Two ways to retire....

Sort of roses named Pierre de Ronsard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just recently, my French dentist retired.

She was my neighbour in my second house in France, and had her office in the next village.
An absolute whizz of a dentist, up to date with top of the range equipment in the wilds of la France Profonde where her husband worked as an advisor at the local Chambre d'Agriculture - source of much under the counter gossip over the aperitifs of an evening......

As dentists do, she had a captive audience.
There is something so undignified about gurgling and frothing while trying to talk with a mouthful of steel implements in the mouth that you tend to give up and lie back to be harangued.
I don't know what she talked to other clients about, but to me she talked about the difficulties of getting any young dentist to set up in the countryside - difficulties compounded by past government decisions to limit the number admitted to the schools of dentistry.
Interspersed with mutters of
'Tiens! So that's how the English do it...' as she tapped and probed.
I began to understand how dental records could identify one...

Over the years, other dentists in the area retired and were not replaced. More and more clients came knocking on the door asking to be be taken on until she was working, first on her half day off in the week, then on a Saturday morning...until her family kicked up.

It worried her to turn people away....it would encourage neglect and end in tears, she used to predict....and it used to rouse passions in the waiting room too.
I was there when a gentleman turned up asking her receptionist/dental nurse for an appointment.
She explained the situation and suggested he try the dentist in the nearby town.

I'm not going to that butcher!

But Madame just cannot take on any more patients....

Hah!

Casting an eye over the waiting room assembled...

But she can take that foreigner! (Me)

Madame has been a patient here for more than ten years....

She's still a foreigner...

The Front National had a lot of votes in that area.....

You met everyone in that waiting room...but , just as in the waiting room of my first dentist, it was a handshake free zone, not to speak of the kissing.
If the mere vibrations of a handshake were enough to set the nerves jangling one can imagine what an approach to the jaw might do.....but it didn't stop the jaws from gossiping.
You emerged from that waiting room fully armed with the latest from four communes, ready to test it out on the postlady who had her own methods of verification.

The expat community would be both surprised and alarmed to know how much of their undercover and under the covers activity was being monitored....but then, I doubt they had read Maurice Genevoix who remarked that everything you did in the countryside was being observed from under the visor of a cap.

My dentist had tried everything to get a replacement....and thought she had the answer in a Roumanian lady with excellent qualifications and references who was very interested in the package offered...until one of her compatriots, a medical doctor, told her what had happened when she took up a contract in darkest France....not too far away.

The maire had offered her a good - not wonderful, but good - package to come to his village.
She had installed herself and patients were happy, their numbers increasing.

Then the local representative of the quacks union  had made it clear that she was not welcome.
Very clear.
Very not welcome.

Despite everything that my dentist could do, the prospective replacement had taken fright.
She - like the Roumanian doctor - set up practice in an area with a large British expat presence where they were made welcome by over worked local doctors and by the community.

My dentist and her husband are retiring to the south of France and the only recourse for her clients is...the butcher in town.

My vet is about to retire.
I met him when , as usual, the gendarmerie failed to come up to the mark.

We had returned from shopping in the late afternoon of a chilly, bright January day. Frost was in the air.
As I unloaded the car I noted a bright spot of red down on the river bank far below and house and wondered whatever a fox was doing there.

Later, from the kitchen window, I saw it again. It had not moved.

I went down to the island and saw that it was no fox, but a small shivering spaniel, crouched in the frozen grass in the rivulets at the water's edge.

I took my shoes off and waded across, worried that the dog would take flight, but it stayed still.
An elderly, blind little lady.

She was soon tucked into a nest by the stove in the kitchen and after a while took warm milk and honey, then a little mince cooked in stock...and then went to sleep.

The tattoo on her ear was blurred, but I 'phoned the gendarmerie and asked if they could check it if I brought her in the next day.

No, they couldn't. Take her to a vet.

So the next day we were going to the tax office and took her to the vet whose office was nearby.
The walls of the waiting room were covered in photographs of dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, chickens, ducks, geese, peacocks, pigs and small rodents, each with a message of thanks or giving an update....quite a sight!
I explained the situation to the receptionist - who turned out to be his wife - and we were shown into the surgery.

He examined the dog.
Then he examined the ear.
Then he examined us before finally looking up the tattoo on the website when he sat for a while, head in hands.

This little lady has come from a puppy mill....I recognise the name and address.
Too old to be useful they put her out in the middle of winter....
Do you want her to go back there?

Clearly we didn't.

Can you cope with her?

Clearly we could.

Ah, well then, I'll just say the tattoo was too blurred to read. I'll drop in to see her later this week.

A super vet who became a friend...dropping in while passing, neat in his linen jacket in summer, last of the summer wine in his woolly hat in winter.

We talked of retirement when we last saw him before we left for Costa Rica sitting on the terrace under the vine, bottles of wine in a bucket of cold water beside us.

Ah..he said...Ronsard sums up how I see retirement.

And this is what he recited, as near as I can transcribe it

Boivons, le jour n'est pas long que le doy
Je perds, amy, mes soucis, quand je boy
Donne moi viste un jambon sous ta treille
Et la bouteille grosse a merveille
Glou-gloute aupres de moy
Aveq la tasse et la rose vermeille,
Il faut chasser l'emoy.

Sitting under your vine,  a fine ham to hand and a big bottle of wine to tempt you, a glass and a red rose...what better to chase away your worries.

A damn sight better than the south of France.