Rural Life

Autumn Lockdown - Day 12 - a bit of a rant

With no other excuses today, my only time out of the house/garden was for my permitted up to 1 hour exercise no more than 1 kilometre as the crow flies from my home.  I chose a time when the clouds weren't too threatening and went for a 3.5 kilometre meander around the village, taking a couple of photos for tomorrow's blog and a couple for today. 

As I went past the Church, I remembered there was a funeral this afternoon.  Normally this means a great crowd of people outside the Church to see the coffin go in, then most file in afterwards for the service which takes about an hour, before filing out shaking holy water at the coffin and sharing a quick word with the bereaved family.  It's not an easy process, but gives some cathartic relief I believe.  Today there were few vehicles or people to be seen - numbers are limited to 30 I believe, and naturally family has the priority.  The deceased was about 95 I believe, so there was a lot of scope for family.

So as part of my walk, I went for a wander around the cemetery - I've never been in before.  The grave markers are mostly less than 100 years old, and are covered in family names that are very familiar to us, and in some cases, there are mentions of those we have known in our 15 years in the village.  It is still full of flowers - we are not so far from the 1st November and grave dressing after all, and the dead have a magnificent view across the valley as they wait for the Last Trumpet.

From there, I climbed the hill and circled round to the football pitch.  The car park has recently been dug up to allow fibre optic cable to be laid - and this is the start point of my rant.  Photo first!

Fibre is the great new hope for internet speeds I gather, and anywhere worth its salt is getting fibre in.  We have a training school for fibre technicians in Baugé.  For many months now, new green metal boxes have been appearing, verges have been dug up and relaid (badly quite often), and white vans and large umbrellas provide the work environment for the technicians.  I believe sometime in 2021 I will be offered the opportunity to sign up for this great leap forward, and it is enabling people to leave the cities and work from home.  But at what cost?  And by that I don't mean the 35.95€ a month (undoubtedly) that I will have to pay to receive this great facility.

The internet can make us all feel virtuous about not travelling and therefore not polluting, but the Cloud and the servers require huge amounts of electricity, not least for cooling.  Each smart phone, computer, laptop, screen, hard drive etc requires electricity to keep it running.  Built in obsolescence and continual software upgrades mean that we have to change these white goods relatively frequently.  Digging up the verges of roads to lay the cables has destroyed very localised ecosystems - so the banks of early purple orchids we used to see won't come back, at least for quite a long time.  The poor reinstatement means that opportunist plants like rape and ambrosia (a non-native invasive around here) take a strong foothold before oxeye daisies, wild orchids and scabious can re-establish themselves.  So while I will undoubtedly sign up, I'm not convinced the environmental cost is worth it yet.

And then people leave the cities to work from home in a greener and more pleasant environment, except that the green and pleasant environment has to be curtailed as more "nice" new houses are built for them to live in, each with a garage to house white goods, bicycles and lawnmowers, and an area of hard standing to leave at least 2 cars on.  But the people moving out of the cities don't always make the villages and rural areas live - they are used to using click and collect and supermarkets, or getting back to their roots with a bread making machine (more electricity), while the village bakeries that the older residents value go out of business or can't find anyone to take them on.  Yummy mummies rush Torquil and Davina to judo, gymnastics, boxing, tennis, football, but don't have time to support the PTA or the Comité des Fêtes, and so village life slowly dies and living in a rural area resembles living in a city, but with a bit more greenery, fast internet speeds and no public transport.

O dear - not the cheeriest post I've ever written!

Autumn Lockdown - Day 9 - market day

When I am doing my evaluation and research work, Saturday is MY day.  I enjoy the chat and the sights and smells of the market, and the afternoon is normally some form of garden or outdoor work.  Today was no exception, even in times of lockdown.

First thing to be done was feeding the chickens, and in addition to sparrow city, I also run the gauntlet of the "digital" starling that sits on the roof.  He is always perky and has a lot to say for himself, but has modelled his song on the sounds produced by an early Gameboy or similar and mobile phone rings.  What a depressing effect modern society can have!

