D-Day and onwards: Dragoon in the South

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

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

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

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

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

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

Butterflies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even the tramps have some class

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

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

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

Back to school....

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

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

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

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

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

D-Day and on: 65 year commemorations

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

Canadian cemetery at Cinthaux

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

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

Liberation of Alencon 12 August

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

Bailey Bridge at Pont Farcy

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

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

Murdered family

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

Coutances – liberated but lost

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

Chateau reunion

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

Dancing in the streets

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

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

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

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

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

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

There will be fireworks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the displays really are good.

Despotism moderated by riot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are French kids happier than British?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fetes, foires and food

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salamanders and toads

One of the creatures we used to see quite often – sometimes alive, often as roadkill – was the fire salamander. This is a form of plump lizard, with a short thick tail, and is very slow moving. It is black, with yellow (broken) stripes down its length. Black and yellow usually serve as a warning that the creature concerned is either dangerous, unpalatable to eat, or both, and this is so with the salamander, which has venom glands all along its body.

Over the years we saw fewer and fewer, and none at all for the last several years. However, this year when digging around the base of a hedge, I inadvertently came across the one shown in the photo above. It does not appear that black, because it is still covered with earth. The salamander is mostly nocturnal, and spends the days underground, usually in a hole previously occupied by a mouse or other rodent. They are harmless to people (unless you ate one, which I don't recommend and have never seen a French recipe for doing so), but not harmless to invertebrates such as snails and worms: see this video of a salamander eating a worm.

They are supposed to be still quite common throughout Europe, but I have never seen one in England. Nor have I ever seen a slow worm in the UK, although they are supposed to be common. I have seen two in our Normandy garden in the last year, which is very encouraging.

We also used to have a fair number of toads. In fact, our elderly neighbour used to laugh at me for going into the garden with a torch in the evening looking for them. One regular visitor was about six inches/14 cm, and we called him Bertie, because he looked like the young King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. The first time we met Bertie was at dusk one August, as we were finishing dinner and the last of a bottle of wine outside the front door. He appeared on the far side of the lawn and marched purposefully, and with dignity – or as much as is possible for a fat warty creature – towards the door, and into the house. I had to remove him to the far end of the garden, but a couple of evenings later he returned, and again went into the house.

Haven't seen him for a while, and there have been very few other toads recently, or frogs, even though I built a pond. Three frogs appeared for a while, but there were no tadpoles. It seems the amphibians are much reduced, by virtue of habitat, climate and weather changes, and I believe some virus.

(There are related posts here and here.

Birds in the house

Apparently, having a bird come into the house is a sign of good luck. We have had this happen three times, and all we have received is bird poop. Still, perhaps that avoided something worse, like a wild boar in the kitchen, or a hang glider on the roof.

The first bird came in, very unexpectedly, three or four years ago. My wife, Averil, was alone here while I was away in London. It was a hot summer evening, and she opened the bedroom window wide, and also the tilting Velux window in the roof above the bed. She had just got into bed when the Velux window suddenly swung over , and a large tawny owl landed on the bed beside her. She looked at the owl, somewhat surprised. The owl look at her, equally surprised. Then they both shrieked and waved their arms – or wings. The owl flew out through the other window, only just fitting through the opening. Just as well, they have pretty monstrous talons and beaks. The lesson, I suppose, is that the tilting mechanism on Velux windows is not stiff enough to bear the weight of a large owl, though I am hard pressed to think of many circumstances in which that knowledge would be useful.

The second bird was much smaller. One of the prettier little migrant birds that arrive each spring is the redstart. Two years ago, one had obviously just arrived from Africa, and was exhausted. It had perched on the lamp outside our back door, which I discovered when I turned on the light. The bird panicked, and flew into the house. It flew around, went upstairs, and because it was dark outside never found a way out. Trying to catch it was at first impossible, because it took off as soon as I got close. However, it was clearly extremely tired, and flew less and less, before eventually giving up and just sitting on a beam. I was able to pick it up, take it outside, and leave it in a bush. A pair of redstarts nested in an apple tree that year, though I have no idea if it was the same bird. The lesson here is that tired small birds at the end of their migratory flight have not eaten much for a while, and do not drop a lot of poop when they are frightened.

