Recently, I have seen two such words. The first was in a fashion magazine – where else – where at the end of features the 'where to buy' section was called Les Shoppings. The same magazine was divided into sections with names ending in Book, such as TrendyBook, for new fashions. It also described adding a belt and a scrap of tartan to an outfit as making it punkifié. The other example was the use of the word 'lifting' meaning having a face lift, in the headline of a local newspaper article about a corner of a town left damaged by a fire some years ago now to be improved: 'la vielle ville attend son lifting.'

At one time, the verb flasher meant to fall in love suddenly, but these days it has another meaning as in '20 vehicules ont été flashés pour des excés de vitesse', although it does not exclusively mean by a speed camera: any radar or other equipment counts.

Finally, for this time at least, the word 'snob'. As a noun, it means the same as in English, that is 'posh', someone who looks down on those less fortunate. As a verb, snober, however, it means the same as the English 'snub', to ignore or reject. Here is an example: 'Obama snobe Sarkozy: en plusieurs occasions,,,Obama est passé devant Sarzozy sans le saluer, et Sarkozy a reagit par une frustration visible' (Obama snubs Sarkozy: on several occasions O. has passed in front of S. without greeting him, and S has reacted with visible frustration'. So much for US gratitude to the French for winning their war of independence for them in 1776.

Coming events...again

Every year, in general, there are four major cultural (in the widest sense) events in Normandy, and another accessible in Brittany. They are a jazz festival, a rock festival, a celtic music festival, a horse show, and a sheep fair. Of course there are a huge number of smaller events – shows, fetes, concerts, fairs – throughout the region, but these are the big ones you have to plan for if you want to be there. And of course, 2009 is the 65^th anniversary of D-Day, and I will put more about that in a later bg.

The annual Jazz sous les Pommiers (jazz under the apple trees) is held in Coutances. This year, the 28^th time, it is on the 16-23 May, and full details can be found here. The performers include well known international jazz musicians, such as Andy Sheppard, Django Bates and Branford Marsalis, plus world music stars and French heros. Many of the events are in the theatre, or other halls, but many are in the streets and other outdoor and indoor venues. You will need to book soon for some of the performances. Coutances is worth a visit at any time: its cathedral is one of the most exciting anywhere, and being on the high point of the town is spectacularly visible from every approach.

The rock festival is Papillons de Nuit, literally butterflies of the night or moths, and is held in a small village called St Laurent de Cuves, on 29, 30 and 31 May. Locals say that there are some problems with huge crowds of young people descending on a small rural area, but there seem to be no major crimes or unpleasantness. The biggest issue is camping sauvage – people pitching their tents in the wrong places: private property, growing crops, fields with livestock. This year the festival features the Kooks, the Ting Tings, Keziah Jones, and djs, rap acts, and who knows what. Well, the yoof know what, but most of the names are a mystery to me. Full details here. Includes a video introduction.

The third major musical festival is in Brittany, and is all Celtic music – not just Brittany, but Ireland, Wales, Scotland. This year is the 38^th Festival InterCeltique, and the main focus this time is Wales (Pays de Galles). The event, – from 31 July to 9 August - details of which can be found here, takes place in Lorient and surrounding villages, much of it in the open air. Details of performers, and full programme, will be available on the official site from 31 March. There are also smaller events (fest-noz) throughout Brittany in the summer. I once followed the sound of Breton pipes after dinner in a small Breton town, and eventually found three blokes rehearsing in the local recreation ground, as darkness fell. Magical, the Breton pipes are like bagpipes, but smaller, only two pipes, and can have I think a sadder sound.

Something that happens every August, and is a prime date for the horse community, is the Normandy Horse Show (in French, la Normandie Horse Show, honest). This is several days of horse things, such as le jumping, the sale of les yearlings, and all sorts of other things that really, really interest the people who are really, really interested in that sort of thing. You may deduce that I am not one of them.

