Photo of my neighbor and friend, Francine, with Blanche in the foreground, and the late Olympia in the back.

It's the Same Old Song

I haven’t been the best poster for the past two and a half weeks. My excuse is that when I arrive here, it always takes me three weeks to a month to recover from my jet lag and to get onto a schedule. I’m just starting to get myself psychologically organized and tomorrow, I’m taking off for Switzerland for a week. So the net result is that I came to Europe for a month and just vegged out on the couch.

This weekend, after two weeks of lying around like a slug, albeit a dried out slug, in front of the fireplace, I finally got into the swing of doing my weight lifting. (In my defense though, I did work many hours on my novel.) After going a while without exercising, and then finally taking it up again, I marvel at how great I feel, and how much more energized I am; and then I berate myself for having ignored my body.

Last night, my husband and I went to dinner at our YOUNG neighbors – they’re our age. Roger also joined us, bringing a special cake that celebrates the three kings who showed up at Jesus’ manger. Baked in the cake, is a small porcelain figurine (now-a-days a Disney character). Whoever finds the figurine in their piece of cake is the king or queen for the year, and they are crowned with the gold colored, paper crown that comes with the cake. There were three pieces that weren’t eaten last night . . . one of them contained the figurine. So we were all disappointed that none of us would be crowned.

During the evening, I fell into my usual habit of quizzing the owners about the history of their house, and quizzing Roger about the war. When I asked him about the war last night, he asked me, “Which one? Fourteen or Forty?”

Roger was telling us about the Gestapo rounding people up to interrogate them. I asked where the Gestapo headquarters were located, and our hostess said she thought that it was where the gynecological clinic was today. The two of us women started laughing uncontrollably, commenting on the fact that both the Gestapo and the gynecologists probably have similar torturing methods. (This morning, I didn’t find the joke so funny, as I thought about all the innocent people who were tortured and killed by the Gestapo and how it wasn’t right to laugh about their plight, even though they were probably dead and gone. And then I thought about the torturing that our soldiers and CIA are conducting in my name, with my tax dollars, and how I don’t do a damn thing to try and stop it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12606-2005Jan15.html I’m just as bad as any French collaborator in the 40’s or German citizen who looked the other way.http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/01/edi05019.html)

Roger said that in his early childhood, the house of our hosts was a ruin, and an old widow lived in it. The house was falling down because she had no money to fix it. As Roger pointed out, “it was before social services” so she had to depend upon the neighbors to feed her. In the early thirties, he can remember his grandmother and his mother sending food over for the poor woman. (In the United States in the first quarter of the century, before there was Social Security, the majority of people over the age of sixty lived in poverty. Now in the United States, the government wants to dismantle the system. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6822964?rnd=1105972841870&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.872 or http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7862-2005Jan13.html)

As many of you who read my blog will recall, I’m trying to figure out the TRUE story about the local teenage girl who was shot and killed by the Maquis (the Resistance fighters) during World War II. Well, last night, I was handed another tiny sliver of the puzzle.

The young victim lived in the house of our dinner hosts, with a woman whose husband made his living as a truck driver for our Moulin when it was a thriving business making flour. (I was also given the juicy bit of information that people in the neighborhood consider the former owners of our mill to have been war profiteers. A trait which is rewarded in the U.S. with stock options, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1391431,00.html but here in France, people who do it are considered to be scum; in fact, I’m reading an article about how after the war, they executed thousands of profiteers.)

The husband of the seamstress, to whom the girl was apprenticed, went up to fight the Germans when they first invaded France in 1939. He was held as a prisoner in Germany for the rest of the war. Our hostess reminded us that her uncle miraculously survived two years in Buchenwald because the Germans didn’t like his political views. (Sort of reminds me of the “insurgent” roundups taking place in Iraq right now just before the election.http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20050116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq)

This additional factoid doesn’t solve the mystery of why the girl was shot or who killed her; but I find it interesting that the family who owned our property, owned the house from which she was abducted, at the time of her abduction. This just heightens the mystery, because obviously, the previous owner, and the other neighbors who were here at the time, know the real story . . . you don’t have your neighbor taken out of a house you own and then don’t bother to find out why her body was dumped not very far away from your property. But for some reason, people don’t want to divulge all the details.

So, as I write this, I see that the old adage is true: the more things change the more things stay the same.

When Hell Freezes Over

Ah, where do I begin?

Roughly 1000 Euros of the 1600 Euro water bill stems from a valve that was left open, by my husband (praise the heavens because I won’t be spanked over the sorry episode) in July for approximately two to three weeks. That’s the best guess that our detective work can figure out.