Yesterday, it was a blackbird. I was reading a newspaper at the kitchen table. When I turned the page, I was surrounded by flapping black feathers and squawking. I didn't hear the bird fly in, though it may have just hopped. It obviously didn't see me until I moved and in effect flapped a huge white wing in the air. The creature flew at a window, banged its head on the glass, bounced off, whizzed around as I tried to open the window, and then flew at me to get out. It hit the glass gain, and then started to fly upstairs before seeing an open door to the outside and flying through it. What I learned from this is that frightened blackbirds contain a prodigious amount of poop, and have the power to squirt it everywhere. I also learnt that it irrevocably stains white painted walls, which have to be repainted.

I am still not ready to talk about the mice invasion of a few years ago.

Vide grenier - junk and bargains

A sign that summer is really happening, despite the weather, is the appearance of often amateurish signs advertising Vide Grenier events. These are the equivalent of British car boot sales – the name means 'empty the attic' – and can be very strange. The bigger and better ones are often called Braderies or Brocantes, meaning in effect second hand or antique, but not junk. Definitely not junk. Some, like at Granville, La Haye des Puits or Hambye, can be enormous with hundreds of stalls, thousands of punters, and even two or more days long.

The one in Hambye was early, in May, and coincided with the first warm Sunday. The result was thousands of people in this small village, stalls in every street and alley, and half a dozen fields dedicated to car parking on all roads leading to the village. Still nothing to buy though. That's not actually true, my wife bought a sort of billhook, called apparently a Leicestershire slasher in the Midlands, well rusted and mounted on an old piece of tree branch for a handle. Ancient and blunt, but she wanted one and new ones were 35 euros, but this was only three. It turned out to have been hand forged, and a neighbour sharpened it to such a fine edge that you could carry out delicate operations such as spleenectomies with it. Probably.

The vast majority of stuff in small vides greniers is utter rubbish – not even worth picking up to throw away. Yet people buy some of it. There was one stall I saw recently which had only old pieces of defunct electrical and computer stuff – odd circuit boards, chips, cables, Sinclair software and other long gone components. There were always five only slightly geeky men around it, usually rummaging through a couple of boxes of old transformers, clearly looking for specific items.

Often there are professional stalls, whether someone selling cheap watches, or higher quality near antiques, and maybe a few specialist such as window replacement firms, but they mostly only go to the big events. The majority of stalls are just as the name suggests, individuals selling off the accumulated odds and ends they no longer want. At one small event in a nearby village I bought a pick axe/mattock tool that I couldn't find in any of the shops, a new pair of binoculars and a new cafetiere coffee maker both of which appeared to be unwanted gifts and were still in their boxes.

Most of these events are organised by the local comités des fêtes, which most communes have, and vary in the quality of their organisation as well as the effectiveness of the event itself. Some show that Monsieur Hulot is still around, but they can be an excellent way of passing some time, of seeing a wider range of French people in their own habitat, and just occasionally, finding a bargain.

D-Day 65 controversies?

So, here we are at D-Day plus 65 years, and there are two controversies. The first is the lunatic assertion by President Sarkozy that 'D-Day is traditionally a Franco-American event'. That is admirably demolished by the writer Agnes Poirier, in a piece in the Guardian newspaper. All the French people I have spoken to are outraged. Not only has Sarkozy now had to back down on inviting the Queen by French pressure, Barrack Obama also told him he was wrong, and has since refused a dinner invitation from him. 

The second, which is discussed on the BBC website, is what they are calling 'revisionism' – the idea that not all was wonderful about the original D-Day and the following events. I have made the same points before on this blog - here and in particular here. One only has to look at photographs of utterly destoyed towns where the sole standing building is the church steeple, preserved for aiming and range finding, to understand the horror of the process, never mind the fact that civilian deaths outnumbered those of the military.

Perhaps a good summary of how we should mark the anniversary is the 6 June editorial on the front page of the local Ouest France newspaper: after referring to Churchill's determination, and the role of the then Queen, it goes on to say: Rendons hommage aux soldats des États-Unis, blancs et noirs, aux Canadiens, à tous ceux du Commonwealth qui vinrent mourir pour nous, loin de leur pays. Rendons hommage aussi aux forces armées libres comme les Forces françaises combattantes ou les brigades polonaises, à tous les résistants des pays européens occupés qui avaient poursuivi leur combat malgré la défaite de 1940 ; mais aussi aux armées de Russie dont, en débarquant ici, les alliés ont voulu soulager la peine. (Render homage to the soldiers of the US, white and black, to the Canadians, to all those of the Commonwealth who came to die for us, far from their countries. Render homage as well to free armed forces like the French fighting forces and the Polish brigades, to all the resistance of the occupied countries who continued their fight after the defeat of 1940; but also the armies of Russia, who by landing here the allies relieved their suffering - my translation). 

