The Force Be With You

The Force Be With You

This evening was the first pizza evening after the year-end holidays and so there was lots of well-wishing for the new year to be done as well as the inevitable “galette des rois”, in both versions, to be eaten. I know I described this new year cake a year ago so I won't do so again. Also, Patrick retired from his job as a physiotherapist at the turn of the year and that was feted with a glass of marc de Chateauneuf de Pape, about the best marc there is. A good evening and it got me thinking about what I would really like to wish people I know and like for the new year. And it is.........”let the force be with you”.

Crazy as it may seem, I think the old Star Wars film touched on a perhaps universal nerve when it came up with that phrase. Whoever wrote that script and, indeed, embedded the idea deeply in the plot, must have experienced what I am about to try to describe. In fact; so must a great many people if the idea is as universal as I suspect.

There have been three separate manifestations of this in my life: sport, writing and personal relationships. I hope I can describe these so that others can relate the same phenomenon to activities and events in their own lives.

The first and perhaps most trivial (but still important) manifestation has been in my very mediocre career in sports of all kinds: specifically, in football, tennis, darts and boules, in all of which I've played for teams at a very minor level. There have been periods, lasting from some 30 minutes to an hour or two, when I played more or less to perfection. I absolutely knew, when I made a shot, that it was going to go exactly where I wanted it to. These periods of perfection never lasted very long and were not repeatable over days; the next day I might play appallingly. However, they were magic when they happened and, for me, unexplainable. Perhaps a period of perfect body and brain coordination? Or perhaps the force was with me. I'm sure that every other sports player, whatever the sport, must have experienced something similar.

The same thing has occurred to me in writing, which has been a major occupation during my life. Sometimes, writing an article of even a few hundred words has been a real labour; at other times, articles of even several thousand words have flowed from my keyboard or pen without a moment's hesitation and barely needed re-reading, except perhaps to add a comma or eliminate a keying mistake. As Nehru said at Gandhi's funeral, you have to find the words. Yet I've never really attempted to write anything I didn't know I could. Sometimes, it seems, it was just that the force was with me.

More importantly still, the same phenomenon occurred very occasionally with personal relationships. In particular I remember a French girlfriend whom I knew when I was 19 and contacted again when I came to France. Once contact had been established, we talked with a degree of intimacy that seemed at once most natural and at the same time incredible given the intervening 50 years. I have felt this same degree of intimacy, in whatever form, become immediate and almost tangible very few times and with very few people in my life but on each occasion so evidently so on both sides that something powerful had to be at work. The force?

Yet again, with my children when they were very young, I remember meeting them again after as little as a week's absence when the reconnection was clearly overwhelmingly emotional for them and so also for me. They blushed, wouldn't look at me at first as though fearing I was just an apparition and then clung to me so tightly that I couldn't release their grip. The force again?

Maybe all these phenomena are not connected as I suppose. Maybe the personal connections are different from those in work or sport. But, whatever is at play, those moments of magic are what I would most like to wish my friends for the new year.

A Happy New Year?

Happy New Year?

For anyone who writes this is the time to wish « all our readers » a happy new year. And so I do. Incidentally, in Scotland, which seems to have laid the principal marketing claim to be the prime usher-in of the new year, it is deemed unlucky to wish anyone a happy new year before the new year actually arrives ; I'm safe on that count. So my wish is a good wish although one that will inevitably face the test of reality. Predictions aren't my forte but a reality check could be on the cards.

I think the major concerns for the new year have to be economic. Perhaps less for people of my age, who have had the benefit of several decades of general economic growth, and more for younger generations, particularly for our children, for those of us who have them. For these latter, the outlook has to be, at best, challenging. From some 15 years ago it became clear that education and health would have to be paid for privately, at least to a significant extent. That is, of course, in countries that had been accustomed to their being either free or highly subsidised. So well and good but private payment assumes private economic well-being. For most western developed countries, this assumption will be false, certainly for next year and probably for several years hence.

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In France the situation is much as elsewhere in Europe. Unemployment is high, salaries static and inflation above target, with job cuts forecast. President Hollande's trumpeted wealth tax has just been judged unconstitutional by France's highest court. The politicos will amend the tax rules to get round that but the tax will do nothing for the economy even if it sends out generally popular signals.

Life in the village is unlikely to be affected very much. The influx of “foreigners” from anywhere north of Lyon continues and so therefore does the house renovation work that sustains most of the local artisans. There are also several instances locally of new roundabouts, road junctions and road bend eliminations which, although mostly unnecessary, will provide more work. And local agriculture is as ever protected by the Common Agriculture Policy.

Steve, Jo, Edward (Marijke's husband) and Marijke came round for drinks early on new year's eve and we had a discussion on coffee-making, Edward being a designer for Philips' kitchen domestic appliance group. I learned quite a bit from the discussion which I shall try to put into practice. Edward asked me is I had considered taking French nationality, for which I am now eligible. My reply was that I would if the UK left the EU, a possibility that I have never seriously considered before. However, Edward and I agreed that the objectives of the principal EU members were political rapprochement whilst the UK objective was the common market. And Edward and I agreed also that the common market was never going to happen. So, why is the UK in the EU? That question no longer seems to be blue sky in the UK but one that can seriously be asked. Maybe the coming year, and debates on the EU budget, will clarify the point.