The water company man came out yesterday and told us that nothing is wrong with our water meter. He confirmed what the plumber told me in October when I called her out to check for a leak after the water company sent me a letter telling me that I had used an abnormal amount of water over the preceding twelve months. I just figured that since I was spending more time here during the year, I was using more water. No big deal, if your hobby is lighting 500Euro notes on fire.

On Wednesday, my husband made another grave error. He turned down the thermostat on our central heating system. By Wednesday evening, his malicious action had the opposite effect, and the house was registering a temperature of over 82 degrees Fahrenheit! We had to sleep with the bedroom window open, and even then, despite it being below freezing outside, we were throwing the covers off our sweat soaked bodies.

In San Francisco, we aren’t big oil consumers. We don’t even own a car. We walk to most of our destinations. But here we have an oil-based heating system and so we were feeling particularly guilty, in a way that only liberals are capable of being haunted by ecological guilt, that we were supporting the supranational oil companies and their auxiliary wars by burning our meager oil supplies at a rate that would embarrass even hyper-consumptive Americans.

My husband called the lesbian plumber, who is a very nice person, on Wednesday evening around five. She said she was very busy, because she had just returned from vacation but that she would call him back. She didn’t call back Wednesday night. Thursday morning my husband, impatient American-capitalist that he is, wanted me to call her again, thinking that a female voice would lure her out to our house of domestic horrors. I have my principles, meager as they are, and I refused to be pimped out just to get the heater repaired. And besides, he needed to build his French conversational skills, and he should take this opportunity to engage in today’s lesson entitled, “Convincing the Lesbian Plumber to come to your Mill to Repair your Troublesome Oil Heater.”

As we were having this discussion, Corinne arrived to clean the house. Since she knows all about the problem because she had to deal with it when we were gone in late November, we asked her to call the plumber and explain the dire situation. The plumber, an employee of Madame la Plombier, a seemingly heterosexual male, arrived an hour and a half later.

He diagnosed the conundrum. When my husband turned the heat DOWN with our thermostat, the regulator attached to the heater got stuck at the level which, in English, roughly translates to “SCORCHING HOT SAUNA.” The regulator is broken. The plumber promised that he will have Madame send us an estimate by Monday (the day we leave for Switzerland). If we approve, then they’ll install the regulator while we’re gone. (Of course we’ll approve it. We aren’t going to go through the excruciatingly painful procedure, a pain similar to that of having your toenails pulled out by pliers, of trying to lure another plumber out to give us an estimate.)

The plumber said that he would put the heater at a lower setting, around 17C (we had been keeping our thermostat at the American level of 20C). We should not touch the thermostat. All should be fine until we leave and they replace the regulator.

Mais au contraire! All is not fine. I’m sitting here at the keyboard with freezing hands, a scarf tied around my neck, and three layers of clothing, while a space heater ineffectually blows at my back drying out my already cracking face that is rapidly acquiring the texture of fine Egyptian parchment that’s been locked in a tomb for five-thousand years.

My husband went to the outdoor market this morning to gather the victuals for a small dinner party we’re giving tonight. A dinner party that will have to be held in the kitchen that will be very messy because I don’t have counters and I don’t have a dishwasher (neither of which I want because that would not be in keeping with the authenticity of the décor). We will eat surrounded by greasy pots because we will need to sit in proximity of the oven which will be blaring natural gas heat. The fireplace in the living room isn’t big enough to provide heat to the dining room.

On a cheerier note, to be filed under “Gee My French is Getting Better,” I’m very proud to announce that just before I sat down to write this missive, I reached Monsieur LaGreze on the phone . . . after four days of being ignored . . . and he cheerfully said that he’ll be out to look at our canal problem this afternoon. He’s the guy you beg to come over when your troubles are so grand that you need work done with heavy equipment.

And another heart-warming development I must report: the Count’s canal is flooding his neighbor’s noyer. I’ve got a case of schadenfreude today. That's a nasty German word -- the French aren't so diabolical.

Despite the hardships under which my husband and I are struggling, rest assured knowing that Blanche and Soixante-Douze are fine. They don’t require central heating systems.

Voulez vous du l'eau?

I had a very pleasant, relaxing day yesterday. I worked on my novel and helped Roger all afternoon in his vineyard. When the sun started to disappear behind the hill behind my house, Roger offered to get out his tractor and trailer so that we could haul the faggots I had made over to our moulin. Now I have a shed full of faggots which means I’ll be doing a lot of duck barbecuing this summer.

While cutting the vines from their wires, and stacking the faggots, I was thinking about how perfect my life meshes with my personality. I’m not lacking for anything material or spiritual. I was amused to think that when I started out “planning” my life, when I was in my teens, trying to follow the dictates of society, I pursued the absolute wrong path. I had no idea what would really make me happy. A lot of trial and error, and a great deal of luck brought me to this happy spot – nothing I learned through the educational system, from the church, or from the government showed me the way.