Even more specialist is the annual Foire de La Sainte Croix, or Foire aux Moutons (Sheep Fair) at Lessay, near Coutances, every September.. This attracts 400,000 visitors every year. The foire takes over a large area on the edge of town, and has competitions, and sales of sheep, pigs, goats, horses, ponys and no doubt many other species of domestic animal. It is accompanied by an enormous market, selling goods of all types, agricultural machinery, diy and home improvements, and enormously varied objects that I do not know how to use, or indeed how to want them.

Lessay itself is well worth a visit at any other time, for the Abbey. This was built not long after the conquest of England, and the exterior is one of the nicest examples of Norman architecture to be found. Inside is a wonderful simplicity, with plain white painted walls, and modern stained glass in the small windows. In 1944 the Abbey was effectively destroyed, and there are pictures of what was just a pile of rubble. Amazingly, it was rebuilt after the war, using the original plans which had survived, and using as much of the original white Caen stone (as used in Westminster Abbey) as possible, but facing most of it with new Caen stone. I saw it first a few months after the restoration was completed. I didn't know it existed, but driving through Lessay on a summer afternoon I stumbled on this wonderful blindingly white Norman masterpiece, and had to stop.

Just because Normandy is rural, part of la France Profonde, doesn't mean there are no major events. But there is also a huge variety of local fairs, celebrations, fetes and so on throughout the year, but especially in summer. Every village has its Comité des Fétes, charged with organising these events. Look for signs, ads in papers, posters in shop windows.

Easter holiday in France?

Easter is an interesting time in France, at least for your run of the mill English atheist like me. More than at Christmas, the fact of being in a Catholic country is very obvious. As Easter is a series of timed events – even if the key event wanders around the calendar – there are many opportunities for the church to make its presence felt. With thirteen different days having some significance in la culte catholique, there are things for priests and congregations to do almost six months. If you want to find what happens in any area, ask at the tourist office, any open church, or get the local paper which has the dates and times of masses and other church events.

However, the good old fashioned non-christian parts of Easter are also represented, with  Easter eggs and rabbits, lambs, flowers, and general commerce and fun activities more and more common. See here for a summary of Easter dates and other stuff. Many shops decorate their windows and displays with hand painted scenes, as in the photo above. 

Perhaps of most significance to many people is the this is the first chance in the year for a longer break. Five days off are long enough for a quick trip from the UK to France, and for those of us in France a visit to another region.

I think the best way to have a short holiday anywhere, but France and Normandy in particular, is not to book a stay in one place, but to wander where inclination and curiosity takes you. I have done this many times, and the two important aspects are that I have always found interesting places about which I knew nothing, and had experiences or met people that were quite unexpected.

Here are a couple of valuable and proven tips. Firstly, many hotels will be busy, and may tell you they are full if you just ask of a room for one night; but if you say you want dinner, and a room, they often miraculously expand to accommodate you. This is because dinner and room is what most French people will want, so they often prefer to take their chances of selling two things. Because of this, you should.choose your hotels by their menus! Look for somewhere you would want to eat in if you weren't looking for a room.

The second tip is to avoid expensive modern chain hotels, and seek out smaller, independent places in smaller towns. They are usually cheaper, friendlier, and much more interesting – sometimes even weird. Every small town in France has its hotel, partly because France is a physically large country, and in the days of horse powered travel it was not possible to go from city to city in one day, and partly because every French town needs a big restaurant for big family celebrations.

Many independent hotels are part of the Logis de France network: all are unique, and mostly two or three stars, with prices around 50-70 euros per room (not per person). The link above is in English, and includes an online hotel search and booking facility that is very good. (This is an honest opinion, not a paid for puff). 

Most people will know about the Michelin Green Guides, which have details of history, places of interest, hotels and most other things. There is one for each region of France. They can be a bit idiosyncratic (or to put it another way, French) in terms of what they see as important, but they can point you to fascinating places you might otherwise drive past.

