God's Town of the Saucepans

Villedieu-les-Pôeles has a long history, and is famous for three reasons. Firstly, in the 12C it was where the Knights Hospitaller – the Order of St John Of Malta – was set up in Europe, and secondly since the middle ages it has been a centre for copper working.

The third reason for fame, or rather notoriety, is that for the second half of the twentieth century it was one of the grands bouchons – the great traffic bottlenecks – of the French holiday season. The only major road from Paris and the north to Brittany went through Villedieu; unfortunately, at the edge of the town there is a major junction controlled by traffic lights. On the major holiday weekends of the summer, in July and August, huge volumes of traffic pass across France. The result was that every year there were long tailbacks from Villedieu, in one or both directions, sometimes up to 30 kilometres. The opening of the A84 autoroute from Caen-Rennes has bypassed Villedieu and ended the problem. In fact the old road now is effectively deserted even in high summer

It is an unexplained aspect of the French personality that in circumstances where the entire population takes to the roads on the same weekends, and when they know there will always be major traffic problems, both from known bottle necks, and from roadworks, accidents and other temporary events, they still all insist on driving on the same major roads and motorways, and spending lots of time stationary. They just will not use the lesser roads. If you want to progress through France in July and August, stick to the slightly smaller roads – the Routes Nationales, the N roads, or the Routes Departmentals, the D roads: little traffic, much more interesting, and stress free. The Michelin maps are good, and the Michelin Green guides will enable you to discover all sorts of fascinating places.

But back to Villedieu-les-Pôeles. Originally, it was a small village called Saultchevreuil (Deer Leap) on the side of a hill overlooking the valley of the small River Sienne. There is an old church there still, with the occasional little concert, but the village has effectively gone. For the usual reasons of family connections, politics and obligations that governed England and France at the time, Henry I Beauclerc, who apart from being the son of William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conquerant) was also Duke of Normandy, Anjou, Acquitaine and much else, gave the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, one of the two military religious orders of the Crusades (the other the Knights Templar) some land around the River Sienne, which became their Headquarters. That explains the very large church (for a town with a population even now of just over 4000), and the renaming of the place as Villedieu, Town of God. There is still a pardon, a religious parade and ceremony, every ten years (I think) where the remnants of the order reassert their rights etc.

It may be that the middle east connection with the Knights brought back metal working skills, but for whatever cause copper and pewter products became the main trade of the town from the early middle ages. The quality was famous, and the trade had three effects. One was the addition of les Pôeles – the Saucepans -to the name to distinguish it from the dozens of other Villedieus in France; such a godly lot before the revolution. The other was that the nickname for the population, who if not hammering away at metal themselves were surrounded by the noise, of les Sourdins – the Deaf ones.

The main street used to be nothing but copper shops, but many have now gone. There are still workshops, making things by hand, some of which are open to visits, and there is a market leading factory, Mauviel, operating since 1830, still producing excellent stuff. I have half a dozen Villedieu copper cooking pots, and they are extremely good. About a third of the price of the same items in UK cook shops.

Happily, Villedieu survived the second world war: the mayor was able to persuade the allies not to bombard it by driving safely through the centre. As a result, unlike Vire, Villers-Bocage, St Lo, Mortain and many others that were destroyed, the central late medieval part is still there. There are many ancient courts off the main street, a pedestrian street (Rue Dr Havard) runs parallel,and many very old homes with huge granite lintels over the doors, which are usually quite low.

I like Villedieu, it is still quiet, feels like a community, and even has its own group folklorique, Les Triolettes, who travel around fetes and celebrations with music and dance. Well worth stopping off on your way to Brittany or the South.

Coincidence, interesting, or boring?

The piece below was posted yesterday afternoon. Last night, on BBC television, I saw a programme called QI, which included reference to the same stuff. Does that mean that I am connected to the zeitgest, or that my ideas are commonplace?

QI stands for Quite Interesting, and the programme is a panel game hosted by Stephen Fry, a British National Treasure. The idea is that the panel, of four comedians, discuss questions around a particular subject, and get points for answering specific questions correctly, and extra for mentioning something considered quite interesting by Stephen Fry. They also lose points for giving the obvious answers to questions, which are also wrong as common knowledge often is, which means that sometimes the final scores are all negative.

Last night's programme was around the subject of France, and part of it was done in rather poor French, but French nonetheless. Two of the specifics were around the stilt walking shepherds of Les Landes, who covered long distances on stilts to locate their sheep in the flat land of the Languedoc marshes, up to the mid nineteenth century, and the fact that at that time only about one fifth of the French population actually spoke French, the rest speaking Breton, Occitan, Basque, Provencal and other local languages, and extreme dialects.

As part of the discussion on language the panel were asked what they thought brushing and relooking meant. They were also asked what les people meant, which is a word I forgot to include. It is the French term for 'celebrities', the subjects of Heat and OK magazines, and the tabloid newspapers in the UK, so you will often see headlines in French magazines and newspapers talking about les people, with photos of actresses, singers, and usually Johnny Hallyday or Eddie Mitchell.

I think I have to assume that the timing was just coincidence.

