On the markets

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The migration season has begun. Wending southward across the English Channel, the weary travellers push on determinedly to their destination....the friends or relatives living in France. The routine is well known to all parties. The car arrives, its contents are disgorged, all the bathrooms are occupied and the party foregather on the terrace where bottles and glasses await them. I often think that for some of them an intravenous drip would be more appropriate, like a blood transfusion.....but in red, white and pink.
'Nurse, another wine box and adjust the feed...the patient is recovering consciousness.'

The first few days are the recovery period, catching up with how awful things are at their end and trying to persuade them that things are not too hot at this end either, but, inevitably, at this point they want to go to a market. I could understand it when the U.K. had nearly lost all its interesting ones, but now, I thought, they had Farmers' Markets and suchlike.

'Well, yes, if you want some stuck up trout trying to flog you meat at three times its normal price because the animal had the privilege of eating her grass while it was alive and looking down her nose at you because you don't wear an appropriately aged Barbour jacket when you go shopping.'

O.K. We'll go to the market. In our local town, it's in the week and is on the small side...a few vegetable stalls, a fish stall, someone selling honey and clothing stalls that make you open your eyes and wonder about the undergarments of your fellow man and woman. Great alarm has been caused recently by an English couple setting up a stall and selling what were described as 'exotic products'. Bearing in mind that when I was first in France Worcester sauce and picallili were to be found on the 'exotic products' shelf together with Vietnamese fish sauce and bean sprouts in tins I was not as impressed as my neighbour thought that I should have been by this news and asked what specifically they were selling.

'Well, I didn't get too close, but I didn't recognise anything.'

This left the field wide open, from live termite grubs - here, for various reasons, the area could develop an export trade - to Viagra, but actually turned out to be energy drinks and new age paraphenalia. I cannot hold out much hope for their enterprise in the land of the thirty five hour week...not much energy gets depleted in that time. Come to think of it, for a nation which eats snails I cannot imagine how a category for 'exotic products' can exist - I suppose it just means anything not produced in France.

There are actually three vegetable stalls on that market. One is run by a retired schoolteacher who regards himself as an expert on all things rural, one by a local supplier and the last by a satellite of a large fruit and veg wholesaler who knocks out their surpluses in the markets in the area. I have had a close look at all three, in terms of the quality and price of their goods and the approach of the stallholder and I go for the wholesaler every time. The retired teacher's produce comes from his smallholding and is nothing out of the ordinary, on a par with the local supplier. They both charge top dollar for the privilege of buying their goods. The wholesaler is much cheaper and the quality as good. If it is at all dubious, signs announce
'Make jam!'
''Cooking grade'
'Eat now!'
and for apricots for jam, tomatoes to cook down for the winter it can't be beaten.

The clientele varies markedly. The would be intellectuals patronise the retired teacher - corner of high thinking high mindedness at high prices - the local supplier has the respectable ladies who have duly donned a suit and high heels to be seen in public...a great contrast to the bedroom slippers and dressing gowns in which they normally pass the morning. The wholesaler gathers the rest. Elderly gentleman are led through their wives' shopping lists, cafe owners pick up supplies and ordinary people on ordinary incomes do their ordinary shopping. The staff are raucous, occasionally outrageous and I wouldn't shop anywhere else.

The visitors are happy..someone has managed to buy twice the amount of aubergines anyone could want to eat..... fired by the presence of the travelling black pudding maker someone else has bought a pile dripping and hot from the cauldron and we are going home to lunch.

'Nurse! The wine box....'

Post it

I bank at the Post Office. Well, the banking bit has been hived off into La Banque Postale, but all my activities take place at the local office of La Poste so it makes no difference to me. I have a great service, thanks to the co operation between the post office staff and the banking staff who blithely ignore the separation of powers in the interests of helping their clients. There have been exceptions on the banking side, but they don't stay long.

When ill and unable to get to the post office I could telephone, ask for what I wanted to be done and the next day the appropriate forms would come out by the postlady's van. She would check I had filled them out correctly, take them back and...voila...my transactions were made. I am not at all sure that the bosses of the Banque Postale would approve, but for me it was a great help and much appreciated.