One thing to remember is the catholic connection again: there are many, many pilgrimages over Easter, and some places can become very busy. If you Google 'pelerinages paques' you will find a lot of them going on, short distances and long. One place I had a huge problem in finding accommodation in a few years ago was Lisieux. which was the home of the famous Sainte Therese, who had some visions there around 1900. Frankly, the whole saint stuff is more than a bit odd to me.

The year I was there coincided with a special anniversary, and the hotels were full. Eventually, I went to the tourist office (called Syndicat d'Initiative in some places), who told me there were a couple of rooms left in a five star place – well outside my budget – or cheaper rooms 75 kilometres away. However, because so many pilgrims were arriving, the nuns at a local convent had gone on a different pilgrimage somewhere else, and were letting out the cells of the convent to visitors. We grabbed them. They were indeed cells: single iron bed, wash basin, crucifix, but clean and not designed for abject suffering like with some sects. My girlfriend and I had different rooms, naturally; the cells were even smaller than cross channel ferry cabins. There was a simple dinner in the refectory, and it all cost about the price of a cheap bottle of wine in England. 

The normal residents all being female, the showers were open to everybody, with no private areas. This proved an excellent example of the fact that French people do not have the horrors of nakedness and the in built shame about their own bodies that we English seem to suffer from. Everybody just showered together - women, men, children, young, middle aged and elderly, and no one though it even worth a comment.

Another Easter, in a fairly unpopulated region, we could not find a hotel with a room anywhere. Having gone past several with Complet signs, we saw a battered signboard pointing to a hotel 3km up a lane. Nothing to lose, and it was getting dark, so we went in search of the place. Turned out to be a small chateau, on the edge of a small village.

The patronne said they had a big wedding party in, but there were some basic rooms in the old stables for a few pennies, and we could eat in the family dining room. We took the offer, and had a really nice country four course dinner. The room was large, and the bed enormous, with at least four mattresses. It looked as if over the last couple of centuries, as the mattresses sagged they just put another new one on top. Getting out of bed actually risked a bit of a tumble, because it was so high. The toilet was at the end of the block, and one of those two footprints and squat that have now virtually disappeared. It was quite amusing, and the chateau itself was an intriguing building.

A couple of years later, we were in the same region, and decided to go the the hotel to see if we could stay in the big house. We could, but the dining room was again closed to us because it was the chef's night off and the hotel was empty, so we ate alone in a small dining room. The owner, who was a woman in her thirties, had seemed a bit afraid of us at first, but as we chatted over a dinner that she had cooked, she began to relax. With our main course, she very shyly offered us some samphire, saying that she had collected and pickled it herself (the place was not far from the coast). Delicious.

The bedroom was one of the state rooms of the chateau: a huge cube with enormous windows and curtains that were almost too heavy to close. The en suite component was a washbasin and toilet behind a two metre screen in the corner. All through the night, a large flock of white geese walked around the large garden, in a very precise route, squawking loudly: Wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah. As the route took them behind the house, the squawking would get fainter, then silent and then start again, building to maximum volume before the cycle started again. In the morning we could see that they was a clear bare earth path all the way round the perimeter of the grounds, with a few corners  cut for no apparent reason. As I mentioned above, some weird experiences to be had.

Spring at last

Some of the things that indicate spring is arriving (not the weather which is staying dreadful) include daffodils and crocuses in gardens and parks, bouncing lambs in the fields, and a lot of ploughs in fields. But for me, the main and most welcome sign is the appearance of primroses in the hedgerows, embankments and roadsides, throughout Normandy. And here they are, as in the photo above.

In England, the primroses – the primavera of Italians - that I saw as a boy in Somerset have virtually disappeared: they might occasionally be seen beside a railway line, or motorway, but never in the profusion that used to occur. The cause is mostly the use of herbicides, that kill everything apart from tough grasses.