If you would have told my nineteen-year-old self, that when I was forty-six I would derive immense pleasure from spending the afternoon with a seventy-six year old French farmer stacking sticks, I would have thought you were insane. And perhaps you question my sanity for thinking that such an afternoon is as close to heaven as one can get on this earth.

But I cannot say it enough -- the simple things are what matter -- health, family, friends, a few cuddly sheep, good food and a little wine. That is all we require. Well, perhaps some garnishes of literature, art, and music as well.

So knowing this, why do we spend our days racing around like cockroaches exposed to light, pursuing the absolute antitheses to happiness?

I’ll tell you why. Because we receive things like the 1600 Euro water bill that arrived in the mail yesterday. So this afternoon, instead of scampering about the vineyard, breathing in the sweet French air of liberte, egalite, fraternite, I will be driving to the water office to try and decipher what the @#%* is going on – choking on my frustration with bureaucrate, fonctionnaire, coliere. (Please add your own accents.)

Do Not Purchase a Moulin in France . . . I Repeat . . .

I'm so excited that you get to see what Blanche and Soixante-Douze look like. I hope you enjoy them for it took me two hours to figure out how to post the photos. AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH. The experience was a reminder of why I want to escape civilization and live in the wilds.

Yesterday afternoon, I helped Roger in his vineyard. He's clipping his vines. I follow behind him and pull or clip the cut vines from the wires andpick them off the ground. Then I pile them into neat faggots. Roger will tie them up later and then save some of them for me. The faggots are fantastic for cooking duck on an outdoor grill or for quickly starting fires in the fireplace.

We don't have a "real" grill that we purchased at a store. Instead, my son constructed a barbecue by piling up large boulders . . . it's quite quaint. Everytime I see it I think of him. If we had purchased a barbeque at the hardware store, I wouldn't think of my son. Since living here, I've discovered that if you want to create an ambiance of quaintness, you need to invest more ingenuity and less money in your THINGS. It's a good thing I decided to choose "quaint" as my decor style, because this quaint canal is sucking up money faster than a British sailor on shore leave sucks up cheap gin.

My husband and I spent the bulk of our waking hours yesterday, and there were many waking hours because it was difficult to sleep with the flooding noyer flooding our thoughts, thinking about ways to tackle this problem leaking canal. The easiest solution would be for us to buy the Foissac's noyer. But I don't believe that the Foissac's will go for that. Farmers, who aren't ready to retire, have a religious relationship with their land . . . they just don't sell it. And since the Foissacs are big vintners and farmers, I think they view it as their destiny to be buying land, not to be selling it to annoying Americans.

But naturally, from our point of view, buying it would be the best solution because we don't know what other remedial solutions will work. We aren't even convinced that we are the ones responsible for coming up with a remedial solution.

My husband came up with the BRILLIANT idea of finding another noyer to swap with them.

We are also in the midst of this horrible lawsuit with the Count, and at this point in time, cannot even dream of asking if we can shut off the flow of water to facilitate a solution.

In short, none of the solutions we have been given are guarantted to work, and if we don't own the property, we will be spending thousands of Euros each year trying to correct the problem while the trees die, and we will most likely end up in court over that. And so we lose thousands and thousands of Euros and the Foissacs lose thousands and thousands of Euros.

We're trying to find an attorney, other than the one we currently have, who is admirably handling the Count's case but we feel she would have a vested interest in creating the grounds for another court case, to give us an opinion regarding the degree of our responsibility for the flooding. My husband points out that the canal and basin were in place long before Foissac put in the noyer. And to butress his defense, the Foissac's put in their noyer fifteen years ago in a flood plane that is bordered on two sides by canals and on the third by the river. There is a mysterious drain that leads from their noyer into our park, which leads us to believe that the noyer has always had some drainage issues.

We've asked four different people what we should do to stop the flooding, and we have received four different answers . . . all of them costing lots of money. Roger came up with the plastic lining idea -- which does not please me in the least. He telephoned a "specialist" in artifical farm ponds and that man said that the cost would be 4,000 to 5,000 Euros. (Add 33% more if you want to figure out the dollar amount.) Besides the ridiculous cost, the plastic is not natural and when the basin runs dry, as it has been in recent years, we will have a MONUMENTAL eyesore behind our house. And right now, the back of our house is not anything that would grace even the pages of Town & Hillbilly magazine.

Keep in mind as I'm complaining about costs that my mood is tinged with resentment that we just committed to spending over 9000 Euros to put a new roof on the Moulin . . . a building we do not use. In the meantime, the cottage/hovel (depending on my mood) in which we reside cries out for improvements.