La Poste is undergoing reforms....less front line staff, longer post rounds, more pressure from above, but the staff really do their best to make sure that their clients do not suffer. My postlady is annoyed because when her round was altered, the one important factory in the area was put on the end of the round rather than the beginning. Her bosses were busy looking at the petrol tanks rather than at the risk that when, at last, commercial competition is permitted in France, those factory bosses will desert the post office for a private competitor in order to get their mail early in the day. They should put her in charge of commercial relations, but there's no chance of that...she has a good education but no 'business' qualifications which would make her eligible for such a post.

The last time the powers that be decided to reorganise the rounds, the postal staff called for a public protest so I duly attended, together with the family who happened to be visiting at the time. We made a large group, boosting the turn out on a cold winter's day, and had a great time watching all the local maires and departmental councillors girded in tricolour sashes demonstrating their oratorical powers from a little platform in front of the mairie. They were united in one thing....their post should arrive first thing in the morning! One maire, the one from my commune, was missing and the postlady tracked him down the next day to enquire into his backsliding. He was foolhardy enough to tell her that he was not in sympathy with all these left wing demands and that it was about time she did a bit of work instead of lounging about having demonstrations. I leave it to you to guess when his post arrived in future.


Back when I first lived in France, the post office had a social mission. My first postman used to call on all the elderly people on his round whether or not they had post, just so that they had someone to speak to and so that he could check on how they were keeping. These visits probably accounted for the strong smell of drink that preceded his arrival at my place at about three in the afternoon, but I suspect that he was a better bet for the welfare of the elderly people on his round than the modern day social worker. For one thing, they trusted him, he was one of their own, not someone imposed on them from the outside. My postlady does not drink, but she still tries to keep up with the old people on her round despite the pressures on her time and the changing nature of public service in France, but it's not appreciated by her bosses.



Still, banking with the Post Office certainly beats banking with Credit Agricole, with whom I used to have an account. I had sold a house and by some administrative mix up the demand for the Taxe Fonciere went neither to me nor to the new owners. Accordingly, neither of us paid it. Then I received a statement from Credit Agricole showing an unauthorised overdraft on my current account, where I kept just enough money to maintain activity. My savings account was still virgo intacta. I telephoned and was told that there was a problem with the tax office. The tax office told me that they had appropriated the taxe fonciere that I had not paid from my bank account. My dealings with the tax office are another story, but my dealings with Credit Agricole demonstrated clearly the difference between having an account with them and having one with La Poste. The Post Office in similar circumstances would have telephoned me as soon as the taxman struck to warn me, and to let me transfer money between accounts. Credit Agricole smugly charged me for the overdraft and waited until the next statement day in order to collect as much as possible.
I had already had unsatisfactory dealings with them. I wanted to buy shares, and as the Post Office could not buy on the markets outside Europe, I used Credit Agricole. I impressed upon the 'financial adviser' that time was of the essence, given the state of the market, but, of course, by the time their regional office geared itself up, the markets had risen and I had missed a good opportunity. I was following the share price on the web and saw no buyers in the market for the amount I had ordered, so went into the local branch to complain. The 'financial adviser' first told me that I could not possibly know whether or not the shares had been bought, and then, when I kicked up, deigned to telephone the regional office, who reassured me that they were indeed getting round to entering the market, but, due to the amount of intermediaries they were using, it all took time. Finally, the shares were bought and, as the market went on rising I swallowed my annoyance until I got the statement with the charges for holding my shares...as in France the individual cannot hold his or her own shares...a financial institution does so and charges handsomely for this monopoly. Eyes watering from the financial pain, I went into the branch again and asked which registration institution was holding my shares...these days it is all electronic and the lovely old share certificates are no more. Once more the 'financial advisor' called the regional office,and I put my question again. There was much huffing and puffing about why I wanted to know and I was finally told that this was confidential information which could not be divulged!
I later discovered, by other means, that my shares were being held in a nominee account, in the name of Credit Agricole!
I sold my shares, and, as I was leaving the 'financial advisor' asked me if I needed any advice. She was a nice little girl, her lack of training was not her fault, so I did not say what was bouncing up and down on the tip of my tongue, but decided to close my accounts.
I waited until a Friday afternoon, went to the local branch, waited while the assistant had a conversation with her uncle and then asked to close my accounts. I signed all the appropriate forms, and then she asked me to wait while she prepared a cheque.
'No, I want it in cash.'
It took a time, because the safe had to be opened, and they even had to have a whip round among the staff, but they finally made it. I walked down the road and deposited it all in the Post Office.