Primroses grow wild only in grass on well drained places. The grasses die back in winter, so that in early spring the primroses can grow their leaves, and then their flowers, quickly and freely. Too much undergrowth and they cannot push their way through; clear earth and they do not have the protection they need through the winter. The ideal is for the undergrowth to be cut in the autumn, leaving short grasses only. That happens as a result of the annual fauchage – the cutting of the roadsides, hedges and bocage facing the roads by the local councils. In the countryside, a tractor with a hedge/grass cutter attachment passes along the roads giving everything a neat, but short trim.

One can see the effects every spring: masses of wonderful pale yellow flowers everywhere. At the height of their short season violets appear in the same places, to be followed by early spotted orchids, purple spikes of little orchid flowers.

What does not happen in France is the extraordinary seas of bluebells that we get in England. The same flower can be found but it only seems to grow as individual plants; the Spanish bluebell is paler, weaker and and also grows alone. The photo of bluebells above was taken last year in Ashridge Forest in Hertfordshire, and happens every year. An odd thing about bluebells is some people, like me, find their scent overwhelming and almost sickly, whereas others, like my wife, cannot smell them at all. And one thing about primroses is that some of them are not yellow, but white, or as some in the picture above, pink in various shades. 

Shakespeare used the term 'primrose path' to indicate the pleasant route through life, of pleasure and dissipation, but perhaps leading to damaging and dreadful outcomes. Just a metaphor, the flowers are wonderful, and their return each year signifies that everything is going to get better.

Dirty Mary has gone away

One of the local characters is Marie la Sale – Dirty Mary. She lived alone, near us, in one of two small houses she owned. She may or may not have had running water and electricity in operation, although they were connected. She tended to wear several skirts, one on top of the other, numerous sweaters, all of them pretty filthy. And of course, she smelled. Hard to say exactly how old she was, but anything from late fifties upwards seems likely.

She was not, in any real sense, mad, but she was a bit odd. In a city, she would have been a bag lady, in the country she was just a bit stranger than most. People knew her, she was polite, friendly within her own terms, but largely in a world of her own. We were introduced to her by Mme Laforet, our neighbour, on one of many occasions when Marie called in on her. She would sometimes offer to help with the chickens and ducks, or some gardening activity, but she was never much use. Mme Laforet tended to get a little exasperated with her from time to time, but to be a good neighbour felt she had to put up with her ocasional visits.

If we saw her in the village or the lanes, we would always stop for a short chat, and she remembered who we were, how we usually got to France from England, and other details, so she was never entirely confused.

Over the years she became progressively smellier, stranger, and harder to talk to. For a while she would appear wearing bright red boots she had bought from somewhere, another time she had a small dog for a year or so. She would talk more to herself, and retreated progressively further into some other world. Once, I encountered her in the lane from the village, and for over 100 yards we walked towards each other. When we were a few yards apart I said 'Bonjour, madame'. She squeaked, and jumped back a couple of feet. She clearly had not noticed me and was utterly surprised by my voice. She regathered herself, and we had the usual brief conversation, but it was all a bit odd.

Now she is in a retirement home, having been taken very ill. I hear that she is doing quite well. She probably never asked for, or would accept, help from the social services, but really would have benefited from some support. Now that she is getting it I hope she is more content. He history is quite sad. Clearly never the brightest of people, she married a local man. A few weeks later he was killed in a traffic accident, and she never really recovered her equilibrium.

Now her houses are beginning to decay; they were never in a particularly good state, but being empty for a year or so the wind has had an effect. Even the old animal feed container tied to the gate as a letter box is now broken.

In our street in London, there is another little old lady who lives alone and has some bizarre behaviour from time to time. The street is three story, late Victorian terraces, many, like ours, converted into flats. Her house is occupied just by her. A couple of windows on the upper floors are blocked off with plywood, and there are other signs of decay and lack of maintenance. The house next to hers has just been renovated completely, and then sold for over £1.5 million.

