Winter
Winter is now here and Christmas is coming. The evenings have been gradually getting colder, although nothing like to the extent they can if they put their minds to it, and the weather has become more mixed. Today was fine again, with the temperature this evening only slightly below zero. The two previous days however were overcast and yesterday brought a lot of rain and high winds. The ground needed the rain so it was not unwelcome. Driving down the Ouvèze valley to Buis this morning, however, I noticed that most of the colour has gone from the hills, not surprisingly as the hills behind Buis were blanketed with snow down to about 1000ft. And the high wind has stripped most of the remaining leaves from the trees and vines. There were also layers of cloud down to not much more than 500ft. Even so, the scenery in that clothing still has a great deal of charm; it certainly beats the view from my former house in Reading.
Christmas is coming because the Christmas lights have been put up in the village. This involves a day in which one street after another becomes blocked off (and each time blocks off access to half the village) because a big chair-lift truck is needed to put them up. However, the village has the good taste to put up lights in Chelsea blue and white colours, which proves I was right to come here.
Life In General
The winter routine has taken on its habitual form. I've been to eat with Daniel and Steve and Jo, they and Mana have been to eat with me. I've been to see two films, one very good and one definitely missable. The Ruban Blanc (a German film whose German title I don't know) was a kind of social study of the repressive social scene in an extremely puritan Germany before the first world war and was very much worth seeing. The other, a Japanese film with the title Une Jeune Fille à La Derive, was supposed to be a landmark in Japanese cinema and may be but didn't seem worth the time. An Iranian film, A Propos d'Elly, promises to be good and I shall see it later this week or early next week. With the variety of films on offer I usually have little idea from the cinema programmes, which have promotional descriptions of course, as to whether a film is worth seeing (or to my taste) or not so I use the imdb.com database to check the films out before deciding whether to go or not.
I've commented previously on French acceptance of sub-titles allowing a far wider range of films to be shown than is the case in the UK. Another factor is that French cinemas are subsidised (at the moment). UK towns similar to Buis, Nyons and even Vaison with its “massive” 6000 population would never be able to support a cinema and the same would be true here without subsidy. To have three within easy driving distance is, in a sense, a luxury, but is an enormous boon in the winter. For as long as that lasts.......The universally derided Sarkozy has removed the wealth tax on companies that helped pay for such luxuries and already the cinema in Buis is asking for volunteers of all sorts (even projectionists) to help the cinema stay afloat. You can argue whether companies should have such an imposition placed on them but you can also ask what has been done in the UK to help keep village communities alive.
The printers have produced the proof of the village guided tour brochure I did the translation for and it looks good, running to some 40 A5 pages. Daniel showed it to me briefly this evening at the pizza get-together and I immediately spotted one mistake I made. Hopefully there won't be too many more; the problem is that as my French becomes more fluent so my English becomes less so. I'll have to practise over Christmas! A new library, now fancily called a “mediatech” (but do you know of any in English villages?), is being opened in the village in January and the brochure is destined to be unveiled at the same time so we should be ready. I shall be interested to be able to get my hands on the village archives, which have been difficult to access previously but will be freely available in the new mediatech. That will give me the incentive to really lobby for a good website for the village in place of the feeble excuse for one which we now have.
lundi 30 novembre 2009
lundi 16 novembre 2009
More On Autumn
Autumn Summary
Signs of winter came and then receded, so it's definitely still autumn. People are sitting out late into the evening on the cafe terraces, admittedly with pullovers and jackets on, but sitting out in comfort. And I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirtsleeves.
A week ago there was snow down to about 2000ft. The surrounding hills had snow towards the top and Mt Ventoux had taken on its familiar Christmas cake look, with snow down to the Mt Serein ski station. A small puff of cloud on the summit gave it an almost dream-like quality, viewed from below. In the middle of the wintery spell cloud was clinging halfway down the hills between here and Buis. The “winter” lasted only 2-3 days however and after the past few days of sunshine have totally eliminated the snow, even on the summit of Mt Ventoux.
Moreover, the brief wintery spell wasn't enough to knock the leaves off many trees and so the autumn leaves colour show goes on. The show seems even to have improved recently with more red showing up amongst the yellow, orange and brown. Tomorrow I plan to go up to Le Crestet, which provides a high-level view of the Ouvèze and Toulourenc valleys and see if I can take a decent photo from there.
