One day I was on the DC metro heading to work at the World Bank, gradually the crowd thinned out and revealed a young lady maybe in her late 20s sitting in an isle seat and fussing over her small baby in a stroller alongside her. Mom was wearing an expensive lime green track suit purchased on the demonstrated presumption that conspicious, consumption trumps taste. She complimented this with a striking multicolored, gloosy pair of what must have been designer sneakers. She would lovingly fuss over the baby, pulling up it’s blanket, adjusting it’s little hat, touching it’s face and each time she finished she would fully insert her thumb in her own mouth and gaze admiringly at the baby. There was no eye contact. Everyone pretended not to notice.
My friend here at work, Muriel hails from Dundee and has arrived at retirement with her accent and sense of humour intact. She and her husband have worked all over; Canada, Africa and the US. They have bought a small farm out in Standardsville in Virginia and she sometimes brings back tales of the life bucolic.
Like the story of her 88 year neighbour, a widower of 13 years who having survived prostate cancer decided to make an honest woman of girlfriend who is a mere 62, and stopped by to see Murial’s husband to check if, for his honeymoon he should be purchasing Viagara or Cialis or would one suffice. He wastold that one should be adequate and off the happy couple went for a weekend at a luxury resort arranged for free by another friend, a travel agent.
The only risk, which they would have to resist, was that the free package was provided by a company that would require them to attend a dinner and sales session trying to sell them a condo on the golf course. The gentleman, being something of a skinflint, over indulged with the free drinks over dinner and had to be put to bed on Saturday night, was hors combat on Sunday and on their return the bride reports that regrettably the weekend was conjugally unconsummated.
On Sat. 25 April I was on my way to work and exiting Farragut North metro station was confronted by the sight of about 20 young people on the sidewalk with masks pulled up over their faces and carrying signs protesting the annual World Bank meeting of the worlds Ministers of Finance. The kids were surrounded by police on motor bikes and in cars. Off to the side were some older people with brightly coloured caps and carying notebooks.
I stopped and asked what their role was and they told me they were with a group of retired lawyers working with Global Justice Action the group organizing the protest and acting as witnesses to the demonstration. As I walked the 10 blocks towards the Bank building, I work in on 19th and I streets, I noticed police helicopters overhead and another group of demonstrators with the police again trying to isolate them. This time in cars, on motorbikes, bicycles and one on a Segway. One of the kids was carrying a sign saying “Capitalist meeting in progress, Keep Quiet please.”
The younger policemen were nervous and one got out of his car holding a can of mace at his side and shaking it, so I walked over and said hello, it’s a nice day. He did not say hello. As I got close the Bank main complex there were barriers around the building and you started to see the young muscular guys with short haircuts, flesh coloured ear pieces talking into their wrists. And standing waiting to get through the barrier were a line of waiters and waitresses each with their white shirt and dark jacket on a coat hangar, all of them from Centra America, waiting to serve expensive food to international misinters of finance here to solve the problems of the world’s poor.
Another morning I was coming up the escalator from the same station and heard this guy playing a long improvised solo to a familiar song. Different people play there on different days, the Chinese guy that sometimes plays the one string violin has not been around this year.
But todays guy has been playing there on and off for many years, a big guy who plays an amplified guitar well, sings and has his dreadlocks up in one of those Jamiacan style knitted hats. As I arrived at the top he started singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and he did it well so I stopped listened for a while. I decided to give him some money but only had a $5 bill so signed that I was putting in the 5 and taking out 3 and he said between musical phrases, cool I work on the honor system. I said I love the sound of Cohen in the morning and he said the dude is coming to town to perform and as I walked away he sang the next line “maybe theres a god above, and all I ever learned from love, was to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Amen
Building a Garage & And So It Goes
Roger
The following is the tail end of a periodic letter I would send to my son Patrick’s godmother Della in Langley. About a year ago she learned she had melanoma and this was my poor attempt, along with some phone calls to make her smile for a moment.
Building a Garage.