Then it was market time - and boy was it crowded, so a good thing it is still in the Place de l'Europe so we can socially distance!  Didier the Purveyor of Yoghurt was right, in that I was at the market at the same time as last week, but he still had yoghurts (albeit only flavoured ones, not ones with pieces in) and rice puddings a plenty.  Then the dry goods caravan was in so I decided to try her rolled oats for porridge (3.50 Euros a kilo).  We will report back on how they are, but we are having to explore French sources for oats, as the stash in the bottom of the bureau that I bought 7 years ago won't last forever.  Something that is without plastic packaging, and may well be local and/or organic has to be a good option.

It was a beautiful morning again and unseasonably warm, so I took a moment or 5 to admire the two great buildings that take up two sides of the Place de l'Europe - the Tribunal and the Chateau.  The Tribunal is about 150 years old and dramatic.  It was one of 18 buildings across France receiving headline support from the French Heritage Lottery this year, and got 500,000 Euros to kick start the 5 million Euro restoration plan.  The building behind it used to be the prison, but was gutted and redeveloped as an art and culture centre a while back.

The chateau is rather older - about 1450 I think - and was the hunting lodge of King Renée of Anjou. It too has had a chequered past, and the exhibits inside are getting a relooking I believe.  When we first arrived, it was a museum with lots of cases of old stones and bits of pottery, so not totally exciting.  Then about 15 years ago they redid it, to make it more interactive and interesting, and with nice exhibition space on the ground floor.  On the other side of the chateau they have made a physic garden, which is pretty and interesting in the summer, but at this time of year, is rather black and dull.

So there you go, a bit of an introduction to Baugé!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 6 - out and about

Thanks to advice from chums who read this via Facebook, I decided to brave the market at la Flèche, armed with my attestation and a shopping list.  I was glad I did - for a start it was a lovely drive up, with magnificent leaf colour most of they way.  Parking by the river was easy, and I could stand and watch this view for hours!

Pretty well all my regulars were there, except the bread, croissant and cake stand, which was a real shame as I had been looking forward to croissants later in the week (although the porridge is still magnificent).  I came home laden with local produce including a very fine cauliflower and a christophine - probably the only one this year, as the guys who manage to grow this tropical delicacy found that the polytunnels were too hot for it this year.

This afternoon I finally started on a rather nasty but essential task, and progressed it as far as I could, at which point I felt that I needed a treat and some exercise.  Armed with another attestation (fortunately the paper supplies 3 normal and one work related per day), I set out on a short but beautiful walk.  First I turned up the mediaeval Rue Basse to the Church.

I then walked down to the Pont de Godeau (once again, he didn't turn up).  Passing by the wall of the mini-chateau, I noticed they had a very fine crop of olives this year.  If they have a couple of kilos, I'm sure they could get them pressed for oil at the oil mill - we are thinking we might get some walnut oil made, if I spend a period of confinement cracking them.

I then went up to the Route de Beaufort, along a bit and back down the Rue de la Croix de la Mission.  I had to go over the old railway line, now a walking and cycling path.  I did pass a jogger at one stage, and spent a few minutes contemplating how far he was taking the Mick, as he had clearly come and intended to go further than 1 kilometre from his home base or his place of work.  But what the hell - people are working within the spirit of the regulations, and keeping their distance, and that is surely the point.  I was wearing a mask too, so should have been safe from any droplets he was shedding around him. 

Anyway, on the field side of the disused railway, I spotted this magnificent spindle bush covered in bright pink berries.  The higher up berries are hawthorn and can be cooked, but spindle is pretty poisonous so is best admired at a distance.

And then towards home and the road back to the village - a very nice walk, but not the longest I can do in my allotted hour and within the radius of one kilometre, but more about that another day.  Now I must join a Women in OR and Analytics virtual conference.