We had aperitifs with Madame and Monsieur Dupuis last night. They used to own the mill and basin that are at the center of our dispute with the Count. Fifteen years later, they still hold great animosity towards the Count for buying and then tearing down their mill. I know this because last night, when talking about the outrage, Madame Dupuis raised her voice level to that of an American tourist complaining about service in a Michelin starred resturant.

Monsieur Dupuis thinks that the leakage was caused by huge river rats, imported into France a long time ago for fur, but which are no longer used for even basse couture and have now overrun the country. He thinks they burrowed holes from the canal into the neighboring noyer. Mr. Dupuis believes that the solution is to simply use a heavy roller to roll over the bottom of the basin. That would be great, if it worked, because it is an aesthetically pleasing and less expensive option than the plastic. The problem is, it's so wet here at this time of year, and the spring should be even wetter, that if we COULD miraculously drain our basin, and the Count's lawsuit absolutely negates that as an option, it would take months of favorable weather to dry out the basin so that a roller could go in there without becoming mired in the mud. We would then run the risk of the canal drying up and breaking up other parts of its course . . . the main source of our angst being the restraining wall on which our house rests.

You already know the solution of the porcelain that the water expert gave us. Foissac and Serge could only think of digging out the canal more and Roger thinks that this plan of attack will only aggravate the problem because it will remove all the silt that has been building up since the canal was last cleaned out four years ago.

This morning, I'm calling the man with all the heavy equipment to come out and give us his opinion . . . he doesn't work on Mondays so he wasn't there to answer my frantic call yesterday. I'm sure he'll have some expensive, unguaranteed idea to add to our list of undesirable options.

And people wonder why I want to hang around sheep. They never serve you with lawsuit papers.

Blanche  

Soixante-Douze 

La Dame Blanche 

Water Follies

Last night, my husband and I were enjoying a peaceful, winter’s evening in our living room. The fireplace was blazing, I was reading Thomas Hardy and dreaming of country life in the late nineteenth century, when every spare field in Europe was dotted with fluffy sheep, and there were no box stores and asphalt didn't exist. My husband was reading a book written by a successful commodities trader who traveled around the world with his very young girlfriend. I doubt if my husband was dreaming of fluffy sheep.

I was just about to lay my head on my husband’s lap and take a little nap, when he said, “I think I hear cars outside.” I had already closed all the shutters for the night, so he reluctantly left the warmth of our hearth to open the front door and look out into the now-frigid night. I soon heard men’s voices in the hallway, and my husband calling out to me from the front of the house, “Serge is here.”

Serge looks as if Tom Cruise was his mother and George Clooney was his father. He is the owner of the property that borders us to the southeast. I had an inkling that Serge wasn’t paying us a social visit, since he had never been to our house before, he didn’t come with his wife, and he showed up at 7pm . . . a most disrespectful hour for a French person, even a handsome one, to make an unannounced visit. He brought his father-in-law with him.

I have noticed that if you stop in for an unplanned visit, the French, at least in the country, will not immediately ask you to sit down, or inquire if you want a cup of coffee. They stand at their door and chat with you for a bit. However, my husband immediately asked Serge and his father-in-law, Monsieur Foissac, if they would like a drink. Oh, non, non merci. They were just here for a quick visit.

Then Serge got down to business. Their noyer (walnut orchard) that abuts our property, our house, and our canal, was flooded. A few days earlier, I had to walk through their noyer with the hussier (bailiff) in order for the hussier to take photos of the canal for the upcoming hearing at the Court of Appeals for the Count’s water rights case against us. Presciently, the hussier asked me if we had any legal action going on between us and the owner of the noyer we were crossing, because he isn’t supposed to walk on other property that may be involved in a dispute unless requested by the owner.

Upon returning to the house, being the considerate neighbor that I am, I called Roger and asked him to call Foissac and explain in his perfect French, that their noyer was flooded again. It had flooded last year when our canal and basin filled up in the spring, and Mr. Foissac and Serge did their own repair work.

This year, they aren’t inclined to be so innovative and enterprising, and informed us, in a very friendly, very civil manner that it was our problem and we needed to figure out what to do about it. We told them that we can’t possibly shut off the water now, because the Count’s appellate case is heard on February 1st and it would buttress our arguments to have water flowing profusely through the canal and basin. They said, oh, you don’t need to stop it immediately. The roots aren’t bothered in the winter. But, you have to do something before spring. That was of some relief.

I, in my aggressive American way blurted out, “Would you like to sell the noyer?” And I think that I was simply ignored since I couldn’t pick out a oui or a non in the sentences that immediately followed my inquiry. I was just being practical, thinking that it would be more economical to buy the piece of property rather than spend unlimited amounts of Euros trying to fix a problem that may be unfixable . . . and perhaps end up in court. Serge assured us that he isn’t like the Count. Unfortunately, I’ve learned, late in life, that when someone says they aren’t like someone, or they would never do something, they’re usually exactly like that someone, or they are certain to do that thing.