On Saturday 29 June, as I do most weekends recently, I went next door to help my neighbour Jean Noel with his year long project of building a garage. He gets up on the scaffolding (l’echafaudage, you learn a new word every day). I fill the bucket with cement and Jean Noel pulls it up on a rope. I was walking into the garage with a full bucket thinking I should get a fresh bag of cement when I put my right foot on a loose piece of wood and fell like I had been shot. Jean Noel scrambled down and tried to pull me to my feet, but you probably remember the experience where your body is telling you “stay exactly where you are for a while until I figure out how bad things are.”
The following is the tail end of a periodic letter I would send to my son Patrick’s godmother Della in Langley. About a year ago she learned she had melanoma and this was my poor attempt, along with some phone calls to make her smile for a moment.
Building a Garage.
On Saturday 29 June, as I do most weekends recently, I went next door to help my neighbour Jean Noel with his year long project of building a garage. He gets up on the scaffolding (l’echafaudage, you learn a new word every day). I fill the bucket with cement and Jean Noel pulls it up on a rope. I was walking into the garage with a full bucket thinking I should get a fresh bag of cement when I put my right foot on a loose piece of wood and fell like I had been shot. Jean Noel scrambled down and tried to pull me to my feet, but you probably remember the experience where your body is telling you “stay exactly where you are for a while until I figure out how bad things are.”
After a bit he pulled me up, we finished the pour we were doing and I stumbled off home. I had a painful shower and then spent Sunday to Wednesday with my foot soaking in a bucket of water and ice. As that was not working on Wednesday I drove the trusty old 2CV to the doctors office in Montolieu, he pushed my ankle in a few places and told me, after he had called them, to go to the emergency room in the Clinic de Montreal in Carcassonne. I told him I would drive there right away. He said no your ankle is broken and get a friend to take me as I would probably not be able to drive back.
I drove home, note driving up hill is less painful than down as no braking is required, called my friend Pierre and that afternoon he drive me to the Clinic. With the system in France you go in, hand them your medical card, they stick it in the computer reader and that takes care of the paperwork. They put me in a room, a doctor took a look, poked my ankle and sent me for an x-ray. About 15 minutes later he came back to the room, snapped the x-ray in the light frame, told me my ankle was broken and asked how I had managed, even using a cane, to get around on it for 4 days. My answer, probably because I am stupid. He wrote me a number of prescriptions, told me to make an appointment with a specialist for the next week, and then two nurses came in and started putting a cast on my leg.
I drove home, note driving up hill is less painful than down as no braking is required, called my friend Pierre and that afternoon he drive me to the Clinic. With the system in France you go in, hand them your medical card, they stick it in the computer reader and that takes care of the paperwork. They put me in a room, a doctor took a look, poked my ankle and sent me for an x-ray. About 15 minutes later he came back to the room, snapped the x-ray in the light frame, told me my ankle was broken and asked how I had managed, even using a cane, to get around on it for 4 days. My answer, probably because I am stupid. He wrote me a number of prescriptions, told me to make an appointment with a specialist for the next week, and then two nurses came in and started putting a cast on my leg.
I asked them to make it as small as possible so I could drive. They thought this was funny and told me that if you have a cast your car insurance is not valid. Pierre took me home, stopping on the way to pick up my prescriptions. These included painkillers, and to my surprise a bunch of hypodermic needles charged with medicine. It was then that I learned that in order to prevent blood clots a nurse would be coming to my house every morning to give me an injection, plus a blood test twice a week to check my platelet count.
The next day, Thursday the nurse arrived just after breakfast, introduced herself and used a lot of French medical phrases unknown to me and indicated it was time for the the blood draw. That done, it takes the edge of your second cup of coffee, she suggested we do the injection. I proffered my right arm she shook her head and indicated my nether regions. So I struggled to my feet, turned my back, undid my belt, drew down my clean underwear, mother had warned me, and offered her my somewhat tense right Irish cheek. A bit of painless time went by so I looked over my should to see a puzzled nurse with a hypodermic in her hand. In response to my inquiry about her presumed preference for left cheeks she replied that in France they give injections in the stomach. So pivoting manfully I presented my stomach and she grasped a handful of my ample avoir dupois and stuck a needle in it. There is a first time for everything and I now have a third alternative for the popular question are you cold or were you born that way.