Franglais and Anglish

English words and terms seem to be becoming ever more common in France. Partly this is because of the general internationalism that affects every country. A lot of it is because television, films and DVDs are increasingly influencing everyone. In the UK, American terms, phrases, ideas and practices are being seen everywhere, particularly among children and young adults. Teenagers especially are it seems learning about the shallow culture of rich US kids, and the restricted views of small town American middle classes, at the expense of their own history and culture.

In France, the state requires a significant proportion of films, television and radio programmes to be made in French by the French, which is admirable and important. Nonetheless, English, and particularly American English, seems to be appearing everywhere. Incidentally, language school in Paris, and I imagine elsewhere, offer the choice of learning British English or American English. No doubt in another 50 years the two versions of English will be as separated as French and Spanish.

As with French words in English, English words contrive to acquire a slightly different meaning or use when transported. Some mean much the same, such as 'le Normandie Horse Show', with its auction of 'les yearlings' and its competitions in 'le jumping', some are the same, but with strange spelling, such as the advertisements in the dogs for sale classification for 'les bouldougs' – bulldogs.

Others are downright weird, and I thought it might be amusing to list some of those I have seen. This is the first of what will be an occasional series.

Relooking: A word that has recently crept in to common usage, for a new service offered by beauty salons and hairdressers, joining shampooing and brushing (blow drying). One of the local museums said in its annual report that visitor numbers were slightly down in 2008, in spite of the museum having been 'relooké'. It means makeover, or redesign.

Tweety Girls: this is the name of a magazine aimed at girls between ten and twelve. I have been afraid to look at a copy in the maison de presse to see if the term has any meaning, and I am certainly not prepared to ask a passing pre-teen girl.

Until a few years ago, French children could only have their births registered with an approved first name, mostly those of saints. Because of immigration and different names from different societies and languages, the rule was abandoned. One unexpected side affect has been the use of names from English, but with Frenchified pronunciation. Two examples I heard recently, both for girls: Shah-duh, which was written Jade, and Dacc-uh-tah written as Dakota. Ah well, there seems to be a trend in England for girls to be given invented, often hyphenated, names. And the American comedian Chris Rock asks why black American women name their children after the sounds they make while giving birth. Languages and cultures will always continue to develop and change.

The bocage: in trouble?

In most countries, fields are separated by hedges of trees and shrubs, or by fences. In Normandy (and also parts of Brittany, Picardie, and Devon) the separation is usually by earth and stone barriers with trees, called bocage. The word comes from bosc, meaning woodland, as in the English word bosky, meaning wooded. They are part of what makes the countryside so attractive.

The geology of much of Normandy includes rich earth, but with lots of stones of varying sizes randomly distributed,. This is good for building, but gets in the way of farming. Since the fifteenth century, fields have been marked by dragging the stones to form barriers, covering them with soil to a height of 1.5 to two metres, and planting trees, such as oak, beech and hazel on the tops. The advantages are that these barriers are solid all year round, unlike ordinary hedges which can be relatively easy for animals to get through, are not affected by individual trees dying or falling leaving gaps, and require little or no maintenance, or raw material costs as fences do.

The trees also provide firewood and timber, and have a value. The plan cadastrale, the equivalent of the UK Land Registry, marks every field with an indicator of which side owns the bocage. Two of our neighbours fell out very seriously when one sold a field to the other, and cut down the trees the day before the sale was completed. The buyer considered this robbery, because he would have paid less for the fields without the trees, the seller considered the sale was of the field, not the trees, and the buyer had no right to the wood.

The bocage is made up of quite small fields, which is now becoming a problem. In about half of France, the law dictates that people can only leave real property – buildings and land – to their spouses, and then equally to all the children. You cannot will it to who you like. The result has been that over the generations, farms have become smaller and smaller, as they have been divided up with each successive generation. Sometimes, one child will buy out or rent from the others to keep a large enough farm, but today there are two very serious issues. Whilst it used to be that 20 hectares of land was enough to support a family, these days it is nowhere near enough, what with milk quotas, fuel and maintenance of tractors, and taxes. Families even up to quite recently could be largely self sufficient, growing all their own vegetables, keeping a pig and a sheep or two, and a dozen cows. One of our neighbours made her own butter and cheese, an annual pig provided ham and pate for the year, and apart from delicacies and essentials such as clothes, water and electricity, hardly needed any cash. That standard of living is no longer acceptable.

Part of the effects of this historic process is that any one farm will have its fields all over the place, rather than as one big parcel of land. Farmers can spend a large part of their time driving their tractors from one field to another, moving cows and sheep quite long distances, and generally being limited in how they use their land. One farmer we know well has about thirty small fields spread all over three communes, a distance of five or six kilometres.

The other problem is that with ever more joint owners of land and houses, it can be impossible to sell. It is not just, as with one friend, getting all six siblings to agree to sell a house, but that often there can be forty or more distant cousins all owning one field or building, many of who are completely unknown and untraceable. This is one of the causes of some houses being abandoned. And of course, family feuds are not unknown, and one intransigent person can prevent all the others making a deal.