At least the weather for the past two days has been brilliant: bright, sunny and with temperatures approaching the 20 degree mark. Long may that continue.

Another Christmas

Another Christmas

This Christmas will be the first I've spent in France but, apart from the absence of my mother and the ritual lunch-time visit to the pub, probably not that different to other recent Christmases. The French celebrate Christmas very much as we do in the UK, with the focus on family and children.

Two differences are the absence of the ubiquitous turkey in England and the lack of Christmas cards. There doesn't seem to be a standard main course meal here although, if one is more common than others, it would probably be duck; I've no idea if that is local to the south of France or more widespread. And foie gras and smoked salmon seem to feature very commonly as first courses, as also do oysters. I noticed in the supermarkets the sudden appearance of carp, which suggests to me the existence of a sizeable Polish population in the area. In Polish households no one can take a bath for a week before Christmas as that is where the carp is, getting rid of it's muddy flavour before being cooked. Newly in the supermarkets too are “cardes”, stems of a thistle that look like celery on steroids. I haven't seen it growing so can't tell what type of thistle it is; one of my dictionaries suggests teasel but it doesn't look like that to me. I don't know whether it is specific to Christmas or simply just available now as, for instance, are persimmons.

The desert here is traditionally some or all of the 13 prescribed constituents that I think I described last year. That, certainly, is local to Provence. Although dried fruits feature prominently on shop shelves, their combination into Christmas cake or pudding doesn't seem to figure in France. The German Stollen is available in shops but that is as near as it gets.

Christmas cards are virtually unobtainable; the ones I sent this year were left over from those I had in England. It is traditional, although not always practised, to send new year cards. These are pale substitutes for English Christmas cards, generally looking like half-size postcards and mostly poorly designed and executed.. Maybe Hallmark or some similar company should get busy over here.

The group of us who sing carols had been busily rehearsing for the past few weeks and duly performed last evening. The event went off very well, largely due to the efforts of Jo and René, with increased numbers of people attracted to it. Even Steve did a solo, which also went well; he's a brave man. I did my usual growling in the background ( at least I hope it was in the background).

I personally was a bit disappointed that we didn't attract more of the villagers outside of friends; there were a few but most of them were already in the bar. I'm beginning to think that this one of my ambitions may be misplaced. Those of us who sang did so because it was fun. However, carols are religious by nature and I suspect that fun may not be a word that can be associated with religion, at least in this part of France. It could be that religion here is too serious a matter, one way or the other. This area did suffer atrociously during the wars of religion but that seems too long ago to have much resonance now. So maybe it is just the separation of state and religion that is at play.

Levenson, Winter And Passports

Levenson

The Levenson enquiry and its recommendations seems to have been a dominant topic of conversation among my friends here, with very divided opinions expressed. Assuming that some action needs to be taken (a significant assumption, I know) the topic has seemed to me extremely complex. If any rein is to be put on the Press, and leaving aside the question of Internet content, it seemed obvious to me that whistle-blowers had to be protected and also the role of government minimised. Why not pass the problem straight to the judiciary, I thought, with the emphasis of control being on means of acquisition, not content? But there are foreseeable problems there also; the complexity remained.

It should have taken me minutes to see the way out but in fact it took me a week of pondering. Everything in my experience tells me not to mess with complexity; stand back, take a deep breath and look to Occam's Razor. Why the clamour for Press censorship? It's because many people feel that a right to privacy has been infringed. So why not forget all the questions of Press freedom/censorship and simply strengthen the privacy laws? These are reputed to be much stricter in France than in the UK, although I don't know the detail, so why not make a move towards French-style privacy legislation? That, plus possibly suitably heavy penalties for infringement, should resolve the problem and put aside any debate about Press freedom. The Press then remains as it has always been, as free or constrained as any other person or entity within the law.

Winter

Winter arrived today. The temperature is barely above freezing even in the early afternoon and it's caught a succulent plant that Claudine and Jacques gave me and which has been sitting out front on my letter box. Fortunately at least half the plant looks healthy still so I shall put it in my terrace room with the other plants I am trying to keep over winter. And I shall now need to cut back and protect the blue solanums (solana?) I have in the front.

Winter also means beef to me: stews (which the French don't have), casseroles, etc. The French don't have meat pies either and I made one last week when Steve, Jo, Mana and Michèle came to eat. All enjoyed it, especially Michèle, but I got the same initial suspicion from Mana and Michèle that I always get from French friends when they are faced with unfamiliar food. The conservatism that even quite cosmopolitan French people display when it comes to cooking continues to surprise me. The idea that French cooking is not only the best but probably the only way to cook food does seem to be really deeply engrained in them. I'd normally serve mashed potatoes with the pie but, as I had a jar of duck fat, decided on roast potatoes. The French don't have these either; same result.

Passports

Friend Steve commented about paassports in his blog recently and that reminded me of a money-making wheeze for the giovernment which I thought of some time ago but which doesn't seem to have occurred to the UK government.  After all, the government is strapped for cash.  Why not offer organic (or eco-friendly) passports? We aleady have organic alternatives for almost everything else.  As far as I know, passports already are organic, though there may be a question mark against the dyes used.  Eco-cheerleaders would no doubt happily accept a £10-15 surcharge for the cost of maybe just an "organic" sticker on the passport so the extra money goes tsright to the bottom line.  Or maybe it's just that I have too much.time on my hands in winter.

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.