On Thursday 10 July Pierre took me back to the Clinic to see the specialist. He cut off the temporary cast, looked at the x-ray and cheerfully advised me I would probably need a total of 45 days with my right leg in a cast. I told him, hopefully that this was not possible as I had only enough syringes for 30 morning injections in my stomach. He smiled and told me not to worry, call my doctor and he would order me up another 15 which the nurse would pick up for me at the pharmacy.
Stuck at home after four weeks learning to walk on a couple of crutches that reach to your elbows and fall immediately to the floor each time you rest them against something, I have had lots of time to very slowly do some of the things I used to do and to consider the future and realize what limited mobility does to our presumed entitlement to a normal life.
Last week I received this.
Hi John.
I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but Della died at 3:15 this afternoon. The end was gentle and comfortable, although I could hear her silently telling us to get the hell out of her room and have a glass of wine and stop scaring her with our silly long faces. She’d slipped into unconsciousness two days ago, but her voice was still inside our heads.
Perry’s at the Hospice with Chris, the other Musketeer, making arrangements, but I’m sure she’d have wanted you to have a better farewell party drinking wine and eating moules on the ramparts of Carcassonne – all the while resting that incalcitrant ankle.
I’ll write more later. Della heard your last letter and she responded with a smile when I told her you sent your love.
Take care. Rene
I had the cast removed today, have another week of injections and am told to behave cautiously when walking outside.
I can hear the sound of Della’s voice n my head but cannot remember what we were talking about, and somtimes my eyes fill with tears.
Be well.
John
The next day, Thursday the nurse arrived just after breakfast, introduced herself and used a lot of French medical phrases unknown to me and indicated it was time for the the blood draw. That done, it takes the edge of your second cup of coffee, she suggested we do the injection. I proffered my right arm she shook her head and indicated my nether regions. So I struggled to my feet, turned my back, undid my belt, drew down my clean underwear, mother had warned me, and offered her my somewhat tense right Irish cheek. A bit of painless time went by so I looked over my should to see a puzzled nurse with a hypodermic in her hand. In response to my inquiry about her presumed preference for left cheeks she replied that in France they give injections in the stomach. So pivoting manfully I presented my stomach and she grasped a handful of my ample avoir dupois and stuck a needle in it. There is a first time for everything and I now have a third alternative for the popular question are you cold or were you born that way.
On Thursday 10 July Pierre took me back to the Clinic to see the specialist. He cut off the temporary cast, looked at the x-ray and cheerfully advised me I would probably need a total of 45 days with my right leg in a cast. I told him, hopefully that this was not possible as I had only enough syringes for 30 morning injections in my stomach. He smiled and told me not to worry, call my doctor and he would order me up another 15 which the nurse would pick up for me at the pharmacy.
Stuck at home after four weeks learning to walk on a couple of crutches that reach to your elbows and fall immediately to the floor each time you rest them against something, I have had lots of time to very slowly do some of the things I used to do and to consider the future and realize what limited mobility does to our presumed entitlement to a normal life.
Last week I received this.
Hi John.
I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but Della died at 3:15 this afternoon. The end was gentle and comfortable, although I could hear her silently telling us to get the hell out of her room and have a glass of wine and stop scaring her with our silly long faces. She’d slipped into unconsciousness two days ago, but her voice was still inside our heads.
Perry’s at the Hospice with Chris, the other Musketeer, making arrangements, but I’m sure she’d have wanted you to have a better farewell party drinking wine and eating moules on the ramparts of Carcassonne – all the while resting that incalcitrant ankle.
I’ll write more later. Della heard your last letter and she responded with a smile when I told her you sent your love.
Take care. Rene
I had the cast removed today, have another week of injections and am told to behave cautiously when walking outside.
I can hear the sound of Della’s voice n my head but cannot remember what we were talking about, and somtimes my eyes fill with tears.
Be well.