She used to be a teacher, someone told me, and when she retired her house needed work. She gave all her money to a builder to do it up, and of course he promptly disappeared, leaving her with nothing but a small pension. She is still fit, and rides a bicycle around the neighbourhood, although she looks seriously weather beaten and in need of a bit of maintenance herself.

A few years ago, mysteriously, many of us discovered the steps and porches of our houses were wet in the mornings, even though there had been no rain. Strange, but not a problem until the weather turned cold, and the water froze. A couple of people slipped, and it was clearly dangerous. Turned out that this woman was going out in the middle of the night and washing everybody's porches. No idea why. Some people had a word with her, and she stopped it.

At one time, these old ladies might have been seen as witches. Now they are just lonely, confused, and often in need of small forms of support that bureaucracies find difficult to deliver.

Abbaye de la Lucerne d'Outremer

Not far from La Haye-Pesnel, near Avranches, is the Abbey of La Lucerne-d'Outremer. Built in the twelfth century, it has recently been restored, and there is even talk of installing a new religious order there.

The name Outremer means overseas, as in the DOM, les Départments Outre Mer, the former colonies of France. It earned the name because during the Hundred Years War the abbots generally sided with the English. This was part of the long lasting connection – and confusion – between what was French, what was English, in the land we now call France.

Whilst probably every British person remembers the basic facts of 1066 and the Norman conquest, the following two or three centuries of war, alliances and occasionally peace, is rarely taught these days. Yet the whole of the more romantic parts of English history that people know from classical novels, folk tales, and not least Shakespeare's history plays still has some bearing on how the two countries developed.

If you have heard of Robin Hood, the Black Prince, Richard the Lionheart, Henry V and Agincourt, you have heard something of the time and its characters and events.

After 1066, William the Conqueror's grandson, Henry was still Duke of Normandy as well as King of England. The France of the 11, 12 and 13C was a small area, mainly around Paris, with some feudal overlordship of other parts, but not direct control. Affairs were managed by wars, alliances, and especially marriages. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Duchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Poitiers etc etc, was the wife firstly of King Louis VII of France, and then Henry II of England. The daughter of Phillip IV of France, Isabella, married Edward II of England, and was the mother of Edward III; and she was the sister of Kings Louis X, Phillip V and Charles IV of France. Family gatherings for these families at the beginning of the 14C would have been a a bit fraught.

One interesting little fact is that there was a successful Normandy invasion by the English in 1417, when Henry V took Caen, and later Rouen. Throughout the Hundred Years War, Normandy changed hands fairly regularly, English at first, then French, then English, then French again.

During this time, there were obviously many divided loyalties. Some parts of Normandy were owned by what had become English nobility, who expected loyalty to England, other parts had owners, and/or feudal overlords, who were French. And of course many families, as with the two royal families, had complex connections by marriage with both sides. The Abbey of La Lucerne was just a forceful example of being ultimately on the wrong side.

The Abbey itself is worth a visit – it reopens on March 15 for the summer. The church is still largely Norman, or Romanesque, style, with thick walls and columns, and round arches. Now that it has been patched and cleaned it is rather splendid.

We went on a tour guided by a young French girl: many historic sites seem to have tour guides who appear to be students earning some money, and usually they are very well informed and interested in the place.

The acoustics inside are dramatic. She pointed out a number of the features inside the church, and her voice was amplified with extraordinary clarity by the building. Far clearer than any public address system I have ever heard, and with that wonderful resonance and almost echo that you can only get from reality rather than technology. No wonder the peasant populace were terrified of the priests: voices louder than anything heard anywhere else, resounding around them, and with no apparent effort by the person speaking.

Some of the monastic buildings remain, with a number of interesting details, such as carving in some of the roof beams in the refectory, and a splendid large dovecote. This is now empty, (there is a photo in the album top right), but there is another dovecote at the Chateau of La Lande d'Airou (privately owned and not open to the public normally), which has a restored circulating ladder assembly inside. This is so finely balanced that a child can move it, but is allows someone to reach every nesting hole in the walls without effort. Well worth a visit.

