Two Years in France

This week it is exactly two years since my goods and chattels turned up in a whopping great van at my new French front door. The heavens opened, great spattering rain – welcome to the Languedoc. Lace curtains in the houses opposite danced the Twitch, faces peered out cautiously at this short, stout alien disturbing the peace of Petite Rue.

I had burnt all boats and bridges in England to buy a house, with big bro Mike, and move to France. The idea which came from nowhere – I mean I wasn’t looking to move across the Channel – was for me to live here permanently and my brother would take on the apartment on the first floor. It was to be one last great adventure.

Garden on first viewing

My kitchen – 1st generation

My bedroom – 1st generation

As I attempted to marshall order out of the chaos of furniture and boxes that were disgorged from the van I tried to quell fears about whether I had done The Right Thing. How would I cope? Would my schoolgirl French stand up to scrutiny? Would I feel isolated, would I fit in, would I, would I? The thoughts buzzed around like a swarm of angry hornets.

We had spent just a week looking at properties and The Old Lady of Petite Rue got our vote. It is a village house in the middle of a row of others. There’s a barn at the back, a walled garden and about a quarter acre of land beyond. The house had received the twin curses of basic neglect and “modernisation”. I’ve come to the conclusion that many French do not like old property and do all they can to eliminate or cover up its origins with cladding, Upvc, plaster board and the dreaded crepi (sort of decorative plaster). It was a case of ‘out with the new and in with the old’ as we tracked down old windows, shutters, doors, door handles and so on.

I have learned a whole new vocabulary relating to building, electrical, plumbing and roofing along with more colourful tradesmen’s terms, appropriate for moments such as when opening up an electric socket and a whole wriggle of burnt out wires, which had no business being there in the first place, spew out like demented worms.

As I have got to know my neighbours I have also learned to tread carefully through the tight-knit family circles that make up the community. Some folk have lived here for generations and spats will break out from time to time which resonate through the village. Last Armistice day at the little ceremony held in the village square, the divorce of a village couple had split families and friends. A ceremony intended to celebrate peace was blanketed by silences, back-turning and gorgonesque glances. It is hard to know at first who is related to whom so the fear of putting foot in mouth is always at the back of my mind.

Like many rural villages its currency is gossip and the old stone benches that have survived modernisation and sit outside some of the houses – gossip seats – provide the means to pass on the latest ‘on-dit’.
“He didn’t, never! Bah alors!”
“She said what? Incroyable! Oh ma foi”.

After two years I still feel I’m a bit in limbo land, wedged between England and its culture and my adopted country. I miss my UK friends but now there is a civilised spare room, I expect visits and I have my french and other expat friends. We expats are known collectively – Les Anglais, Les Irelandais and so on. This last summer I almost graduated to becoming an individual again – Shayla or Madame Weelliams – so I must be making progress.

Group conversations still baffle me a bit – they go so fast, ‘du coq a l’ane’ (from the cockerel to the donkey). often I’m still framing a response to the cockerel whilst the conversation has whizzed on to the donkey. But I arrive in the end.

I am writing a lot more regularly now; the house is still work in progress; I scour the vide-greniers (boot sales) for goodies for the house and the garden is beginning to take shape. I have centuries of history on my doorstep waiting for me to discover and breath-taking (literally) landscape to explore. So this last great adventure – based on a totally unplanned, spur of the moment decision – is proving to be one of the best I’ve ever had. I hope I’m not tempting fate.

Myths and Legends II

This week I thought I would introduce you to the Magic Mountain or the Pic de Bugarach which is close to Rennes-le-Chateau . The mountain is a bit of a geological freak in that its upper layers are considerably older than the lower ones owing to some upheaval of the Pyrenees way, way back in time. This gives the mountain its other name – the Upside-down mountain. The rock is limestone and a network of underground caverns and a river have occupied the hearts and minds of numerous believers in hidden worlds and magic going-ons for several centuries.