Garden
The gaura and gallardias at the back have continued blooming and been joined by a blaze of chrysanthemums. These are ones I bought last year, on sale in all the garden centres at this time of the year, which failed miserably in the pots on my balcony and survived the winter. So I dumped them in the back garden last spring, since when they have gone from strength to strength.
I've also started planting the blue pansies in my pots in the front, which were so enjoyed by my neighbours last year. I've managed to vacate two of the bigger pots to be planted up and a third is awaiting the final demise of French marigolds which show no sign of stopping blooming at the moment.
Shades of Jean de Florette
At a recent gathering I got talking to Paul, an Englishman who has been out here for 30 years or more. We got onto the topic of changing attitudes and he recounted how a Parisian couple bought a house and some land overlooking the house we were visiting. They apparently intended to start a small market-garden holding and were drilling for water in various places over their land. They never found any and eventually sold up and moved on. The people they sold to also wanted to find water and asked a neighbour if he knew where it could be found. He did and they found it. When Paul asked the neighbour why he hadn't pointed this out to their predecessors, who could clearly be seen drilling earlier, and he replied: “They never asked me”. All this was a propos of discussion about how and whether people were welcoming or accepting or not and our respective experiences with other nationalities, French, English, Spanish and Italian. Whatever, it's a changing world.
Signs of winter came and then receded, so it's definitely still autumn. People are sitting out late into the evening on the cafe terraces, admittedly with pullovers and jackets on, but sitting out in comfort. And I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirtsleeves.
A week ago there was snow down to about 2000ft. The surrounding hills had snow towards the top and Mt Ventoux had taken on its familiar Christmas cake look, with snow down to the Mt Serein ski station. A small puff of cloud on the summit gave it an almost dream-like quality, viewed from below. In the middle of the wintery spell cloud was clinging halfway down the hills between here and Buis. The “winter” lasted only 2-3 days however and after the past few days of sunshine have totally eliminated the snow, even on the summit of Mt Ventoux.
Moreover, the brief wintery spell wasn't enough to knock the leaves off many trees and so the autumn leaves colour show goes on. The show seems even to have improved recently with more red showing up amongst the yellow, orange and brown. Tomorrow I plan to go up to Le Crestet, which provides a high-level view of the Ouvèze and Toulourenc valleys and see if I can take a decent photo from there.
Garden
The gaura and gallardias at the back have continued blooming and been joined by a blaze of chrysanthemums. These are ones I bought last year, on sale in all the garden centres at this time of the year, which failed miserably in the pots on my balcony and survived the winter. So I dumped them in the back garden last spring, since when they have gone from strength to strength.
I've also started planting the blue pansies in my pots in the front, which were so enjoyed by my neighbours last year. I've managed to vacate two of the bigger pots to be planted up and a third is awaiting the final demise of French marigolds which show no sign of stopping blooming at the moment.
Shades of Jean de Florette
At a recent gathering I got talking to Paul, an Englishman who has been out here for 30 years or more. We got onto the topic of changing attitudes and he recounted how a Parisian couple bought a house and some land overlooking the house we were visiting. They apparently intended to start a small market-garden holding and were drilling for water in various places over their land. They never found any and eventually sold up and moved on. The people they sold to also wanted to find water and asked a neighbour if he knew where it could be found. He did and they found it. When Paul asked the neighbour why he hadn't pointed this out to their predecessors, who could clearly be seen drilling earlier, and he replied: “They never asked me”. All this was a propos of discussion about how and whether people were welcoming or accepting or not and our respective experiences with other nationalities, French, English, Spanish and Italian. Whatever, it's a changing world.
lundi 2 novembre 2009
Autumn Smells And Recollections
Autumn Smells
One of the things that most reminds me that it is now autumn is the smell of garden refuse burning: dead leaves, twigs, branches, etc, providing swirls of smoke that perfume the air. The boules court is so covered in leaves that we have trouble seeing the cochonnet when it lands and generally have to clear the leaves away from it so that we can see to point. Sylver, a boules regular, spends some time sweeping up the leaves but last night's high wind left a lot to do.