Don't mention the war

In the same way as the disaster of Omaha Beach means that the other four invasion beaches can often be overlooked, the enormous importance, and overall success, of the D-Day landings obscures the fact that for the preceding four years, France was occupied by foreign soldiers.

The occupation had many implications for ordinary people. Some were active collaborators, as in Vichy and the Petain puppet government, some were passively cooperative, some avoided the German rule as much as they could, and of course some joined the Resistance. Every town and village had people in all these categories, and even now there are sensitivities and undercurrents not obvious to outsiders.

Many people do not want to talk about the war and the occupation, including those who were not born then, but who know of aspects of that time and how what members of their families did, or did not , or were suspected of doing. Who knows how we would have behaved in that situation? Certainly, the example of the occupation of the Channel Islands shows some of the issues.

If you look carefully in many of the towns in Normandy, you will find the occasional plaque on a wall stating that the person named was shot by firing squad at that place, or hanged, or otherwise killed. Many people were taken away, to prison, forced labour, or worse.

If you visit St Lo, you will find the centre, where the Saturday market takes place, inside the wonderful medieval ramparts, but completely destroyed by the American bombardment in June 1944. All that remains of the old town centre is the church tower, deliberately not repaired, and part of the gatehouse of the old castle. In the gatehouse is a large brass plaque, recording the names of everyone from St Lo who died during the war. It starts with French soldiers killed in action during the defeat by Germany, then has members of the resistance killed in action, resistance members executed, and all those deported to concentration camps: many of these are just the family name 'and 4 children'. The last two categories are civilians killed during the bombardment, and members of the resistance held in the prison. Liberation was not cost free.

My now deceased neighbour, Madame Laforet, was one person who had lived through the occupation, and able to talk about it. She mentioned that her eldest son had to be hidden in effectively a pig sty at the bottom of a distant field for some months, because the Germans were rounding up all the teenage boys for slave labour in Czechoslovakia; virtually none returned. She talked of other occasions when animals and crops were taken, of people disappearing.

She also talked about the invasion itself, pointing out where an allied bomb had fallen just the other side of the garden, and how a German sniper had killed two British soldiers in the lane. The sniper was killed by a German tank, commandeered by a young woman from the village.

Some other people, mostly women, who were children during the war, have memories of fear, hunger, and people vanishing, some to other areas to resist, some to prisons, some dead.

By the time the invasion moved away from Normandy, many towns were completely destroyed, many people had been killed, and a few scores were settled.

A French politician, I believe – I can't trace the quote – said that after the war, there were more members of the resistance than there were people. Human nature being what it is, I don't find that surprising, and there could have been few people who did not emotionally support the resistance, even if they like most of us lacked the courage, or the freedom from responsibility for others, or the right opportunities, to participate actively.

The Memorial museum at Caen is a museum to peace, not like the Imperial War Museum with its toys for the boys, and has a hugely moving range of displays of life under the occupation. It is at junction 7 on the Caen Peripherique (ring road) and is informative, sad, and ultimately I think encouraging, and an excellent antidote to many of the other commercial museums which glorify the fighting, the weapons, and the glamour of combat which is experienced only by the uninvolved, the uncaring and the unimaginative.  It has produced a film of the D-Day events, with archive film from both sides shown on a split screen. One side shows the landing craft, the other the blockhouse and gun emplacements being manned. Where one side shows soldiers being machine gunned by planes, the other shows the view of the piloy=ts at the same moment. More reality.

Winter with a vengeance

Following the unusually miserable cold Christmas and New Year, as shown in the two pictures above, I started this post on the weather in Normandy. However, it has rather been taken over by the snow in London: back for a meeting which was cancelled.

Generally, the Normandy climate is not much different from southern England: Rouen average temperature 9.9 C, London 11.0, Caen 10.9, rainfall 26 inches, 24 inches, 25 inches, even though being further west and further south one might expect a little improvement. Not exactly the South of France, but a typically temperate climate. 