The French government are trying to help by brokering matching sales of fields: Farmer A sell a field to Farmer B who has the two next to it, and Farmer B sells a field to Farmer C, who in turn sells one to Farmer A. The complication is that of course each farmer thinks the field he is giving up is worth far more than the field he is receiving, irrespective of any government sponsored financial adjustments. The one irrevocable fact of farming throughout the world is that every farmer devoutly believes that 'my land' is always worth far more than 'your land', because it is better earth, better maintained, gets better sun and rain and so on.

The roadways between fields – well tracks, mostly – have been worn down over the centuries, by horses, cattle, sheep, wagons and people, and are often two or three metres lower than the fields on either side. In England these sunken paths are often called 'hollow ways'. In summer they can be effectively green tunnels.

The bocage presented a serious problem during the Normandy landings from D-Day. Looking at maps, the military, especially the Americans, assumed that their tanks would just drive right through the countryside. The senior British, French and other officers who had visited Normandy before the war, or done their research, knew how wrong that was.

Firstly, the tanks, particularly the US Shermans, would just rise up at the front, exposing the unarmoured underside, rather than passing through, stopping that sort of progress. The second point is that the hollow ways were narrow, so tanks could not turn round once they started along one, and they could only fire their guns straight ahead; the barrels could not be swivelled. Proved to be a bit of an issue.

Today, there are two factors causing the increasing loss of the bocage. Farmers are increasingly wanting larger fields for efficiency, and easier use of mechanisation. This is being driven by a sad trend to keep many cattle indoors, and feed them silage, mostly maize, and chemical feeds. This means growing large amounts of maize, which is harvested by large machines, which need large fields. The cattle produce less milk, of lower quality, but I believe fatten more quickly for beef. Once the bocage has been cleared, it will never return.

At the same time, local councils are finding that they have a little bit of money each year, and are using it to 'improve' visibility in country lanes. This is done by widening some parts, which means ploughing up the bocage, adding a couple of metres to the road width, and putting up wire fences on the new road edges. They are also removing twists and turn where they can, and in many places just replacing the bocage with fences that can be seen through. The idea is to reduce traffic accidents. Doesn't seem to work: people just drive faster on the new straight bits, and don't slow down enough on the bends.

I think that progressively much of the more obvious bocage will disappear: in the last ten years the roads from the nearest town to where we live have mostly been modified, and it is less interesting a journey as a result. Animal husbandry might change, but increasing awareness of and concern for the welfare of the beasts will help to diminish the trend.

It seems, however, that progress almost always involves swapping something rare and special for more of something cheap and worse.

Mont St Michel 1300 years of history - plus.

A World Heritage Site, one of the modern Seven Wonders of World, Mont St Michel in Normandy near Avranches was first used as a Christian site 1300 years ago. In fact, it was also a religious site before the arrival of Christianity. One of the very successful policies of the early church was to take over existing religious places as soon as they gained enough power. By so doing, they created an impression of continuity, and used the familiarity with the site of the local people. Plus of course it made it much harder for the original religions to carry on.

Many of these takeovers are identifiable today, because most of them were dedicated to St Michael (St Michel), the slayer of the dragon, a metaphor for the old faiths. The early Celtic religions often used hill tops and other prominent locations for their shrines and meeting places, and if there is a church on a hill, it is most likely to be the Church of St Michael.

The Abbey and church on Mont St Michel, built in various stages during those 1300 years, is spectacular and overwhelming; the highest part is known as La Merveille (The Marvel). Not just a church, but an entire small town, and enormous, and above all in the most striking location imaginable. It is in fact so complex that when I went on a guided tour I lingered a litle too long in one part, and the tour had vanished; it took an hour to find a way back out. There are several of my photographs of the place in the gallery at the top of this blog, which can also be found here. Every time I visit the Mont, or go near it there is a different view, or different lighting, and I probably have hundreds of pictures.

A few years ago I visited Egypt, and went to Giza to see the Pyramids. Having seen so many pictures of the iconic group of three overlapping triangles, seeing the real things was somehow very weird. That familiarity of the image made it seem as if that is all there is, an image. It was as if having seen all the Left Turn road signs over the years, I was one day to encounter the 200 metre high original Left Turn of which all the signs were copies. It is the same with Mont St Michel: the outline is so familiar, a jagged triangle that is easy to draw freehand from memory, sitting in the sea or miles of wet sand, that the real thing becomes unreal.

The village where I live is about 30 miles from Mont St Michel in a direct line, but 50 miles by road because of the Bay. Of course, whenever we have visitors they want to visit the Mont, and even the most wonderful of places can be seen too often, so these days we tend to provide them with guide books, itineraries, and ideas on all the other nearby interesting places.

We were driving out of our village with one visitor, an old friend from Canada, and she suddenly squeaked 'I can see Mont St Michel!'. We told her she was mistaken, we are far too distant, and there is at least one range of hills in the way. Every time we saw her over the next couple of years, we would suddenly point, whether we were in London or anywhere, and say 'Look – Mont St Michel', and laugh. Very unfair.