The real point, surely, is to recognise and respect the terrible realities of the time, and learn not to repeat the horrors. To do that we need to remember exactly what happened. Not a Hollywood version, not an edited by special interests version, but the horror, the mistakes, the failures and bad behaviour, as well as the heroism of ordinary civilians and armed forces.

I previously mentioned my father's memoirs of his time in the RAF throughout World War II: these can now be found as a collection of pdf files at www.one-mans-war.com They have also been published as an eBook for Kindle and other readers, and can be bought from Amazon and other eBook sellers; details on the website.

Visiting Normandy for D-Day +65

A few helpful quick tips for people planning to visit Normandy for the 65^th Anniversary of D-Day. From the UK, look at the British Legion site, and from the overall French perspective, check the official programme of events here.

Firstly, make your cross channel ferry reservations as early as you can. Now that P&O no longer travel the western crossings direct to Normandy, the remaining services – Brittany Ferries and LD Lines - will fill up quickly. There is not likely to be a problem on the short crossings to Calais and Boulogne (unless the French fishermen blockade the ports again, which is always possible – but to get to Caen (Ouistreham) on the north coast nearest the landing beaches, or Cherbourg for the second phases of the invasion, or Le Havre for the consolidation, early booking is probably a good idea.

Hotel bookings will be essential. Try Logis de France for real independently owned hotels (see this blog item). Reasonably priced chains include Mercure, Ibis, Accord.

There are also some very cheap hotel chains, such as Formule 1, which are acceptably comfortable at very low prices. I prefer independent, quirky, little hotels which are usually cheap, in interesting towns, and all very different. Speaking as little French is probably essential, though.

A useful initiative is the Normandie Pass, which for a one off fee of one euro, provides reduced admission to museums, events and non D-Day attractions, products and services. If you want to see as much as possible, it can save you a fair bit of money, as well as lead you to some unexpected places and events.

There is a very large number of events being planned throughout the region. To find out details of what and when, visit any local Tourist office – Office de Tourisme, or Syndicat d'Iniative - where you will usually find English speaking staff, large volumes of usually free leaflets, guides and other materials. Look for the 'i' symbol on signs and streets.

None of the organisations mentioned here have paid anything to be named. Alas...

Coastal foraging/peche a pied

A new book from the chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall called Edible Seashore – River Cottage Handbook 5 talks about foraging for shellfish, seaweed and other splendid foodstuffs on British seashores. His article in the Guardian introduces the book, and includes some decent recipes.

He is talking about a rare activity in the UK. In France, on the other hand, seeking out food on the low tide beaches is pretty much a standard practice. Here in Normandy, la Peche a Pied is hugely popular on the major low tides of the year. In the Bay of Mont St Michel, where the beaches slope very gently, the four lowest tides, at the equinoxes and solstices, reveal huge expanses of sand and rocks normally covered. People descend by the thousand, carrying buckets, rakes, spades, diggers, nets and very often uniquely personal implements, and spend as many hours as the tide allows digging, sieving, poking around, netting and generally foraging and fossicking. Whole families, from toddlers to great grandparents work together to gather enough for a good meal.

The beach at St Martin de Brehal, for example, is more crowded at the December solstice low tide than it is in high summer.

All the major beaches where it can be worth foraging have regular updates on water quality, wildlife

health and populations, so that everyone can know what is safe to eat, and what to leave alone to protect the species. This is if course available at the mairies, but also on signs at the beaches, usually on the life guard station. There are many guides, such as this local official site, and many books and other sources of information.

Generally, most areas have limits on the number of each species any one person can collect, and for many there are minimum sizes to ensure that the young have time to grow and reproduce. The main species are much as in the UK: crabs, shrimps, cockles, mussels, whelks and so on. Many beaches are sites of shellfish farming, and the relevant species should not be collected from there. Most common are oyster farms (ostreiculture) and mussels (conchyliculture).