My house turned out to be sitting at the top of a range of hills, and at 300metres above sea level is high enough to be on average about 1 degree cooler than the rest of the region. The other effect is that as this is the first real range of hills inland from the Atlantic, we get quite a lot of rain. Normandy in general is pretty wet – there are postcards and tee shirts on sale which make fun of this – but we seem to have more days damp than dry. Sometimes it is just the usual crachant Normand – Normandy spitting – of somewhere between fine spray and very damp air, sometimes we are actually inside low clouds, and sometimes it is just this side of total immersion.

We have learnt that we are in a micro-climate, and that whatever our weather, it is usually better at the coast thirty kilometres away – more sun, warmer, less wind. But in general the weather is mild, and short of extremes.

This winter, though, has been colder for longer than any other. Twenty days where the temperature was below zero. The saving grace was no rain or snow, and most days were ultimately bright and sunny, even if too cold to do much. A key problem was dense freezing fog in the mornings, with visibility just a few feet. We have had worse.

Three years ago there was very heavy snow, and we were in fact stuck in the house. I tried to leave, because we were to collect a couple of friends arriving on foot at Ouistreham to stay over New Year with us. The road at the end of our drive is a bit of a hill: down ends in a cross roads, up is a t-junction. About thirty five metres up, the car just stopped moving up. I put the hand brake on and the gear in park, and got out to see how to rectify the situation. As I was standing behind the car, it seemed to give up on adhesion all by itself, slid towards me, and then into the ditch. I had left the door open, and that jammed against the hedge so that only one wheel was in the ditch. Still took three hours to get a tow truck to rescue me. And every passer by (four in two hours) who kindly stopped their car to help couldn't get going again either. A snow plough attached to a lorry made things worse by compacting the snow rather than moving it; eventually salting did the trick.

A few years earlier, there was another severely cold spell. We were leaving for the ferry back to England when our neighbour, Madame Laforet, came out of her housing waving and shouting. Turned out that she had a burst pipe pouring a lot of very cold water all over her spare bedroom, just behind the living room. Apparently the mains tap lived in the cave under the house, which itself was built just before the revolution. Mains water did not get connected until the sixties, and electricity a year or two later.

This cellar contained an illegal still, a couple of very large, in fact huge, barrels of cider and a lot of unidentifiable stuff. All over the ceiling were pipes, running in every direction, and up and down the walls, with taps everywhere. It seems that every time a new water using facility – a sink, a shower, a wash basin, a toilet etc – had been installed, a new set of pipes were laid.

The ceiling was the floor of the room with the leak, and consisted of very old floorboards which had shrunk over time, and had big gaps. The cold water was therefore falling on me all the time, and it was very, very cold. It was also running over the electric wires, which may or may not have been live. I went around with a torch, turning off every tap I could find, and nothing stopped the leak. Finally, I found a tap under some sacking and other rubbish in the far corner, and that stopped the water.

La Mere Laforet was cold and wet, and for the first time since we had met her she looked old, frail, and depressed, poor thing. We had a ferry to catch, all my clothes were in a suitcase in the boot of the car, and I was soaking wet. However, we phoned her son to come round to help her, drove off calling in at the village plumber to get a repair organised, and then crept very slowly over black ice to St Lo and the dual carriageway to Cherbourg. Passed six other cars in the ditches on the way.

Health and Efficiency in France

Unsurprisingly, the French health service is different from the British. This blog is not meant to be a practical guide to anything, but you can find a useful overview of how the service works here. The French journalist Agnes Poirier who writes in English for the Guardian and other UK papers, did an intriguing piece about the differences between British GPs and their French equivalents recently.