Pic de Bugarach

Most recently is the belief that the mountain provides a vast underground parking lot for alien spacecraft. According to the Mayan Apocalypse prophecy our world as we know it was to end in December 2012. That I missed the event is entirely due to my own lack of responsibility. However, those in the know (and more responsible), knew that some nice aliens would be on hand to airlift anyone on the mountain to safety. Between January and July 2011, the farming village of Bugarach (pop.200)received an influx of over twenty thousand visitors anxious to stake their place in the queue. Reports of strange rituals and men creeping around in white dresses emerged and the village made headlines in worldwide media.There was talk of a mass suicide and eventually after a government inquiry, the police blocked off access to the mountain. I don’t know if there is still a queue of hopeful emigrés waiting to hitch a ride.

Go back a bit further in time and we arrive at the story of Daniel Betex, a Swiss and a respectable security guard by day and explorer/truth seeker in his spare time. He was interested in the Medieval Cathar sect and fossicked about on the mountain, digging in to its secrets. He found a blocked entrance – possibly the gateway to the centre of the earth. He opened up the entrance and found the underground river with some sort of “mandmade” quay and other stone structures. But who lived and worked there? Betex then started to explore the basement of the ruined Chateau de Bugarach which, along with the village has Cathar associations, (those pesky Cathars – they get everywhere!) However, in the bowels of the chateau Betex found stones with carvings showing a container on a stretcher. Let’s not jump to conclusions but…does the Arc of the Covenant come to mind? No? Well not for me either. Yet it did attract the attention of Israeli general, Moshe Dayan and the Mossad (Israel secret service).

Chateau de Bugarach

In 1988, Betex became really, really excited and wrote to a colleague about a fabulous deposit. Of what? A pile of fossilsed Woolly Mammoth poo? Who knows? He wrote to a colleague that he only needed four or five more days and then “you will be fabulously rich”. Alas, three days later the poor man was dead and his fabulous deposit died with him. Naturally there are questions about his death and different causes attributed. An interesting side point is that the French authorities concreted over the basement of the chateau where Betex had found the stones and refused to give permission for his work to be continued. All I will say is that in my experience the French are not particularly health and safety conscious.

The mountain is shrouded in mysteries as well as mist. It is said to give off a strange energy which I, being an insensitive soul, cannot say I noticed. Yet planes are not allowed to fly over it since it makes their instruments go haywire but being practical as well as insensitive I wonder if magnetism might not be the culprit rather than a bunch of aliens protecting their parking lot. Down the centuries, stories and legends have accumulated. There are some said to have secret knowledge about the secrets of the mountains but being secret, no-one actually knows of what this secret knowledge comprises. That’s the problem with secrets isn’t it?

But what an inspiration it has been to authors, particularly to French writers such as Gaston Leroux, George Sand, André Malraux and many others. Not forgetting of course Jules Verne with “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” and “Clovis Dardentor” in which he wrote about a secret entrance leading to an underground world where a mythical race lived. More recently, the mountain and, I guess, its history is thought to have provided Stephen Spielberg with the inspiration for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Perhaps it will prove an inspiration for one of the stories in my next book but I can’t say because it’s a secret.

Mystery, Myth and Legend

I’ve been delving into mysteries, myths and legends this week in search of new material for a second book of spooky stories. It appears I’m surrounded by them (mystery, myths et al, that is) and they all centre on one tiny village atop a 1500ft hill not many miles from here in the Languedoc – the village of Rennes-le-Chateau. You would think that nothing much ever happened in this ancient hilltop village hidden in the clouds from the valley below but you would be mistaken.

Rennes-le-Chateau

Treasure – Secret Geometry – Coded Documents – The Merovingians – Knights Templar – Cathars – The Ark of the Covenant and the Menorah – maybe even the secret of my lost waistline – they all find a place in the history of the village depending on your own favourite theory.

Perhaps the most well-know of these mysteries concerns Berenger Sauniere the priest of the village who, in a strange turn of fate soared from rags to riches almost overnight at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Berenger Sauniere

He bought land, built himself an estate including the Tour Magdala which he used as a library and the Villa Bethania, restored the church and filled it with ecclesiastic artifacts, stained-glass windows and the perplexing “benetier” (water basin) held up by a remarkable devil.