John
Observations on Elections and Other Events in a Small French Village
John, Sam,
Last Sunday they held municipal elections to pick a slate of “aldermen” for every town and village in France. If there is more than one slate representing e.g. left and right wings then the final slate can be a mixture of candidates. The slate of winners then nominates one of themselves as mayor. All very democratic. In our small village the former mayor did not run for re-election.
A few days before Sunday’s election the new mayor’s 59 year old wife unexpectedly had a heart attack and died. That day her brother came to the door, in tears, of my friend Jean Michel to bring him the news and collapsed in Jean Michel’s arms. Jean Michel turned white, went to the kitchen and ate some sugar to recover from the shock while his wife Josy comforted their friend
On Monday morning Josy and I went out for our daily walk and in passing we saw the gate to the mayor’s home was open and someone was working in the garden. So we went in to commiserate with and congratulate the new mayor, and found it was in fact his brother in law doing the work. He had built a very nice small fence around a large tree and planted flowers inside it in remembrance of his sister.
As we were commiserating with him we noticed that he was raking her ashes into the soil.
He told us the his brother in law and now the successful new mayor was inside resting.
The trouble is we think we have time.
I hope this find you in good health and that all is well in Perth
You know you are dead when the bills stop coming in.
John
More About Life in Saint Denis
Hello Della,
Some more rambling observations from St Denis.
Sometimes when I am on the terrace in the evenings I look up and there are the 3 rabbits sitting on the lawn again, and we sit there quietly looking at each other for a long while. I am not sure what exactly they are thinking but my thoughts, depending how close we are to 7 PM, veer between Brer Rabbit and Lapin a La Cocotte. Then as dusk starts hiding the chestnut trees and the first bats swoop around, the rabbits retire to their blackberry patch for the night and I go inside, leaving the bats to dine on the bugs that were snacking on me.
With my children and my visitors all gone back to the USA my life has moved closer to the intended routine. A bicycle ride three days a week to keep the heart functional, up along the least hilly stretch I can find along the road to my friend Joseph’s farm. The roads are narrow and there was one particular corner where drivers seemed to be coming around more in the middle of the road than on their side. After a couple of trips I figured out that on the terrace of a summer home, just before the corner from Joseph’s house, an evidently impoverished Dutch lady and her daughter were attempting to stay warm by lying in the sun naked. Alas the alabaster Hollandaise have gone home and we are all back on our own side of the road.
A few weeks ago as I rolled down the hill before the bridge and the old mill I would see a young couple working on, and clearly living in, an old van set up in the front garden of a house that was closed up for the season. Being winded and needing an excuse to stop on the way back up the hill, and being curious I went in and said a big Bonjour. The kids looked a bit nervous so I said Hello and they started speaking Scottish, or maybe English with a very strong accent. They had finished school and were driving around Europe for a year. So my question, after offering them showers, phone calls home etc. was why overhaul the van in rural Saint Denis in the south of France. Their answer, their first stop after purchasing the van in Scotland was Saint Denis to see some friends staying there for the summer. By the time they reached Saint Denis they realised the true condition of the van and started overhauling it. Now with weeks gone by and their friends returned home they were finishing up and leaving in a couple of days.
So next spin down the hill the gates were closed, the garden tidy and the kids were on the road. You would wish them well, bon voyage, true love, a wedding, children and lots of warm memories for the long rainy Scottish nights when the sun sets at 4 PM and kids do not want to go to bed or to sleep. I did recommend they consider immigration to Australia, one does what one can.
In fact most of the summer visitors and tourists are now gone and we have the roads and countryside pretty much back to ourselves with the sun still shining and the weather still warm. But I do miss walking along the little rural paths that the farm workers used to get to the fields in years gone by, and meeting tourists who stop speaking Dutch, German or English to respond to my ringing Bonjour with their Bonjour in return. Thus enabling them to continue on with their constitutional enjoying a warm feeling of experiencing la France profonde, never suspecting my Irish origins.