Then, one very clear day in winter, we saw Mont St Michel from the same place. With a very detailed map we discovered that our village is on the top of a range of hills that is slightly higher than the range between us and the Mont. At one specific place, it is just possible to make out a little grey triangle, apparently hovering in the air, in the far, far distance, if the light is right, and you find the gap in the trees. Most embarrassing.

One of our neighbours then told us that the musician Jean Michel Jarre had a huge concert and light display on the Mont, and quite a few villagers gathered in a particular field to watch, and listen on their radios to the simultaneous broadcast. Apparently, so many people wanted to go to the concert that the roads were jammed for miles in all directions, and most of those with tickets missed it.

Like St Iago de Compostela, in Spain, Mont St Michel was a major pilgrim site, and indeed one of the stops on the way to Compostela. There is a little village, not far from us, called St Michel de Montjoie (Joie means, unsurprisingly, joy), which grew up at the first point where pilgrims from Paris caught a glimpse of the Mont. It is also the site of a Museum of Granite, and part of the Route du Granit walk. Much of the granite used in Paris came from here.

For some reason, quite a lot of British people either know nothing of Mont St Michel, or think it a minor attraction, like the Cornish St Michael's Mount, which is like comparing the parish church of St Pancras with Westminster Abbey. If you ever go to Normandy, or Brittany because it is effectively on the border, not to stop off at the Mont would be a dreadful loss.

Foxes, urban and rural

Over the Christmas holiday, a French man in his forties, with learning difficulties, was on a visit to London with a group. He became separated from the group, and disappeared. He had no money, no ID, no mobile phone, and did not speak any English. Happily, he was found, three days later, in South London. He did not explain what he had been doing, or how he got where he was found. All he wanted to talk about was the foxes in the streets of London.

Of course, every one knows about the urban foxes, but over the last four or five years there seems to have been almost an explosion. I live near Hampstead Heath in London, and one sees foxes in the streets most evenings after dark. These are city foxes: cocky and hard to intimidate. They walk along the pavements, and if you follow them they take no notice unless you gain on them, when they either break into a casual saunter, or wander into a garden out of sight. If they are coming towards you, they usually cross the road, not out of fear but because they really would prefer not to be seen with you. I have seen a couple sit down in the middle of a suburban road in broad daylight, watching builders put up scaffolding, and another lying along a wall between gardens sleeping in the sun. And of course, it is always easy to smell where they have built their dens. I have even been woken up by the screaming of two or more foxes in the gardens.

In Normandy, by contrast, I have seen foxes on only two occasions, both as they slunk along the far side of fields. They are around, and there are many paths made by them as they follow a regular route around their territory, particularly where they scramble over the bocage hedges. They are secretive. That is because many people keep chickens, which roam around freely so that foxeds are shot on sight, and because many farmers still hunt. Not on horseback with hounds, but on foot with rifles, and motley dogs, and mostly they are hunting for the pot. Winter weekends the hunters are a common sight, trudging through the morning mist and fog in ones, twos and threes, every so often firing at something, and missing. At the nearby forest, during the weekends in the season, there are signs warning that the people are hunting is in progress, and to beware.

La Chasse is very important to those to whom it is very important, but there is less and less to shoot. The hunting societies now artificially raise hares, pheasants, partridges and even deer, to release when the season starts. The increase in prosperity, the rise of supermarkets and the use of cars means that it is not really necessary to hunt for food to survive, although there are of course always interesting game that you cannot easily buy.

Because the Societés de la Chasse have traditionally been quite powerful, they have many rights and privileges, and they are governed by quite extensive regulations. However, nowadays, fewer young people are interested, and older hunters are dying off. There are now many people who do not approve of hunting, and where there were signs at the gates of fields saying that the hunting rights were reserved to the Societés, there are more and more signs saying 'Chasse Interdite' (hunting forbidden).

The downside of regulation for the hunters is that as their power wanes, the regulations start to work against them. The owners of land can register their refusal to allow hunting. The hunting season is being shortened by the Préfectures who set the rules. Limits are being imposed on what creatures can be shot, and how many. For example, a Societé can only shoot so many hares in total, but no one hunter can shoot more than one, only two wild boar may be killed, and so on. Even if the Societé had actually raised the creatures themselves. The details are usually published in the local papers, and displayed on the larger mairies.

Many hunters are unhappy, but there is little they can do. In a couple of generations' time, hunting will be virtually gone. I for one will not miss it.

The changing face of the French Christmas?

Twenty years ago, Christmas did not mean that much to the French. Of course, the church made a lot of the religious aspect, but celebrations were much more limited than in the UK. Where there were lights in public places, they were mostly strings of white bulbs across some streets, or more often, outlining the roof, doors and windows of churches and public buildings.

In fact, these subdued illuminations were often quite elegant, in a minimalist way. Driving through the countryside one would frequently see in the distance a church or mairie in outline, like a simple line drawing. In the streets there would often just be branches from fir trees, stuck in holes in the pavement, with little parcels attached, and sometime sprayed with white or glitter paint. No one stole the packages, or damaged the branches.

There have been many changes since. As prosperity has increased, and the supermarkets and other major retailers have grown, so the forces of commerce have brought about a new form of Christmas, requiring much spending communally, commercially and individually, to the extent that it has become more like Britain. (The same thing has happened with halloween, which did not exist until the supermarkets used it as a marketing exercise and a new revenue stream.)