Benitier

All these works were carried out in the name of his housekeeper Marie Denarnaud.

When called to account for his increased wealth and other actions, he havered somewhat claiming the money came from donations. He was charged with simony (taking money for masses that were never given) and suspended from duty. Nevertheless he continued to live in Rennes as a free-lance priest. The village council complained about other un-priestly activities such as, along with his housekeeper, digging up graves at dead of night. It is claimed that he found coded documents which, when decoded, showed X marking the spot of a lot of lovely loot and this was the source of his wealth.

After his death, his housekeeper sold the estate to a wily hotelier, Noel Corbu, promising him that when she was about to breathe her last she would reveal a secret to him that would make him both rich and powerful. Alas the workings of fate. A few weeks before her death Marie had a stroke or seizure leaving her bereft of both voice and the ability to put pen to paper. The secret died with her. The hotelier, nothing daunted – well perhaps just a little – used the story of hidden treasure in a remarkable PR coup. His new restaurant – the renovated Villa Bethania – was in need of customers so he used the story to draw in the punters – even going so far as to record the tale (with suitable dramatic embellishments) for his new customers to hear. He took the line that the hidden treasure was that belonging to Blanche of Castille – the Spanish wife of Louis VIII. From these beginnings the Treasure story snowballed bringing treasure hunters from all over the world to the little hilltop village.

Whose treasure? Theories abound. Was it the Visigoths loot (Rennes-le-Chateau was the centre of the Visigoth kingdom);how about Cathar treasure smuggled here after the fall of the last Cathar bastion Montsegur; could it be the booty of the Knights Templar brought to the village before they were all killed off? Who knows?

However what I do know is that local history provides rich pickings for a writer whether presented as fact or fiction. Since Sauniere’s time a catalogue of popular books have fallen from the presses, fact and fiction, culminating in Dan Brown’s best seller “The Da Vinci Code” with around 80 million copies sold.

Oh why, oh why didn’t I get there first?

Now Autumn’s Fire Burns*

I have woefully neglected this blog over the past four-five weeks as I’ve flitted around like a demented bat drumming up business for “Close to the Edge – Tales from the Holderness Coast.” Thank you to all (or even any) of you that have bought the book, I hope you were well satisfied.

So now I’m going to return to life in France for a while and will try not to mention my book “Close to the Edge” more than once or twice per blog!

Here in the Languedoc, autumn has arrived and almost overnight the trees on the valley sides took on all the colours in the spice box – ginger, cinnamon, saffron, paprika; just here and there a solitary bank of trees remains obstinately green. The days are short but filled with sunshine and the nights and early mornings bring just a nip in the air… a hint of winter to come. Autumn has its rituals and festivals just as Summer had the fetes, vide-greniers and marchés nocturnes (night markets).

First comes the mushroom season. Everywhere in the woods amongst the earthy mould, between tree roots or in a patch of soft grass in a clearing, ceps, chanterelles, pieds de mouton- all these little autumn wonders pop up, all perky, waiting to be picked by those who know where to look and who jealously guard the secrets of their favourite hunting-grounds.

Ceps

pied de moutons

If the mushrooms are too coy to make an appearance there are always chestnuts to be found and some of the last fetes of the year celebrate the arrival of the fat shiny nuts by offering a host of ready to eat dishes accompanied by the obligatory oom-pah band.

Late September and October sees the Transhumance when the livestock are brought down from the mountain pastures… another reason for an autumn festival. The farmers, their wives and children together with an assortment of misbegotten dogs gather their flocks of sheep or small herds of cattle and slowly wend their way down the mountain to the “home” village. The ewes with their lambs hustle and bustle along, high with their odour of lanolin. Here and there they grab a bite of roadside herbage or stop, snort and stamp their feet when one of the dogs gets a bit impertinent. In the village the ewes are separated from their lambs, which are taken away to fulfil their destiny on a dinner plate and soon the air is full of cries, bleats, shouts and barks until the cavalcade passes through and away to their respective farms.