A few days ago I was taking a stroll down one of these paths listening to a podcast from an Australian university, two teams were debating the question can capitalism have a soul. So apropos of who knows what one of the debaters threw in a vignette from the 1960s when a young liberated Australian university student was bringing her new baby to school and breast feeding it in class. The professor newly arrived from England, and with a military bearing and moustache said nothing the first two times but on the third occasion said young lady do you know that breast feeding is a form of masturbation. There was a horrified silence, the young lady blushed deeply and after a pause said, no I didn’t but you do it your way and I’ll do it mine. So I was bent over laughing out loud when a couple from my village came around a bend, said Bonjour and were gone before I could come up with anything plausible. Thus do you earn a reputation in a small village.
However it will take time and effort to surpass the older gentleman up the road. I am told he is a Russian who has lived in the village for many many years. About 40 years ago he first became of note for wearing a luxurious full length fur coat in the winter time. But he moved from note to lore when he was observed early on a cold New Years morning at the edge of the small lake that provides the local drinking water, shedding his fur coat to reveal a naked Russian who plunged into the water for a ritual swim. He evidently repeated it for a sufficient number of years that people stopped waking up early on New Years day to watch, so no one knows if and when he stopped.
A few weeks ago I was returning from my bicycle ride, coming down the narrow road to my house when I met my next door neighbour’s sister, her car parked in the middle of the path gathering blackberries from the drywalls enclosing the fields. Since I had to get off the bike to pass I offered to help with the blackberry gathering and after a while and some scratches she told me she had just told her brother that I was invited for lunch at her home the next Saturday. I thanked her and made my way home. The next day, Friday her brother Jean Noel told me about the invitation and I asked what we were having for lunch so I could bring a few bottles of wine. He told me that the main course was 300 snails. So I asked what wine went with snails and he told me red. Who knew.
On Saturday I showed up about 1230 with my wine and there were about a dozen people present, some of whom I had met before when eating on Jean Noel’s terrace. We started in with snacks and the wines that go with snacks. Then a big wok like pan was put on the table with I would guess at least 300 snails and a sauce that added a certain je ne sais quoi. We worked our way through that with baguettes and red wine. Then they lit the barbecue and proceed to grill portions of a wild pig someone had shot just recently. Wild pig also goes with red wine. Next of course came cheese, desert including a blackberry pie that I had contributed to, coffee and a little glass of Armagnac digestive. All this took place on the terrace outside and about 5 PM Jean Noel’s niece asked her Dad if she should dance for us, and he said sure and everybody else cheered.
This is a child about 10 years old wearing what I think we used to call pedal pushers, runners on her feet and a simple top and with her hair pulled back in a pony tail. So blasé John thought this will at least bring the day to an end before I fall asleep here in my chair. The kid went inside to pick out some music and gave it to her cousin to put on the stereo, we all turned our chairs to the front and she stood still waiting for the music. Then when the music started, she stood totally erect, put her right arm in the air, turned her hand over her head, put her left hand behind her back parallel to her waist, turned her head slowly to look over our heads and with a look of pride and a poise dating from hundred of years started to dance a flamenco. After about 5 minutes her audience began to shout encouragement asking for more fire, more blood and she danced with a passion a 10 year old couldn’t possibly have known.
When she was finished I was completely flabbergasted about what, if you are lucky, you can tumble into in a small French village on a sunny afternoon after some food and wine. I thanked the young girl and complimented her father, asking him how long she had studied dance. He told me only a few months. But I persisted asking how could she have that look, that poise and he told me that everyone present, with the exception of two of the ladies, were originally from Andalusia in Spain and what I saw was a natural part of their heritage. Remember over 300,00 Spanish refugees, many Catalan escaped to France during the Franco dictatorship.
It was getting on for 6 PM and I started making my excuses again and they cleaned the table and brought out the aperitifs. The ladies said they were going to make two simple omelettes with locally picked mushrooms, one drier for those that preferred that and the other baveuse, such an evocative word, for those that preferred runny. They also lit the barbecue again and started grilling portions of a deer that a boyfriend of one of the girls had recently hunted and a 3 litre bottle of wine, red, appeared on the table. As a guest I got one of the fresh deer kidneys soaked in vinegar and placed on the barbecue for not a long time. When we reached the coffee for the second time one of the guests came out of he house playing a local set of bagpipes, it actually is a small sheep turned inside out with the legs stoppered with wooden plugs and a drone and chanter stuck in one end, or the other.
