On yer bike?

The French of course take cycling very seriously. All through the year you will see cyclists in tight fitting club uniforms in bright colours, steaming along all the country roads, in ones and twos or sometimes a whole club of a couple of dozen identically costumed people, in a group, or spread out of several kilometres. Midweek, many of these cyclists are quite elderly men and women. While we no longer young English chaps never get much more exercise and excitement than discovering a new cardigan in Districenter or Gemo, our French equivalents are covering 100 km at high speed. For the fun of it. They may look wind battered and wiry, with faces like WH Auden in the sun, and wear hideously multicoloured nylon costumes and hats stolen from aliens, but my word they are healthy. Even sometimes into their eighties.


There are cycle races all through the year, big and small. The biggest of course is the Tour de France, and one of the second rank is the Tour de Normandie, which is happening right now at the end of March 2010. I don't read the sports pages in the papers anywhere, and haven't seen the local Ouest France for a a couple of weeks. I was thus utterly surpriased to find myself heading straight into  the Tour de Normandie last Saturday. We were driving through the Forêt de St Sever-Calvados on a road we often take, when suddenly a group of motorcycle cops with blue lights and sirens came screaming along the road towards us, and waved us to stop, and pull off the road. Not easy because there was a ditch, and very little else. They were immediately followed by a dozen or so other motorcycles with two up and signs saying 'Officiel' on the front, and then thirty or forty vans and cars, all covered in big ads, and most with half a dozen bikes on the top. That was when we began to think that the Tour was also going through the forest...


A couple of minutes later, more blue lights and sirens, and a group of about 15 cyclists in their midst, and then yet more vans and cars with bikes on top. We thought this must have been the end, and began to move off. More officials whizzed up and told us to stop again. After five minutes we could hear a roaring noise, like a train, and over 100 cyclists screamed by at full speed, throwing empty drink bottles, food pouches and other stuff as they passed.  They were so close together that it seemed that they could only be avoiding crashing by synchronising their pedalling. Five seconds and they were gone. Following them were more support cars, vans and bikes. And a group of people coming along picking up the rubbish the riders had thrown down. Two minutes later, it was all over, and we could drive on.


I had never actually seen a major cycle race up close, but the noise of the bikes, the speed at which they were going, and the closeness of the bunch were all quite extraordinary.


Cyclists having priority over motorists is not just something that applies to organised races, it is respected everywhere. Drivers will slow down, pull out to the left, and give way to cyclists as a matter of habit, whether the cyclist is a young racer training for the Tour, or an elderly lady coming back from the market, or a farmer who has already lost his driving licence wobbling home from the bar. Not like the UK, where cyclists are usually invisible, or if they are seen are perceived as two dimensional and need no space. Because cycling is respectable and respected, something like the Paris Velib system is very successful. Bike stands are everywhere, and the bikes are used by all sorts of people, from elegant lady lawyers with their briefs in the front basket, to elderly gentlemen with substantial bellies and award winning moustaches. Of course it also helps that Paris is much smaller than say London, and fairly flat, but the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, a cyclist himself, is planning a similar system. Whether the bikes will last more than a couple of days without being stolen, vandalised or destroyed is still unknown.

Tips on learning French

I am not a natural linguist, and it has taken me a long time to become reasonably confident in French. Along the way, I have found a few things that helped that might be worth passing on.


To begin, some sort of formal learning is pretty important especially at the very beginning.. It can give you concepts, grammatical insights, and the confidence of learning with others. Even if you can only manage the occasional hour of tuition at a further education college, it is worth the effort. If you live in London, the Alliance Francaise runs very good courses, and puts you into a very French ambience from the start. If not, there is always the Open University. I did one of their French diploma courses a few years ago, and it was very useful. Then you had to record middle of the night television programmes to help, but it is now all internet based.


Languages are about communication: to learn you need to communicate, and that really means speaking to others. Obviously, In France that is not too difficult, but may be more so in the UK, other than London. In France, make opportunities to talk to people as often as you can. As long as you are polite, and make an effort, just about everyone will help you out when you get stuck, and not laugh if you make mistakes. There is a piece on this blog about Getting on with the French, which might be useful. There was a documentary on French TV a few days ago (February 2010) about the French community in London. There are now somewhere between 300,000 and half a million French nationals living in London, which makes it the sixth largest French city by population. In my street in London, without about 58 houses (though many two or three flats now), there are four French families that I know by sight,enpought to say 'Bonjour', and probably others. In central and north London one can hear French being spoken every day.


