2 July 2008

France without the French

Last night I was dutifully cutting my terraces at the front of the house with my new lawn mower. It shows you just how sad a life I now lead that when my old mower decided not to start after yet another winter left rotting and neglected on the top terrace, I could not wait to go out and buy a new one. It’s like driving a brand new car – it’s smooth, uses half the petrol and I thought was quieter compared to the old one.

Down here in the scorching south, it’s a legal requirement to keep your land well cut during the summer months to reduce the fire risk, so there I was at about 8.30pm cutting away when I noticed a figure one terrace up watching me, hands on hips. I stopped the mower and said good evening (in French). He then proceeded to go and on and on in French until I stopped him. The rest of the ‘conversation’ then took place in Franglais until the Anglo Saxon bit at the end.

'I’m sorry', I said, 'I cannot understand French when it is spoken too quickly'. 'Do you have a problem with the noise of my mower', fully aware that you’re supposed to stop machinery noises in the evening but I wasn’t too sure of the time limit. Turned out it was 7pm, however in 90 degree heat the only time you can realistically work is morning and late evening.)

Off he went on another rant as if I hadn’t said a word. I stopped him again. This time he said he could not speak English. And then he started again. All I could comprehend was that it was his view that I created lots of noise with the parties and the frequent music which is a complete load of sweetbreads.

I stopped him again and asked him, 'do you have a problem with the mower?'

Well, to say that he started on again like a demented parrot would be doing a demented parrot an injustice. I said I was sorry about the noise but that it was cooler in the evenings but I would stop now.

Off he went again. However this time I let rip as best my French would allow me.

I said it was about time he cut his grass and maybe if he did a little bit of work around his house it would look better. I’m not at all sure if he understood a word I said cause he went off on one of his tirades again. At this stage I did not know what to do so I thought a bit of Jack Nicholson would do him good. I started laughing hysterically and clapping my hands with my eyes wide open staring at him. I called him a stupid old French tosser (we’re in English now) and told him to **** off and leave us Brits alone.

He went off up the hill and I went for a stiff drink and a cigarette.

Now those of you with tendencies to diffuse confrontational situations with diplomacy and reasoning, just would not survive in rural France. A French neighbour is generally a pain in the ass – they keep their distance, are sometimes pleasant but beneath the surface lurks that arrogant French pomposity that eventually will bubble to the surface and explode all over you. I have come to the conclusion (and I’m sorry to be generalistic) but every Frenchman over say 65 is a complete and utter idiot.

This is not the first time I’ve had a run-in with this old fool. Once before he shouted down about me cutting logs in the afternoon and I shouted back that he was only in his place 6 weeks a year but I lived here all year and we needed to cut logs. His only English then was the shouted statement – ‘You Engleesh are all zee same’. I don’t know where he learned it from but he’d patently forgotten it last night !

My other French neighbour started off ok. He was very grateful to me for rescuing the terraces from the jungle they had become (because they border his land) and even gave me some of his fertiliser but our relationship started to get a bit rocky when he objected to the sort of trees I was planting – what’s wrong with palm trees ? He said they looked stupid and that I should plant olive trees. I said we lived in an exotic part of the world and every Englishman (ok I’m Scottish but let’s go with the flow on this one) wanted palm trees around his house. It did not go down too well but we continued to talk occasionally.

Then my builders started getting too close to his boundary (it should be OUR boundary but boundaries are sacrosanct to Frenchmen) and he used to stand and watch them (hands on hips) and berate them if they spilled so much as a grain of cement on his side.

The final straw was when I had a Polish labourer working for me doing odd jobs. He did not speak any French and very little English so I was rather upset when I returned to the house one day to find my neighbour shouting and screaming in his face about some stones he had taken from a bit of scrub land at the end of the lane. When I enquired about why the stones were so important he said something about ‘stopping the boars’ but whatever he meant didn’t mean anything to me. I offered to put the stones back and said my Polish friend has no English or French but as last night, he started again to shout and scream at him, waving his arms in that menacing way.

I’m afraid I resorted to my Anglo Saxon again and told him to get off my land.

Since then we have had a nodding acquaintance but even that may now be a thing of the past if the two old French tossers up the hill got together last night for a drink !

Oh France would be a magnificent country – all they have to do is get rid of all the French !

29 June 2008




It’s All Gone Quiet - Well Now and Then !

Well Julie and the kids have made their escape to a Spanish villa loaned by a friend and I am revelling in the peace and quiet chez moi – well sporadically quiet. A new helicopter service has started on top of the mountain behind our house and every ten minutes or so it takes off and swoops down with a dreadful swooshing of it’s rotor blades. Given that I’m not allowed (by law) to use noisy machinery after 12 midday on Sunday I think this noise is an infringement of the well respected laws which I think are entirely logical – and logic is not something I readily associate with the French ! For example, as you know, French nouns are ascribed masculine or feminine status – so how’s this for logic – cheese (le fromage) is masculine whilst a place where they make cheese (la fromagerie) is feminine ! No wonder us ex-pats have a problem. I will recall to my dying day asking for a light for my cigarette on my first day in Tourrettes. A light is a light is a light – or so I thought so I was a bit bemused (and so was the rest of the place) when I asked for a lumiere in local the bar to light my cigarette. A lumiere is a light bulb ! Anyway things have progressed since then although I recently asked some visitors to the house if they wanted a bois (a wood) instead of a boisson (drink) !

So this weekend has been relatively quiet. A normal 6 hour dinner with Angie and her friends (Dan and confusingly another Angie) ending at 2am on Saturday morning started the weekend off nicely. I managed to stay reasonably sober by drinking spritzers but at about midnight the lemonade ran out and I was then back on Angie’s very generous glasses of white wine. Needless to say when I awoke later on Saturday morning the old head was not quite its usual self. The rest of Saturday passed without incident thank goodness.

Sunday morning was also quiet until Tan came over and suggested I join him and his friends for lunch. I decided to take a jug of champagne sangria with me which given that most of his group had only got to bed at 8am did not go down too well so Tan and I did it justice. Then in order to square a bet he’d made, Tan had to swim 40 lengths of his pool blaming his poor time on the sangria ! I didn’t force him to drink it !

The helicopter was still buzzing overhead so three of us went up the mountain and managed to get a ride almost immediately. Two things to report; (a) thankfully the copter is moving around the area so we’ve now had our two days for the rest of the summer and (b) the pilot appeared to have a death wish as he swooped over the tips of the mountains with the rotors making the branches of the trees below move and then he’d plunged vertically into the valley. He also turned the copter on it’s side as we flew along the mountainside. The pictures with this blog might not be too clear but they might give you an idea of the terrain he took us over.

Poor Dan felt much the worse for wear when he got out of the copter and when I tried to tell him that I had little sympathy after his 8am end to the previous night’s festivities he said that it wasn’t the actual ride which had been the problem but the overpowering BO of the old French guy who had sat next to him ! This is a very common problem in France and the country must have the lowest per-capita sales of men’s deodorants in the civilised world. It is pervasive – bank tellers, people standing in bars and the post office – you just cannot escape it – the odour is everywhere.

The rest of Sunday was dominated by Spain thankfully beating the Germans in the final of the European Championships (football). If ever there was a 1-0 thrashing this was it and I am not biased – I don’t care who beats the Germans !! So there !

The only other thing to report is that Shadow has been missing for about 36 hours now – he’s probably next door where Angie feeds him lamb chops and burgers whereas all he gets at home is boring dry dog food and the occasional ‘tossed spaghetti dinner’ (see blog for 26th June) !