13 August 2008


The Fawlty Towers of Picauville

My last two blogs have told of our visit to Normandy in northern France where we stayed with Lynn and Brian our ‘friends’ who we usually meet in the south. They are kindly ‘putting us up’ in their cottage in a small, rural village called Picauville which is about 40 minutes south of Cherbourg and about 1 hour from Caen.

Whilst their hospitality is welcome, or was when they made the offer, our visit so far has been reminiscent of the TV show, Fawlty Towers with Basil and Sybil, a goat called BB and a whole host of chickens, ducks and other feathered wildlife. The holiday was presented as a quiet relaxing break but the reality was somewhat different and within a few hours I was checking the tractor timetables in order to get back to the airport for a return flight home. The first hour was ok, just as it is in the TV show, but as time progressed the true picture started to emerge. Basil and Sybil went into overdrive.

As we sat down to dinner on the first evening with BB the goat looking over the hedge at us, I was just about to take a spoonful of the fruit sauce to accompany my Normandy Pork but luckily was stopped by Basil, sorry Brian, who informed me that the jar was, in fact, the jam-water fly trap and probably wouldn’t add much to the flavour of Lynn’s (sorry Sybil’s) pork dish. On reflection I’m not so sure. Also, when asked about our specific dietary requirements I had stated quite clearly that apples give me a severe guttural allergic reaction but ring upon ring of apple was placed on my plate and then covered with a pile of Cadbury’s Smash. In an effort to be polite, I scoffed the lot and then had to be given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as I rolled about the lawn with BB the goat, looking over the hedge and imitating my dying noises. Narrowly surviving that experience, J and I retired upstairs where I flopped on the bed to find out that a single sheet covered a base of pure concrete. Now I had a broken back and a bust head to go with my badly swollen throat nevertheless I managed to get off to sleep, dozing off in a sea of pain.

After what seemed like only a few minutes but in fact due to my coma was several hours, I was woken by the ringing of bells in the next room, or that’s what it sounded like. Indeed, it was bells, loads of them, in stereo or even quadrophonic and the sound they made was quite horrific and it was only 7 o’clock in the morning by my watch. They came from the church about half a mile away and I still have not had a reasonable explanation as to why a group of deaf, incompetent bell-ringers would start practising at 7 o’clock in the morning. After approximately 30 minutes the clanging stopped only to be replaced by a cacophony of cocks crowing outside the bedroom window. Why do they need to do this every morning ? Is it a macho thing or what ? Anyway, after 30 minutes, the cocks went back to their beds or more likely, to say to their waiting hens, ‘how would you like your eggs this morning ? Boiled, scrambled or fertilised ?’ – ha ha !

After the commotion of the bells and the cocks I turned my good ear upwards again and enjoyed peace and quiet for about a nano-second and was then shaken out of bed with what sounded like an incoming Tsunami. A water based disaster was obviously heading in our direction and I waited for the tidal wave to burst through the bedroom door but just as quickly as the thunderous roar started, it disappeared again. Later on I was to find out that this was the cottage’s toilet flushing system which was obviously based on some old jet engines which made sure the ‘waste matter’ was properly flushed from the cottage and out to sea with such force that it reached the English coast within 5 minutes.

Breakfast was the previous night’s bread which was sufficiently chewy to give me severe jaw ache however, as I had sat on a chair the previous evening which had collapsed, I did not wish to add to the distinctly frosty atmosphere which pervaded the room. Thankfully I recognised the fruit compote from the previous evening and left it well alone. I did notice however, that it was now nearly full and had a certain movement within it.

Afterwards we left on our first sightseeing trip to see some hedges and a big tree and were just being told that the lifestyle in Normandy is so tranquil and quiet when we happened across a couple of motorists shouting and bawling at each other in the middle of the street ready to start a bout of fisticuffs. Totally engrossed in their own little war they were completely unaware of the fact that probably for the first time since the Germans were retreating in a bit of a panic, there was a rapidly growing traffic jam with more and more horns sounding as each minute passed. That night I did my best to single-handedly empty a 3 litre box of rose wine, attempting to induce a state of complete paralysis in order to escape the traumas of Fawlty Towers and the attentions of Basil and Sybil.

11 August 2008

We're Here Because of Unknown Heroes


We’re Here Because of Unknown Heroes
We’re on our third day in Normandy. The weather is mixed but thankfully cooler than the south where the heat has been oppressive for several weeks. The terrain is very similar to southern England with mile after mile of flat fields bounded by hedgerows which could have been transplanted from Kent or Sussex. The plants are also the same (apart from the occasional palm tree) and there are lush green lawns fronting most of the farmhouses, a welcome sight which is absent from the scorched south.