In the 60s I read an article about the then famous cyclist, Tommy Simpson, who was based in France as that was the only place where professional cyclist could earn a living. He did not speak much French, but got on perfectly well with his cycling team mates, and the world in general, by using the word 'faire' (to do or make) as his only verb, followed by a usually relevant noun. So he would say 'je fais velo' - I will ride my bike' - or 'je fais dejeuner' - I had lunch, or 'je fais gagner ' - I am winning. Everyone understood him, and he had a very successful career, until he died in a race from the effects of performace enhancing drugs, probably the first famous sports person to do so. My point is not that you should avoid performance drugs, though of course you should, but that you can talk effectively and happily in France in French, however little you know, as long as you try.


If you are not in France, it might prove useful to find a way of establishing contact with French people learning English - or indeed another language - via the internet, and set up a regular online conversation. With the internet the way it is, there is no problem in being able to talk to and see someone anywhere in the world. Just do a bit of research around the concept of 'chat'. Asking a teenager you know to help explain it is best if you are over 30  - all teenagers seem to be in perpetual conversation with all the others. There are a number of sites where you can find people who want to help and be helped learning English and French. Try Total France, ExPat Blog, educational sites, and some social sites (beware wierd people and places, though). There are a lot ofpeople who are happy to help you with your French, in return for your help with their English.


Reading French newspapers really does help. The national papers such as le Monde are available in most British towns, and if not local libraries might often be able to get them. They do provide exposure to a lot of words you won't come across in textbooks, especially colloquial everday speech terms, and technical stuff, not to mention the sort of thing you will find in the advertisments. The virtue of a newspaper is that you can take your time, you can stop and start when you like, and look up things you don't understand. It will also demonstrate, if you are undergoing formal education in French, that the seemingly dozens of tenses that are part of French verbs, but not English, are rarely used, and you can do without them.


It is widely believed that television in France is generally dreadful. Not really true, though their rubbish is even worse than British rubbish. They do have more arts programmes, political discussions, and other serious stuff, and those programmes are often up to three hours long. Here is a really useful tip: watch documentaries, especially about the arts, on the French/German channel Arte. Everyone speaks very clearly, and steadily, unlike drama and popular shows where there is shouting, gabbling and slang that you will never grasp. As the programmes are usually shown in both countries, they are made with the need to be translated either by dubbing or subtitling, in mind. That means that speech is more measured, and more careful, and for someone learning the language whether French or German, this helps enormously. It might also be that arts programmes tend to feature intellectuals, academics, and the higher bourgeoisie, all of who usually think before they speak, assume that others will be interested in what they have to say and want to think about it before replying. And of course, a lot of it is being read from scripts, carefully.


For example, last night I watched a programme called 'Un Soir àu Musée' (an evening at the museum), which was about a new exhibition of JMW Turner paintings in Paris. Apart from the fact that the pictures are stunning - one can see that Turner put up the scaffolding on which the Impressionists hung their work - the programme was hugely interesting, with some extraordinary filming in Venice to back up the paintings. The commentary, and all the interviews, were clear, obviously correct French, and easy to understand. This programme was actually on France5, but is typical.


Another tip is that many digital channels (and all French television will be digital only soon- March 2010 in lower Normandy) often have the option to have subtitles for the hearing impaired members of the audience. This can be really helpful to learners of French, because you can see the words being spoken written down simultaneously. Of course, it cannot be word for word, but the gist will be there, and it is surprising how much this helps learn more of the language. A big problem for learners of any new language is elision, the running of words together, so it is very hard to tell where one word ends and the next starts. Seeing it as well as hearing it makes that much easier. It also helps with pronunciation, and interpretation of what you hear. A good illustration of this is the phrase 'la vie en rose', which means 'life in the pink' or the good life. When spoken, it can be hard to tell the difference between that and 'la viande rose' - pink meat - or 'l'avion rose' - the pink aeroplane. Context helps, but confusion means thinking about what was said, and then missing the next bit of speech.


If you are not in France, many programmes on Arte are available to watch on the internet at Arte.fr for a week after broadcast, for free, as are some programmes on the other French channels, so you can watch them from other countries.