Every year has seen more street decorations, strings of multicoloured lights everywhere, across streets, wound around lamp posts, on buildings. There would be complicated designs, with messages, blinking and flashing, more and more complex each year, every town and village trying to be a little more colourful than the next. Many were boring, many were often interesting and striking.

People began to decorate their houses inside, and put up Christmas trees. Six or seven years ago, some individuals began to decorate their houses on the outside, with more and more lights, reindeers and so, just like so many lost souls in England. No infant school can end the term without a visit from le Pere Noel – in fact for a week or two the whole region seems to be crawling with Father Christmases, like London is with foxes. And now some villages are complaining that people are stealing the light bulbs and even complete sets of lights, such as garlands, angels and stars.

One common external decoration on private homes is a three foot high Sanhta Claus, climbing the outside of the chimney, or by a window. Whether because they are quite difficult to attach, or because of the winter winds, many of them end up dangling awkwardly from a rope. It rather looks as if there has been a widespread outbreak of lynching dwarf Father Christmases, which is not the most festive of images.

This year there may be the beginning of a retreat. Whilst in most places the lights are brighter, the arrangements bigger, the number greater, some towns are rethinking their approach. This is partly because there is a greater awareness of the environment and energy implications, partly because of the world financial position, and partly, I think, that it has all become rather silly.

One factor is changing their displays to light emitting diodes (LEDs) rather than incandescent bulbs. These are much cheaper to run, cheaper to make, and because they are small and have to be used in groups any individual failure has little visible impact. The problem with LEDs used to be that they were not very bright, but technological improvements have increased their brilliance, and enabled arrays of individual LEDs to be created simply, and in different colours. The strings of lights that you can buy for your Christmas tree, that blink, flash, and chase each other, are LEDs. In fact, the halogen bulb in my desklamp here failed, and the replacement is an array of LEDs instead of halogen.

Some towns, such as St Lo, are reining back their displays overall: they have their lights for 16 days only, they turn them off at 10 p.m., and they have limited the illuminations to some rather tasteful white streams of lights hanging like a waterfall from a footbridge over the river Vire, and a few boxes and lights around the commercial centre.

Maybe we are seeing the start of taste and good sense prevailing over the interests of big business. If that could happen anywhere, it would probably happen in France first.

Oysters at Christmas

You might find the occasional turkey on sale at Christmas in France, but the real festive requirement is for oysters. So great - and temporary - is the demand that most of the supermarkets put up marquees in their car parks in the last two or three days before Christmas, solely to sell oysters. This year, 2008, baskets of two dozen no.3 oysters are typically selling for 12 euros, and people are buying several baskets each. In London they were available at a pound an oyster. Typically, the French eat over 120,000 tonnes of oysters every year.

Here in Normandy there are quite a few oyster farms along the coasts, and especially around the Baie de Mont St Michel, including into the Breton side. For example, Cancale in Brittany is famous for the quality of its oysters, and there are stalls on the harbour and beach selling all the different varieties – Numbers 1 to 3, creuses, and others, to very, very discerning customers. At about noon every Sunday, there are many gentlemen arriving fresh from Mass, to buy the oysters for Sunday lunch. Many of them have their own oyster knives, and will try a number 3 here, a rare variety there, often ending up buying their four dozen or whatever from a favourite producer.

I can't say that I really share the enthusiasm. There is something about eating food that is not only raw, but alive, that causes me a little difficulty from the aesthetic point of view. I enjoy them cooked – there is one local restaurant that does them with cider and Camembert, grilled for a minute or so, which are pretty special, but just occasionally I will choose raw ones.

A couple of years ago we had to call round to see a local farmer, Georges, about an issue with our fields that he was using, on Christmas eve. He and his wife invited us to lunch on Christmas day (the real big family meal is dinner on Christmas eve), and insisted we come. When we got there, there were 19 other people for lunch, so it was no surprise that he had meant it when he had said that two more would be no problem. People locally prefer benches to individual chairs, because you can always find space for one or two more on benches.

Georges was standing at the sink, with a huge platter on the draining board, a little knife in his hand, methodically opening oysters from several baskets, and placing them on the platter. I think that was his only contribution to meals, other than making cider, calvados apple brandy, and pommeau (cider, sugar, calvados, seriously lethal), and preparing the shallot vinegar for the oysters.

In the event, I suppose I ate more than half a dozen of the oysters, spooning on a little shallot vinegar to ensure they winced and were alive, washed down with very dry cider. After the oysters, fish poached in wine and cream, then three of four chickens that had been running around the yard the previous day, then cheese and salad, then traditional apple tart. Excellent all round, and near enough to our house for me to walk home the long way, from one side of the road to the other and back again, the entire kilometre..

But not a sign of a turkey, there or anywhere else, any year. Anyway, best wishes for Christmas, and a prosperous 2009. Bonne annee.

