Beaujolais Nouveau Etc

Autumn Colour

The defining characteristics of autumn, for me, are what is all around now. The vines have turned colour and so have the deciduous trees, about half the trees in the area: maples, poplars, lime and plane trees. The shades vary from light yellow to dark brown and there's even some red, vines of I don't know which variety. The other major change is the smell of wood smoke, the smoke spiralling lazily from numerous chimneys. It reminds me always of Afghanistan, northern India and Kashmir. The Clean Air Act largely did away with this in England and, anyway, the normal household fuel years ago was coal or coke. Here wood stoves are prevalent and, in this area at any rate, seem to have little affect on air quality. So I can enjoy the smell.

Beaujolais Nouveau

Beaujolais nouveau arrived here on the 15^th, as no doubt to many other places, the big celebration being a two-day junket in Lyon. I know it is traditional to celebrate it but I find it rather strange that an area so proud of its Côtes du Rhone should celebrate a wine from southern Burgundy. I wonder if they do that in Bordeaux, Burgundy's arch rival?

Anyway, Patrique and Valérie at the Bar du Pont took the initiative to arrange a Beaujolais nouveau evening, making tapas to go with the wine. I thought the wine was much better than previous Beaujolais nouveaus I have tasted, with a fuller flavour and longer after-taste. My earlier experiences had convinced me that the tradition was a lot of fuss about nothing. It seems that weather conditions dictated that the wine was long on quality but short on quantity this year, with a harvest 50% below last year's. It used to be said in England that more Beaujolais was drunk there than was produced in Burgundy so that will probably be even more the case this year. One thing I found out that I didn't know was that 60% of the Beaujolais produced is drunk as Beaujolais nouveau. That must be good for the producers' cash flow.

So, I spent an enjoyable evening in the Bar du Pont with Daniel, Claudine and others. Claudine is still annoyed that I agreed to let the Mairie copy my website but I think I can convince her that it frees us to develop it in other interesting ways.

Gégérines

Gégérines are apparently a type of very hard squash that grow locally and are essentially inedible. Inedible to you and me, that is; to the French they are simply a challenge. I seem to remember remarking before that the French could probably make an interesting sauce for cardboard; so it is with gégérines. Claudine has promised me a jar of gégérine jam, a former local speciality, when she has finished making it. Why it is no longer seen around much is no doubt due to its preparation. Apparently the squash has to be pulverised and boiled for a couple of hours four times over before it can be made into jam. To warrant that amount of effort it must taste good.

Of Death And Acceptance

Right Or Wrong ?

The formalities consequent upon my mother's death seem to have gone on for far too long. I now believe they are at an end but not without a final episode which has left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Prior to my mother having state-provided carers she had engaged a lady from a list offered by Age Concern to help her with housework. This engagement continued until her death. The lady did a sterling job and was helpful beyond the strict terms of her engagement. When my mother died I felt that this lady should receive something from my mother's minimal estate and said to her to take £200 from the bank account she was managing for my mother (the account contained only £395). She did this but then claimed I had told her she could have all the money in the account, which I know I did not do (I did not know at the time what bills might be outstanding) and which her subsequent withdrawal of exactly £200 confirmed. As I've said, this lady did a lot for my mother, almost certainly doing extra jobs for which she may not have been paid, so what should I do? I decided that since I had determined that a bequest of £200 was appropriate I was going to stick by that, and did. The result was an unpleasant exchange of emails and a very soured relationship.

Did I do right? On one hand it seemed stupid to argue over a trivial sum which did not matter to me, particularly regarding someone who had effectively befriended my mother. On the other hand, this lady's work is with people who are vulnerable and, if I let this pass, would the same be repeated? Indeed, should I report this “misunderstanding” to Age Concern? I asked myself what my mother would have wished and thought that she probably would have let the lady have the extra money; she wouldn't have wanted what she would have called “bad blood” between her and the lady. However, I stuck by what I knew to be the situation and the £200 bequest. It did, though, leave me with a very unpleasant and unwelcome feeling.

Inheritance

Claudine came round this evening to eat with me and Steve and Jo and the discussion got onto inheritance law. French inheritance law looks at first glance pretty straightforward. Virtually all a deceased's estate has to be left to members of the family and in designated proportions. There appears to be little point in a will so I was surprised, when discussing this with my cleaning lady, that she should comment that it was always best to make a will (which has to be lodged with a notary).

