Sunday, February 22, 2009

Barbier and chips

Last night I went to the theatre; well, a production in the Grande Salle of the Foyer Rural in St Dizant (i.e. the village hall), but very high standard.

The troupe, from a town a few kilometres away, tours the local towns and villages every year, and is obviously very popular. You have to book a seat in advance, and even though the Grande Salle seats about 500, it was sold out.

For warm-up they started with a mime (based on Chaplin), a solo dance (based on Madonna), and a very funny demo of making chips. Then we got to the main programme - Ma Femme Est Folle by Jean Barbier, a comedy in two acts. It was brilliantly done, and so clearly acted and enunciated that I got most of it (some of the slang words weren't in my vocabulary, but the meaning was clear from context, or occasionally gesture...). Most of it was broad farce, including the obligatory removal of trousers, which took place during a little scene in which the gay accountant teaches the secretary how to seduce a member of the same sex. Shades of Terry Scott's panto act, but without the skirts.

In the interval there were pancakes and eclairs and apple tart a 1 euro, and the food ran out.

It ended at 00:45. They do like to get their money's worth!

Friday, February 20, 2009

We have satellite dish and tv, now to introduce them to each other...

There was a Freecycle ad for a tv in usable order; how could I resist? The address was somewhere near Ikea and I need cheap stuff for the house (well, I need free stuff, but Ikea is the next up in price), so I arranged to collect the tv on Thursday because that's the Ikea late-night and sales day. Plan for the day: first, an appointment with Camille from Casa Nova to see what can be done upstairs with the little money I have left, then to Bordeaux.

All went well until Bordeaux. I got horribly lost following viamichelin's instructions and decided to go out to the ring road and start again. Bad move. It was into rush-hour, and if you get in the wrong lane... well, I ended up going all the way round, and then doing a few loops in north Bordeaux. I phoned the tv donor and he had no clue about the roads or street names (as he said, you can't see them when you're driving). With all the roadworks and diversions, the signage is missing or confusing: the city council probably thinks it doesn't matter out of tourist season.

Eventually I found the place, two hours late, in a one-way area. It had a No Entry sign and a notice saying the road was blocked, but there were cars in it so I drove up there anyway.

The tv is enormous. Donor was fortunately strong, and lugged it down from his flat. He spoke English, too, which was comforting because I was tired and fraught: car engine had been overheating in the traffic jams.

It was 20:30, and there was still time to get to Ikea before 22:00. Unfortunately, the Pont Aquitaine was due to be closed overnight, starting at 21:00. I'd thought it wouldn't matter because there'd be an alternative route of some kind. As I got close to Ikea and the bridge I realised that there were no diversion signs. None. Just the "bridge closed" signs. So I missed Ikea and went over the bridge before I could get trapped in Bordeaux.

Tv is still ensconced on the back seat of the car. I can't lift it.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Great Storm of February 2009

On Monday, the storm arrived. It wasn't as bad as the Great Storm of January 2009, but close. I made sure all the shutters and doors and windows were secure, and went to bed early. Soon afterwards the power went, leaving me huddled in my four-poster, curtains tucked in, with the wind-up radio and the wind-up lantern. I didn't sleep much. All night the storm would start to move away, and then come screaming back. I could hear things crashing outside. France Inter was running reports every 15 minutes, and in between there was soothing music and friendly chatter. It helped me because... I was scared. It was alright while I was awake, but when I dozed off the noise brought dreams of shipwreck and houses falling into the sea, and I woke in panic.

When I went to make tea (thank goodness for gas cookers - Mama always said you should have a gas hob in case of power cuts) it was surprising to see how light it was outside. The clouds were intermittent and the moonlight showed trees thrashing frantically. Poor trees, the ground is so wet this winter and their roots are not firmly fixed, and they have had to fight another storm before recovering from the first. Someone on the radio said that this was another once-in-a-century storm, and it's the third in 10 years, so how's that for climate disruption.

Around dawn the noise dropped to strong wind, and I slept.

The next day, all was well in the hamlet apart from a wall on M. Magister's property, which started falling down onto La Concierge's house. She called the mayor out and he sent a digger to demolish it. She's quite annoyed because they will have to pay for the removal of the wall, which has been unsafe for years - the old man hadn't had any repairs done for decades. We're wondering what will happen to the house: whether the sons will try to sell it, or one will move in, or they will just let it crumble. It would be a shame because although it's not in a good state, it is old charentais style and could be very pretty.

The trees won.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Sketches and moonlight

It's not quite true that the locals close shutters and stay indoors for the winter. Saturday was Theatre: an evening of sketches in the Hall at the Foyer Rural, which is a kind of community centre and home of the town council's social and cultural committees and offices. The theatre group was excellent, with most of the adults at professional level, and two of the teens are heading that way. I understood almost all of it with the exception of one of the comic songs sung by the commère (that's not a typo, it was a she) during scene changes, which appeared to be in Charentais.