After politely shaking hands with us, Serge and his father-in-law left. I said to my husband, “Now I know why the French farmers don’t immediately ask you if you want to sit down and have a drink when they open their door. They want to figure out if you’re bringing them good or bad news.”

It just so happens that our English friend Norman has a son who is a flood control officer in northern England. His masters in college had something to do with water management. My husband called him last night and said, “Hello Christophe, you don’t know me, I’m the man who owns the property where you and your father cut down the big tree.” Christophe panicked and blurted out, “Is there anything wrong?” Naturally, since he and his father took out two healthy trees when they cut down the large dead one, Christophe was feeling a little pang of guilt. But my husband reassured him that the call wasn’t about the tree.

Christophe was very helpful, telling my husband that what we need to do is to repair the leaking parts of the basin with puddling clay. This is a Limoges-quality clay that you use like Play-Doh, pressing it into the ground with your feet as if you were stomping grapes, to create an impermeable lining. Amazingly, on the web, the instructions for using the clay said that you can use SHEEP to help you mold the clay into the cracks and crevices! That is, the cracks and crevices on the bottom of the canal – sheep aren’t skilled in plastering the walls of canals. The clay is also expensive – naturally, only the best for our useless canal. So here’s another year of no furniture for the house, but lots of Euros for the canal and 9,000 Euros for the new roof on our useless Moulin. If worse comes to worse, we can always drain the canal and eat off of our elegant Limoges porcelain service for two-thousand people.

I told my husband last night that I’m beginning to understand, with great clarity, why out of the five original mills on the canal, only two are left standing. I suppose I’m coming around to the idea that tearing down quaint ancient French buildings is not a crime. As you know, when someone says they aren’t like someone, or they would never do something, they’re usually exactly like that someone, or they are certain to do that thing.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I postponed putting up the “Samedi Soup” post because I thought my husband would give me some photos to post. As you can see, he hasn’t figured out how to get them on to the computer. But our friends Jacques and Odile spent the night and took photos of the sheep this morning, so as soon as Jacques sends me the photos I’ll post them. I know you’re all excited to see Blanche and Soixante-Douze.

Today the weather was gorgeous and warm. My husband wanted to sit in front of the fire this afternoon, but I nagged him into going outside telling him that it was a shame to sit indoors when the day was so perfect. He ended up cutting firewood with his chainsaw. I cut my rose bushes; I tried Blanche’s new red sheep halter on her in an attempt to groom her but she would not cooperate; and I played in my compost pile. If you don’t compost your lawn clippings, leaves, banana peels, salads, old vegetables, you’re missing out on the thrill of seeing all that ‘garbage’ turn into beautiful black dirt. When I first arrived here, I bought bags and bags of potting soil. Now I make my own . . . and it’s biologique.

This December, I was surprised to receive a call from our Dutch neighbor. His firewood got wet and he wanted to know if he could take ours. Of course, he would replace it. I said it was fine with me. When Craig went out today to cut the logs into smaller pieces, he discovered that all the wood that is in our wood shed is wet! The Dutch guy had just exchanged his wet wood for our dry wood. He had taken ALL of our dry wood; and we had a lot of it. I thought he was just going to take SOME of our wood, and would replace what he took with dry wood.

I pointed out to my husband that we tend to come out on the short end of any good deed we do for this guy. Last summer, he asked me if he could park his old Citroen in one of our open sheds . . . for the unstated reason that we had so much junk around our property the car wouldn’t alter our landscape, whereas his place is so neat, the car would disturb the carefully manicured ambiance. I said it was fine with me.

He parked the car, and all was fine. It’s one of those funky 80’s Citroen, so it did lend an air of French authenticity to our farm. In October, his running Citroen broke down, and he began showing up here every day to take parts off of the old Citroen. Well, when we arrived here a week ago, we found a Citroen chassis sitting under our open shed with no wheels, no nothing – just a chassis. My husband just left to go “talk” with the man about the chassis, to ask him when he plans on taking it away. We’re finally starting to throw our junk away . . . since Monsieur Reste left, we’re free to decorate the place the way we want.

Samedi Soup

It’s 1:30pm here in France. Today, I made a pot of potato soup and two onion/walnut/Roquefort quiches. I’ll give one of them to Therese because she gave me six eggs the other evening when, just an hour before a dinner party, I discovered that my husband did not notice that I had written the word oeufs on his grocery list.