A demain!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 4 - a precious hour

I can't remember if sleep was hard to come by in the first confinement, but this time round it isn't easy, and there have been some deeply weird dreams.  Today I am trying a healthier day to see if that makes any difference.  First off, and force majeure as there is no bakery in the village any more, was breakfast, and a delicious bowl of porridge with quince jelly to get the day going.  Hopefully the oats will prove that they really are a super food - quince is also pretty special.  I should point out that I don't make the porridge, and it is also not my quince jelly - so a double treat, in that someone else made it all!

The weather was once again miserable, so for much of the day, I had to content myself with staring at the computer and dealing with trying issues that threaten to overwhelm me at the moment.  So it was a relief as it got round to four o'clock that the skies cleared a bit, and I could change my mindset and find a blank attestation, my map of allowed walks and a few bits to deliver.  Then I strode out armed with ID card, attestation, face mask and a desire for exercise and fresh air.

Once I had dropped off the things that needed to be dropped off, and had chatted with a friend who was walking her dog, I pursued the route I had mapped out in my head.  Once I got to the highest point, I could look out towards the main road and one of the chateaux in the area, but actually while I thought a view into the distance would help, it only showed how short a distance I could go towards the horizon.

Back into the village and I went down to the Pont de Godeau (you can wait there, but Godot doesn't turn up I find) to see how the local river is swollen with the recent rain.  That was a far more satisfying view.

This time, parks are not closed, so I could walk around the village lake and look back along the valley.  Here I could let my imagination run wild as I was close to the site of the Battle of Vieil Baugé, (in)famous for being the turning point of the Hundred Years War.  But sadly I stayed firmly grounded in the here and now - not least as next year is the 600th anniversary of the battle, but how many of the plans for celebrating that will actually happen?  I had hoped my Scottish friends would be able to join us, but that looks less likely (the invitation still stands, guys).

Clearly I need to prepare myself mentally before taking advantage of my precious hour out and about.  Something for tomorrow.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 2 - retail in the time of confinement

Saturday is always a shopping day for me - has been for years.  I do the small local shops of wherever I live to get food and treats for the days/week ahead.  It was the same when I lived in Hertford, Wallsend and Worcester, so no different now. 

However was a sad day in some ways.  For the past 15 years, I have walked up to the boulangerie about 200 metres from my front door and have bought pastries, bread and sometimes cakes made by the very talented Bruno Pellé, and sold with charm and a caring word by his lovely wife Arlette, or one of their three children.  But today was the last day - health reasons dictate that he stops working the fierce hours expected of a baker (2:30am to 11am 6 days a week, Christmas included, and sometimes an afternoon shift too), and they have not been able to find anyone prepared to take the business over.  From tomorrow, we have to seek our bread elsewhere, and further away (not so easy in the time of confinement).

But we do not live on bread alone, and as the outdoor markets are still open, it was into Baugé for the usual purchases - fish, fruit, vegetables, raw milk, desserts, thick cream, crèpes and galettes, and delicious but unspellable things from the totally charming Moroccan family.  The market was heaving.  By the time I got to the milk products chap - Didier - all yoghurts, all bar 3 rice puddings and all bar 1 milk pudding had been carried off by others.  As he sorted out milk and cream for me, we pondered on the phenomenon - "they will never eat all they bought from me over the next week, it's impossible!"  Well, his stuff is delicious, but clearly there was some panic buying going on too.  "The psychologists are watching" was another clear message!  By the time I got back to the vegetable stall, they had run out of carrots.  Carrots!!!!

For all we are restricted in our outings, and people had to wear masks, there was some insouciance among those in the market - for the first time in ages my bottom got bumped several times by the basket of the lady behind me in the fish queue.  She also didn't understand Paddington stares, so I guess she was a Parisian taking advantage of her second home.  Hopefully she will go home tomorrow if that is how she is going to behave.

