French Life-expat France

Some of you will remember that in 2003 France had a major ‘canicule’ (heatwave) that lasted for several weeks - and that an estimated 15,000 people, mostly elderly, died as a result. Following that heatwave, France implemented measures to prevent the same thing happening again.

This week has been very hot in the south of France, often over 35 degrees, and the ‘anti-canicule’ measures have leapt into life.

If you are elderly it seems your name is now on a register of vulnerable people, which means that every 30 minutes, day and night, a kindly neighbour comes knocking on your door forcing you to drink five litres of water and to take a cold shower.

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The Tour de France starts next week, and has the potential to be the most interesting Tour for years. It is the only sporting event I have any interest in so bear with me…

The course has been well planned, especially the idea of fighting out the last but one day on Mont Ventoux, to keep us all engrossed to the end. The route studiously manages to avoid most of north and west France, preferring to venture into Monaco, Spain and Andorra, for reasons that aren’t completely clear.

Perhaps the organisers like to tie in the Tour dates with their annual summer holidays.

Alberto Contador and Carlos Sastre, winners from the last two years, will both be there - as of course will be Lance Armstrong, making a much publicised (and much debated) return from retirement. All should add to the excitement.

But wait, is that a storm cloud ahead?

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I’m without a bike this morning - it seems I have been overdoing it and have stretched the chain! Result is I can’t go out for a ride, which always puts me in a bad humour for the day. Not that I’m any good you understand, I can’t imagine how I stretched a chain, but I do like to stretch my legs, and I can’t abide walking or jogging

I did look pretty impressive cycling home yesterday though - even if I do say so myself. There was a howling gale helping me along and I was doing about 40kmh without too much effort, despite the absence of most of my gears.

One curious aspect of travelling around France is that some regions seem to attract hundreds of cyclists, and it only takes the slightest excuse for all the locals don their lycra, whereas in other regions cyclists are practically an endangered species.

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This week Mrs B is away stamping her carbon footprint on the gardens of Normandy so I have the sheer joy of a week at home alone with the girls (aged 15 and 13). The end of the school year is always a busy time, with numerous exhibitions, spectacles and events to, errr, enjoy, and to escort the children to. This year is no different.

The other big thing about the end of the school year is the driving around. I have spent more or less the whole of the last few days ferrying children (our own and other peoples) to and from one event after another. My favourite was picking up daughter 1 in one town at just before 1.00am just to take her to another place equally far from where we live so she could party for a couple more hours.

‘Can we take this form to lycée?’ (50 km round trip); ”Can we pick up ….. on the way?’ (20 km round trip); ‘Can you pick me up from the cinema at midnight?’ (30 km round trip). The list is long, perhaps endless.

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Around our property we have quite a lot of land, including about a hectare of woodland and another hectare of field that we are turning back to woodland - partly for the environment and partly because we like trees. One thing that we also briefly considered was planting a tree for each family that stay in our rental properties, in a small effort to overcome the environmental impact of people getting here.

Mrs B told me that if we planted trees in the summer they would be dead by autumn through lack of water, so my plan to have trees with little labels saying which family they represented got cancelled before it started, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately I had to agree that people returning each year to visit their very own row of dead trees might not be very impressed by our efforts.

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It was a fine sunny day last week and I was approaching Saint-Montan, a quaint medieval village, just before lunchtime. I had big plans to explore the little village and then find somewhere for eat. I was in good spirits.

The car park - about the size for 30 cars I suppose - was completely full so I carried on through the village to find somewhere else to park. Nowhere turned up, but after a good few minutes stuck in a traffic jam along with lots of other hopelessly confused tourists I noticed a small road leading off from the blockage and signed as parking.

Off I went, very pleased with myself that I has spotted the sign hidden behind a lorry.

Unfortunately the parking was closed for a petanque contest, and there was no space to turn around, so I enthusiastically carried on along the track I was on. I don’t know if you have ever driven five kilometres on a rutted track on a steep hill side, with no possibility of passing a car coming in the opposite direction, while the dream of a nice lunch fades away, but it doesn’t put you in the best of moods.

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Well, one day left to decide who to vote for in the European elections - and frankly I haven’t the first idea. So if you’re here looking for guidance you’re likely to be disappointed. because that’s what I’m looking for as well.

When I was young and angry I always knew exactly who to vote for. I was a Labour supporter when I was a student, in between attending CND marches and carrying banners stating ‘Don’t vote - it encourages them’.

Then I started earning money, Michael Foot took charge of the Labour party, and I became a staunch Conservative, if never quite a Thatcherite.