The evening started late, at 9pm, and was so entertaining that I was amazed to find that it was past midnight when it ended. It was a very cold night, with frost and the moon by which you could see the houses and road as if the streetlights were on. I spent a little time on the way home just looking at the hamlet and fields by moonlight. That's how I noticed a light in the window of the little house: it must have been on for over a week. Even with the bright moonlight I didn't fancy sliding over the icy lane and opening the frozen old door to look for the off switch (I've never turned on the light because I'd only go in there in the daytime), so took a look round the dangerous jumble of electrical wiring and boards in the barn, to see if I could find a way to cut the power to the little house. No luck. There must be a feed somewhere, but that spaghetti wiring and the collection of random, sometimes live, junction boards is no place for an electrically-challenged wimp. Next day, when the sun had thawed the land, I went over to the little house and turned off the lights, and picked up a bagful of logs and wood offcuts.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Funeral of a neighbour

Last week one of the neighbours died suddenly of an embolism. I hadn't spoken to him, just waved bonjour. Anglo-neighbour had said he was grumpy and didn't talk, though I think he was friendly enough with those he knew. La Concierge came to tell me the news, and that the interment would be the day after. She asked if it's true that in England the funeral is held a long time after the death - it is true, of course, but at the moment even more than usual, as there is a three week wait for cremations in some towns. She said it wasn't necessary to attend, but I could (I checked because in some places strangers wouldn't be welcome, and in some other places, such as Orkney, women don't go to burials).

Arriving at the church and seeing so many strangers, I felt very out-of-place but determined to take some part in such an important event in village life. I got inside with some help from Madame who lives at the corner of the road (in the next hamlet, all of two houses) and found a place at the side and out of the way, where I could admire the model of a fishing smack hung from the ceiling. It was still a few minutes early, so I watched the funeral director and his minions setting up. They wore a uniform of grey suits. I'd wondered about correct dress, but as most of my clothes are black it wasn't a big worry; clearly ordinary clothes are the custom. There was someone who looked in charge of things, wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie. Now that was a surprise. He's the priest.

Like most old churches, this one is beautiful. The local stone is always lovely, in here it has been shaped into blocks to build an.interior of vaults and arches; old and calm, at least for most of its length: up at the front, all changes. There are of course brightly painted plaster saints and a madonna, 3/4 life-size, and a set of 1930s-style Stations of the Cross, but it's the area around the altar that holds the attention. Real red-brown marble fake pillars flank a tryptych of bright paintings, which I couldn't see clearly partly because I was at the back of the church, and partly because of the lights: a double row of light-bulbs framing the the arches of the paintings, which looked like a star's dressing-mirror until the recording of organ music started up and brought a vivid image of the whole thing beginning to turn like a merry-go-round.

The church was almost full. The local population is about 750, and most of them must have been there, apart from the 50 or so Anglos who live here full-time. I think I was the only one.

During the recorded organ music, the coffin was carried in. Strange how small coffins look compared to the size of the living person. The priest and a group of people up at the front who were holding pieces of paper produced something like a psalm; we had a couple of stand-up prayers and then the main part of the event - a long dissertation. My mind wandered a bit, I have to confess, but I caught some of the descriptions of his life and mentions of his family. Occasionally there was another prayer or psalm. The priest has a reasonable tenor and was near a microphone. I don't know if the other people were choir or family: they didn't seem sure of what they were doing.

After about an hour, people stood up and began to process to the front. I couldn't quite see what they were doing, but it seemed that each one, as they moved to the foot of the coffin, shook a stick or whisk over the coffin so I guess they were sprinkling water on it. Then there was a chinking noise as coins were dropped into something (presumably not the coffin). I decided against trying to get Chariot up the aisle in two rows of people, so I missed this part of the ceremony. Then there were more words and finally, after almost two hours, everyone went out either to follow the coffin to the cemetery next to the church or to go back to work. I waited for the church to empty, quietly singing along with the recordings of the Gounod Ave Maria (very florid tenor) and the Mozart Ave Verum, and then went home, greeting La Concierge's husband and being introduced to his cousin on the way.

It seems to have been the right thing to do.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Angoulême, briefly

After a journey of discovery on the internets, we found that the best place to look up Eurotrain information is a German site. Silly us, we should have thought of that. It turns out that this particular TGV to Lille does stop at Angoulême, so the plan to attempt the roadworks in Bordeaux was happily ditched in favour of a drive via Cognac to Angoulême, where there is easy weekend parking at the station. Well, usually there is. This weekend was the International Comic Strip Festival and the city was crowded, but with a little queueing we found a disabled space. Even though other drivers were having to leave their cars in the roadways while their passengers dragged cases out, nobody uses the disabled spaces illegally: so different from south-east England.

I waved goodbye as the TGV left, and went back out into the warm sunshine. The brightly-painted shuttle bus decorated with comic strip characters was tempting - free rides! - but I decided to drive round the city instead, just in case of getting stuck somewhere. There were people all over the streets, talking, sitting at cafe tables with laptops. Sitting in traffic jams in the narrow pieces of road was left for motor vehicles was an unusually pleasant experience because I could look at all the placards and the giant strips lining the pavements, though the stops weren't long enough to read the stories.

Angoulême stands on hills high above the plain, and one side has amazing views from a steep road with mountain-style bends. Much of it might not be possible and certainly wouldn't be easy by wheelchair, but the central space around the cathedral is level, and one day I must go and look at it properly.

Preferably not on a Wednesday, when they have Chocolate days. I don't think that would be a good idea.