Food and More Reflections

Madam and I (and little Pip) have lived in France for 5 years now - do we like it? Well, up to a "Point Lord Copper". There is a lot to like about France and the French, but there are disappointments. Take the food for instance, I am greedy - I like my food. Before we left England "kind friends" liked to point out how fat I would get on "all that lovely French food"; that has not proved to be the case; French food has been a great disappointment. The French seem to have turned aside from their famed culinary skills and prefer to stuff their systems with Pizzas, Burgers and other such fast food rubbish. The old family Resto seems to have pretty much disappeared. French cooks seem happy to serve fast food as fast as the French public is happy to shovel the rubbish down its' collective gut. Very sad, but at least it has removed any tendency I might have to overeat. My great sadness is "The Beef". When I first arrived in France, I used to look at the beautiful 'beef on the hoof' feeding in the pastures and salivate; it was not to be. French butchery is a complete disgrace. Meat is not hung, indeed, I understand that it is an offence under French law to sell meat that is more than 3 days old. This is all the fault of the British, of course. They get blamed for inventing 'Mad Cow Disease' (as though the nastiness was completely unknown in France). This means that any steak offered for sale will be marked (V.B.F) - Viandes Bovine Francais - steak that is only suitable for re-soling a boot. I have given up trying to chomp French beef - very sad.

We first went to the Vienne (West Central - Poitiers), it was not a part we knew, but it seemed worth a punt because Madame and I are monstrous keen on hunting. I had tried French hunting back in the 1980s and greatly enjoyed it. According to the official map of the Society of Venerie, the Vienne had the largest number of packs of hounds per square kilometre of anywhere in France. A man told me that it was possible to hunt 7 days a week in the Vienne. This may have been true - what is also true is that in five years - I did not have one day that I remember with pleasure. French hunting had greatly changed for the worse in the previous decade. The great hunts that I could remember were no longer possible. Hunting had become 'parked'. For example, our local hunt that pursued both Stag and Boar, lived in a forest of 30,000 acres. After the Hitler war the noble owner was thought to have been too sympathetic in his approach to the German occupiers, so his house was burned down and he moved away. He put in a 9ft stock proof fence around the forest and leased the sporting rights. I used to hunt there a bit, but churning round the same bit of forest, day after day, can quickly lose its' charm. The local farmers told me that there used to be great hunts out of the forest, but as with the tender 'beef', those days were gone.
These days I fear the 'Parking Craze' has increased. I can see the reason for the landowners; parks can be stocked. Busy main roads avoided and insurance costs reduced. Gone are the days when a hunt would be accompanied by its' own van of Gendarmes who held up lesser traffic when hounds had to cross a main road. The modern sort of hunting may be practical, but it lacks excitement and zest. There was plenty of hunting in the Vienne, but it had no sparkle.

Now we have moved to Normandy and we are hoping for a fresh start. What about the French? We have met many pleasant and helpful French. The big problem is that the French are deeply engrained with petty bureaucracy. Take a problem - I was christened Robert, William Frederick Poole. All my life I have been known as William, or one of the variations. The French do not go in for multi prenames - they have hyphens - Jean-Paul; Sophie-Anne etc. so to the French bureaucracy I am, Poole-Robert. If you try to change it they will object. For instance: I needed to change my mobile phone. My wife took the old one to the Orange shop in the town. "But", said the woman, "You must bring Msr Poole's passport". So she did. "But", said the woman, "you must have the written permission to use it". To cut a long story short, it took Mrs P six visits to Orange - I could not be William, my name was officially Robert and so on.
You may think that petty officialdom is an annoying joke, but the results can be tragic. Do you remember Srebrenicia in 1995? The inhabitants of the town had a UN protection force of Dutch troops. The Dutch asked their French Commander for an air-strike to stop the Serbs shelling the town. "No", said the French General - "the Dutch have filled in the wrong form". Because of this bit of petty lunacy - 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered.
A fine example of Bumble-dum.

NOVEMBER 2011 – Brr...

