My Postillion has been Struck by Lightning

It had been arranged that mother would come to visit us in December and January, with the maelstrom from Belgium coinciding with the middle part of the visit.
The kitchen would be ready, beds would manifest themselves, mosquito nets would be purchased....all would be in hand.

Then nemesis in suede shoes, my mother's doctor, intervened.
He did not like the look of her leg (I wonder how he managed to phrase that to escape without injury), he did not like the look of her blood pressure (which would not have been improved by the news on the state of the leg) and, in short, he did not think she could make a long haul flight without undue risk.

On telephoning the surgery on receipt of the news the receptionist said that Doctor could make time to speak to me 'in the circumstances'  and when she put me through he confirmed that he was worried...worried enough, as he said, to brave the wrath of the matriarch, whose lungs and verbal dexterity were, he considered, standing up well to the burden of ninety six years.

So, instead of flying out to escort mother to Costa Rica I am flying out to visit her by way of a trip to France to see to the admin of Wuthering Heights - are you sure you don't want a house in France? - to upbraid the Post Office for losing my mail, visit the taxman, and encourage the Banque Postale to sell shares I told them to sell some months back.
I'm lucky enough to be staying with friends and will try to catch up on people I didn't manage to see last time....if I have time in view of the shopping list which is gaining on me faster than the tides of Mont St. Michel.

 I have to bring back some decent claret from the cellar....that's O.K. as l shall be at the house in any case picking up the books on antique furniture to supply the carpenter with models for chairs for the house in San Jose.

I have to look for shoes and galoshes in size 47...a size unknown to Costa Rica.

I have to look for elasticated waist trousers in pure cotton...not too heavy.

I have to go the supermarket with the ethnic section to pick up Turkish pimiento paste, both sweet and hot.

Goat cheese logs, Fournol, Maroilles, St.Agur...harissa...and would it be easier to get kippers in France or in England...better ring our supplier out in the Vendee....and dried mushrooms....
Oh, and those packs of plastic corks and corkscrew...and is there any epine left in the cellar...?

All very well...but on my success or failure in finding this lot depends my next leg of the journey which will be determined by the weight of my luggage.

Under twenty kilos and I shall fly by Ryanair....but need to prebook.
Over twenty kilos and it's Eurolines where I can take two suitcases for the price of my ticket.

I refuse, ever again, to cross Paris with suitcases and a carry on  bag...so the train is out.

With or without the trousers and shoes it looks like two suitcases and Eurolines....but then I still have to pay for an extra suitcase flying back.
I have what I think is called an open jaw ticket - all too redolent of the sharks running the airline business...by which I arrive in Paris and leave from London...and if the problems obtaining confirmation of my booking are any harbinger of what will happen when booking an extra suitcase then I will need a week's notice to sort it out.

I found the flight combination on Iberia's website...which promptly went down at irregular intervals so  that booking a ticket was rather like a ladies' excuse me, which followers of Freud might like to know was first typed as a ladies' excise me.

Finally, my reservation was confirmed...but not the purchase.

I have been here before; when my French bank has refused...in the interests of my security...to honour an airline ticket booking as it is rather more than I spend in the supermarket once a week.

Why didn't you contact me, then?

We don't do that.

However, when I was in Costa Rica someone totally unknown to me to was able to buy one thousand Euros' worth of musical equipment in St. Jean de Luz on my account without any worries about my security at all.
It took me six months to get the money back and no explanation has been forthcoming to this day...

After a delay of over twelve hours I grew restive...and was lucky enough to be able to count on a good friend in France to pretend to be me when ringing the Banque Postale to see if they had authorised payment.
Telephoning from Costa Rica I find their choice of music not up to the cost of the call.

No, nothing from Iberia.

The local Iberia office not responding to calls I eventually found a well hidden reservations number on the website. Learning how to pronounce the Spanish alphabet paid off as I recited my reservation reference.

Tranquillo, Senora...we haven't processed it yet.....wait until the afternoon....
At least it wasn't the manana of the manana.....

Thanks to my friend alerting la Banque Postale, the payment went through....but the thought of paying for an extra suitcase gives me the willies already.
Oh for the days of clerks who could answer you there and then with the aid of a telephone.

Were I to fly into Stanstead I could catch up with our hardy Harley Davidson septuagenarians...if it's Eurolines I shall miss them and stay in Kensal Rise instead, whose gentrification I lay firmly at the door of the pet shop and the inflatable doggy sex toy in their window.
Where canine sex toys lead the organic butcher is not far behind, nor the soi disant yummy mummies occupying the coffee shop which used to be a quite decent caff.