La Transhumance

Now as the year slows down so does village life. Shutters close early and open late;the scent of wood smoke streams from chimneys that have slept all summer. In the streets, piles of crinkle-bark logs spattered with the grey-green bloom of lichen appear outside front doors and families and neighbours form a line to pass the logs through the house to the courtyards at the back. Oak is the wood of preference – burning long and hot – yielding all the energy it gathered during its years. For me it’s time to get back to some serious writing and catch up on the books and films I’ve stashed away ready to be relished (I hope) once the sun goes down and the shutters close.

*”Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.” (William Allingham)

Quick Update

Just to let you all know that after considerable faffing on my part – techie ignoramus that I am – I’ve changed the blog a bit. NOW you can read about the progress of my mag. op “Close to the Edge”if you click on the eponymous header at the top of the page. This, if my extensive calculations are correct (and the lovely people at WordPress are right) will take you to a separate page dedicated to my book about the Holderness Coast. It’s coming out as an e-book in May, larded with piccys taken by my long-suffering friend June Berridge as well as images from times of yore and will answer burning questions such as:

Why did Fat Willy give land to found a monastery?
What happened to the port of Ravenser Odd?
Who murdered the Rev. Enoch Sinclair?
Who were the naughty nuns of Nunkeeling?
Why is the Holderness Coast shrinking?

All will be revealed; stay tuned.

My general blog page will mainly have my meanderings about life in France. Oo La La!

Those Were the Days

Today, the village where I live musters around 500 souls but roll back the years and more than three times that number lived here. The place was a hive of industry with spinning mills, comb making and jet working factories.

At the bottom of my street there is a huge building, now empty and crumbling away that was used for spinning and carding wool. Built in 1827 to replace an earlier building, it presents an imposing front which was the family’s home together with workshops behind for spinning and carding wool. What you might call a Queen Anne front and a Mary-Jane behind.

Initially the work was done by hand and often in the workers’ own homes but by the mid-19th century after yet another change of ownership, the newcomer modernised the mill and installed spinning, carding and combing machines. These were powered by water from a canal that runs alongside the building and on through the village. The workers at the mill ranged from age13 to 70. During the late 18th and 19th century this mill churned out finely combed and spun yarn later used in carpet and cloth manufacture.

The working of jet – a type of lignite – was another local occupation from the 16th century onwards. By 1800 there were six jet mills in the village, three of which had been seized from the Marquis de Puivert (he didn’t fare too well during the Revolution) and sold on. The mills produced jewellery and rosaries for export throughout Europe, the Middle East and America. Again, the canal running through the village powered the jet working machines for cutting and polishing the stone although the finer pieces were finished by hand using a mix of powdered limestone and charcoal from willow trees. As jet became less sought after the industry fell into decline and by the end of the 19th century was finished. The mills remain, some converted to other use, some left empty.

Our third industry – dating from the Middle Ages in this region- was the making of combs. In the village there were 10 comb-making establishments employing around 300 people. Originally the combs were made of boxwood but as that material became scarce holly, service tree, hawthorn and beech were used. Later, in the mid-19th- early 20th century ivory and horn were introduced. One factory alone produced, in a year, 42,000 boxwood combs and more than 21,500 ivory ones and all that through the labour of 8 men, 1 woman and 3 children.
As hair-style fashions changed the demand for these combs lessened and today the combs are mainly found in the brocantes and at car boot sales.

The Thirteen Desserts

So that was Christmas – my first in France and full of food, fun with pre-Christmas parties, a gourmet veille de Noel (Christmas Eve) meal, an English Christmas on the day itself and further jollities over the New Year. Little wonder my wits are wandering and my waistline widening.

The shops were full of the essential Christmas fare such as truffles, foie gras and oysters; my neighbours’ kids have been almost beside themselves in a frenzy of speculation as to what Papa Noel will be bringing them and even the weather played a small part by whipping up a few snow flurries to crown the mountain peaks.