Apero Chanson

The town of Granville sits on a promontory in the Baie de Mont St Michel, north of Avranches. Built largely in the 12^th century, and enlarged later by the English, the town never amounted to a great deal, and even escaped any significant damage in the last war. During the Hundred Years War, the town was on the side of the English against the French. Today, its business is mostly tourism, with yachting of some significance. There is an annual sailing competition, and a large marina. It is still a working fishing port: there is a  sailing vessel, called a bisquine, developed for fishing in local waters around Granville and St Malo, with a few examples left in use for entertainment and display, rather than working.

The old town is surrounded by a medieval city wall, but there are very few really interesting buildings. Plenty of narrow streets, and old domestic buildings, but nothing outstanding. There are two museums in the old town: a Granville history, and a new museum of modern art: Musée d’Art Moderne Richard Anacréon. This summer, there was an exhibition of photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue, which I wanted to see. Lartigue was an early 20thC photographer who achieved some extraordinary images for the time, starting from when he was just a boy.

Never having previously visited the museum, we were following signs as we walked through the old town. We came to a building with an imposing portico with columns, and various posters on the railings, so we assumed this was it and walked in. In fact, it was a small theatre, and there was a musical rehearsal in progress. We went back out, but were followed by two ladies, who told us that this was a rehearsal for a free concert that evening. The theatre was being used for training singers – a short course, or stage – and this was the just ending. The concert was to allow the trainees to perform in public and demonstrate their newly developed skills. And not only was the concert free, there was a little reception at the end with rose wine, also free. They were very keen that we come, 'if you have nothing to do, it should be interesting, we will be very pleased. Free concert, free wine, and imploring ladies: how could anyone resist, so we pitched up later.

As ever with events like this in Normandy, it was late starting. Same with firework displays, entertainment performances at fetes, large scale public dinners, concerts and everything else. For some reason, there appear to be no effective producers for any public event, so nothing is ready on time. No matter. The teachers did a couple of songs, accompanied by a pianist, to relax the audience: the theatre seats about 60, and was full to overflowing, which I am sure was encouraging to them. Then the trainees each did a song or two, or even three. They were all very competent, good voices, mostly interesting songs, Very little of what one might call stagecraft for the main part: they came on, sang, and went off.

The exception was a bloke in his 40s, who did two comic songs, very well. He knew how to relate to the audience, his timing was excellent, and he had everyone in his hand. The second song, which has stayed in my head, was about everything going wrong and the frustrations from that. Each problem finished with him singing 'J'ai dit Merde!, doucement/simplement. Ca fait du bien' (I said shit, softly/simply. That will do), varying the volume and the timing. By the fourth verse, the audience were joining in, but he fooled them by changing the pauses, and the volume. Never found out his name, or that of any of the other performers. At the end of the show he did a serious song, very professionally.

So there we are, an unexpected entertainment, followed by a glass of wine, with friendly people. What better way to finish a late summer's day. And the Lartigue exhibition was terrific.

A story of progress

When we first came to Normandy, our nearest neighbour was Mme Odette Laforet. She was over 70, and well liked and respected in the village, with many people calling in to see her. I would look in on her when passing, to see if she needed bread or anything from the village. One morning there were four or five men sitting around her table, drinking coffee and calvados, and I stopped to join them for a while.

I asked one of the men, a morose chap with a big moustache, in his thirties, what he did for a living, to which he replied 'chomage' – unemployed. He'd been looking for work for a while, without much luck.

A few months later, we had arrived in the nearby town, from an overnight ferry, and had stopped to get breakfast in a cafe. As I crossed the road from parking the car, I heard someone call my name - 'Monsieur Paul'. I turned, and it was the same chap, Gaston, that I had met chez la mere Laforet. He told me he now had a job, in St Lo, and that one friend drove him from the village to the town, and another from there to the place in St Lo where they both worked. He was much more cheerful, and very pleased with his job.

The following summer, I was at a grand annual fete – la Fete Retro at St Aubin des Bois – which is a splendid event with farm work through the centuries, from hand reaping with sickles, through horse drawn machines, to tractors. They even have a field of corn which is harvested by the range of techniques, the corn threshed, milled and then baked during the day, and the field then ploughed by ox drawn ploughs. Someone said Bonjour, and again it was Gaston, this time smartly dressed, and looking very confident. He told me that he had been elected mayor of our commune, and clearly was someone to be reckoned with. So a very radical transformation over less than a couple of years.

The mayor of a French commune, of which there are over 20,000, are very powerful, even if the commune is, like ours, only a few hundred people. There are always Mairies, little town halls, or Hotels de Ville in larger towns, they all have a budget taken from the local taxes, and they are consulted on everything. If you need permission to build, have a problem with other people, or traffic or anything else, the first stop is the mayor.

Every politician in France is normally also the mayor of their home town, whether they are a minister or a member of the Senate, and whether their home is a city like Rouen or a village like ours. The public view is that if someone cannot get elected as mayor by the people who know him or her best, they should not be voted for for a higher office. Tends to create more connected politicians that the British system, where the majority of MPs would never get elected to anything by those who actually know them personally.