For immediate translation of words and phrases, I have put Babel Fish on my always visible bookmarks, so I can very quickly copy paste a fragment of text on the internet to get the meaning. The software is free - there is a link on this blog. Not perfect, but as good as any other translation by machine.


One last thing that I found positive: learn some key common phrases that can both give you time to think if you add them into a sentence, and suggest to the person you are speaking to that you are a bit more fluent than you really are. That second point, strangely, means that people are more relaxed, and less likely to expect that they won't understand you, so conversation becomes easier. The sort of phrase I have in mind is 'c'est à dire' - that is to say -  which gives you the chance to find the words you need without looking if you are really struggling, 'comme ci, comme ça' - a bit/more or less/maybe/average, and is useful to cover the situation where you just cannot think of anything specific to say, and 'ça fait du bien' - that will do very well/ is fine. But above all: practice speaking, listening and communicating. No substitute, and it is more enjoyable that you might think.

On the trot

If you ask a British person what the words 'trot', 'trots' or 'trotter', you will usually get one of these replies: Montezuma's Revenge, Delhi Belly or some other acute digestive disaster, a member of the Militant Tendancy, Socialist Workers Party or some other doomed 1980s far left group, or a cockney chancer played by David Jason in a long running tv comedy programme. In France, it refers to a very popular form of horse racing.


Le Trot consists of horses pulling flimsy two wheeled vehicles along race tracks. The wierd bit is that the horses cannot gallop, but must trot, in a prancing, slightly absurd fashion. They race round tracks, quite fast, but not as fast as normal horse racing, and of course the chariots take up more room, so there is quite a lot of jostling and confusion. I think it is a very silly process. I believe in North America they call the little carriages 'sulkies' for some reason. I know of three or four bars called 'le Trot' or 'le Trotteur', and Normandy being a very horsy sort of place, there are often horse boxes being towed around, with the little carriages attached to the back, their shafts sticking up into the air.


Out of season, and sometimes on summer evenings, you might find trotteurs exercising on some of the beaches. Apparently, apart from having long flat stretches to practice on, the sea water is good for the horses, so they sometimes go through the shallow water.


A good example is the beach at Jullouville, where at low tides there is a very long, wide and sandy beach. Here are some photographs of several trotteurs on a January afternoon.

The naming of inhabitants

The other day I half noticed the word 'canisiais' in the headline to a small article in the Ouest France paper, and had no idea what it meant. Reading the piece showed me that it referred to a person from Canisy, a small village near Saint Lo. The French have names for the inhabitants of just about every town and village, but I have not been able to discover any logic in how they come about.


In Britain, we tend to talk about a Worcester woman, or a man from Southampton, or a person from Porlock. I can only think of Londoners as a similar form. Glaswegian, Liverpudlian and Mancunian are surely not really used by the inhabitants as routine. There are a couple of usages derived from Roman names, such as Exonian for Exeter, or Salopian for Shropshire, but they are not much used. Stratfordian and Oxfordian are not related to the inhabitants, but to those who believe the works of Shakespeare were written by the chap from Stratford, who signed his name most commonly as 'Shagspeer'  - if six examples can be called common - or who believe they were written by the then Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. 


Most of the French terms seem to be of two types. The most frequent is to add -ais to the end of the name, such as Granvillais, Caennais and so on, and the second to add -ois, as in Niçois or Virois. Then there is Parisien, but it then gets very, very confusing. Here are a few examples: Vannes: Vannetais; Avranches: Avranchinais, Saint Lo: Saint Lois.


It can get very strange: the inhabitants of Manvieu-le-Bocage are apparently les Mévéens, the people in Manche les Manchots (though this is being replaced by Manchois). The people from Villedieu-les-Poêles -God's Town of the Saucepans - are called most often les sourdins, the deaf ones, from the centuries of hammering copper, but also les Théopolitains - theos from the Greek for god, politi for town. Those from Lisieux are les Lexoviennes from the Roman name of the town.


My favourite is that for Pont l'Evéque - Bridge of the Bishop, where the splendid cheese is made. There is a Bishopsbridge Road in London, near Paddington Station, but it is utterly anonymous. The people of Pont l'Evéque are known as les Pontepiscopiens or, sometimes, les Episcopontains! That is just strange, but it does imply some knowledge of Latin.