At 1130 I again started to say thanks and tried to go home and then it was announced we were going to a larger village to hear some live music and have a last beer. So I got home at 1 AM, turned around a few times and finally laid down and thus ended another weekend in a quiet rural French village.
So now here it is another weekend and time to end this and take a walk to my friend Joseph’s and if I time it right on the return the sun will be going down and shining west to east along the Pyrenees, which roll back into the distance from low to high like broken waves. I like to walk along that road when as winter comes on the snow starts creeping down the mountains and the setting sun reflects off it like snow on fire.
Last note. I got to the farm yesterday and Jeannot , Joseph’s brother in law was sitting outside on a bench in the shade. Jeannot was taken by the fact that I had walked to his place from the village, about a 30 minute effort and told me that at 82 he does not walk anywhere near as much as he used to. Jeannot is a widower with a ribald sense of humour, and he and Joseph live together in their old farm house. Joseph and their dog joined us at the bench. Joseph and Jeannot are about the same age, and if like today neither one has their hearing aids installed, and they both have very pronounced rural accents, the conversation gets loud and frequently confused. I asked Jeannot how long their neighbors the Dutch ladies had been gone and he told me three days. I told him he could still walk a fair distance if he knew that, or was he sneaking across the fields, which got Joseph laughing. Joseph only has one leg, he lost the other years ago in an accident with a farm machine, so cannot cover much distance at all. Actually Joseph has 3 legs, his good one, the prosthesis he was wearing, and his spare prothesis which he had washed and was drying in the sun outside the front door. Jeannot using lots of colourful patois told me that even at his age, if he could not walk far his eyes were still working, for example he could see that the widow Hugette was back home up the hill because her laundry was outside. So I complimented him on his continuing youth as evidenced by his interest in the widow’s underwear and there was a lot more patois and three old guys laughing on a bench with a dog with its head on one side looking at us.
On the way home I walked down the lane past the Russian gentleman’s home and he was in his vegetable garden leaning heavily on his walking stick modernising the system everyone uses here to try to scare off the birds. You cut plastic bottles in half and put them inverted on a stick and when the wind blows they rattle and spin around. Today he was installing a new system with string and shiny CDs which were spinning in the breeze. I wondered if the CDs were of Russian choral music, Gretchaninov for the birds of Saint Denis .
I hope this finds you well, and all things considered, in good spirits.
I will call you on Sunday
Your friend,
John
Some more rambling observations from St Denis.
Sometimes when I am on the terrace in the evenings I look up and there are the 3 rabbits sitting on the lawn again, and we sit there quietly looking at each other for a long while. I am not sure what exactly they are thinking but my thoughts, depending how close we are to 7 PM, veer between Brer Rabbit and Lapin a La Cocotte. Then as dusk starts hiding the chestnut trees and the first bats swoop around, the rabbits retire to their blackberry patch for the night and I go inside, leaving the bats to dine on the bugs that were snacking on me.
With my children and my visitors all gone back to the USA my life has moved closer to the intended routine. A bicycle ride three days a week to keep the heart functional, up along the least hilly stretch I can find along the road to my friend Joseph’s farm. The roads are narrow and there was one particular corner where drivers seemed to be coming around more in the middle of the road than on their side. After a couple of trips I figured out that on the terrace of a summer home, just before the corner from Joseph’s house, an evidently impoverished Dutch lady and her daughter were attempting to stay warm by lying in the sun naked. Alas the alabaster Hollandaise have gone home and we are all back on our own side of the road.