Fortunately, I have not yet had to make much use of the health service in France personally, but I have had some dealings with it. The first occasion was with an emergency, involving my neighbour Mme Laforet, who was then in her late seventies. I knocked on her door one morning to see if she needed anything from the village, and found her standing over her sink, looking pale, and with a tea towel wrapped around her left hand. She said she didn't want anything, but I noticed blood dripping from the towel. I asked her what had happened and she said that she had been cutting weeds with a sickle and had cut her hand. I insisted on looking at the injury, which turned out to be a dreadful slice virtually cutting off her thumb, and bleeding very badly.

I found a new towel and wrapped it tightly around her hand, and said she must go to the hospital at once. She wasn't keen, but eventually I persuaded her to phone the clinic in the nearby town, the nearest place where she could get suitable treatment immediately. This being France, and the time a little after noon, the clinic was about to close for lunch, but a doctor said he would wait till we got there.

The doctor spent a couple of hours cleaning the wound, stitching it up, and fastening a complex metal brace to keep the join firmly closed. He wanted her to stay overnight for observation, but she refused, because she had to see to her chickens, and the ducks. He made arrangements for a district nurse equivalent to visit daily to check her out, and we left.

A couple of hours later, I wandered down to see how she was getting on, and found her in the garden, with her sickle in her hand, and a plastic bag covering the bandages and metalwork on her injured hand. She said she was bored just sitting still, and the plastic bag meant there was no risk. I think an hour or so later the local anaesthetic wore off, because she went back indoors and just sat there for a few hours. The happy ending is that she made a complete recovery, although her thumb remained bent in a peculiar way.

My other experience had a more sad outcome. A good friend we had made in France, Jean, had some stomach problems that required an operation. We visited him in one hospital, then another, larger one after another operation, and then a third. Ultimately, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, from which he died.

Seeing him in the different hospitals did show that the standards of care and cleanliness were the same high quality in all three. The food, as one might expect, was pretty good, as always, three courses, with choices, ordered earlier in the day. It was always hot, properly prepared and edible. Unlike my local – teaching - hospital here in London, where half the time there is only cold food or sandwiches, where patients get the choices made three days earlier by the previous occupant of the bed, and where there have been instances of malnutrition in patients who have been unable or unwilling to eat the food, and where even if they have the nutritional content has been dreadful.

Whilst it might seem unfair to compare provision in smaller institutions in the less populated areas with a major institution in a huge city, I believe the French hospitals were infinitely better in terms of hotel facilities – all wards for example are rooms for one or occasionally two patients, with their own showers and toilets. To get to see a specialist seemed to be quick and easy, with no waiting list issues. Obviously, I have no way of evaluating the in patient hospital diagnosis, treatment and so on, but it was always easy to get a second opinion, and the issues were discussed with the patients and their families. I do not believe there is any satisfactory reason why this cannot be done in the UK. When the NHS is spending 12 billion pounds on a misguided IT project that is unlikely ever to be delivered completely, will still cost more than the latest budget, and will never deliver anything like the benefits needed to justify it, I do admit a small amount of despair.

A final example is a friend in London who developed the Dupuytens's Contracture and had waited for over 18 months to see a specialist, who then put him on a waiting list for treatment, which when it happened involved an operation to cut and slice his hands. And it made no difference. By chance, he heard of a specialist in Paris, who had trained under Dupuyten. He rang him, and was offered an appointment in a week.

At this consultation, the doctor explained that the operation was a mistake, and that effective treatment involved a local anaesthetic, and diminishing the calcium build up causing the problem by manipulating a needle in the finger joints. My friend has now had three or four treatments, at a cost of 60 euros per session which he intends to claim back from the NHS, and all bar the his little finger, which has been bent the most severely for the longest time, are virtually normal.

Having regularly been to my local hospital, as an out patient, over the last three years, I can say that in London I feel that this hospital feels full of illness and inefficiency, whereas in France the hospitals are less frightening, more welcoming, and seem to be more efficient. Of course, all this is merely anecdotal rather than evidential, but I have yet to encounter any problems.

If you go to France – or anywhere else in the European Union - make sure you have an EHIC card to get free or reduced cost healthcare. You can apply here if you haven't already got one.