I don’t cook much in San Francisco. But here, in my primitive kitchen I enjoy the task; probably because I have two, double French doors that look out on to my quaint world so that I’m never bored. I often walk to the doors, stirring a bowl of batter, to see if the sheep are nearby. Cirq, the cat, comes by to visit. He stands on his hind legs to look in the window and beg for any scraps of food I might be charmed into giving him.

While chopping and baking today, I saw a petite yellow finch blithely hopping about on the driveway. Not long afterwards, I saw three hunting beagles flash past the kitchen. I don’t know where they came from, but they dashed into our woods, from where my husband said he could hear squealing. Somehow, these dogs figured out, from a good distance away on the other side of the road, that there was a wild boar in our woods. Funny thing was though, their masters never showed up. I went outside and called for Blanche to see where she was. I was a little concerned that the dogs might go after her. She answered back from her hiding place under a bush. I have never heard Soixante-Douze baaaa. She lets Blanche do all the negotiating with the humans.

If it is cold where you are, try this very quick recipe, my French neighbors loved it.
It’s my variation of potato soup.

• Chop up four slices of bacon.
• Then fry in a soup pot, until almost crisp.
• Throw in two chopped onions
• Add three chopped stalks of celery with their leaves.
• Mince up some garlic and throw it in.
• Sauté it all as long as you can without browning.
• Add six medium sized potatoes, cut into small cubes, with their scrubbed skins on.
• Cover so that the water is about a quarter inch above the ingredients.
• Grind and then add, a lot of black pepper.
• Salt to taste.
• Bring to a boil, then slowly simmer for a half an hour or longer.
  (This soup is even better the following day.)
  
  
  Perusing several French cookbooks, I noticed that the French do not make chunky soups. With the exception of French Onion, their soups all seem to be smooth, cream based.

Chic Sheep

Yesterday was beautiful, warm, musky with the scent of wet decaying leaves, very much like the first days of spring. After returning a jar of grainy mustard to Therese, who was in her bathrobe and embarrassed to be seen by my husband, Craig and I headed off on a walk up the narrow footpath that starts behind Roger’s house, winds through the woods, past a truffle grove, coming out of the woods at the house of Marcel Marceau’s former wife, and then continues past an almond orchard and a motocross track that’s used once a year for a race. It was relaxing and refreshing to walk the three miles, only coming across one other human, a man in a car when we were near Marceau’s ex’s house.

At ten, the plumber came by to figure out why we’re having hot water problems and to fix the leaking heating pipe in the attic. Last summer we had a new door made to replace an old rotting door which leads into the building that houses the massive electric turbine for the Moulin, along with our water heater and the oil and electric heaters for the house. The door had swollen up so much from the dampness of winter that the plumber had to pry it open with a screwdriver, and pulled a large strip of wood off the side of the door. My husband then spent the afternoon shaving the edge of the door down until it fit.

In the afternoon, Blanche, Soixante-Douze and I took our first walk together since Souixante-Douze arrived. I quit walking with Blanche when S-D showed up in September because Blanche wouldn’t leave without S-D and because S-D was sauvage, and attempted to run away when we first got her, I didn’t want to take the risk of walking her.

My husband suggested that I only take the sheep for a short walk to the Count’s falling-down chateau; and that turned out to be a good idea. In the old, Olympia days, Blanche would follow behind me and Olympia would languidly bring up the rear. But now, S-D nervously leads the way, Blanche follows, and I bring up the rear. I noticed the unfortunate pecking order that posts youth in the front and relegates the elderly to the back of the line.

As anyone who has met Blanche can vouch, following Blanche is not a pleasant experience. She doesn’t lift her tail when she goes to the bathroom, so she is always sporting a wet, black, urea-stained tail that is most unpleasant to be near if she decides to swish it, or to stop suddenly in front of you on the narrow path. But she’s beautiful if viewed from the front or side.

I kept trying to change the configuration of our small parade, but couldn’t manage it until we turned back for home. Surprisingly, everyone just reversed positions, there was no jockeying for the post of leader. I lead, Blanche followed, and S-D nervously pulled up the rear. Maybe I’ll apply to get a government grant to study the dynamics of flocking behavior in sheep.

My husband said a few days ago, that if I want to get thirty ewes, I could. However, what went unsaid was that I would have to sell the lambs to support the flock. I don’t know if it would be possible for me to sell lambs that would end up on dinner plates. Are there aren’t enough people who want to buy pet sheep. In the newspaper the other day, there was a small flock of pregnant ewes for sale. I would have called to inquire about their breed and price, but since they are due to give birth in January-February, and sheep often require help with their birthing, I didn’t investigate this flock, because no one would be here to help them . . . and I’m certain that the cleaning lady/caretaker would have no interest.