A few weeks ago as I rolled down the hill before the bridge and the old mill I would see a young couple working on, and clearly living in, an old van set up in the front garden of a house that was closed up for the season. Being winded and needing an excuse to stop on the way back up the hill, and being curious I went in and said a big Bonjour. The kids looked a bit nervous so I said Hello and they started speaking Scottish, or maybe English with a very strong accent. They had finished school and were driving around Europe for a year. So my question, after offering them showers, phone calls home etc. was why overhaul the van in rural Saint Denis in the south of France. Their answer, their first stop after purchasing the van in Scotland was Saint Denis to see some friends staying there for the summer. By the time they reached Saint Denis they realised the true condition of the van and started overhauling it. Now with weeks gone by and their friends returned home they were finishing up and leaving in a couple of days.
So next spin down the hill the gates were closed, the garden tidy and the kids were on the road. You would wish them well, bon voyage, true love, a wedding, children and lots of warm memories for the long rainy Scottish nights when the sun sets at 4 PM and kids do not want to go to bed or to sleep. I did recommend they consider immigration to Australia, one does what one can.
In fact most of the summer visitors and tourists are now gone and we have the roads and countryside pretty much back to ourselves with the sun still shining and the weather still warm. But I do miss walking along the little rural paths that the farm workers used to get to the fields in years gone by, and meeting tourists who stop speaking Dutch, German or English to respond to my ringing Bonjour with their Bonjour in return. Thus enabling them to continue on with their constitutional enjoying a warm feeling of experiencing la France profonde, never suspecting my Irish origins.
A few days ago I was taking a stroll down one of these paths listening to a podcast from an Australian university, two teams were debating the question can capitalism have a soul. So apropos of who knows what one of the debaters threw in a vignette from the 1960s when a young liberated Australian university student was bringing her new baby to school and breast feeding it in class. The professor newly arrived from England, and with a military bearing and moustache said nothing the first two times but on the third occasion said young lady do you know that breast feeding is a form of masturbation. There was a horrified silence, the young lady blushed deeply and after a pause said, no I didn’t but you do it your way and I’ll do it mine. So I was bent over laughing out loud when a couple from my village came around a bend, said Bonjour and were gone before I could come up with anything plausible. Thus do you earn a reputation in a small village.
However it will take time and effort to surpass the older gentleman up the road. I am told he is a Russian who has lived in the village for many many years. About 40 years ago he first became of note for wearing a luxurious full length fur coat in the winter time. But he moved from note to lore when he was observed early on a cold New Years morning at the edge of the small lake that provides the local drinking water, shedding his fur coat to reveal a naked Russian who plunged into the water for a ritual swim. He evidently repeated it for a sufficient number of years that people stopped waking up early on New Years day to watch, so no one knows if and when he stopped.
A few weeks ago I was returning from my bicycle ride, coming down the narrow road to my house when I met my next door neighbour’s sister, her car parked in the middle of the path gathering blackberries from the drywalls enclosing the fields. Since I had to get off the bike to pass I offered to help with the blackberry gathering and after a while and some scratches she told me she had just told her brother that I was invited for lunch at her home the next Saturday. I thanked her and made my way home. The next day, Friday her brother Jean Noel told me about the invitation and I asked what we were having for lunch so I could bring a few bottles of wine. He told me that the main course was 300 snails. So I asked what wine went with snails and he told me red. Who knew.
On Saturday I showed up about 1230 with my wine and there were about a dozen people present, some of whom I had met before when eating on Jean Noel’s terrace. We started in with snacks and the wines that go with snacks. Then a big wok like pan was put on the table with I would guess at least 300 snails and a sauce that added a certain je ne sais quoi. We worked our way through that with baguettes and red wine. Then they lit the barbecue and proceed to grill portions of a wild pig someone had shot just recently. Wild pig also goes with red wine. Next of course came cheese, desert including a blackberry pie that I had contributed to, coffee and a little glass of Armagnac digestive. All this took place on the terrace outside and about 5 PM Jean Noel’s niece asked her Dad if she should dance for us, and he said sure and everybody else cheered.