We are taking France out to Lunch. In case this confuses you, France is our best French Friend. We stayed with her when we were house hunting in Normandy and she has proved a very good help and stay ever since. France was born in 1942. This was not a good time to be born and raised in France. Her father had her christened 'France' so that there would be something French left in France. She lives on a large farm just outside our shopping town, which has expanded onto the farm. On what is left of the farm she keeps horses. Normandy is renowned for its horses. They are of a really good old fashioned type - short legs, short back, deep chest, good back end, any English Hunt would be very happy to have a stable of Norman horses. Sadly there is little mounted hunting in Normandy. The French custom decree that 'La Chasse a cours' is a matter for Forests. These are few in N. Normandy. In the area where we live it is mostly 'Horn and Corn'. It would be good country for a pack of Harriers, but no one has got round to that. The French are a bit ticklish about hunting hares anyway, them being a bit scarce. I remember having a lot of fun with a rather good pack of harriers where we lived before. But they caught too many hares and the locals stopped it. I have studied the country whilst bodging around on my 'Mobility Scooter'. Most of the country would be un readable now, what with wire and mechanical hedge trimmers. It must have been a good bank country once with nice, roly poly, double banks, but they are all covered in scrub and brambles now. It was a great tank country, I believe - the Panzers liked it dearly. The country is cobwebbed with little gravel lanes, so you would get about quite nicely on a 'quad', without jumping. It would suit me quite nicely. We did find a useful looking Foxhound country out on the Channel coast - very like W.Cornwall, but the Government has plonked huge Nuclear power stations all over it, which have killed the job - pity it must have been rather good rough hunting. We did find a pack of hounds to the South, but it would have meant a 4 hours drive to and from the meets which frankly is too much for old retired people and most often hunting that we had down in the Vienne was of such poor quality, we decided that rather than go out for disappointment, we had had a bloody good innings we would rather sit by the fire and relive the good hunts that we had in the past. And especially now the 'as exciting as watching paint dry' Flat Racing season has ground to a halt; we can watch the jump racing on the telly. I am sure that if we asked France, she would take us Trotting. This is the big equine THING in Normandy and there are horses scattered about at nearly every farm. I know that France's family are big in it, but I have watched it in the USA and it does not stir my adrenaline at all. I would as soon watch Paschale sweep my chimney, which I did the other day and I found it quite intriguing. It is quite different to the English method. No brushes are involved for one thing. 'Rammonag takes 2 men - two ropes and a bugger's muddle of twisted metal. Man the First climbs up on the roof and drops a rope down the chimney with one end clamped onto the Buggers' Muddle. Man the second waits down below and catches the rope as it is dropped. He then bellows 'Allez! ‘up the chimney and hauls on the rope. The BM is then dragged down the chimney, sticking its hooks into any bits of tar it may encounter. Then the whole boiling arrives in the fire place - ALLEZ! And the nest of hooks goes up again and the process is repeated as often as Paschale deems it necessary. I must say that I consider it much better than sticking a pipe up the chimney and sucking. One thing to remember is that smoke in France is 'wood smoke'. Coal is expensive and hard to come by. I go through a haze of fragrant wood smoke when I go through the street each morning. It is better than 'smog'. In case you are confused by my mention of a 'Mobility Scooter'. They are comparatively rare in Rural France, but you will see a lot in London - dashingly ridden by Chelsea Pensioners. They are electronic and have to be plugged in and charged up. They do not like mud and and they are flat out at 8 kph on the Tarmac. They are supposed to have a range of 50+ Klicks. I am not so sure. Mine died on me the other day half way up a hill. I rang the supplier in Gloucestershire. He suggested that it had not been charged properly. This was a good idea because it made Mrs Poole feel guilty (she being I/C charging, me being considered too stupid) What the Scooter is excellent for is Dog Jogging. In traffic Pip sits up like a Duke or a Lord in a bag on the Pannier, but on the little roads he trots along for miles and I must say that the French rural cars are very good about little dogsPS for Mr H: I do not remember when you spoke to the Stukleys (Simon?), but no parcel has yet arrived Blessings Willy