In all this, one of the key gripes is not lockdown itself, but the existence of unfair competition from the super and hypermarkets (last week it was between restaurants (allowed) and bars (closed)).  One good meme doing the rounds today wondered if Covid might not be better controlled if we closed the super/hypermarkets and other big stores and let the small shops run the economy for a couple of weeks.  Provided I had a good stock of cat food in, I would so totally support that!

Remember if you have small local shops open, use them, even if it costs a few pence/centimes more!  Because once they have gone, they won't come back.

 

Summer Reflections 6 - harvests and sunsets

We are into September, but these last few days, it hasn't felt like it with hot and sticky conditions and often cloudless skies.  Harvesting has been going on apace, and our garage smells magnificent at the moment as there are 150 kilos of ripe quince in there, waiting for a slot at the juicing plant.  Quince juice isn't something you would happily drink on its own, but add sugar and time and the skills of the distillery and it makes a very delicious eau de vie.  I've also set off a large jar with a shredded quince, a bit of sugar and about 50cls of quince eau de vie to make a very special quince liqueur.  Quince is a good remedy against the winter stomach bug that does the rounds (my excuse, I'm sticking to it).  Tomorrow I will start to make quince jelly.

We have two barrels of fizzing and burping fruit at the moment, even before we get the quince one going.  There is a plum one - deep maroon and brooding; and a pear one - the colour doesn't merit description and it is like the surface of an uneasy volcano.  Both smell sweet and interesting though.

The badgers in the wildflower meadow are clearly bringing in stores for the winter - there is a dusty trail through the dead stems and a lot of sand by the set entrance.

Those days where there has been a bit of cloud in the evening, we have seen some dramatic and colourful sunsets.  Well, I have to walk down a path to the boule de fort car park to see them as the Bungalow of No Merit is now in the way.  In previous years, we have admired from the living room and bedroom windows.  Anyway, new local order, but glorious skies to gaze at in wonderment.  My photos don't do them justice, but enjoy anyway!

Summer ends on 22nd September apparently.

 

Summer Reflections 5 - it's nearly autumn

There are storms in the UK and we are due temperatures below 20ºC at the weekend - summer is definitely on its way out. 

During the summer we had the migrants from the south - swifts, swallows and house martins - who made each day special with their aerobatics and their song, loud and strident for the swifts, soft and bubbling for the swallows and martins.  We also had the migrants from the north - friends with second homes in the area, finally allowed across the Channel to enjoy their other homes and gardens and breathe a bit more freely in our rural paradise.

The UK Government-imposed quarantine on the whole of France (other governments do localised ones, which seems a bit more sane) saw the northern migrants flee home, with no real idea of when they can come back "officially".  There are still a few stragglers for whom quarantine holds limited fear, although insurance might be a bigger issue.  The weather and the seasons mean our other migrants are heading back south.  It is a couple of weeks since I heard the shriek of a swift, and the swallows are grouping up and heading off slowly now: we won't see them again until March or April next year.

This year the drift to autumn feels sadder than usual - normally there is a gentle melancholy once the Comice is over, knowing that days are getting shorter and cooler and wetter.  This year it feels more stark.  There are no Comices due to Covid, and in a normal year, every weekend in September is taken up with some event or other (mechoui, Patrimoine, forum des associations, the Bake Off, the volunteers' picnic), this year events are few and far between.  The forum des associations goes ahead with no demonstrations, food or drink and patrimoine will happen, but rather reduced and with less fanfare.  And then nothing.

We all sit and wait to see what the Second Wave will be like.  It will be important to seek out the small discoveries that make life more joyous - I might have to start a new blog series on that!

In the meantime here are photos of the new windmills at Chigné, not yet commissioned and some nutters are trying to get them removed via judicial review!  Also a photo of an unhappy carp - the oxygen levels in the public lake don't seem quite right for it, and a nice view of the church and a dramatic sunset.

