Kafka Meets the Surrealists

What a day!

This morning, Craig and I drove into our main town so that I could register with the Prefecture in order to obtain my official long-stay visa . . . the consulate in San Francisco just issues a temporary visa.

After receiving the necessary documents which I am to fill out and take to the mayor’s office tomorrow, Craig went to talk with the office that deals with drivers’ licenses.

We have Florida drivers’ licenses which the French government will exchange for a French license.

However, since we just got them at the beginning of this year, and there is no indication on the license of how many years we have been driving, to the French registrar, it appears as if we are novice drivers.

She’s willing to issue us a novice driving permit, which means we would have to drive around with a big “A” on our car, we would have to drive accompanied by a licensed French driver, and we would have to pay to take driving lessons. Not a very pleasant scenario.

The registrar told us that if we provide some sort of official government documentation of our driving record, then she would issue the license.

Problem is, that previous record would have to be obtained from California, and France won’t consider any driving records or drivers’ licenses from California! So we’re thrown in this license limbo because California won’t accept a French license as valid . . . and vice-versa.

There were four registrars in the office. The first, didn’t know what to do. She felt that she couldn’t bend the rules but she sympathized with the frustrating position in which we found ourselves.

A second registrar told the first one to just go ahead and give us the licenses. Registrar number one agreed with that reasoning and was on the verge of doing that; but then, registrar number three chimed in that it couldn’t be done.

We concluded the matter for the time being when registrar number one wrote down the name and number of the director, who was on vacation for a week. We are to call Madame le Chef next week to see what she suggests we do to escape our Kafkaesque plight.

This afternoon was warm and sunny and so I gathered together my beach towels to go lay in the park and take a nap with the dogs . . . I would have gone out with the sheep, but they have too many flies hovering in their vicinity.
The two dogs fought over my attentions. I covered my head with a beach towel because their fight kept crossing over my body. At one point I peeked out from under the towel, and was struck by the strange sight of the rooster, his head and chest jutting out from behind a large tree on an incline above where I lay. The dogs were fighting in front of me; Attila had Antoinette’s head in his mouth. I laughed at the surrealist tableau that was presenting itself to me and marveled at the wonderfully strange life that I lead.

In the late afternoon, I drove into our village to do some grocery shopping. I had sole on my menu, but my plans where dashed when I found the fish monger’s shop closed – he had posted a note stating that there were no fish today. I drove to the supermarket and they didn’t have any fish. I guess there was no fish today because yesterday was a holiday and that disrupted the fish distribution system.

So, discarding my Mayo Clinic healthy cornmeal encrusted sole for the evening, I walked to the butcher’s. I asked him to cut me off a large steak suitable for barbequing. I asked him if he was interested in buying my lambs.

He said he would be very happy to buy my lambs.

I asked him when he wanted me to call him. He replied that I should call before the lambs are four months old. I said I thought that I would be calling him in September.

He said, “Are the sheep pregnant?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

He asked, “Do you have a buck?”

He must have thought I was an absolute idiot.

Lamb consumption is quite high in France. That’s because they eat very tender lamb. In the U.S. the consumer eats lamb that’s over a year old and that’s been fattened in a feed lot. The resulting meat would be mutton to a Frenchman, and they’d have to be starving to eat it. The French prefer their lamb to be taken right off the mother, at the tender, unbelievably cute age of 3-4 months.

Emotionally, I don’t see how I’ll be able to sell my lambs. I don’t even eat lamb. But the agreement with Craig is that the sheep have to finance themselves. And wool doesn’t bring in any money. On sale day, I’ll leave the farm and Craig can deal with the butcher when he comes to take the male lambs away.