Rural Life

Looking back at the Comice last weekend

Last week's blog was a teaser about the float I have been working with others from the village for last week's Comice.  The Saturday was wet, so I was glad that it was still in the hangar where we store it, and Sunday dawned fair but cool for the drive to Vaulandry and for the procession itself.  I wasn't with it when it headed off, so I didn't see the roof flapping, as while it was fine at walking pace, the more sprightly 20kmph on the open road, compounded by a gap where the door panel would go, was too much for it.  There was a stop to strap it all together and a message to me to bring staples and means of fixing - like I wasn't going to bring that sort of stuff anyway!

This photo shows as many of the contributors to the float as we could track down once the procession was done!

I found the float at about midday and spent a happy hour adding all the bits that wouldn't travel well, getting the roof secure and putting on the door panel.  Then I set up the cauldron and fire, placed the furniture and all was ready. 

The staging area for the floats is always a nice place to be.  People putting the final touches together, getting dressed up, having lunch and preparing for the afternoon. 

As ever, the procession was late setting off, and took its time too, and being with our float, I didn't capture all of the others well, and totally missed the performance by one lot, while being subjected to the same inane song about Little Red Riding Hood (the float behind ours) nearly 50 times!

The theme of the Comice was the Call of the Forest, and all floats were linked to that, some more closely than others.  Next year the Comice will be at Fougeré, so they were ahead  of us, with their take on the magic of the forest and a giant druid.

After us was Pontigné, Little Red Riding Hood, that blasted music and a Wolf that made a few small children cry and behaved generally very badly - but only when he had his wolf's mask on.

Other aspects of the forest included Echimiré and their dolmen, le Guedenieu and their dominial forest, Cuon looking at the seasons on one tree, and St Martin d'Arcé had an Ent.  Vaulandry had a float showing woodland crafts, while Cheviré le Rouge went all out and depicted the Call of the Bois de Boulogne (Paris) complete with police van, gendarmes, pimp and some really dodgy prostitutes.

We distributed about 4 kilos of sweets while walking with our float, mostly to children, but volunteers, first aid teams and local mayors were very grateful for a sweetie too.  In case you haven't worked it out, ours was Hansel and Gretel, the Witch and the Gingerbread House in the forest.

To give you an idea of what a procession of floats looks like, here we are, going around the exhibition of agricultural machinery and services!

Every Comice has to have outdoor catering at some stage.  Last year we had something like 20 whole pigs spit roasting over firepits.  This year the Sunday night feast was steak, but you could still have a lovely big bonfire in order to have enough glowing embers for cooking 1,200 steaks.

We didn't stay for the late night entertainment but we did stop and enjoy a local band entertaining the masses, with a slightly weird mix of accordion, tuba, voice and guitar.  It was rather good and we bought the CD, and one of these days I will listen to it too! 

So that was the Comice 2024 and we have a bit of a rest now before starting work in January on the float for 2025, when it will be the 150th Comice of Baugé en Anjou!

Monday we were back down to earth with a bump, with a funeral, the weather turned about 3 times in the week, and today is beautiful but distinctly autumnal, which is unfair as summer only seems to have started about three weeks ago!  However there is live music at the village pub tonight, so I must get on with making supper so we can eat before we go out.  I leave you with a rather fine photo of a small wasp having a go at pollinating the first of the cristophine flowers for this year.

Have a good week!

 

 

A hint of what is to come!

By the time this gets published, our village float for the Comice at Vaulandry will be over at Vaulandry and I will be doing the final touches to it.  There are giant boiled sweets to be added along the sides, the door panel of the witch's gingerbread house to fix and the full glory of the bamboo trees to open out.  I will also likely have to reattach a number of flowers, before setting up the witch's cauldron and chair.  It's all go!

The full story of the parade of decorated floats may well not be published until next weekend.

 

Dog days of August

Interestingly (well I think it is interesting anyway), the French word for heatwave is canicule, from the Latin canus and something else, but implying our dog days of high summer.  Anyway, we are slap bang in the middle of another bout of high heat, which is quite restricting.  This morning we thought we might go to the Festival of the Giant Croissant - it is an annual thing around here.  I thought I might have written about it one year, but looking back, I haven't.  The giant croissants are over a foot long and would feed a family of four for two breakfasts.  I digress - everyone seemed to have the same idea and with a wait of 15 minutes to get into a car park, a couple of hours slogging around a hot village surrounded by fragrant and sweaty people lost all appeal.  We diverted to see the cats in the country and slop a bit of water around new crops and came home.  When I checked the Weather App, this is what I was promised.

While the sun is at its most intense at midday, the hottest time of the day is generally between 5pm and 7pm, by which time it was due to be about 35ºC.  We have decided to spend the day defrosting the small freezer instead.