Sylver is a village character, 82 years old and with a limited brain capacity not helped by his age. He can be seen wandering around the village most days and likes to do odd jobs that help, like sweeping the boules court, making piles of leaves and burning them. Only recently, Daniel told me that his father was a foundling from Marseilles, like Sylver, but with much better luck. Both were part of the programme to find homes for foundlings in Marseilles at the beginning of last century in the Drome/Ardèche areas. Daniel's father, though, was placed with a family without children who treated him as their son and inheritor. Sylver, by contrast, was placed with a family that exploited him as an unpaid servant. Daniel says that, for that reason, he always has a soft spot for Sylver; the difference between his circumstances and Sylver's were a matter of chance.
Added to the smell of burning leaves here is the smell of wood smoke, coming from a number of chimneys and the result of a local liking for wood stoves. Every other household seems to have one. I'm not sure what the French have in the way of a Clean Air Act but it clearly doesn't apply to wood stoves or garden bonfires. The smell of wood smoke always reminds me of Herat in Afghanistan. I remember arriving there from the Iran border and wandering round the main square in the evening to be confronted by numerous stalls cooking bread and various dishes all on wood fires. The air was grey/purple with smoke and the smell of wood burning everywhere.
Nostalgia
Autumn is also often a nostalgic time for me and this evening was a prime example. At the pizza evening in the Bar du Pont, Jacques, the bar owner had set the TV for a programme that showed Petula Clark reminiscing about the 1960s, which was about the time virtually all the usual crowd were in their teens or early twenties. So we had Petula Clark herself singing, as well as the English Beatles and Rolling Stones and the French Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan and Françoise Hardy, and the film scene of the time represented by François Truffaut, Grigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. Plus of course the previous generation who were still in full swing such as Edith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. And fashion was represented by the Mini car, mini-skirt and Paco Rabanne.
It all brought back to me what an inventive era that was. The French “nouvelle vague” films were swiftly followed by the English kitchen-sink dramas. I don't think the French quite made it on the music front, compared to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and others, but Johnny Halliday was certainly something something new for them. And they added their own gift for chic to the English mini-skirt. I remember Petula Clark as a rather pure, slightly gauche, English rose who became much more seductive and wider in range after marrying her French husband. And mini-skirts on French girls always seemed to me at the time overtly the same as those on English girls but somehow less blatant and more provocative.
“Those were the days, my friend..........”
One of the things that most reminds me that it is now autumn is the smell of garden refuse burning: dead leaves, twigs, branches, etc, providing swirls of smoke that perfume the air. The boules court is so covered in leaves that we have trouble seeing the cochonnet when it lands and generally have to clear the leaves away from it so that we can see to point. Sylver, a boules regular, spends some time sweeping up the leaves but last night's high wind left a lot to do.
Sylver is a village character, 82 years old and with a limited brain capacity not helped by his age. He can be seen wandering around the village most days and likes to do odd jobs that help, like sweeping the boules court, making piles of leaves and burning them. Only recently, Daniel told me that his father was a foundling from Marseilles, like Sylver, but with much better luck. Both were part of the programme to find homes for foundlings in Marseilles at the beginning of last century in the Drome/Ardèche areas. Daniel's father, though, was placed with a family without children who treated him as their son and inheritor. Sylver, by contrast, was placed with a family that exploited him as an unpaid servant. Daniel says that, for that reason, he always has a soft spot for Sylver; the difference between his circumstances and Sylver's were a matter of chance.
Added to the smell of burning leaves here is the smell of wood smoke, coming from a number of chimneys and the result of a local liking for wood stoves. Every other household seems to have one. I'm not sure what the French have in the way of a Clean Air Act but it clearly doesn't apply to wood stoves or garden bonfires. The smell of wood smoke always reminds me of Herat in Afghanistan. I remember arriving there from the Iran border and wandering round the main square in the evening to be confronted by numerous stalls cooking bread and various dishes all on wood fires. The air was grey/purple with smoke and the smell of wood burning everywhere.