Summer reflections 3 - love and lighting

It's been an interesting week here in rural France.  Holiday makers and second home owners are starting to arrive, as is Covid-19, although Anjou is not as badly affected as Brittany or PACA, we have moved from green to amber on RAG ratings.  The tourism season meant that there was an added attraction at the market last Saturday, as local authors did a book signing session - mostly wearing masks.

While the start and end of the week were hot and sunny, the middle was less impressive, with cloud, some light rain and cool temperatures for July - it's not unknown.  The conditions were clearly right for stag beetles to get it on, and I found a pair at it in the aubergine and pepper bed.  I wouldn't normally comment on beetle sex, but these are seriously big beetles and they made a bit of noise, plus I have chums who are that way about stag beetles.

The photo was after the event...

As the weather improved, so the long evenings were more appealing for late walks after I have watered the potted plants.  This photo shows a pretty novel light on the church spire (yes, it is twisted, just like Chesterfield, well not exactly like Chesterfield, but...), as it is really only at about 9:45pm or later that the sun hits that bit of the tower.

Apologies for the revolting bungalow in the foreground.

The vegetable plot is starting to get into its swing - here is Fergus guarding our swag (hard earned swag).  We have also robbed a couple more potatoes, and the beefsteak tomatoes are ripening.

Finally, it is a good year for my favourite flower.  We have three pots of agapanthus and all are out, but this one is the most dramatic.

Have a nice weekend and wear a face mask in enclosed spaces!

 

 

Summer reflections 2 - excess fruitfulness

Summer is definitely here, as there are more and more British cars on the roads.  If you are coming over, and bringing a car, don't be fooled by the British press saying that main road speeds are back to 90kmph (56mph).  In some places they are changing, in other places they aren't.  Basically, keep your eyes on the road signs, and if in doubt, stick to 80kmph (50mph).  And ignore what your satnav says too, as it won't be up to date.  We believe it is a scam to earn more money in fines, and they will still fine you, even if it is a British registered car, and that fine will find you.

So what about the excess fruitfulness?  Well that is down to our poor, long suffering pear tree.  We have yet another year where it is loaded down with fruit and we hadn't realised how big some of that fruit was, nor how much there was.  Sometime yesterday afternoon, a gust of wind hit it a bit too hard and wallop!  Down came a big branch.  A cat may or may not have been involved too - Zola is being a bit coy about that.

Now our usual way of dealing with excess fruit won't really work, as it relies on things being ripe and mushy and full of sugars and with a bit of natural yeast.  While large, these pears aren't really ripe or even close to thinking about being ripe.  Anyone with recipes for what to do with green, unripe pears, please let me know before the chickens peck them all to bits (and a vast hill of chicken food isn't actually what we need either).

 

Summer reflections 1 - the weather isn't right

As my Facebook feeds and my memories tell me, in general the first half of July is scorching hot, bright sunshine, occasional and scary thunder storms and farmers working around the clock to get the grain harvest in.  Currently only the last of these seems to be running to form.  The weather is cool (low 20s at best) and a bit dull.  That hasn't stopped the maize from growing, although our own sweetcorn is unlikely to hit 2 foot tall.  I no longer have an evening vista to enjoy.

Some of the gardens we keep an eye on have different crops surrounding them.  This is not what you might think but very closely related.  Germination rates seem to have been pretty poor.

Evidence that Covid-19 is still a threat can be found if you have to go hospital visiting.  I'm not sure how the image below is supposed to bring comfort and succour to the invalid being visited, but that is the only way you can be to get in.  At least they don't stick a thermometer in your ear any more to check your temperature!

For those who don't see my Facebook posts, while the sweetcorn is unlikely to do anything this year, we have done well on garlic, shallots and potatoes.  The spuds were ones I robbed from 3 different plants, while rummaging in the soil to see how they were getting on.  Rather well was the answer - they were delicious with butter and a nice lump of salmon.