..
Le
Bout de Monde 2
By Basil
Howitt
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August 2006
| No
matter how remote you are from civilisation people are the same.
Some of these stories from the back of beyond in Le Fenouillèdes
could
come straight out of hot reality TV shows, or the most popular urban soaps
from around the world. All human life is here in this tiny village
of 90 souls, surrounded by vines, sun-scorched garrigue scrubland and maquis.
Not to mention dense woods of murky green kermes oaks full of wild boar,
roebuck deer (chevreuil) and so many other wild animals.
Perpignan
Tart
Take one village-born
wag, Jean-Claude, who was having a pleasant affair with a divorcee in the
nearby hamlet of Bordela. Until, that is, the said woman caught him
in her double bed with her daughter. Jean-Claude then took refuge
in the arms of “a Perpignan tart” (plenty to choose from there!) and even
married her. The betrothed couple invited everyone in the village
to the wedding - in the hopes, it was unkindly said, of getting a good
number of wedding presents.
Alas, the marriage
was over soon after it started. Our Jean-Claude had been working
on a building job in Llimas with his mate Pierre-Yves. On the last
day of the job, le proprietaire invited them to stay for the customary
pastis. Unfortunately the “une pour la route” (one for the road)
became the first of far too many. On the way home down a tricky mountain
road Jean-Claude missed a bend, crashed through a barrier, and careered
down into a ravine below. Pierre-Yves was killed outright, but Jean-Claude
survived. Very luckily, a passer- returning home noted that the barrier
had only very recently been flattened and called the police, who arrived
with les pompiers (firemen) to find Jean-Claude still conscious.
When she realised he would be wheel-chaired and dependent on her care for
many months, his new wife quickly bade him au revoir and resumed her pursuit
of the oldest profession.
The Funeral
Baked Meats
When our deputy
mayor Monsieur Marty sadly lost his wife to an untimely terminal illness,
it was another of those cases where “the funeral baked meats did coldly
furnish forth the marriage tables.” Rumours were very soon rife that
M. Marty had been seen “dancing” (no less!) with his femme de ménage
at a nearby fête. Even more scandalous, they were reported
by our gossipy neighbour opposite, Joseph, to have “left together”. “But
I don’t really know, of course.” Joseph said to me soon afterwards,
“that’s just what people tell me.”
Mais oui,
monsieur! At all events M. Marty very soon married his femme de ménage.
Visiting
Nympho
A part-time
English neighbour of ours, Peter, surprised us one morning with the following
account by e-mail of a party he had been to in the garden of his next-door
neighbours:
Hi Bas,
As you probably heard, Alain’s
party went on until the small hours. It certainly had some highlights.
I met Henri and Janine - he works for ASR [a firm of kitchen fitters] so
you probably know him already. Janine is quite a girl. She
must drive poor old Henri mad. She can jump around in a most attractive
way to the thump-thump music, and although Henry does his best, at heart
I think that he is a square as I am. She showed me her scar, and
I offered to show her mine. She didn't take up the offer. The
highlight really was the nympho who came. Apparently one of Alain’s
colleagues met her through the internet. She came down from Paris.
She flounced around with an exaggerated model like walk, with plenty of
boob showing, chasing all and sundry who were male. She was hardly slim,
but not what I would call fat. She even spent some time talking to
me, so she really was up for anyone. She said that food was great
in Paris, and when I said that it must be expensive, she said she was never
on her own. She drank too much, and I must admit that I didn't see
all the activity that followed. She must have wanted to relieve herself,
so instead of going to the toilet, she had her knickers down and had a
wee in the shadows. Not impenetrable shadows either. After
that she was obviously really very hot, and went off with one of the fellows
to the bushes, where their shoes were clearly to be seen. We didn't
hear any grunts and groans so I guess that it wasn't all that satisfactory.
You would have thought that she would have been satisfied by all that,
but no, she came back to dance around by the fire, looking for another
fella. I saw two of them push her off. In a way I felt quite
sorry for her, but I wasn't willing to even think of doing anything else
to help her out. Jacques apparently took some photos, which I think
were rather lacking in detail, but no doubt they will get around.
This morning I heard more.
Apparently when she came she went up to Alain’s friend’s mother, who is
74, I think, fondled her breast and said how good they were. Quite
a little Parisian squib in Cansal. Alain didn't see any of this at all.
He will have to remember his 40th by hearsay. More to follow if I
hear anything.
Peter
Twice abandoned
What bewildering
lives people lead! Take the poor son of a friend of ours from the
nearby village of Sagansec. The son lived happily with his woman for several
years before they married and had two children. His wife then cleared
off leaving him to look after them. A few years later she returned
to base and the couple had another two children. You’ve already guessed
the dénouement! Yes - she’s now left him with all four!