Lynn and Brian have made us most welcome, plying us with copious amounts of food and wine and have ferried us everywhere so the plan about J and me not driving up there worked – although having witnessed the rather more courteous driving style and the quiet country roads, I sometimes wish that I had taken my Alfa.

Picauville, where Brian and Lynn have their beautiful cottage is just inland from where the D-Day landings took place and although I had reservations about visiting the many seaside memorials for the invading forces, we ended up at one today. As I looked out to sea from the sand dunes still populated by German bunkers I could almost visualise the troops storming ashore to be met by German resistance on the morning of 6th June 1944.

My reservations were based on the fact that I dislike the glorification of war and all the commercialism which generally accompanies and, in my view, trivialises the struggles of others. However, the Utah Beach site which commemorates one of the US landing forces was quite understated and although there was the inevitable shop with tasteless memorabilia, the commercialism was not overdone. No McDonalds or KFC outlets and no garish hotels with neon lights. Just miles and miles of beach where thousands of US soldiers lost their lives as they jumped from their ships and waded ashore in the dawn light. One thinks of the opening sequence from the film Saving Private Ryan and desperately hopes that the film makers overdid the bloody sacrifice which happened on those beaches. As I stood there, and this may surprise those who know me and don’t think I have a serious bone in my body or thought in my head, but as I stood there looking out to sea I tried to imagine myself as a young US infantryman on one of these ships which had carried me to the coast of occupied France. I would see my comrades on other ships landing on the beach and being blown up by mines or being cut down by machine gun fire from the German bunkers and I would be thinking that it’ll be my turn soon. The high command would have worked out the anticipated casualty rate during their planning period but to them this was a statistic – to me this was most probably death and I hoped that it would be quick.

So as I stood there thinking of the 19 year old Private Anonymous and his comrades who were just about to be killed, I thanked them silently and in my own way for their sacrifice. Without them and the thousands of British, Canadian and French troops who stormed the Normandy beaches, fighting a war which many of them would not understand, we Brits would not be enjoying the French countryside in the way we do.

The photograph is the American Utah Beach Memorial.

10 August 2008


French Fokkers

Julie and I left for Normandy today. We’re off to stay with Brian and Lynn, our friends who also have a place in St Paul and whom we know from St Paul’s Baptist church. The trip’s been arranged for months but despite this there is always the last-minute panic that sets in before the dash to the airport. Watering plants, organising cats and dogs, cleaning the place up for our house guests and then ….oh yeah – I’d better have a shower. Never know who I might sit next to on the plane.

At the airport, with of course, no cheap parking available, Julie spending money like she’s just won the lottery and me desperately trying to get airside so I can just sit at the gate and relax, we realised that for the first time we’d be flying Air France, that industrial bastion, so beloved of the French government that it is habitually provided with billions of taxpayers euros to the extent that they had enough last year to go out and buy KLM, the Dutch carrier. Anyway that’s an aside – so as we sat there patiently waiting to board Julie asked me what plane we’d be going on. I looked over to the end of the air bridge, saw the plane and said, ‘Fokker’. ‘Excuse me’, she replied, reminding me with her supercilious tone that for the last few days my language has been basic to say the least. ‘Fokker’ I said again. ‘Who’s a fokker’ she asked looking around to try and spot the person who might have annoyed me. I said ‘there’s loads of Fokkers over there so it’ll be one of them’. She turned away in disgust and we boarded and took off. When we arrived at Lyon there were loads more Fokkers, in fact there were Fokkers everywhere, and they were all French. A whole load of French Fokkers.

Trying to impress my wife, I said ‘I’ve never seen so many Fokkers, France must have most of the Fokkers in the world. Just think of that – all the world’s Fokkers in one place’. By this time Julie had gone off in disgust in a vain attempt to find yet another retail establishment where she could try and melt her plastic but in fact could only find a ‘ladies’ and, never one to pass a ladies, in she went.

I wandered off to the departure gate and was looking out of the window when she sauntered up. ‘What you looking at darling’, was the question, obviously having forgiven my previous bad language. ‘All those Fokkers’, I said. ‘Well I hope those French Fokkers have transferred our bags onto the next plane’, she said surprising me with her grasp of aviation terms so quickly.

Now – this is plagerism of the most blatant kind. Eons ago I was sitting watching the Des O’Connor show on TV (yes I know but I always switched off when he sang) when he introduced a new comedian unknown to British TV. I watched this guy lamely try to get more than polite laughter out of the audience when he suddenly started telling this story of a British Second World War fighter pilot surrounded by Fokkers. When he mentioned the word at first, the audience were a bit quiet and poor old Des didn’t know where to look but gave a quick snigger which only encouraged the comedian, Stan Boardman, to continue his story. It was an absolute classic. Find it here on You Tube and enjoy it.