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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.  - Article Continued Below -

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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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