Nostalgia
Autumn is also often a nostalgic time for me and this evening was a prime example. At the pizza evening in the Bar du Pont, Jacques, the bar owner had set the TV for a programme that showed Petula Clark reminiscing about the 1960s, which was about the time virtually all the usual crowd were in their teens or early twenties. So we had Petula Clark herself singing, as well as the English Beatles and Rolling Stones and the French Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan and Françoise Hardy, and the film scene of the time represented by François Truffaut, Grigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. Plus of course the previous generation who were still in full swing such as Edith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. And fashion was represented by the Mini car, mini-skirt and Paco Rabanne.
It all brought back to me what an inventive era that was. The French “nouvelle vague” films were swiftly followed by the English kitchen-sink dramas. I don't think the French quite made it on the music front, compared to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and others, but Johnny Halliday was certainly something something new for them. And they added their own gift for chic to the English mini-skirt. I remember Petula Clark as a rather pure, slightly gauche, English rose who became much more seductive and wider in range after marrying her French husband. And mini-skirts on French girls always seemed to me at the time overtly the same as those on English girls but somehow less blatant and more provocative.
“Those were the days, my friend..........”
dimanche 1 novembre 2009
Autumn And The Cinema
Autumn
There's a poem by some French poet I can't recall about autumn leaves, put to music and sung by Juliette Gréco, that just about gets the mood here now. The extended warmish weather has meant the trees and vines have kept their leaves longer than usual and all are now putting on a great autumn display: yellow, orange, red through to brown. And it's everywhere. Opposite the front of my house Mt Bluye is full of cover and the back road to Vaison through St Marcellin, which goes quite high up, gives some beautiful panoramic views.
I hadn't expected as much. There are a lot of fir and pine trees here and the truffle oak which also abound don't turn brown in autumn (they do later on). However, the vines can put on a display and this year the fruit trees haven't lost their leaves yet (plus the poplars, lime and plane trees). After a few years of wandering around arboreta in England and wondering at Japanese acers I decided that these were a bit too showy. A group of them can look quite startling but you never get enough to make a broad panorama; for that you have to rely on the native trees and the natives here this year are doing great.
Cinema
Autumn is also the time to start scrutinising the cinema programmes. I went to see Fish Tank, which I liked, then Le Syndrome du Titanic which was a worthy documentary on the state of the world's resources but a bit too worthy and obvious. Despite some great photography I fell asleep in places. Then I saw Partir, which disappointed me. Despite good acting from Kristin Scott Thomas et al, and good reports on the IMDB database, I felt the plot lacked something and didn't feel much in sympathy with any of the characters except perhaps the kids, whom I don't think were supposed to figure much in the overall film. Maybe that is just me (and the wrong film for me). Next week it's off to see Le ruban Blanc
There's a poem by some French poet I can't recall about autumn leaves, put to music and sung by Juliette Gréco, that just about gets the mood here now. The extended warmish weather has meant the trees and vines have kept their leaves longer than usual and all are now putting on a great autumn display: yellow, orange, red through to brown. And it's everywhere. Opposite the front of my house Mt Bluye is full of cover and the back road to Vaison through St Marcellin, which goes quite high up, gives some beautiful panoramic views.
I hadn't expected as much. There are a lot of fir and pine trees here and the truffle oak which also abound don't turn brown in autumn (they do later on). However, the vines can put on a display and this year the fruit trees haven't lost their leaves yet (plus the poplars, lime and plane trees). After a few years of wandering around arboreta in England and wondering at Japanese acers I decided that these were a bit too showy. A group of them can look quite startling but you never get enough to make a broad panorama; for that you have to rely on the native trees and the natives here this year are doing great.
Cinema
Autumn is also the time to start scrutinising the cinema programmes. I went to see Fish Tank, which I liked, then Le Syndrome du Titanic which was a worthy documentary on the state of the world's resources but a bit too worthy and obvious. Despite some great photography I fell asleep in places. Then I saw Partir, which disappointed me. Despite good acting from Kristin Scott Thomas et al, and good reports on the IMDB database, I felt the plot lacked something and didn't feel much in sympathy with any of the characters except perhaps the kids, whom I don't think were supposed to figure much in the overall film. Maybe that is just me (and the wrong film for me). Next week it's off to see Le ruban Blanc
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