At dinner the other night, Steph our Dutch friend, told me that there is a flock of sheep, kept by a real shepherd that is roaming the communal property and trails of our small village. They are the Causse du Lot breed, of which there are less than 150,000 in the world, all of them in our departement. According to Roger, the pure breed is dying out because they are being cross-bred with larger sheep so the farmer can make more money, Another vestige of the old days that’s slowly disappearing. Blanche is one of these cross-breeds. Her mother had the black raccoon-ringed eyes and black ears, her father was all white.

Blanche has the elegant Romanesque head of her Causse du Lot mother, but not the black markings. Last year I tried to purchase a Causse du Lot companion for Blanche, but couldn’t find any lambs because I was searching at the wrong time of the year. If I had a flock, I want it to be Causse du Lot. There are sentimental people here in France who work on saving these old breeds. There’s one breed of which there are only twenty-five left in the world living in one flock near Bordeaux.

Maybe this afternoon, when we return all agitated from our agitating trip to the lawyer where we will have discussed, in French, the upcoming appellate court case that the Count filed against us, I will calm myself by going in search of the shepherd and his flock.

The famous Paris Agricultural Fair is being held in early March. I really wanted to go this year, to see the fancy, freshly washed, sweet-smelling championship sheep of France. But I will be in the U.S. packing up to move here later in the spring, so I guess that’s some consolation. My friend Nathalie is going to go with a bus full of local farmers. If you’re in Paris in early March, I suggest you go. From everything that people tell me, it’s the vrai France. This is where the annual judging of the fine wines takes place and whre the finest food from all over France is rated. There will be Bresse chickens, Quercy lamb, foie gras (for you California criminals), and every cheese and wine in France: a Francophile or gourmand’s dream come true.

Yesterday, the thought occurred to me that our life here on the farm is idyllic . . . except for the constant water torture: leaking roofs, leaking heating pipes, leaking kitchen water pipes, hot water heaters that don’t work, the Count’s Bleak-House saga trials over the lack of water in the canal, irrigation pipe management in the summer, and the constant scrubbing of our high calcium content water off of the bathroom fixtures.

There’s some lesson about life contained in that conundrum that water, the basic element of life, would cause us constant problems. Perhaps it is that every heaven contains its own hell.

Veuve Cliquot Deux

I apologize for promising to write after the first of the year and then not getting around to it. I’ve been writing a novel, and that takes most of my coherent time. However, since arriving here in France on the 31st, I haven’t had much coherent time as my jet lag has been particularly ferocious.

I do not advise flying from San Francisco to Toulouse, sardined into the coach section, on New Year’s Eve, arriving at your destination at 4:00 in the afternoon, and then going out for a long dinner that lasts until 2:30am.

I will try and make up my lapse in posting to you by writing daily from now on until the 18th, when we leave for Switzerland. And, TA DA, by posting photos – if my husband can figure out, and then show me, how to post the photos from our new digital camera.

Our American friends, who just moved to Italy, flew up to join us for New Year’s Eve, and spent three fun, but probably boring (for them) days, watching us sleepwalk. Roger joined us for dinner on the 31st. It was the first time I ever saw him in a tie, a very chic and tasteful tie. The five of us had the most incredible dinner at the fancy new restaurant in our nearest village. We were serenaded by two men: one played the guitar and sang, the other played the accordion. When they walked into the room, my friend said, “Oh no, an accordion.” She had bad memories of her uncle in New Jersey whipping out an accordion after family repasts and bellowing out some abomination of a song. But this accordion player changed her mind, and mine, about the usually wheezy instrument. The way this man played, it sounded as if the accordion was a cross between a violin and an organ. The songs were old French songs that had everyone swaying, and Roger singing. I felt as if I was transported back to an elegant restaurant in 1920’s Paris. Roger was a little embarrassed when the owner of the restaurant was making his New Year’s speech, and after he had finished speaking to the room in French, he turned around, faced our table, and repeated his remarks in English. Roger whispered to me, “Now everyone thinks I’m American.” His face was flushed and he sounded worried.

Heading back to the Moulin after dinner, I looked up and saw that the lights were still on at the mayor’s office/community center that hangs over the cliff overlooking the river valley. So we dropped off our sleepy guests and headed up the hill, where our neighbors were still dancing and drinking champagne. Horatio Alger was there with his family. The man I purchased Soixante-Douze from was there. And our housekeeper/caretaker was there with her husband.

This was a distressing sight. He’s known as an untrustworthy, violent, LePen supporting kind of guy. He left our H/C this fall, and because she needed to make money to stay in her house if they divorced, a mutual friend recommended her to us. My husband was wary of taking her on because of all the bad things we had heard about her husband. Even though he had left, we really didn’t want to have him turn his attention to us or our property for any reason. But we hired his wife, and she is a wonderful worker. She keeps house better than I can – we arrived and our beds looked as if they were in the Ritz, the sheep were well cared for, and all the weeds around the house/Moulin/barn had been pulled! The place had never looked so good.