Two Nearby
Errant Mayors
“We don’t
want this village to become another Clochemerle.” Thus the mayor
of Dieusac in his published response in our regional rag (L’Indépendant)
to a mass resignation of mainly female local village Councillors over his
alleged financial mismanagement and improvidence. However I suspect
these lady councillors are more incensed because the said respectably married
mayor has been having a raging affair with the village’s divorced lady
newsagent and tobacconist (La Buraliste). Often during the witching
hour of la siesta Monsieur Le Maire has been spotted making his way to
her love nest. Hardly surprising either, because the said Buraliste
is a striking example of how French women can remain glamorous in their
fifties and well beyond.
Even nearer
to home another mayor has been in marital difficulties. The signs
that a woman is about to leave her husband always seem to include the sudden
application of very heavy makeup - at least that’s been my experience
in a former marriage breakup. Sure enough, this mayor’s wife appeared
heavily painted with her ever more rotund husband at our Christmas bash
in
Cansal last year. Then we heard that she had left the marital home
“to look after her ageing mother”. We also heard that feeling lonely,
the mayor quickly found solace in the welcoming arms of a Mme X who worked
in La Cave Co-operative! However we are delighted to report that
the married couple are now back together again.
The Log
Cutter and the Sculptress
And now just
for a change –a rare tale of happiness and true love from just outside
the village in that hamlet I mentioned earlier, Bordela.
It’s all too
easy around here to become friendly with the tradespeople and professionals
who supply us with goods and services. We have, for instance, become
very firm friends with my visiting chiropodist and his family. Having
one’s toe nails cut is after all a fairly intimate encounter and generates
opportunities to discover common interests and attitudes to life.
More of them another time.
The first time
I met Giles when he delivered us five stères of logs (a stère
is a cubic metre) he seemed a bit surly. “The price doesn’t include stacking
them for you”, he said firmly. “Of course, I understand,” I replied. “But
I would be very willing to pay you the going rate for some help.” “O.K.”
After the logs
were stacked I invited him to stay for a beer. He was happy to accept,
especially since my step-daughter and three of her friends were all sitting
very decoratively and chatting and sipping apéritifs on the terrace.
The only problem was Giles had no English and the girls no French.
However, he being young, tall, dark and handsome, that didn’t prevent the
usual non-verbal modes of contact being established (smiles, flutters,
knowing looks and all the rest). I discovered that with two small
daughters Giles was going though a bad patch in his life, having been abandoned
(it seemed) by his wife.
So I invited
him to call in again for a beer whenever he was passing though the village.
He did so two or three times on his own, and then one day turned up with
a beautiful svelte young lady called Anny. “I’ve come to tell you that
I am giving up the log-cutting business and am moving in with Anny.
She is a sculptress and I am going to do all her heavy iron foundry work,
making moulds and casts and all that.”
They have been
very happy ever since. Although Anny, in her forties, is a good ten years
older than Giles you would never guess it. We recently went to have
supper with them on the terrace of their new huge rented home – part of
a beautifully restored 11th century Mas or Manor House in the Fenouillèdes
where Anny has a huge studio and works very successfully on commissions
and exhibitions. And although Anny has no children of her own she
clearly gets on very well with Giles’s two lovely daughters.
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Article Continued Below - |
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Article
Continued From Above -
Naked Man
in Vines
Our regular
walk – a good 3½ mile loop the locals call La Boucle – is stunning
all the year round and breathtaking in late April and May. On clear
days you can see the Tour de Tautavel (where the remains of “Tautavel Man”
of 450,000 years ago were discovered), the sea, the mountains of Bugarach
and Canigou …
This year in
late April the landscape changed from winter to full spring almost overnight.
What a riot of growth and colour! Take a deep breath as I tell you
the flora my wife Clare identified in late spring and early summer: wild
oats and barley, alfalfa, asphodel, bindweed, blue pimpernel, cistus, clover,
corncockle, cytinus hypocistus, dogrose, half a dozen varieties of euphorbia
(spurge), flax, great mullein, helichrysum stoechas ("curry plant"), herb
robert, irises, large snapdragon, mediterranean lavendar (lavendula stoechas),
narrow-leaved cistus (rockrose), narrow-leaved helleborine, pitch trefoil
(psoralea bituminosa), poppies common, long-headed and rough-headed, ramping
fumitory, red valerian, sainfoin, small-flowered catchfly, smooth hawksbeard,
spanish broom, tassel hyacinth, urospermum dalechampii ("Doreen's Daisy"),
vetches galore (montpellier, tufted, winged pea, wild pea), violet birds'
nest orchid (the 'violet limodore'), wild mignonette, wild salsify …
It was during
one of these walks that my wife’s brother, who was staying with us for
a few days, swears he spotted a naked man in the vines. Phil (unlike
me) is not one to make things up for the sake of a good story. Suddenly
he cried, “Oh! - there was a naked man down there in that vineyard.
I looked over there because I heard someone working then I thought ‘he
hasn't got a top on’ and then ‘he hasn't got any bottoms on either, unless
he was wearing flesh-coloured underpants.’ But he's completely disappeared
now. What made me think I was right was the way he dived into the
bushes when he realised I was looking at him.”
Whatever next?
The mind boggles.