D Day all over again

On the beaches of Normandy, brave men are reliving the moment when they fought their way ashore to liberate the continent of Europe on the 6th of June 1944. They were soldiers.

Across the river from my house, lily livered bullies are busy trying to destroy the rookery that lines the waterside by shooting at the nests. They are louts....otherwise known as 'la chasse'.

In the autumn, the peace of rural France is broken by volleys of gunfire and tooting of horns....no, Chancellor Merkel has not decided to conform with German tradition by invading France....the hunting season has started. Men in camouflage clothing with vast amounts of ammunition tramp through the vines, and mushroom picking becomes dangerous as they don't seem able to differentiate between a human backside and a deer. No wonder their insurance policies cost so much. By twilight, the shooting stops, but the tooting carries on late into the night as the hunters try to recover their dogs, who, having been liberated from the pens full of excrement where they spend most of their lives, underfed to keep them 'keen', have understandably disappeared into the countryside.

La chasse is supposed to be one of the triumphant results of the 1789 Revolution. Before, only the nobility could hunt and the peasants had to watch deer scoffing the crops they needed to sell to pay the rent to the nobility....well, that's roughly the idea. After the Revolution, anyone could hunt anywhere, except that the new masters, usually notaires, enclosed vast stretches to prevent anyone hunting anywhere they liked. This is one reason why la chasse is to be found in your back garden stealing your chickens.

Sport it is not. Pheasant farms abound, and the local chasse buy a batch of birds and release them the day before a hunting day...usually Thursdays and Sundays. The birds associate people with being fed and so advance towards the hunters offering an easy target. They still manage to miss, though. Wives tend to kick up if husbands return empty handed...bredouille...given the price of cartridges and this is the second reason that la chasse is to be found in your back garden stealing your chickens.

Having caught one bright spark who sent his dogs in to retrieve my birds, I telephoned the President...no, not that one, the President of the local chasse, to complain.

'Not a problem' he replied sunnily. 'We'll pay you the cost of replacement.'

It has never crossed what he is pleased to call his mind that my chickens are not just a feathered version of the euro to me. I like my birds, they supply eggs while they are able and live out their lives scratching up the flower borders when they're past it. I hope my old age will be as pleasant, but I doubt it.

It has never crossed his mind either that his members have no business to be stealing poultry in the first place. La chasse regards itself as privileged, a law unto itself, and most rural French go along with that...after all, la chasse is armed, and can make life unpleasant.



Originally, the only limit on their activities was a requirement not to shoot towards your house if less than 100 metres away from it, but latterly, the European Union has promulgated a law which allows you to keep the chasse out of your property completely. I can only assume that some Eurocrat had had his chickens stolen too. They don't like it and will defy it if they can, but it is the law. Mark you, getting a gendarme interested in upholding the law is an uphill struggle, especially against armed men.



Some years ago, a young woman was house sitting in what later became my house. At five o'clock on the morning of the first of May the telephone rang. A man's voice told her that she would hear shooting, but that she was perfectly safe if she stayed indoors. She did indeed hear shooting.....a large group of men were advancing through the garden, shooting the rooks from their nests. She ran out, asking them to stop, but they laughed at her and continued. She went out to the road and took the numbers of the cars parked there, then returned and telephoned the gendarmerie. Nobody came, and the shooting continued. She telephoned the maire. His wife said he was out shooting rooks. They eventually left, leaving carcasses everywhere. She telephoned the gendarmerie again and was told to get a bailiff to estimate the value of the birds.

She had been mocked and terrified and no one gave a damn. It was a local tradition, the gendarmerie told her, to shoot at the rooks' nests, as the birds are supposed to pick holes in the plastic covers of silage dumps and ruin the contents.



Now, as far as I am aware, people were not making silage and covering it with plastic in the French Revolution, so this was a pretty recent tradition....just another manifestation of la chasse making itself unpleasant. The owner was based in Paris, and was resented locally, so this was a means of putting her in her place by the local bully boys.