I took the matter up with Claudine. She confirmed that French inheritance law was indeed extremely simple but only in extremely simple cases. That is, for example, if a married person dies who has never been married before and is married to someone who has never been married before and if neither of the couple have any children outside of that marriage. If, however, there has been a divorce somewhere along the line, within the couple or indeed the putative inheritors, or if there are step-children, all hell breaks loose. The previous simple prescriptions for the simple case become Byzantine. The law, as it stands, was simple not encoded to cater for such cases and a will cannot override whatever the law, in any specific non-simple situation, may decide. The result would seem to be a bun-fight for lawyers who will get rich at the expense of putative inheritors. This has convinced me that I need to see a notary soon to sort out what, if anything, I need to do. I don't want to leave my kids with a complex legal situation to resolve in a foreign country and in a foreign language

Acceptance

I have recounted to various friends my interchange with the Mairie over my website, why the Mairie refused my gift of the website but wanted to copy it. There were comments varying from “what do you expect from the Mairie” to surpirse and indignation. I think the Mairie's reaction was to do with acceptance and degrees thereof. I remember Pedro, my roofer, saying to me three years ago, that when he had arrived 28 years earlier from Alsace that, as far as the village was concerned, he might as well have arrived from outer space. At the time, even people who arrived in the village from as nearby as Nyons (20kms) would be regarded as “foreigners”. Time changes perceptions of course but a lot of time is needed to change entrenched ones.

I reckon I'm pretty well accepted in the village now. I remember writing, a couple of years ago, that I felt I was accepted at boules because nobody any longer felt the need to be polite to me; they felt free to swear at me, as they would to anyone else, if I played a couple of bad shots. That has moved on, as my boules playing has improved, to the point where they react with puzzlement if I play badly: what went wrong? I take that as a further degree of acceptance. The villagers who know me even acknowledge, if with some surprise, that an Englishman can cook as well as they can. But there's a limit. Clearly, an Englishman writing about the village in the public domain in French as well as in English was a step too far, for the time being at any rate. The village had to assert itself.

That's fine by me and relations regarding the website are very amicable. They will build their website on the basis of mine and I will develop my site in my own way. The boundaries, for the time being, have been established.

Websites To Trousers And Rocks

Website

The day before yesterday I got a phone call from Frans Oort , whom the Mairie has appointed to help villagers using the PCs in the media centre in the new library. He wanted to discuss my website on the village, it now being in the public domain (www.mon-mollans-sur-ouveze.fr). So I went along to see what he wanted. He said the mayor and councillors were very excited by it; they were amazed at what I had done; it was just the sort of site they wanted.

I said: “Fine, so they can take it over as the official site; I said I would give it to the village if it wanted it”.

“No, no” said Frans, “they have asked me to create a website just like it and I wanted to ask you if I could copy your material; we'll acknowledge it, of course”.

I said: “You can copy what you want but why not just take over the site?”

“The problem”, said Frans, “is that it all has to be approved by the mayor”.

“OK”, I replied, “So let the mayor vet it and just take out what he doesn't want”.

“No”, said Frans, “I have to create a new site and I am not so keen on WordPress for the software; I prefer to use GetSimple. I will do all the updating so that will be fine”.

Clearly, my idea of having several villagers able to maintain the site has gone out of the window, though it does leave hanging the question of what happens if Frans falls under a lorry.

So the village will create a new website, just like mine. I left the meeting assuring Frans I would be willing to help in any way I could but have the feeling that my job is done. I'm not sure whether I hit paranoia, NIH syndrome, xenophobia, more (paid) work for Frans or whatever but I shall continue with my website, worrying less about the practical information that needs to be on a village site and focussing more on what I want to put on it. It sounds crazy to me but it frees me to do what I want.

Trousers

As I was leaving the meeting (several other villagers using computers were in the room), one of them, Geneviève, asked me if I would like to come to lunch the next day. I had had lunch with her a week previously wearing trousers that were slightly too long and she had noticed and said she would fix them for me. I said I would be glad to come to lunch so she called out: “And don't forget to bring your trousers”. Eyebrows raised and giggles all around the room.

Weather

It snowed last Sunday. None of the villagers I know can remember it ever having snowed in October before, although it was only a light covering which had disappeared by the following morning, even from the top of Mont Ventoux. Now, though, Mont Ventoux has a thick white winter coating at the top and that will probably stay until next March or April. I still haven't found it necessary to have any heating in the house apart from in the living room in the evenings but that too will come soon. Winter is definitely approaching.

Crests Of Rock

Geneviève's house has a spectacular view of Mont Ventoux from her dining room. Whilst having lunch with her and admiring the view I noticed a crest of rock rising sharply above the hamlet of Veaux, which lies at the foot of Mont Ventoux. I hadn't noticed it before. This struck me particularly as there is a similar crest above Buis les Baronnies, known locally as the wall of China, and, indeed, a very large one atop a hill that is a local landmark called Les Dentelles de Montmirail. Since the hills around are generally rounded and wooded, these crests of thin, bald, sheer rock stand out noticeably. I'm not enough of a geologist to know whether these are made of a harder rock to withstand the erosion that must have shaped the rounded hills from which they stand out or whether some later seismic event has forced them to the surface (but I would assume the former). Either way I now realise they are a definite feature of the landscape.