Baffled
doctor bows to ancient horse remedy
One of our
beloved neighbours, Guillaume, is now in his 80s and vows often to continue
to work his vines “jusqu’ la fin” (until the end). “Il faut toujours travailler
avec passion” is another of his mantras. (“It’s always essential to work
with passion”.) His Spanish born wife Marcia came here as long ago
as La Retirada – the mass exodus across the border from Spain during the
Spanish Civil War. The other day Guillaume stopped their car and
proudly lifted his trouser leg to show us his knee covered in a thick brown
paste. It was, Marcia said, her cure for the acute eczema all over
Guillaume’s legs - a problem that had defeated our much respected local
Doctor! Marcia had applied an ancient remedy for horses: a glutinous
potion of sulphur and honey. Et voilà! Guillaume was soon
cured!! By the way, it never pays to enquire of a Frenchman after
his health. If he is not well, he will bombard you to the last detail
with the state of his digestion, joints, heart, liver, spleen, kidneys
… No wonder that pharmacists everywhere in France make such a killing.
The Little
Pedlars
When they
are short of pocket money, two or three enterprising children from down
the road come to the door with lovely bunches of lavender (or lavender
bags), mimosa, apricots, apricot jam … - always nicely packaged in
a Catalan-coloured ribbons of red and yellow (sang et dor). They always
insist on being paid separately so they can keep their accounts straight
and spend their takings at once! Who can resist them?
La Veille
Mamie Catalane Têtue
(The Stubborn
Old Catalan Grannie)
Our local
firemen have many varied duties to perform besides sorting out the carnage
from horrifying road accidents and putting out huge forest and scrubland
fires fanned by La Tramontane – the fierce bone-dry west wind from across
the mountains, similar to Le Mistral.
Standing in
the grocer's in Lageste my wife heard the sirens wailing and the firemen
dashing off on a call.
'What's that
- a fire? a road accident?' she asked the grocer. With a gentle smile
he explained.
"No, not at
all. It’s an old grannie. She is a Catalan. She is therefore
very stubborn. She refuses to live in a retirement home, insisting
on staying in her own home.
“So - every
time she falls over, the pompiers have to dash off and haul her up again.”
Manyana
Cansal like
everywhere else in this part of France (and of course over the border into
Spain) is plagued by the manyana factor. Right now, the house opposite
ours has been sporting scaffolding for several weeks – quite an eyesore
and with no prospect of anyone actually using the scaffolding to replace
the roof. The house in question is a second home and so we know for
certain that for the next several months the scaffolding will just remain
there before anything happens.
There is one
compensation. As long as the eyesore remains we can rest assured
that the ghastly French owners will not turn up. You can always tell when
they have arrived because the head of the family immediately starts bawling
at his young children, who are actually quite charming.
Likewise in
the lovely field opposite our bedroom window, the view has been spoiled
now for 10 months by a building materials. The builder was allowed
to use the field while converting an adjacent barn into a house.
Trouble is, no-one has been working on the conversion for months and as
we open the shutters every morning we are stuck with piles of breeze blocks,
sand, tiles, plastic …
Trying to get
any job completed around here is very wearing and requires consummate diplomatic
skills. Plumbers are the worst, as they probably are all over the
world! OK, so you eventually get the job started – but then there
is a hitch and he says he has to get some materials and will be back in
a couple of days. You always know what that means. If you are lucky
and keep ringing him he might come back in ten days and do a bit more.
You often have to wait months and months to get the job finished.
The Cheap
Flight Bores
The biggest
boon of living almost entirely amongst the French here in Cansal is that
we are spared The Cheap Flight Bores. In nearby villages there are
clusters, not to say colonies of English second home owners. My idea
of hell is to go to aperitifs where these people drone on endlessly about
their problems with termites, and the cheap flights they have taken to
Perpignan or Carcassone or Gerona operated by Ryanair, Flybe, Bemybaby
… - how they got here for 15 cents “plus airport charges of course”.
They bore one to death likewise with tales of delayed flights and cancelled
flights due to airport strikes. “Why on earth do ‘they’ allow this kind
of thing. Don’t ‘they’ realise we are bringing a great deal of money into
their country?”
Enough!
Mattresses
for Sale
Whoops! I
must stop. There goes the village PA system cranking into action with a
scratchy snatch of recorded Catalan music played by a Cobla (a Catalan
band with certain unique instruments), followed by an announcement from
the Mairie. It’s always difficult to decipher the message because
of the crackling speakers, but it’s almost certainly to inform us of the
visit in the Place de la République of an itinerant tradesman selling
linen and mattresses in the square.
Why so often
mattresses? They must take a hammering in these parts!
At other times
the PA system will announce an invitation to the village’s gargantuan Christmas
shindig when no expense is spared on children’s presents, the buffet, wines
and spirits. We also get announcements to collect our free bin bags in
February and free geraniums in May - and invitation to drink lots of free
pastis or Muscat de Rivesaltes at the annual fête with disco held
every August.
Au Revoir et
À Bientôt!
.....
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