While the mad world outside balances on its nose (the better to sing Loving you has made me bananas) life here in the Clochemerle of SW France continues on its divagational but at least recognisable dance.
The wife of the owner of our only Tabac Presse here has left him. This is even bigger news than the local GP being an alcoholic, or Murielle’s transformation of the village epicerie from an expensive jumble sale into the main hive of commerce. For Madame la Presse had conquered cancer with impeccable aplomb, and was something of a local hero. Now she has fait le depart, and the good lady clearly doesn’t want her husband to know where she is.
The man himself is not bitter: “I don’t know where she is and I don’t give a f**k”, he told me last week – while giving me a murderous stare….within which there was ample warning of the dangers of taking her side. Actually, I had always quite fancied her, but this didn’t seem the right moment to impart such information. There are dark rumours in these parts about his odd definition of lacking bitterness.
Here at Slogger’s Roost, thanks to fifteen days of almost uninterrupted blue skies the tangled jungle formerly known as my 2-acres of grassland has been chopped down somewhat. The Green Beast has been repaired for the fourth time this year, and I am on the Thing most days as its two vicious blades grrrr away at the long grass. Afterwards, I rake the surplus away like a demented serf – while watching the almost tame fawns who stare benignly in bewilderment as this task is performed.
Deer are somewhat anal about where they wish to walk. They plough the same furrow every day – a practice that leads to the creation of deer tracks – after which they settle down for a rest in the exact same place on each of those very same days. Thus on my return to the Roost after some weeks of absence, the evidence of their obsessive compulsive disorder is everywhere to be seen in the shape of trails joined up by flattened grass. So perhaps it’s understandable that young deer wonder whyTF I am bothering to remove these signs. My dogged response is based entirely on the mistaken belief that this is my land not theirs; and also on obvious questions like “If you don’t want to be hunted, whyTF do you leave so many clues in your wake?”
Fawns kill trees. Let’s not beat about the bush here, it’s what they do. They rub against and generally nibble young stems all the way round until the sap cannot rise, and the trees expire. I realise that this sort of politically incorrect fawnism will hasten my downfall among the Fluffies, but then I’d rather tell the truth than fawn over twerps who want to cover the world in foxes. Fawns are a bloody nuisance.
That said, they’re also irresistibly vulnerable and charming. Life for the townie-turned-countryman is a never ending maze of skirmishes between the human cerebral hemispheres. And it is further complicated by the tussle between the Englishman and his vaguely adopted Gallic culture.
I never fail to be charmed, for instance, by the politesse of village life, and the way in which everyone says hello and how are you and isn’t it cold and so forth. But on the other hand, I remain mystified by the inability of French artisans to remember that (a) they will not increase their income by simply charging more for their services, and (b) ultimately I am the client, and what I say goes.
Nevertheless, I am forced to admit that – while much of French agriculture is guided by the same madness inviting US investors to purchase junk bonds – equally, its retained grab-bag of civilised intent bulges with more purity than the cash-filled pockets one finds in America and Britain.
With no disrespect to the French, I genuinely wish it wasn’t so. I preferred things as they were, with my Dad telling me how the French are “a scruffy bunch who fall down in their toilets”. The buggers remain as contrarian as ever, but these days they have a great deal of community logic backing them up. This weekend there’s a foire de Noel up the road from here. It will be fun, because the French en fete unfailingly are….and God help me, I’ve never been to one before.
So there you are then: I am another Rosbif lost in the love-hate thing that is the Entente Cordiale. But there are worse places to be.
The Slog 