More on this picture of Florida’s state flower in a moment. First a few general comments about life here in France this week, particularly the way it revolves around the village hall.
Autumn must be on its way, because the signs for ‘night markets’ (places were villagers and tourists eat together in a town centre, while music plays and people dance) have been replaced by signs for Loto – bingo to you and me – with typical prizes being a live duck or half a pig. Personally I have never played, but Loto events are the big thing around here in the winter, and people travel for miles to spend the evening in the cold village hall trying to win things that the rest of us wouldn’t know what to do with.
Something else important happens in the village hall – the meetings of the mayor with his adjuncts and deputies, to discuss the pressing problems in the commune, such as planning permissions to be granted.
Many of the small towns around here have a little explosion of new-build houses around them – typically bungalows, not dissimilar to those that were so popular in the UK in the 1970′s. Not unattractive but they don’t always enhance the village or the countryside.
The same thing has also happened in other countries of course, because people everywhere like to live in warm, cosy, cheap, new houses rather than old, drafty, expensive houses.
I asked somebody how their own village had managed to avoid having one of these building developments. “We haven’t approved the planning strategy for the village” he told me – all communes have to agree which parts of the village can have new buildings on them – so if anyone asks for permission to build a new house we tell them that it can’t be approved until the planning strategy has been finalised.
It took me a moment to catch on, but this failure to agree IS their planning strategy. If they don’t agree on a ‘new-build’ plan, then new properties can’t be built, and they don’t want new-build homes. So presumably every few months they have a meeting, wink and nod at each other, and come up with a pretext for an objection to any plan put forward, and delay the plan being finalised for a few more months. It’s good to hear of French bureaucracy working for the common good!
One of the other major events in the village hall is the weekly dance, where the ‘more mature’ element of the community get together for a quick turn on the dance floor. Or rather a slow-turn. Since no-one here dies before they are about 110 – all that fresh air and organic produce has its benefits – I understand that the dancing tends to be a bit on the slow side but a good time is had by all.
The other major events in the village hall are the commune meals – once or twice a year the entire commune gets invited to spend the evening together, with excesses of food and drink laid on by the commune. This is a great idea! Old and young alike all mingle happily, and it works wonders for community spirit.
Since community spirit is just a long-lost memory in many places, why don’t you suggest that your local town does the same…it is actually possible for that gang of youth who hang around on street corners to get on and have a nice chat with the elderly folk from the retirement home, hard as you may find it to believe.
Enough of the village hall, why the picture of the Florida flower? My daughter accused me of not having a ‘proper blog’ because ‘you don’t have pictures of the family and Orlando Bloom on your blog’. These apparently being the key requirements of a successful blog among 12 year olds. So the Florida state flower is my own little effort to have an Orlando Bloom on the blog.
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