Cider and autumn

Because Normandy is too far north for grapes, cider is the everyday alcoholic drink. You will find apple trees everywhere. In our own garden there used to be over a dozen, but three or four have died from old age, and four others were blown down in the Great Tempest of New Year's Eve 1999, when a third of all the trees in France were destroyed.

Apple trees do not grow true from seed: the new tree will not produce apples exactly the same as the parent, and for commercial purposes all apple trees are cuttings grafted onto root stock. Cider apples do not need to be identical, so every tree is different: we have green, yellow and red apples, none of which are copies of any others around. As a result, every non-commercial barrel of cider is different from all the others. As in the picture, cows are often turned out into the orchards after the apples have been gathered, though more often it is a pig. Pork from pigs fattened in the late autumn on apples is rather good.

Around October, the cider apples are gathered into piles. All over Normandy there are huge heaps of apples in farmyards and gardens, slowly beginning to ferment. Sometimes the entire region smells like a fresh glass of cider. Apples are not picked from the tree: only those that fall to the ground are gathered, until the last few are knocked down with sticks.

Gathering apples like this employs a unique fork, with six of eight tines, each with a ball on the end to avoid spearing the fruit. The piles are left until the communal cider press arrives, open to the weather, chickens and wildlife, the bottom of the pile rotting, many being part eaten by wasps and other insects. Health & Safety nightmare in the UK, but no problem in Normandy. The sugar in the apples helps preserve them, and the alcohol is a powerful antiseptic.

Cider used to be made by pressing the apples in stone presses. These were effectively a circular trough, into which the apples were forked, and a large stone wheel like a mill-wheel rolled round and round the trough by a horse, or sometimes a cow. The pressed juice then ran off through smaller troughs and pipes into big barrels. There are still a lot of these presses around, but now only used as ornamentation, and with the troughs filled with flowers.

Nowadays, the pressing is slightly more mechanical. The press is on a trailer, taken round by a tractor. It is effectively a steel frame, about a one metre cube, with a screw press mechanism at the top, and mesh sides. A layer of apples about six deep are forked intop the press, then a mat of sisal or similar, like a doormat, is put on top, and more apples added. Another mat, more apples, and so on until the cube is full. The screw is then turned – usually takes two men - and the apples crushed. There is a rim around the trailer, and the juice runs out into a thick hosepipe at one corner. The other end of the hose goes into a huge barrel in the cellar or barn.

When as much of the juice has been extracted as possible, the screw is unwound, and the mats and fibre removed. The compressed apple material is called le fromage, and fed to cows; in Somerset it is called the cheese. The process is then repeated. That is all that happens. The apple juice turns into cider with no further intervention. The sparkle in cidre bouche is natural, and comes from the fermentation process. Farm cider can be very alcoholic.

Cider is a home product, like making jam. Even the supermarkets sell the wire caps to close the bottles, as well as corks and other paraphernalia. The farm cider is a live product. We once put a bottle on top of the fridge, at the back, and forgot about it. After a few months, the warmth and vibrations got to it. There was an enormous explosion, and the entire kitchen was coated with a thin layer of fizzing liquid. Shards of glass were everywhere – there are still dents in the ceiling. Fortunately, no one was in the kitchen at the time. But it took a day and a half to clean every inch of every surface, every utensil, pot and item of furniture, and it took three months to lose the smell of cider.

The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was mad because of his work. In Somerset, where I come from, there used to be a recognised industrial illness called 'cider brain' affecting farm workers, and manifesting itself in the same behaviour as the hat makers. The cause was basically the same. The hatters breathed in lead compounds used in the process of working felt to make the hats. The farm workers had a gallon of cider (two at harvest time) as part of their pay, and the cider was made using lead pipes. Fortunately, that doesn't happen any more.

French style, good and....

The French, of course, are famous for their sense of style, whether it is the haut-bourgeois with their designer clothes, or the teenage girls in the cafe. For many, the ability to choose stylish clothes, whatever their income, is utterly innate and unequalled.

Every year, when we go to the Reveillon de St Sylvestre, the grand New Year's Eve celebration, with nine course dinners, dancing until five a.m. and then onion soup, there will be ladies of a certain age, dressed and coiffed wonderfully. There is nothing finer that a French woman in her sixties, in full make up and a mini skirt, dancing sedately – or wildly – with her gentleman, ignoring all around her. How do they do it? It seems no-one knows. An Englishwoman of that age dressed like that would usually be a disaster, not so much mutton dressed as lamb as a faux pas dressed as an embarrassment.

Yet French women do it, almost without thinking. There was a silver haired lady at one event wearing a calf length dress with lots of pleats. When she danced, it was clear they were not pleats, but the dress was effectively ribbons, and they swung all around her as she danced, allowing her to display her splendid legs. I think she was around 70.

And young girls of eight or nine who have wonderfully sophisticated hairstyles, that are impossible to find for any age in England. Somehow, they make them look like sophisticated children, whereas non French girls would look like Lolitas or Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. An example is the little girl in the Petit Filou yoghurt ads on UK television.

French women have a saying, 'visage ou faisse' which means 'face or bum'. You can preserve either as you age, but not both, and everyone has to choose.

