House Numbers
The village council
voted some three or four years ago to introduce house numbers to the
village. To me it seemed a simple job of going along each road
sticking numbers in sequence (preferably) on each house; but what do
I know? For a start, many of the roads just outside the village
didn't have names or, at least, signposted names, and the actual name
of the road could be a subject of dispute. Anyway, over the past
year road names have been officially decided and duly posted.
The job of assigning
numbers, so I heard, had been goven by the previous council (some 3-4
years ago) to Jean Francois Colonnat, the acknowledged authority on
the village's history. I don't yet know whether he discovered the
problem of unnamed roads or whether he had a role in giving them
names or whether he just threw his hands up in despair. It was a
fair bet that any conclusions Jean Francois came to would be
historically impeccable but also that the job wasn't going to be done
very quickly. So, as the years passed I just assumed that probably
something would happen sometime but I wasn't holding my breath;
anyway, the village seemed to be doing quite well without house
numbers. But last week it happened, in the rue du Faubourg at least,
and no doubt house numbers are sprouting everywhere all over the
village. My only worry is official documents, like tax returns.
Because the tax authorities had got my address wrong and this year I
decided to correct it, I had theoretically (only way to correct the
address) to move from the Route de Buis (it passes by the end of my
road) to the rue du Faubourg, where I have always been. I have
always lived there at Les Bleus so the question is this. Now that I
am officially number 39, am I going to have to move (theoretically)
from Les Bleus to number 39? And I thought house numbring was
straightforward!
When the council
people came to screw the new number to my wall I said that was OK as
long as the number wasn't 13. They didn't understand. It seems that
that number has the opposite connotations in France to those it has
in the UK. In France 13 is lucky.
Rémuzat
I've
just returned from a boules tournament in Rémuzat.
There was a feeling around that the national championships (for
wrinklies) were becoming too
serious and that the camaraderie and general
bonhomie that had been a
part
of them was being lost. As a result, Mollans, Sarrians and Beaume de
Venise decided not to go this year but to hold their own tournament
instead, in Rémuzat.
In fact, players from Carpentras and the Var also came along.
Despite
Rémuzat
being only an hour's drive, some 40kms, from Mollans I hadn't been
there before. It lies in the narrow valley where the Aygues river
has carved a channel through the foothills of the Alps. You soon
realise you are in different territory as grape vines give out
immediately above Nyons, then olive groves also peter out and the
road clings to the side of steep
escarpments or goes
through tunnels beneath the foothills.
The steeper roofs around Rémuzat
itself tell you this is deep snow country. Vultures were
reintroduced here several years ago and they and eagles were to
be seen high in the air
in abundance during the day.
It
was decided to hold the tournament along the lines of the
free-for-all boules days we have in Mollans, each player changing
parners after each match and the partnerhips being drawn at random
out of a hat. Scores are accumulated for each player rather than
teams, since there are no set teams, and there is obviously a
significant
element
of chance according to
whom you are drawn with and against. Since everybody played six
matches the element of luck was supposed to even out over the
tournament. Anyway, I managed to get the fifth highest score out of
44 which was more than enough to satisfy my ego, even without the
very good bottle of Vacqueras that came with it.
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