Jazz in Granville

A recent jazz concert in Granville was another illustration of the way the arts are flourishing in Normandy. The musicians were the Indigo Trio, from Chicago: Nicola Mitchell on flute and voice, Hamilton Bankhead on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. The venue was the tiny 64 seat Théatre de Presqu'Ile in Granville. I have been to this theatre before, and this time it was also completely full. In fact there was not just standing room only, but the eight or nine children in the audience were moved onto the sides of the stage to make more room. Brilliant performance by a terrific group, who were clearly not used to playing such a small place, nor to the different ways of a provincial French audience. 


After a 45 minute starting piece, and a couple of shorter numbers, they took a bow, and then looked at each other in bemusement, because the audience applauded enthusiastically, but nothing else. French audiences are very respectful towards the artists, and assume that the artist decides what he or she will do, and that decision is the right one on artistic grounds. Not up to the audience to question that, so there was no expectation that there would be encores. However, after a minute or so, an English voice in the audience (not me) called out 'Could we have another please?'. The musicians were greatly relieved, and started another 45 minutes.

The group's other concerts in their tour were in much bigger places, like the theatres at Caen and Rouen, but I think the intimacy of the Presqu'Ile made for a better concert than many in the bigger places. The performers were closer to the audience, and the audience could see exactly how the musicians played. This was for me particularly interesting watching the drummer, who had a number of personal techniques. It was fascinating watching some of the more intricate pattern making, and the use of a variety of sticks and brushes. By coincidence, I saw him again on television a week ago, playing with the 77 year old jazz musician Arche Shepp. This was on a programme on the wonderul France-German channel Arte. Shepp was interviewed, and spoke in English and fluent French at random, sometimes switching in mid sentence. The CD with that music is available here, and is a fascinating mix of jazz and - as unlikely as it might seem - rap music.


The Théatre de la Presq'Isle has now been renamed the Théatre de l'Haut Ville, and has become associated with the othert theatre in Granville, the modern Archipel, which has 443 places. Compare Granville, population 14,000, with a similar size of British town, and see if you can think of one with even one functioning theatre, never mind two.

Lac de la Dathee

[This post has attracted many visitors, for some reason. I have created a new one with additional and more recent pictures here]

In the seventies, the need for an improved water supply for the town of Vire led to the damming of a valley fed by a little river, La Dathée. This is now a lake, of about 45 hectares, and has been turned into a leisure resource as well as a water reservoir. There is also a large nature and bird reserve.


There has been a facility for hiring canoes/kayaks. pedalos and so on for some years. There is also a solid, if not formally paved, walk (randonnée) of 6.25 km all the way round. There are a couple of steep slopes, but the path is good for pushchairs and wheelchairs, as well as joggers. As this is France, at the start of the walk by the carpark, there is a little sign describing the creation of the path. It cost 49000 euros, funded more or less equally, by the Basse-Normandie Region, La Manche Department, and Vire town. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, public spending is identified and defined in France.


France is a bit behind the UK generally, in providing wheelchair access, though it is improving. At this lake there is a special car park for wheelchair users, leading on to a purpose built dock for angling from a wheelchair. There are anchorage points, appropriate level barriers, and of course a flat access lane. There is also a picnic area (this is France), but with a couple of specially designed picnic tables: a bench on one side only, and slightly higher than usual, to allow wheeelchair users to share a tables with other people. Not seen that before. This was funded by the same parts of the state, plus a grant from the Credit Agricole bank.

The last time I went to the lake was after the weeks of heavy rain, in early December 2009. The dam (barrage) itself was fairly spectacular, as in the picture. Normally there is no water flowing over the top.The river flowing away from the dam was over its banks. The lake itself has burst its banks all round. The Dathée and another smaller river were overflowing as they entered the lake, additional drainage ditches had been cut all round to prevent the paths being flooded.

2009/2010 - such a winter...

December 2009 and the first week of January 2010 have been unremittingly awful, and therefore highly unusual. Not as dramatic and destructive as the Great Tempest of Boxing Day 1999, but long and continuously depressing in different ways. It started with ten days of virtually constant rain, when the daily rainfall was more than the average for the month. Rivers overflowed their banks, and everywhere was sodden. Then the weather went dry, and often sunny, but day after day below zero. The first two photographs show the valley of the river Sée near Tirepied, between Avranches and Villedieu-les-Poeles. This is a flat valley where normally the river gently meanders along, but in times of heavy winter rain can flood. This year it flooded almost completely, and before the flood waters had all gone they froze. Before there was any chance of a thaw, the snow fell. That was on 17 December. and the picture with cattle was the view from our bedroom window the next morning. And the snow is still here, being renewed every four or five days, just as it looks like the last is going from the fields.