Mother has a programme outlined..her unexpected Christmas shopping.... visits to the theatre....restaurants...

But in view of what we had first arranged, it is as if her postillion had been struck by lighting.





 

Merry Christmas

My favourite French carol...so soothing after a surfeit of commercial muzak in the supermarkets....I hope you enjoy it.

I have given the words below...please forgive the background as I had to copy and paste to keep the accents! 

Quelle est cette odeur agréable,

bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?

S'exhale t'il rien de semblable
au milieu des fleurs du printemps?
Quelle est cette odeur agréable
bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?

Mais quelle éclatante lumière
Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux
L'astre de jour, dans sa carrière,
Fu-til jamais si radieux!
Mais quelle éclatante lumière
Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux

Voici beaucoup d'autres merveilles!
Grand Dieu! qu'entends-je dans les airs?
Quelles voix! Jamais nos oreilles
N'ont entendu pareils concerts.
Voici beaucoup d'autres merveilles!
Grand Dieu! qu'entends-je dans les airs? 

Ne craignez rien, peuple fidèle
Écoutez l'Ange du Seigneur;
Il vous annonce une merveille
Qui va vous combler de bonheur.
Ne craignez rein, peuple fidèle
Écoutez l'Ange du Seigneur.

A Bethléem, dans une crêche
Il vient de vous naitre-un Sauveur
allons, que rien ne vous empêche
D'adorer votre redémpteur
A Bethléem, dans une crêche,
Il vient de vous naître-un Sauveur.

Dieu tout puissant, gloire éternelle
vous soit rendue jus-qu'aux cieux.
Que la paix soit universelle
que la grace abonde en tous lieux.
Dieu tout puissant, gloire éternelle
vous soit rendue jus-qu'aux cieux

What I'm missing this Christmas

Is what used to be the high spot of the winter fruit bowl....a juicy, perfumed Passe Crassane pear, the tip of the stalk dipped in red wax to avoid evaporation......

And a few bunches of Chasselas grapes cut from the vine when just ripe and left with the stalks in water and the fruit supported on orange boxes until Christmas.
Edith showed me this and it will be the first Christmas for years that I won't be eating fruit from my own vines.

So I'll just have to make do with pineapple and guava....

Merry Christmas!

It's ganging agley again.

Image via Wikipedia

I had the Christmas and New Year well organised.

We are going to a 'solstice party' on the 21st....so entitled by the hosts to annoy absolutely everyone invited and to ensure a vociferous evening. I wouldn't want to be a latter day Druid at that particular assembly - his little golden sickle wouldn't be much defence against some of the dinosaurs slated to be present. We shall all take something to eat and somewhat more to drink and it will be wheelbarrows at midnight, kindly provided by non drinking friends.

Then that was to have been that. End of public festivities, shut the doors and utter peace until January 2nd 2010. We had plans, and they precluded the presence of others. Any others.

The hype of Christmas dismays me...even before Armistice Day, the junk and lights are in the shops, the jingles are playing overhead and people are being persuaded that they need to show their love for someone by buying them useless tat. Or, worse, that feeling obliged to send something to someone, they feel that useless tat would fit the bill. I have long since abandoned sending Christmas presents...I send something that a friend or family member might like when I happen to see it, whatever the season might be.

Family get togethers depend on which bits of the family are getting together, too, so that also is something best left to a more clement season than that of mid winter, rather than risking all out war round the fireside and mother monopolising the television for The Queen's Speech. Let alone the problems of who doesn't eat what, who ate too much of something they shouldn't have and the loud collective fizz of Alka-seltzer at the breakfast table.

This year's Christmas plan was ...books.

There are years when not much really seems to appeal from the reviews, and others, like this one, when I keep saying
'I must read that!'
Blogging has extended my horizons too, encouraging me to start on areas either totally new, or re-opening avenues long closed off by the passage of time and accrual of mental junk.

So, we have both been making lists and thought we would order just in time for the holiday - as otherwise we would just read the lot as they came in and be left to our old favourites by the time Christmas came round.

Well, we're well served for our egoism and optimism. So far, nothing has arrived. I know we have another week but I am getting nervous all the same.

Amazon tracking is great....except that their French centre has gone on strike - thank you the CGT, who think that Christmas pressure is too much for their members to stand. More likely they felt left out, what with the baggage staff at Orly airport feeling the strain and the drivers of the RER network in Paris deciding that working in winter was really beyond the pale.

Other books are coming from the States...notably one by George Soros that a U.K. firm said couldn't be sent to France - something I must follow up. I know Soros was done for insider trading in France some time ago, while his French counterparts got off scot free, but what has that to do with importing a book? Probably a very simple reason and nothing to do with conspiracy theories, but it intrigues me all the same. And why can it come from the States and not the U.K.?