Since I have lived there, the neighbour who steals ducks asked if I would mind if they shot rooks on May Day, and, to be fair, my refusal has been respected. Of course, my fences have been repeatedly broken to allow my dog to escape onto the road, but this must just be coincidence. They stand on the other side of the river and shoot the nests, ostensibly on their side, but on mine too if I do not stand out there and watch them.
I have, however, discovered the existence of the garde chasse, an employee of the body regulating hunting activities, and have also discovered that the local representative has a vendetta against the particular group annoying me. I don't know why and he won't tell me. It is apparently illegal to shoot out the nests because protected species of bird may use them and this was enough to have him setting up an ambush and catching them in the act, for which they all got a 200 Euro fine.
Some days later, the wife of one of them rang me up.
'You owe us 200 Euros. If you hadn't reported it we wouldn't have to pay the fine.'
My French has matured to a level where I could give the appropriate response and be understood. The 'phone was banged down at the other end.
For the rest of the season and well out of it, they then made a point of gathering opposite my terrace on a Sunday morning, blasting off with their shotguns. As intimidation it didn't work.....and if they want to waste their money on cartridges that's their worry, but it is symptomatic of what is wrong with our European society generally. No one will control the lawless louts and bullies who make normal life unpleasant.

I would like to see la chasse up against what faced those men landing on D Day.....perhaps I could persuade the Bundeswehr to have a summer camp in my garden. They wouldn't have any problems getting to us.......all French roads are lined with trees so that the German army can march in the shade.

The European elections - nul points

If the European Union had had any sense, it would abolish elections to the European Parliament. They just stimulate disgruntled European citizens to express themselves and, while this has no effect whatsoever on the workings of the EU, it does not make for good publicity.



I have been looking at the lists of candidates,or, more precisely, at the lists of parties who will, should they win in my region, impose their choice of candidate upon me. There are all the usual suspects....the Union for the Presidential Majority, the Socialist Party, the more socialist than socialist list, the further out than socialist list, the right wing list, the right wing non LePen list - have to be careful how you describe this gentleman as he is litigious - the Philippe de Villiers list....follow his example, breed for France to keep the immigrants in check- the third way list of Bayrou, wonderfully entitled MoDem...burned out before it started - Greens....after the German experience of Green power causing the average voter to refer to them as the Green terrorists I'm staying well clear - the Esperanto list - and, fascinatingly enough, a royalist list! There are others, but exhaustion takes over after a while. I did just wonder what happened to Chasse, Peche, Nature, that association of chancers who believe they have a right to trample over anyone's property in order to shoot or hook anything living in the name of tradition, but I expect they're in there somewhere, hiding under another name.



European politicians complain that these elections will just be treated by the public as a chance to react to national politics, but they should think carefully about this line of argument. If people didn't treat them in this way, then very few indeed would turn out to vote at all. People have more sense than politicians like to think....we know that European Members of Parliament are just the window dressing for the deeply undemocratic operations of the European Commission...but natural indignation gets the better of us on the occasions when we are allowed any participation in political affairs. Rather than crying 'A plague on all your houses', we let off steam with our cross on the ballot paper whenever we have the chance, which isn't very often.



I dream sometimes that people will try a new form of civil disobedience....just not participate in elections at all. Just imagine if after Thursday's hullabaloo the results were announced all over Europe.....

'France Centre, nul points, France Ouest, nul points.....' Terry Wogan's stint on the Eurovision song contest would come in handy here on a TV election special.

Still, one most not underestimate our masters....the European Commission would probably react by setting up yet another well paid body to investigate the disenchantment of Europeans with well paid bodies set up by the European Commission.

It is, of course, all the fault of the U.K.
Mired in the disentanglement from Empire and the perceived need to lick any passing U.S. presidential backside, successive post war British governments took their eye off what was happening on the continent of Europe. The Coal and Steel Authority and Euratom developed into the European Economic Community without any participation from across the English Channel, and, by the time Edward Heath took the U.K. into its fold, the European structure was set. This has been a catastrophe for anyone hoping for participation by the ordinary citizen.
The model used for the EEC was that of French administration and French administrative law. This might well have been acceptable to the rest of the original partners, since all shared the legal and constitutional legacy of Napoleon I's conquest of Europe, but it is totally alien to what was then the U.K. constitutional and legal heritage. Contact with the pernicious European model has diluted and distorted that heritage in very short order, which demonstrates its attraction to the power hungry and greedy administrator and its danger to the man and woman who has to live with it all.