Lac Montbel and the snowy mountains

Amongst the Christmas traditions observed in parts of the Languedoc and Provence is the custom of the Treize Desserts – the Thirteen Desserts. It is a custom with religious significance – thirteen being the number of the Disciples and Christ himself at the Last Supper. After the main meal (called le Gros souper), tradition has it that there must be thirteen desserts placed on the table set between three candles (to represent the Holy Trinity)and each diner must have a small piece of each dessert to bring good luck during the forthcoming year. The desserts stay on the table for 3 days and in some parts a place is set for the family’s ancestors to come and have a nibble as well.

The mix of the Treize Desserts varies a little but generally includes:
a type of olive bread, eaten with grape jam. This must be broken into individual servings with the fingers, rather than cut with a knife to protect one’s wealth from disappearing in the coming year.
Around the olive bread are arranged the “four beggars” – raisins, dried figs, walnuts and almonds. These represent four monastic houses –Dominicans, Franciscan, Augustine and Carmelite.

The four Beggars

White and Black nougat is set out to symbolise Good and Evil

Then there are dates – a symbol of Mary and Joseph coming from the east together with more dried figs and other fruits from the far east, recalling the origins of the three wise men.
A platter of fresh fruit including oranges, clementines, apples, pears, quince paste, melon and grapes form another dessert.
In addition there will be a whole range of pastries, biscuits and quite probably the ubiquitous bûche à Noel, a rich chocolate log.
All of this feast is accompanied by vin cuit, (cooked wine) – a reference to Christ’s wine at the Last Supper.

The Thirteen Desserts

So now it’s on to the next tradition – the New Year resolution and this year my one and only resolution is not to make my usual well-intentioned but totally unrealistic wish list since I always fall by the wayside in double quick time. But what I do wish is that all of you who read this blog have a very happy, prosperous New Year.

Harvest Festivals

Autumn is in the air down here at Ste Colombe, signalled by chilly early mornings and plumes of wood-smoke drifting upwards into a blue sky as my neighbours fire up their stoves. Yet before long, the sun is up, breaching the shadows in the courtyard of my house and the über-snails retreat to the coolness of crevices in the stone walls whilst the lizards come out to play hide and seek between the gnarly wisteria branches.

Although the summer frolics of festivities and fêtes are over and the grape harvest is underway it is now time to pay homage to humble fruit and vegetables and so we have celebrations of the virtues of onions, garlic, apples, sweet chestnuts and even the lowly spud. At these fêtes you can wonder at the sheer variety, sample the goodies and buy, buy, buy ‘til your purse drains dry.

Yesterday was the fête de chataigne (the sweet chestnut fair) together with a vide-grenier (car boot sale),fairground stalls and the obligatory oomph-pa band. The vide-grenier was a large one and clearly sellers had enthusiastically ransacked every cupboard, cellar, attic and barn . Clothes, toys, books and CDs, old tools, kitchenware, granny’s favourite coffee set, painstakingly embroidered bed-linen – if you could name it, you would find it. So it was that an old wooden vinegar barrel, two sets of wall lights, a pressed glass lampshade and a ceramic cafetière found themselves in the back of big bro’s van and on their way to Petite Rue.

Later in the day, in sweltering heat, the sweet chestnuts were roasting and a tray-full of artisan bread baked over an open fire filling the air with a mouth-watering savoury aroma. However it was the sweet stall that attracted my attention. Goodies of all shapes and sizes, in the most garish array of colours and oozing with sugar – were they as wild in taste as they were in appearance? Was it enough to tempt this gal to abandon her quest to discover her lost waistline? Did she fall by the wayside and give in? Well that’d be telling.

The Lady of the Lake

Here’s a salutary tale for those so smitten by their lady-loves that they commit very silly acts!

In the village of Puivert, a few kilometres from where I live, is a castle perched high on the mountainside overlooking a small man-made lake.