We were marooned in our house for four days. On the second day, a farmer used a tractor with a shovel to try and clear a way out, but once we get out of our little rural lane, the road has a sharp incline, and I could not get all the way to the top - 50 metres - even though my foot was to the floor in first or second gears, the car stopped moving. Downhill ended in a T-junction at the bottom of the valley, with sharp climbs in both directions. The last photo is the walk to the village after three days of snow.

New Year's day, and the snow fell continuously, another foot or so. It was gardually reducing until yesterday, 6th January, when another foot fell. It is snowing again as I type, and of course we cannot get the car out and are marooned again. Fortunately, there is a small epicerie (grocery) we can walk to in the village, and a depot de pain as well, though the two mornings a week butcher hasn't been able to get there.

I know there has been a lot of snow in the last few days in the UK, and it seems the bad weather is stretching all the way to the south of France. Must be the climate change - global warming leading to a shift which in the short term is very cold, before overheating. It is also interesting that we in western Europe have had unreasonably good weather, compared with North America, for centuries and longer. Toronto in Canada is on the same latitude as Madrid, and they have snow for six months every year. Snow is really pretty for the first day, but ther magic wears off. I found that in Quebec a few years ago, when the temperature was minus 25 without counting the wind chill, and there was no free running water anywhere. The Saint Lawrence river at Quebec city is about a kilometere wide, and was entirely frozen except for a single little channel kept open by an icebreaker chugging up and down 24/24. We have not got it that bad, yet, but ten years after La Tempete, another bad winter. Is a pattern developing?

Where the money comes from - and goes

There seems to me to be a much greater sense of civic pride in France than in the UK. This applies particularly to the local arena, where spending money on civic resources and appearances is expected and welcomed. In Britain, any council expenditure on non-essentials such as the theatre and dance, art works, street decorations and the like tends to get criticised by a large section of the local population, and the tabloid press nationally, as a 'waste of taxpayers' money', 'councillors's ego trips', or most damning of all 'elitist'.


This goes to all public expenditure, see for example a big piece in the Sunday Times on 3rd January 2010 headed 'BBC wastes millions' about art works being commissioned around the BBC redevelopment. Of course, the Sunday Times is owned by Mr Murdoch, who also owns Sky TV, which of course needs to damage the BBC for commercial reasons, but there is nonetheless a willingness of people to accept this sort of idea.


In France, local mayors, departments and regions are all prepared to invest in the quality and enjoyment of life, whether it is subsidising a theatre, financing cultural events, or justinstalling and maintaining wonderful flower beds everywhere. All part of maintaining and enhancing la patrimoine.


Here are a couple of examples. In Vire, a town with a population of about 14,000 people, there is a new theatre, seating 618, with a team of about 18 people, including a writer in residence, and which puts on demanding and interesting productions. It also has extensive educational programme, and takes productions to quite small villages throughout Normandy. It is the Theatre de la Preau, and has a budget of 1.6million euros. 


In Villedieu-les-Poeles (population under 5000) there is a museum of traditional furniture, small museums of lace making and copper working, a whole range of free public events in the streets. 


There are theatres at St Lo, Coutances, and Granville. Granville also has its Museum of Modern Art. Avranches has the Scriptorium - a museum of all the old documents from Mont St Michel - which as a series of exhibitions throughout the year: the most recent was of photographs of literary figures by Robert Doisneau. Every village has its salle des fetes, and a comite des fetes to devise and bring about events.


What is also noticeable is that all of these resources, events and activities receive their public funding from a variety of sources, and these are publicised properly. Theatre programmes, museum exhibitions and every event include details of where the money came from. For example, the Theatre de la Preau had a wonderful drama/dance production called On Somme (about sleep) which was fiannced by about a dozen organisations and other subsidised theatres, and a play about Madame de Sade co-produced with 10 other companies. The programme does not play it safe, with mixed media, dramas about racism, jazz, a piece based on the writings of Studs Terkel, and almost all are completely sold out. Many of the productions are actively ptomoted to young people and schools and colleges, with big discounts for parties and organised groups of students.


I cannot think of anywhere in the UK where small towns have such resources. Not Swansea, Bedford, Leicester for example or similar large towns have as many artistic and cultural facilities. 

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.