Until recently, candidates for jobs with the EU went through a sort of finishing school, to train them to pass the qualifying exams for employment. The training consisted of learning and being able to regurgitate the history and achievements of the EU, which might be wonderful way of training the memory, but not much use in relating to the needs and aspirations of the average guy in Europe. However, it was modelled on the French system of crammers for the Hautes Ecoles...ENA, Polytechnique, Ponts et Chaussees...with the same aims. Instant recall of 'La Princesse de Cleves' does not in my view qualify anyone for running other people's lives. For once I agree with Sarkozy.... However, the objective is to form a body which thinks and acts alike and in this respect, the training is most effective.

The idea of a European Union is wonderful....no European citizen would argue against a body that keeps its composite nations 'jaw jawing' instead of 'war warring', but the reality is dreadful. On one hand, farmers get handouts to keep the European agroalimentary industries profitable. On the other hand, money has to be spent to clean up the water supply polluted by these farmers' activities. Local authorities can get grants for traffic calming, resulting in more road rage than I ever thought possible as one negotiates the chicanes and has to back up against a file of traffic as there is no room for a lorry to get through in the other direction, but not for setting up decent old peoples' homes.

A recent project sticks in everyone's craw locally. The river which runs through my garden was the object of an environmental plan. Put in plain language, it needed cleaning out. The obvious thing to do is to assemble the riparian owners, see what equipment they have, hire anything else necessary, then let them get on with it. This is not the European way. A grant category exists. The expert staff employed specifically by local authorities for applying for grants do their stuff. To avoid corruption...pause for hysterical laughter all round....a study has to be done by independent experts. Three men with an expensive car come out and walk along the riverside for a few days and come up with a plan. The cost of this exercise swallows up most of the available grant, but, with undaunted optimism, the job is put out to tender and a public meeting is called....democratic participation in the operation of the EU...to tell those concerned what has been decided. The river bed must be cleared of lumber which has accumulated in the winter floods for the past twenty years. We have to allow access for crawler tractors, tree cutters and their necessary equipment, and boats. We have to agree to move the wood cut before the winter floods carry it back into the river again. We don't have a voice in what trees must be cut.

Three men with a chainsaw, trailer and small bathtub arrive. Red marks are put on trees overhanging the river, including some recently planted under another European grant aided scheme to stabilise the river banks. They set to work. The dog chases them off my property and they do not return. I see them on the river in the bathtub with a chainsaw, cutting off branches protruding from the water. I ask them what happens when the river level drops. They shrug and motor downstream.

In due course an exhibition is opened at the local authority offices. Our stretch of the river is now officially cleaned up. I take the dog for a walk on the riverside footpath. It is still obstructed by overhanging trees as is the river....branches stick up menacingly from the riverbed....a lot of trees have red marks on them. I can only assume that anti European Union dogs saw them off this stretch as well.

On the ground, the European Union is not working for the ordinary European, so, on Sunday June 6th, as far as I am concerned...nul points!

Oysters and 'r's.

Here somes summer, and the oysters of Arcachon are off the menu again. I forget why...it will either be poisonous algae or poisonous effluent, but at least down there it won't be radioactivity.

Still, there are plenty of other alternatives, as long as you keep an eye on your map of leaky coastal nuclear power stations while you are making your choice. Pretty safe with Cancale and Belen, nice round traditional oysters from Brittany, and anything down the Vendee coast., though these are the craggy Portugese oyster......just keep clear of Normandy's offerings with the Cap la Hogue power station dribbling goodness knows what into the waters. I wonder if President Sarkozy will be offering President Obama Normandy oysters when they meet for the D Day commemoration, or whether the U.S. secret service will veto the suspect offerings?