But in times past there was a huge lake confined by stone barrages. However, a certain Aragonaise princess, let’s call her Dame Blanche because she had a thing about always wearing white, visited the castle, fell in love with the surroundings and above all with the lake that stretched out below the castle towers. So enamoured of the place did she become, that she prolonged her visit until she became a permanent resident in the castle. This was much to the liking of the seigneur of the castle, one Jean de Bruyère, who had taken a fancy to Dame Blanche; whether his missus was entirely thrilled was another matter. So, Dame Blanche mooched around the lake every day, communing with nature, talking to the birds and generally not doing very much at all.

As happens to all of us age began to creep up on her and she had increasing difficulty in getting around the lake to do her communing thing. However, she found a rock, strangely enough shaped just like an armchair where she could perch her derrière and while away the hours in contemplation of the lapping waters, the tranquillity and the way the sunsets seemed to set the lake afire, surrounded of course by her entourage always ready to fetch and carry.

Then, one day a rainstorm swelled the lake waters and the wind whipped the ripples into waves which spilled over the banks, submerging the Dame’s stone seat. This catastrophe filled the lady with sadness; she slipped into a green and yellow melancholy and withdrew within the castle walls. However, one of her pages, no doubt a bit lacking in nous, suggested to her that if a hole was made in the lake’s retaining wall the water level would fall and she would be able to recover her seat which, as an added bonus would always be dry.

The Dame put this idea to the besotted master of the castle who could not naysay her and he promptly set his minions to work on creating a hole. Unfortunately, no-one gave any thought to the effects of the pressure of water behind the wall escaping through this small breach. The inevitable happened and the whole wall collapsed unleashing a torrent of water down the valley, flooding the village of Mirepoix some 30 kilometres away causing loss of life and untold damage.

It is said that the lady herself was carried away by the flood water and today, she haunts the castle. When it rains in Puivert she may be seen staring out of a window in one of the towers, no doubt contemplating the damage she caused.
And the moral of the tale…well you decide.

(Photos courtesy of June Berridge Photography)

If music be the food of love…

…then I’m in the right place in the right country because it was here in the Languedoc that European literature is said to have been born. Right on my doorstep is Puivert Chateau, whose Lords were some of strongest supporters of the Troubadors, those poet/musicians of the 12th and 13th centuries.

Puivert Chateau

These men and women, mostly well-educated and often of high status, created their sophisticated and often raunchy poetry, written in Occitan (the language of Languedoc) and set to music. They held to high ideals and a philosophy of equality based on virtues rather than family connections or wealth.

Throughout the countryside they were welcomed at the Chateaux of their patrons whilst becoming an an anathema to the Catholic church. This hatred arose probably from two issues. Firstly many of their patrons followed or supported the Cathar sect – a bunch of heretics in the eyes of the Church. Secondly, their work lauded both romantic and sexual love – women were an ennobling force as opposed to the Church’s view that women and sex were sinful.

The songs of the Troubadors embraced a number of themes including love, eroticism, war, nature and political satire. But it is the Amour Courtois (courtly love) that blended both erotic desire and spiritual aspirations for which they are most remembered. Courtly love was seen to have six attributes:
– Literary – made popular first in song and verse and then carried out in real life.
– Aristocratic – practised by Lords and Ladies in palaces and chateaux.
– Secret – no-one else must know about it and so it included secret meetings, hidden codes of conduct, gestures and tokens.
– Ritual – included the exchange of gifts and tokens. The woman was the dominant partner and received songs, poems, flowers and favours from her besotted Knight. He would try to make himself worthy of her through deeds of derring-do. She was only required to give a nod of approval for unrequited love was part of the game.
– Adulterous – eventually it included extra-marital rumpy-pumpy as a way of escaping from the marriages of convenience, made for economic or political reasons. Troubadors were cavalier about the concept of marriage seeing it as a ploy of the Church. Their ideal was a relationship based simply on a meeting of minds, bodies and souls.

They accompanied their poetry and songs with a range of musical instruments notably the lute, the cornemuse (a bit like a bagpipe), rebec, tambourine, cithern and psaltery.

Inevitably as the Church escalated its war against the Cathars the culture of the Troubadors declined leaving other poets such as Chaucer, Dante and Malory to carry forward their work.