With hot periods like this, there isn't much you can do really.  You have to go with the flow and try to keep as cool as possible (it is only 29ºC in my office currently).  This week we did decide to try out a new restaurant nearby.  The Bistrot 1813 has only been open perhaps 3 months, and is doing well, although from adverts on social media, when the schools and colleges go back, they could be struggling for waiting and kitchen staff.  We had a very enjoyable lunch there - 16,90€ a head for three courses, plus drinks on top (a very good Côtes de Rhône by the glass - not cheap, but if you are only having one glass, make it a good one!).  Fontaine Guerin is just down the road from us and has a church with a twisted spire - there are a few of them around here!

Yesterday morning was overcast and sticky.  Sunny and 36ºC is distinctly unpleasant but 28ºC and muggy is possibly worse.  To make the small and bijou market at Baugé that much more pleasant, there is often musical entertainment.  Some can be a bit trying - some Frenchman trying to croon "It's now or never" and imitating Elvis is the nadir, but recently there was a trad jazz clarinettist who was fab.  Yesterday we had a couple on guitar and fiddle doing Celtic sea shanty type music which was enchanting.  I hope they come again.

Rebus is no longer officially a kitten, he is now a cat.  He thinks this is a bit unfair, but once you hit one year old, you are a grown up in cat world.  But as he is now considered a cat, he has adopted one of the best loved cat perches around our garden.  Not our gutter, but definitely our cat!

He is well camouflaged in there!

The Marx Sisters have taken to garden life well and Harpo has started to lay eggs, but Chico and Groucho are being threatened with being part of the poule au pot served by the village at Telethon time.  I don't really need 3 freeloading chickens!  

We are in the final countdown to the Comice, at Vaulandry this year.  The last time it was there was 2011 and it was very hot (bit of a theme there).  On the Saturday a bunch of us performed Old MacDonald a une Ferme - there are photos here but fortunately no video!  Reading through the rest of the story, Pauline is now in the caring profession, Florian is married with one child, and Valentin has a degree in Engineering - how things move on!  The second day was the usual mayors' ploughing match and parade of floats, as is shown here.  I had nothing to do with the lovely float for le Vieil Baugé, which paid homage to the village's past as a wine producing area.

I've just heard a noise like a large lump of ice falling off the freezer, so I must go and tend to the ice removal process, which will be nice and cool - have I mentioned that it is 29ºC around my computer?  Have a good week!

 

 

 

Summer miscellany

Yes, summer is firmly installed now, and finally the verges are taking on their straw colour that I normally associate with July.  It arrived in a rush, with last Saturday starting to look promising, and last Sunday was as perfect a summer day as you could ask for.  But it didn't know when to stop, and Monday was hotter, which made visiting a chum in hospital more appealing as they had air conditioning.  Tuesday was deeply unpleasant - up to 39ºC measured in the shade in the garden, but with humidity, feeling a lot worse, and since then things have slowly calmed down to normal high summer.

On Monday, to finally welcome in summer, we got most of the cover on the gazebo in the garden.  First I had to check all the fixings and resew a number of the tapes, as they had been buffeted rather in the winds last autumn.  It is easiest to use my sewing machine outdoors, where the light is good and the table doesn't have a slippery surface.  Poirot, the elderly cat, decided I needed help and supervision - fortunately it didn't make life too difficult!

We have started on the annual mow of the wildflower meadow (royal we).  There is never an ideal time to do it, and currently it is a sea of white umbellifers, mostly wild carrot I think, but there are few butterflies, and the crickets seem to get out of the way OK, and if we leave it too long, the brambles and old man's beard and tiny saplings get more difficult to pulverise.  Seeds of things like orchids and broomrape are now ripe so will be spread around in the mowing process.

A favourite flower is gaura, and this year, after it had been well and truly strimmed down to ground level, it has come back with a glorious display for us.  I guess this could be the answer for how to keep it lovely!

I have been through the files on the trail camera that was overlooking one of the ponds.  It wasn't the best placement, and it overlooked a path going across so you get lots of photos and videos of animal bottoms disappearing out of shot.  This short video of a meandering doe is a rarity, and she doesn't stay around that long either!

Perhaps a day after the camera was set up, a stag took an interest in it, and had a good go and dismantling it, but failed.

The main purpose of the camera placement was to catch the boar having mud baths.  They leave an imprint in the mud that is impressive, so I hoped to capture something interesting.  One night I thought I might be in luck.  A boar arrives.

It gets itself into position, after a bit of preparation.

But is then too far away from the trail camera to set it off again, until bath time is over anyway, at which point I get an image of a muddy boar!  There is evidence of the boar bath place in the mud of the pond of course.

I would show you that, and the boar after its bath, but the internet is so slow and intermittent, I need perhaps 20 goes to get a photo loaded up, so I am calling it a day.  Enjoy your week!