The downside is when the French taste fails, it fails spectacularly. For example, Johnny Hallyday. The French cannot do rock; although I have heard a frighteningly decent rock accordion, incredibly. In general, French rock music is like your dad dancing: awful, wrong and embarrassing. Though, French rap music is more French than rap, and I think quite good.

The other squirmingly bad thing is the men who wear multicoloured trousers. Extraordinary combinations of colours and patterns. I have seen some that are clearly camouflage trousers for someone who has to hide in a barrel of Smarties, and others who want to be able to become invisible on the vomit-strewn pavement of a Cardiff street at 2.00 am on a Saturday night. Beyond bad.

But the young women, that is under 60, are all wonderful when they want to be, and even when they don't in many cases.....

Normandy beaches

Contrary to the Hollywood version the D-Day landings took place (almost) simultaneously on five different beaches, code named Sword (British), Juno (Canadian), Gold (British), Utah (US) and Omaha US), and involved all the western allies; US soldiers were a minority. For those who want to understand that extraordinary event, you must visit the Caen Memorial Museum, exit 7 on the Caen peripherique (ring road), which includes archive film from both sides. This is a museum dedicated to peace not war, and also shows a great deal of very moving information about the Occupation and the effect on civilian life in France, rather than the usual boys' toys and violence.

However, this post is not about those beaches along the northern coast, but rather those further south in Normandy, and as they now are. All along the west coast of the Cotentin peninsula, as far as Avranches, are some splendid, sandy beaches that are little known. The picture is of St Martin de Brehal. Part of that is because of their history, as well as their location. When the railways came to Granville and the region, a whole series of little holiday villages developed. This was because it had become possible for the Parisian middle class families to send the wives and children to the coast for the summer, with the men joining them for August.

The beaches were ideal, because being part of the shallow Bay of Mont St Michel, they shelved gently, were very sandy and safe for children. The holiday villages grew up because the villages after which they are named are actually almost all a couple of miles from the sea. Places such as Breville-sur-Mer or Lingreville-sur-Mer are not sur mer. The sea retreated several hundred years ago, leaving exposed land that has been turned into excellent market gardens. Especially good for leeks and root vegetables such as carrots. But the villages were too far from the sea for small children, maids and mothers to walk every day, in both directions. So, all sorts of little cottages, chalets, bungalows and, occasionally, fairly grand houses, were built beside the sea. Many were rented.

If one visits, say St Martin de Brehal, today, many of the properties directly facing the sea are being renovated and extended, and there are many newer developments, including apartments, being constructed. In summer most of the beaches have life guards.

Apart from miles of sand, many of the beaches are also used for farming mussels, oysters and other seafood. Mussels are grown on ropes of coconut fibre (it doesn't rot in sea water) and where there is a mussel farm, at low tide the poles with their ropes are exposed, and tractors and trailers drive across the beach to maintain and harvest them. These mussels are moules de bouchot – highly prized, plump little fellows, and now have their own AOC, like wines and cheeses.

At the solstices, when there are extreme high and low tides, there is a phenomenon known as the peche a pied – fishing on foot. The tide goes out an enormous distance, exposing rock pools etc that are never normally seen. Thousands of people arrive, with rakes, shovels, buckets and other equipment, in search of wild shellfish, crabs etc. And I do mean thousands – more people at the December low tide on the beach than at the height of summer.

All year round, splendid walks and sights.

And the Brits.....

When we bought our house in 1990, we were the second British owners in the commune, which being very rural has a population of just over 600, and includes five villages. Apparently, there are now over 50 British owned homes.

The attitude of the native French people to this influx is divided. On the one hand, there are those like Jacques, who for a while has rented some fields from us, who is fine on the surface – indeed we have had dinner at his home - but who tells his drinking friends that les Anglais are ruining his country. He thinks we are responsible for rising property prices, most of us don't speak French, and we have foreign ways.

His brother Georges however, says that the British are helping save the commune, because we are buying properties that the locals don't want, and spending our own money on local firms to restore them, when they would otherwise crumble away. He thinks that we do indeed bring new money into the region, and new life into villages which have declining and aging populations. Many British owned houses are only occupied for a few weeks a year, but the owners pay the same taxes (taxe d'habitation and taxe fonciere) as the locals even though they make less use of the services the taxes pay for.

In addition, in recent years younger British people have been arriving, and making their lives there, not just part timers and old fogies like me drifting into retirement. As a result, the local village school, which was in danger of closing, has a renewed future because of several British children being enrolled. Also, an increasing number of French people, locals and Parisian week-enders, are also buying old properties and renovating them, having seen what is possible.

For myself, and I think a good proportion of other local Brits, the purpose is to be in France, and not to be part of any 'ex-pat' community trying to create the equivalent in Normandy of Surrey-en-Dordogne, or Costa Dagenham. We know two local Brits, one who recently bought a barn which he is converting, and who we pass on our way down the lane to the road, and another who makes a living doing all sorts of work, such as house minding, lawn mowing, helping with harvests, carpentry and so on, for local French people, Parisians, and a few Brits; we met him when he did some work for our French neighbour.

Fortunately, the Normans dislike the Parisians more than any of them dislike the British.