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Those of you who need to keep in touch with your office or access your emails while you travel probably keep an eye out for hotels that have wifi (internet) access when you are planning your trip.  Note to hotel owners in France: for me, and many others, this internet access is actually quite important.

I’ve just got back from a few days travelling across the south of France, where three out of four hotels failed to provide the promised internet access, so I thought I’d write a quick guide to what hotels mean when they say they have internet access, since there is often a difference between what they say and what they actually provide

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Brittany travel bulletin!!

Here’s one to watch out for if you are in the Morbihan region of Brittany this summer - the 18th exhibition of ‘Art in the Chapels’. I’m a big fan of these large scale installation art events and might well try and get up there myself in September, weather and time permitting.

In their own words:

“Every summer for the last 18 years, L’art dans les chapelles has invited artists (painters, sculptors and plastic artists) to create a dialog with a patrimony of exceptional richness and diversity - the local chapels of Brittany.

Most of these chapels date back to the 15th and 16th centuries and stretch along the Blavet valley, in the region of Pontivy, in the Morbihan part of Brittany. Each artist temporarily takes possession of a chapel.

In 2008 the English artist and guest of honour David Tremlett created a Wall Drawing for one of the chapels, while for 2009 the guest of honour is the artist Vladimir Skoda.”

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After four days huddled in the dark I have finally emerged from the gloom - only to find it’s pretty gloomy outside as well, so I guess I didn’t miss much. I’ve been working on our company accounts.

Sensible people running a company would keep on-going accounts and records, so that when the accountant calls to say ‘we need your information next week’ they can calmly pull it from a drawer and drop it off at the accountants office the same day.

Unfortunately we are not sensible, or well-organised, and after calmly telling the accountant I’d ‘drop them off in a couple of days’ I thought I’d better make a start. We are 11 months into our companies financial year so it isn’t very practical to put it off much longer.

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It is true that French farmers aren’t always held in the highest regard, especially by people in countries such as the UK that don’t benefit from the large farming subsidies that France receives. But for the farmers themselves life isn’t always sunshine and champagne.

I was talking to a local farmer who predominantly makes his living from dairy cows, and he was explaining some of the challenges to me. Not surprisingly these stem from officialdom rather than troubles with cows.

The price that a farmer will receive for each litre of milk is set by bureaucrats in Brussels each year. Last year the price rose dramatically, and this year it has been cut by around 50%. Brussels play with prices like this in order to encourage or deter farmers from producing milk - if they want more milk to be produced they will raise the price, and vice versa.

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We moved here in November 2001 and it was only in spring 2003, after we had lived here for more than a year, that our house was more or less pleasant to live in and I had time to turn my thoughts to the concrete shed that stood a few yards away. The shed housed an old wood-burning boiler (not working) and lots of old rubbish, and was clad on the outside with cement and chicken huts and on the inside with various old boards and doors.

It seemed to offer little in the way of redeeming features, so I set to with a chainsaw and a pneumatic hammer, starting off by removing the chicken sheds.

Demolition work being a great pleasure, I set to happily - and took about two days to get to the main structure of the building. As it turned out the first wall exposed was a traditional colombage (half-timbered) wall. As more of the recent additions were removed we rapidly realised there was much more to the building than we had thought.

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Given the recent demise of the ‘French News’ newspaper, it might seem bold, even reckless, to launch a new newspaper targeted at the same audience just three months later, but that’s exactly what some brave souls are doing with ‘The French Paper’.

I’m impressed! Personally I often struggle to think of a couple of blog entries a week, so the thought of producing enough information to fill a monthly newspaper gives me the colly-wobbles.

Quoting from their blurb:

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We have all seen menus in French restaurants that have been translated poorly into English, where perfectly delicious dishes suddenly become unappealing, completely uninteresting, or exotically rude sounding in the English version offered up for tourists.

A quick search for examples found ’savage rabbit’, ‘varied crudenesses’, ‘raped carrot’, ‘prickly tomato sauce’, and ‘jumped lamb’.  Tempting, I’ll take the lot.

This issue was brought to mind this morning because I noticed that the t-shirt my daughter is wearing today reads:

‘The life is too short…to be a bad mood’

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As the summer approaches I’ve been out and about snipping, pruning and shearing - always under the watchful eye of Mrs B (head gardener).

She lives in fear whenever I use the strimmer or tractor-mower, secure in the knowledge that another small bush or tree is about to be thrown to the ground and chopped into thousands of small pieces.

Mostly she is right, and if I didn’t work without pay I would be sacked immediately.

It’s the same with the children. One of them was coaxed into pulling out some weeds in exchange for a fistful of euros but then worked in mortal fear about which ‘weeds’ they were allowed to remove.

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