I used to enjoy oysters when in the U.K., though the price of Colchester natives even then would make your hair curl if you bought them in Wheelers. I used to buy them from the oyster stall on Mersea Island in those far off days when a cheesecloth blouse on a young woman in summer would bring about a fit of absentmindedness on the part of the chap selling his wares when it came to counting the oysters he was handing over. These days I expect you could strip down to your Agent Provocateur knickers without any effect on the price or weight.


Initially, France put me off the oyster. It was the fault of the fruit de mer, that stomach turning plateau of cooked shellfish of uncertain age and origin combined with living things in shells awaiting their fate at the hat pin provided for each customer. Having noted that the incidence of food poisoning went up when the local supermarket reduced its intake of shellfish from twice to once a week, I went off shellfish in a big way.


My repugnance was not overcome by the French New Year thrash....the Sylvester. Oysters are obligatory at these events which are great in every other way and French hospitals cancel all staff leave in order to be ready for the rush of the 'oyster knife through the palm of the hand' injuries , resulting from opening oysters at speed while having drink taken. I wondered whether it was because the craggy Portugese oyster was more difficult to open than the horseshoe type, but I have come to the conclusion that is probably the amount of 'drink taken' that is the deciding factor.



Then the family came down for the summer and went to the seaside for the day, to a resort they used to go to when the children were young, returning with a basket of craggy oysters. We sat outside at the wooden table perched precariously on the slope under the trees and ate them with relish...they were plump, juicy and a far cry from the miserable specimens of the winter months. I was reconverted to oysters!

It made me think...at New Year the shops and stalls are awash with panniers of oysters, collected especially for the winter festivities...it is the major selling point of the year. How long have these oysters been sitting about in the viviers, or holding tanks, let alone in transport and stacked up in the loading bays of the supermarket delivery systems? An ex neighbour of mine, a retired Paris bus driver of a careful turn of mind, told me that when he buys oysters for the New Year he insists that the panniers are opened in front of him and that he tries the contents. He had been disappointed too often before starting this practice.

'They don't like it, but, damn it, it's my money I'm spending!'

I wonder, too, if, as well as the freshness factor, the feeding is better in the summer months. A friend goes down to the islands off the Atlantic coast in the summer and comes back laden with buckets of wild oysters which he distributes lavishly...they are a real treat, but even the shop bought oyster is now firmly back on my summer menu, whether it is clear, milky, or, in the case of the oysters from Marennes, green! And I don't have to wonder if there is an 'r' in the month. It doesn't matter!

Is it food to die for?

A friend is arriving shortly, and I am looking forward to the Red Cross parcel she will be bringing. The Marmite, cheddar cheese and fresh indian spices are keenly anticipated, as are the golden syrup and suet. The French may make rude remarks about English cuisine, but I've never known any of them refuse a second helping of treacle tart, while the home made Christmas puddings are now not just accepted, but requested!

The big problem will be finding somewhere to have lunch. These days, I have given up going out for pleasure as I have been disappointed so often, but friends and family have the kind instinct to take out their hosts as a relief from the cooking and washing up. Give me the washing up any day over the overpriced and sub standard offerings which are the norm in my locality!
First, you have to beware of the places that announce their menu by price not by what they propose to serve. One encounter with a cow intestine sausage was enough to ensure I never entered such a place again....if they are too idle to write out their menu it doesn't hold out too much hope for the cooking! Recommendations have to be treated with caution.....a full plate cares much more weight in local opinion than the quality of what is served on it and I don't fancy tired charcuterie and salad leaves washed in bleach solution all bought in from the local supermarket. I can grate vegetables and buy cold meat myself...I can cook a steak the way I like it rather than having it ruined by a chef with his own ideas on what the customer should want and I can have a decent bottle of wine rather than paying over the odds for rubbish and risk being breathalysed on the way home. A place has to be good to overcome all these obstacles and, at the moment, I know of only one.