So, while she seemed happy that her husband was back in her life, I wasn’t because I didn’t want her to leave us if he didn’t want her working, and I didn’t want to have to deal with him in any way. Already the Nazi is too much in my life, for I kissed him good-bye when we left at 3:30am. You know, the French cheek kiss.

Waking up on New Year’s Eve, our guests informed us that they were roused in the night from their sleep by water dripping on their heads. Upon hearing this, the color drained from my husband’s face and I thought he might have a coronary . . . we’re still trying to get the roof repaired on the Moulin (see previous post “Waiting for Fargal.”). A huge sigh of relief went up when the leak was determined to be coming from a heating pipe in the attic; making the three stories of water seepage staining the walls seem trivial and even humorous. Unfortunately, our lesbian plumber is on vacation until next week.

We drank Roger’s Veuve Cliquot last night. Two evenings ago, he had us over for aperitifs, to officially hand over the check from the walnut buyer. I was surprised that the buyer gave us 10 cents (Euro) a kilo MORE than he had quoted. Now that’s something that doesn’t happen often in a business transaction. We arrived for the aperitifs, and on the table was the famous bottle of Veuve Cliquot, this year’s batch of moonshine Ratafia, Wild Turkey, and a type of moonshine made from Armagnac grapes. He let us know that if we desired REAL wine, he had that too. Oh, and he had some moonshine made with prunes that he said he gave to my son but it was too strong and my son ran to spit it out in the sink. Then Roger proceeded to bring out enough appetizers that would feed fifteen to twenty French people, but only two Americans.

We decided not to drink the Veuve Cliquot because we didn’t think we could finish the bottle, so I told Roger to bring it to our house for dinner the following evening. He arrived “a l’heure” and the other two guests were ten minutes late. He took advantage of the private moment to tell me that he had called one of the three assisted living centers in our departement that are sponsored by his farmer’s union, to find out about the details of moving in. I didn’t like hearing this. Just the day before, I told my husband that I would be very sad if Roger moved away, because he’s the last of the working old farmers in our neighborhood. He knows how to farm in the most simplistic, economical way, and I really want to learn from him. Furthermore, if he leaves, the vrai France, the mythical France that is my fantasy, atrophies away and the new, modern Euro-France takes its place.

One by one, they’re all dying: the guys who wear the berets, the women who raise their own hens for eggs and kill their own chickens for dinner, the people who remember the World War I veterans, and the people who lived through World War II, and the endless stories they know are disappearing with them. Our discussion last night at dinner centered on all the people that Roger and our other guests know who are now living in the Maison de Retrait. After the assisted living centers, that’s where you go to die, and one of our guests had just signed her mother in last week.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why I have to be so sensitive; but, if I leave the house and drive down the road, I become very sad. Because all I can see, despite the incredible beauty, is the disappearance of the France I want to live in. This simple, elegant, rural lifestyle died decades ago in the United States: that’s why I had to come here, I thought it still existed. But what exist are just the remnants of a very beautiful civilization which is slowly being washed away in an acid bath of modernity. Some chain stores are now staying opened through lunch. Therese across the street doesn’t have any rabbits any more and told me that she’ll get rid of her chickens this year. Roger is going to close up his farm that has been in his family for hundreds of years. Some Dutch, or English, or American will buy it and they’ll invite us to aperitifs and we’ll sit in their newly redecorated, centrally heated modern kitchen, drinking some booze they bought at the supermarché, and it will be fun, but it will be sad because it isn’t life in France. When Roger goes, France goes. We’ll be left with the Euro Zone: with box stores and straight, wide roads no longer lined with sycamores, processed foods, outlawed foie gras, no-smoking in restaurants, no moonshine, no old people riding bicycles, with people eating while they watch television, with garbage disposals, with big refrigerator/freezers, with frozen fruit (which you still can’t buy here), with pasteurized cheese, with warehouse grocery chains.

I’ve got to go now. I’m going to take my sheep and head out for a walk into the woods and fantasize about stopping time. I’ll walk past the ruined chateau, the crumbling stone walls that line the paths, the achingly beautiful little arched bridge that some poverty haunted serf built two hundred years ago. The sheep and I will stand on the hill, peeking through the holes in the last remaining wall of the castle, destroyed in the Hundred Years War, which once symbolized the power and influence of our village. The valley will spread out below us dissected by the fat river winding its way to Bordeaux, and I’ll be happy knowing that I was lucky enough to witness this beauty. I was blessed to breathe in the sweet air of the decaying grapevine leaves that rise up from the valley. I was able to experience France before it disappeared under a blanket of asphalt.