This is a child about 10 years old wearing what I think we used to call pedal pushers, runners on her feet and a simple top and with her hair pulled back in a pony tail. So blasé John thought this will at least bring the day to an end before I fall asleep here in my chair. The kid went inside to pick out some music and gave it to her cousin to put on the stereo, we all turned our chairs to the front and she stood still waiting for the music. Then when the music started, she stood totally erect, put her right arm in the air, turned her hand over her head, put her left hand behind her back parallel to her waist, turned her head slowly to look over our heads and with a look of pride and a poise dating from hundred of years started to dance a flamenco. After about 5 minutes her audience began to shout encouragement asking for more fire, more blood and she danced with a passion a 10 year old couldn’t possibly have known.
When she was finished I was completely flabbergasted about what, if you are lucky, you can tumble into in a small French village on a sunny afternoon after some food and wine. I thanked the young girl and complimented her father, asking him how long she had studied dance. He told me only a few months. But I persisted asking how could she have that look, that poise and he told me that everyone present, with the exception of two of the ladies, were originally from Andalusia in Spain and what I saw was a natural part of their heritage. Remember over 300,00 Spanish refugees, many Catalan escaped to France during the Franco dictatorship.
It was getting on for 6 PM and I started making my excuses again and they cleaned the table and brought out the aperitifs. The ladies said they were going to make two simple omelettes with locally picked mushrooms, one drier for those that preferred that and the other baveuse, such an evocative word, for those that preferred runny. They also lit the barbecue again and started grilling portions of a deer that a boyfriend of one of the girls had recently hunted and a 3 litre bottle of wine, red, appeared on the table. As a guest I got one of the fresh deer kidneys soaked in vinegar and placed on the barbecue for not a long time. When we reached the coffee for the second time one of the guests came out of he house playing a local set of bagpipes, it actually is a small sheep turned inside out with the legs stoppered with wooden plugs and a drone and chanter stuck in one end, or the other.
At 1130 I again started to say thanks and tried to go home and then it was announced we were going to a larger village to hear some live music and have a last beer. So I got home at 1 AM, turned around a few times and finally laid down and thus ended another weekend in a quiet rural French village.
So now here it is another weekend and time to end this and take a walk to my friend Joseph’s and if I time it right on the return the sun will be going down and shining west to east along the Pyrenees, which roll back into the distance from low to high like broken waves. I like to walk along that road when as winter comes on the snow starts creeping down the mountains and the setting sun reflects off it like snow on fire.
Last note. I got to the farm yesterday and Jeannot , Joseph’s brother in law was sitting outside on a bench in the shade. Jeannot was taken by the fact that I had walked to his place from the village, about a 30 minute effort and told me that at 82 he does not walk anywhere near as much as he used to. Jeannot is a widower with a ribald sense of humour, and he and Joseph live together in their old farm house. Joseph and their dog joined us at the bench. Joseph and Jeannot are about the same age, and if like today neither one has their hearing aids installed, and they both have very pronounced rural accents, the conversation gets loud and frequently confused. I asked Jeannot how long their neighbors the Dutch ladies had been gone and he told me three days. I told him he could still walk a fair distance if he knew that, or was he sneaking across the fields, which got Joseph laughing. Joseph only has one leg, he lost the other years ago in an accident with a farm machine, so cannot cover much distance at all. Actually Joseph has 3 legs, his good one, the prosthesis he was wearing, and his spare prothesis which he had washed and was drying in the sun outside the front door. Jeannot using lots of colourful patois told me that even at his age, if he could not walk far his eyes were still working, for example he could see that the widow Hugette was back home up the hill because her laundry was outside. So I complimented him on his continuing youth as evidenced by his interest in the widow’s underwear and there was a lot more patois and three old guys laughing on a bench with a dog with its head on one side looking at us.
On the way home I walked down the lane past the Russian gentleman’s home and he was in his vegetable garden leaning heavily on his walking stick modernising the system everyone uses here to try to scare off the birds. You cut plastic bottles in half and put them inverted on a stick and when the wind blows they rattle and spin around. Today he was installing a new system with string and shiny CDs which were spinning in the breeze. I wondered if the CDs were of Russian choral music, Gretchaninov for the birds of Saint Denis .
I hope this finds you well, and all things considered, in good spirits.
I will call you on Sunday
Your friend,
John