There is such a place in a tourist town some forty minutes' drive away and it is a great place to take visitors. On a riverside street there is a shabby courtyard surrounded by green painted railings where a brown door alongside leads you to a corridor with a toilet at the far end, a sink against the wall and another door into the bar itself. Here you have an authentic workman's caff of the 1920s, with its huge bar and mirrored display of bottles, while tables and bentwood chairs line the walls and battered iron tables lurk outside under faded umbrellas in the summer. The proprietor is now in his late seventies, a rotund, white haired gentleman in white overall, slippers and, in winter, woolly hat, who shuffles round to take the orders of his customers. The regulars are local workman and some surprisingly colourful ladies, but tourists get the same courteous attention, even if regulars on a limited lunch hour get the fastest service. He offers an unchanging menu...crudites to start, beetroot, potato salad, tomatoes and high class charcuterie - yes, I know what I said about being able to buy it myself - steak and chips, either bloody or just cooked - and I know what I said about cooks with their own ideas on steak - and the unchanging bottle of house red. Yes, I know I have just contradicted myself, but this place has one of the nicest atmospheres I know, and the chips are the best I have tasted outside Belgium. He was kind enough to tell me which brand of oil he uses and the chips on the home front have undergone a distinct improvement following his advice. The waitresses vary from visit to visit.....either delightful young things in exiguous clothing or a woman of a certain age with views on how her customers should behave. The house dog insinuates himself alongside your chair, the regulars help themselves to a drink from the bar as they chat over their newspapers and this is the only place in which, while waiting for a table, I have ever been given a drink on the house, or, come to that, discussed the merits of DAF cars.

There is only one problem....will he still be alive?

I have had far frostier receptions in my time. There is one hotel with restaurant where you are either welcomed with open arms or receive the cold shoulder depending on four elements...if you have been able to reserve in person AND have been lucky enough to meet the chef's dogs while so doing AND like dogs AND the dogs like you, then it is the arms. If not all of the above then it is the shoulder. At least, thinking it over, I can find nothing else to account for the difference. If I am invited by a dog approved person, all goes swimmingly from the moment that Madame - wife of chef - beams as you open the door to the moment that her husband emerges from his kitchen flanked by the dogs to accept the gratitude of his customers for what has been a superb meal. If invited by those not vetted by the dogs then either it is impossible to reserve a table, or if you have slipped through the net by getting the trainee receptionist who believes in encouraging trade then while the food is still superb Madame wants to rush you through your meal, sulks if you resist and the evening is enlivened by the slam of plates hitting the table. As it is a long way off, the necessity of making two trips, one to book and one to eat, ensures that I only go if invited by someone on the dogs' list who lives nearby.

The last expedition to a local restaurant was a disaster...you sympathise with the Russians fighting on seventeen fronts when you've had this sort of experience. The site was pleasant, on decking over a lake, and the menu did not look too large to be authentic.....when it offers everything under the sun you know that the freezer and the microwave take the majority place in the kitchen. We ordered oysters. Word came from the kitchen that oysters were off. Monsieur et Mesdames did not realise that oysters had to be fresh, so they were not available, we were told, by a snooty young waitress who refused to respond to our French and insisted on using English. Since we had just seen them on sale in the local supermarket, we could only imagine that the staff were too idle to nip down and buy them. We ordered something else as a starter and ordered filet of salmon, fish gratin and steak as our main courses. The salmon was approaching raw, and the steak was an amalgam of gristle and fat, undercooked to the point of having just been defrosted in the microwave. Madame could not eat it, and asked for a doggy bag. The waitress decided at this point that she did not understand in either English or French, and the steak was whipped away. The pud was fine, in fact, good....an assortment of desserts....but the coffee was rank. The waitress was no longer in attendance, being busy patronising another table of English customers, but we finally obtained the bill and were set to leave. Where was the doggy bag? Our waitress had gone incommunicado, so Madame invaded the kitchen, where the steak was lying on the table.....had it been forgotten or was there some hope among the staff that they could palm it off on some other customer? She demanded a bag, scooped up the steak, and we were away. That afternoon, the fish gratin made itself felt with a bout of food poisoning for Monsieur. We cooked the steak before giving it to the dog. He was all right.ri

A breathless hush

Rural France has been very quiet since Thusday, April 30th. The predominant sounds are the click of the computer mouse and the cry of enraged triumph when the quarry is pinned down.

This beats any all action computer game hands down for excitement and emotion, and it is thanks to the European Union which has decided that, in the interests of transparency, all beneficiaries of the Common Agricultural Policy should be named.

