Spring Events

Blossom Time
There's been blossom around for almost a month now. The first trees around to come into bloom are the almond and the winter cherry. They are followed by the peach, fruiting cherry, apricot and plum (and apple) and that is now happening. There aren't so many peach trees locally but all the others are adding their blooms and, within a week or so, the whole area will be ablaze with fruit tree blossom.

I've taken a number of photos of acres of fruit trees in the past but never yet got one that really did justice to the scene. The problem seems to be that you need either to be above the trees looking down or in amongst and under them. Otherwise what you get is a thin line of blossom in a much larger scene. I'll be trying again to capture what the (selective) eye sees. It's strange in a way because I have several shots of fields of poppies that really work and that, on the face of it, is a similar challenge. It probably needs someone much more adept at photography than me to resolve the problem.

Village Events
The Bar du Pont has duly changed hands and the seemingly perennial Jacques and Monique have been replaced by new owners. The ten days the bar was closed were put to good effect as the beer barrels and freezer have now disappeared from view, resulting in much more space in the bar which has been welcome for the last two crowded pizza evenings. Also, a redecoration job has made the bar a lot lighter and a big new TV screen (ready for the World Cup?) and a subscription to Eurosport have added to the new image. And the new owners have been going out of their way to be welcoming.

The change of ownership of the hairdressers doesn't happen until next Saturday (apéro in the Salle de Fêtes that evening) but the library (sorry, médiathèque) was duly officially opened the Saturday before last. This needs some explaining unless you are used to municipal cock-ups.

The inauguration itself was uneventful in the extreme, in that people went into the library and and wandered around it and then were asked to go outside for the official opening and cutting of the ribbon to allow entry. What ensued was some 90 minutes of every conceivable person involved at local, departmental and regional level giving speeches as a result of which I understood what a book was and that the Internet was important too. By the end it was starting to rain and people were disappearing so I think I twigged the purpose of all this. There was a free apéro offered after the speeches and the length of the speeches ensured that few enough people hung on to fit within the free apéro budget.

Budget was certainly a pertinent point. The new building is nothing less than magnificent and apparently cost around 700,000 euros, financed at various levels in the local government hierarchy. It was mentioned during the speeches that alternative projects considered included the possibility of a covered boulodrome, so I'm not sure they got their priorities right; but I suppose that is arguable. However.............there is a remarkable lack of book shelves and books in the library; strange, for a library. Also, the impeccably furnished multimedia room lacks any computers. It appears the budget didn't stretch to such lesser items. These will follow......? It seems crazy but I suspect that, within a year or maybe a year and a bit, there will be a good library here. One thing I've learned here is to trust evolution. It takes time to get things right but they eventually seem to happen. It reminds me rather of a (sarcastic) cartoon that was pinned up in an office I worked in which showed two elephants mating and had the caption: around here things happen at a high level, involve a lot of noise and trumpeting and it takes two years to get a result. There's a follow-on project to put up a good website for the village (with me as official English translator) so we shall see......

Following on from the opening of the library there was a Saturday morning exhibition for the “writers of Mollans”. I duly attended with the (obsolete) computer books I have written and a selection from the hundreds of press articles I have kept. The principal interest seemed to be in the photos of computers in the first book I wrote, machines much less powerful than the modern PC and that would easily have taken up most of the space in the new library building. For anyone unfamiliar with the computing scene in the early 1960s (only 50 years ago), the machines appear antediluvian. Some visitors also tried out their English on my press articles and commented (variously) on the associated photos of me in earlier years. The other writers had mostly written autobiographical accounts of their lives in and around Mollans, some of them very interesting.

Translating Websites
I commented previously on translating the Chateau du Cros website and noticed recently that they had not incorporated my translation. A quick query produced the response that, as a result of being in dispute with the culprits of the original translation, they were having to create a completely new website. Hence the delay.

In the meantime, friend Michèle has managed to incorporate my translation of her gîte website (www.lariaille.com) via her son (an IT worker) and is delighted. So that's one good job done. And I'm now out of Viognier wine and so will have to go to the Rieu Frais vineyard to get some more and, while there, see if they have used my translation of their brochure. Could be worth a discount or a bottle or two more...........................