They'll probably all arrive in time, but I am a worryguts...so I'm thinking about which old favourites I will be putting out on the bookcase by the armchairs...empty so far in anticipation of the Christmas goodies to come...to give us a happy holiday.

Christmas is coming and the duckstealer is taking orders...

Image by crookrw via Flickr

Christmas is coming, season of goodwill to all mankind.

The postlady arrives at the door and refuses a coffee. Things must be serious.

'You need to keep an eye out' she says. 'The guy up the road'...jerk of head to indicate the duckstealer, 'is taking orders for poultry.'

Now, I know that the duckstealer has geese, guineafowl, and chickens, but he doesn't have ducks, having been unable to steal any of mine recently.

'Is he taking orders for ducks?'

'And for geese.'

Which is to say that he is taking orders for more geese than he has. Which is to say that I need to get mine up off the islands at night and enclose the ducks as well. And while I'm about it, I'd just better keep an eye on my chickens and the three guineafowl which escaped from his place last year and for which I paid him, to keep him from having an excuse to come round to count up what I had available in the poultry line.

Thank goodness for the postlady.

'Bernard told me to tell you,' she adds, thus confirming my suspicion that all is not well between the duckstealer and his neighbour Bernard.

Bernard, who produces ducks commercially to a contract, will be locking up his sheds as well, then, as the optimistic duckstealer cannot bring himself to believe that anyone who has so many ducks - for 'so many', read more than five, his arithmetical ability being a bit like that of the great apes - would miss a few and is always surprised when outraged owners appear to reclaim their poultry, if he has not been quick enough on the slaughter and pluck operation.

I cannot say that I am particularly keen on Bernard, who has a habit of spreading his duck slurry on his land when I have guests to lunch, but he is preferable to the duckstealer - not, thinking about it, that that hoists him very high in popularity table. He rates a long way behind Gengis Khan, for example. Whatever his manifest failings, Gengis Khan did not live within olfactory range of my terrace and had nothing to do with ducks. As far as I know, anyway.

What puzzles me is why Bernard asked the postlady to warn me.

I get on with his wife, that poor downtrodden woman who thought she was lucky in marrying a guy who would inherit a farm. No one told her she would be doing all the work on it without pay, nomatter what is shown in the books. Bernard doesn't like her coming down for a coffee....one, she is wasting time that could be spent milking goats and two, she is probably picking up wild ideas of independence, so she only comes down when he is out for the day..which is often...and when his mother goes to the old age pensioners club to play belote and she gets through the mountain of ironing his mother leaves her to keep her occupied while not under direct surveillance. We exchange news otherwise through the postlady, providing Bernard's mother has not contrived to keep her busy and out of the way at letter delivery time.

Her post, such as it is, comes here, to keep it away from the family Gestapo. They would have a collective fit if they knew that she had a little account at the Post Office where she salts away whatever she can skim from the shopping money. Everyone at the Post Office knows,of course, but they don't like Bernard and his mother much either. There's not enough in it to make it necessary for her to file a tax return, that's for sure, so no risk of Bernard finding out that way.
The postlady has been at her for ages to divorce the guy and go onto social security, but she is too frightened to make the leap, having been in the hands of social security when she lost her mother when she was a teenager, so carries on slaving away for the ogres.

So why is Bernard being helpful?
I can't rate above the duckstealer in his table of favourites. I'm foreign, I complain about his duck slurry and I encourage his wife. The duckstealer is French, doesn't complain and won't let his wife complain either, and thinks Bernard is a great guy who knows how to keep women in their place. Furthermore, Bernard does nothing for nothing.
This will worry me until I find out.

Still, first things first. The poultry. I now have to set up the wire netting to make an alleyway between the river and the pens, clean out and restraw same, find all the food and water bowls and clean them out, and then, in the afternoon, coax the birds to come to this bank with food and then drive them up. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? Someone should tell the birds that. I will be shunting them up the hill when one -and I know which one it will be, the old Chinese goose with a notch on her bill - will decide that she doesn't like mountaineering and will turn round. Her group will follow. The others will stop and start honking in alarm. This will rattle the ducks, who are rather more fleet of foot than the geese and will start diving back past me, as fluid as river water. The dog will intervene...from the wrong side. I will rave. The geese will stop honking and watch the spectacle. The ducks will be back on the island. A window will open and someone will ask what all the noise is about. I will reply, succintly. The window will be slammed. The window slammer will descend to the garden and intervene....from the wrong side.

I will start again tomorrow.