Germany has failed to obey....it's not that long after the disruption of absorbing the old German Democratic Republic, after all....a row about which fat cats have their paws in the cream which is mostly paid for by the German public is not regarded as conducive to solidarity and fellow feeling in hard times.

One has a feeling that all the Greek, Roumanian and Bulgarian beneficiaries are related, probably to their agriculture ministers, but perhaps that is just how their names look to northern European eyes.

One knows, too, that the Queen has had her paws well buttered, but all of this pales in comparison with the emotion felt by a Frenchman able to confirm long held suspicions about his neighbour's finances.

By consulting the website

www1.telepac.agriculture.gouv.fr/telepac/tbp/feader/afficherResultats.action

...which has just gone down, what a surprise!...

the French taxpayer, consumer and, vitally, neighbour can discover just who has had his or her snout in the trough and to what extent.

It is fascinating to learn that a chap up the road who has to my certain knowledge thirty milking goats and a shed full of ducks has raked in seventeen thousand euros in the last accounting year while steadfastly refusing to pay his wife a wage...nomatter what it says on the books...and leaving his house in the state it was in the 1930s where sanitation is concerned. It does account for his smart cars and vans, however.

Then there is the guy across the river. He has a few cattle, mostly to be found in my garden when the river is low enough for them to wade across, and a pig unit which seems to be subject to electrical faults every three years in which animals inevitably die and he inevitably collects insurance. He has received one hundred and four thousand euros. It accounts for his cars too.

The man who steals my ducks as an extension of his declared activity as a cattle farmer has trousered thirty four thousand euros. It accounts for his son's cars.

The French farmer is an unpopular figure abroad, seen as grasping, greedy, environmentally unfriendly and living high on the hog on the backs of European taxpayers and consumers. It may come as a surprise to learn that he is regarded like this in France, as well, except for European taxpayers, substitute French ones....they have no time to worry about the emotions of other European taxpayers. The figures pubished more or less discreetly in the newspapers have unleashed howls of fury in the comment columns and a great deal of earnest discussion at the level of the local bar.

According to my non farming neighbours, there are two aspects to the farmer's unpopularity ...his farming activites and his privileged position when it comes to taxation.

The farming activities are but all too well known. Pollution of wells and water courses by the over use of fertilizers, which now has to be cleaned up at the expense of the general taxpayer. Over use of insecticides which are rendering the countryside sterile....hardly a buzz in my blossoming fruit trees which once were alive with pollinators....and two fingers put up to beekeepers who have seen their hives and their livelihoods destroyed. Paid to sow inappropriate crops which demand irrigation to an extent that domestic water sources are threatened. Spreading his manure on the fields and not turning it in so that the stench overpowers the neighbourhood - I swear the guy with the ducks has a copy of my diary as it seems like every time I have friends to lunch in the summer he spreads his manure the day before and drives us off the terrace. The ability to blight the countryside with chicken concentration camps, silos and sheds, while the ordinary guy has to jump through the hoops of French planning regulations to change the colour of his shutters. There is a lovely village nearby, where the main streeet is all mellow golden limestone. At the end of the street, visible from the moment you drive into the village, is a silo of vast proportions painted a livid forest green. Just try painting your shutters that colour!

Never dare let your field to a farmer...with his nine year renewable leases and his right to first refusal should you wish to sell he is a blight on your property...let alone what he gets up to while he is renting.

It is the underpart of the iceberg that rouses most resentment, however. Thanks to taxation policy, farmers manage to keep the bulk of their money inviolate, while declaring miniscule sums. This enables them to maintain their vehicle fleets at minimal cost, while entitling their children to grants meant theoretically for the children of the poor. Natural disasters have no meaning for them....they are compensated on the grand scale, which in its turn provides permanent support for the car sales industry. You have no idea how much the average guy who has to economise to keep his car on the road resents the fleets of white vans and smart cars issuing from farm gateways. You have no idea how much the general shopkeeper or tradesman resents the handouts for hard times while he faces going bust and being obliged to keep on paying workmen for whom he has no work.

Still, as my elderly neighbours say
'Nous sommes pour rien'......we don't count.

Farmers count. These subsidies keep the French agro alimentary industry turning, and keep the farming vote turning out for the right in French national politics, and, thanks to the European Union, we all pay for their privileges.