Living in Brittany

Its very quiet here now since the autumn half term the place is empty of visitors for the first time since the beginning of April so we can shout and scream and no one hears us except perhaps the neighbours.The weather has changed like a switch as soon as the last visitors left at the end of October , the last two months have incredibly dry and warm  and now its the rainy windy  season which is good for the ground and gardens.I had a quick visit to the UK to pick up a few goodies I had bought on ebay which I get delivered to my brother also to pick up of a chipper/mulcher  attachment for my Countax mower from Exeter.I bought one of those electric ones years ago which you use once and then throw to the back of your workshop in disgust as its so slow and inefficient, but the Countax chipper is a good tool as it works direct off the 16 hp motor so plenty of power and can slice up to 6cms  but I prefer to do half that thickness and chainsaw the rest in to fire starter pieces. I also bought a second hand chainsaw as my old one I cynically call it French as it works well for 10 minutes and then it needs a 2 hour rest.My brother has moved to Bude in Cornwall where I went to secondary school  ( it was a grammar in those days ) and the most worrying thing was I knew 10  people in the street of his house, 4 were ex teachers, 2 were in the same class as me , the next door neighbour played in the town band with me its just too much .Tony the ex-class mate insisted on taking me out for a pub crawl which didn't do much for my head the next day.It was interesting that recession wasn't effecting Bude so much as its a tourist town and the "staycation " fashion helps it survive.

I returned from a walk with the dog at the weekend to find a springer spaniel chasing one of our white chickens around the garden last weekend, after a few subtle words of English it disappeared and the chicken jumped into my arms to be rescued and I was going to put it back into its run but noticed the other chick had disappeared so I dropped it in with the brown chick. There was just a pile of feathers so assumed the dog had carried it off. This was a good opportunity for Paulien to have an in-depth conversation with the hunters on dog control and respecting distances with local houses, as they just seem to shoot anything which moves especially while the maize crops are still standing.However the next day when we moved the 2 remaining chickens ( we move their run everyday so they have something fresh to scratch ) we heard a faint noise in the hedge and found the missing chick minus quite a few feathers wedged behind a water butt, a very lucky chick!

I did a gig a couple weeks ago in Plufur with Anthony ( an ex pro trumpet player ) we played the first set before the other group played, "Feeling" a jazz quartet with a very good singer. It was OKish  and in the paper the "Tregor "last week we had our photo in and a write up, Anthony with his "bewitching" trumpet  and Simon with his "hot sax " a bit ambiguous !

I had to go flat hunting in Rennes with Max as he and Bas are studying there at the university next month. I left the arrangements up to Max and he had 2 rendez-vous organised. The first was on a purpose built block modern Ok if you like fitted carpets on the walls and one of the bedrooms  wouldn't have taken a double bed, so it was small,but it was passable and then the agent at the end of the visit said the owner didn't like students, so it was a waste of time and for the second appointment we waited  and waited and the agent never turned up and Max didn't have his/her  number, but fortunately we ventured into an immobilier at the centre of Rennes and asked if they had any thing on offer and we  were offered a first viewing of an apartment which was in the process of being repainted so we had to return a couple of days later ( its only a 2 hour drive to Rennes ).However the apartment was great just a 5 minute walk from the centre, it was slightly old fashioned with a squeaky wooden floor but spacey 68msq and going for 690€ a month.Its great for Max as his uni is just 2 streets away whereas Bas is at University2 which is on the edge of Rennes so a half hour walk,15 min on a bike it seems to be very bike friendly or he could take the metro. Rennes is a very interesting city,very old centre with the newly restored parliament building  ( the fishermen burnt it down in 1994, Paulien used to know a fisherman he had a few fingers missing as he had let go of the Molotov too late ) It also houses the appeal courts and has exhibitions in the assembly room and is well worth a visit but I guess small children wouldn't find it too interesting. In the centre of Rennes is the " rue de soif " a wide street flanked by restaurants and bars ( also the Webb Ellis )  the centre of the night life.

Here at Coat Aillis we have our "happy family " week with lots of regulars back and we are in the middle of our annual pool competition sponsered by Npower,CMB and Super U. Fortunatly the Aussies lost the ashies so the Npower memorablie has some meaning otherwise it would have to have been binned. For the juniors Iz has to play Emma but for the seniors it looks like a three way final between Ted, Bas (former junior champion) and Pete (07 winner ) or Xav (a 4 times winner of the juniors )Will post the winner next blog.

On the seaweed front the beach of course is looking very clean  and last week the French PM ,Fillon visited with 3 minsters ,agriculture,health and the environment with the usual pledges of money to throw at the problem when the real solution would be effective policing of the rivers and closing down any dirty units caught polluting

We have recently come in contact with our immediate neighbour's ( Etienne )  sister  during the EDF chainsaw massacre  ( 24/05 post ) as she was doing a dossier  on the damage they had done. She is a very formidable short woman with incredible energy when you think she is 84yr. She explained she had a grandson  staying in August who wanted to improve his English so we arranged an exchange with Teddy who is staying with us before his parents arrive.During her second visit she explained that her deceased husband had hid in the loft of the gite "les Etables " from 1942 onward as Coat Aillis was the communication base for the local resistance in the last war. During our renovation of that gite we found a Lee Enfield mk2 rifle hidden in the gables

The story that led up to her late husband hiding was he was a "de Staint Laurent " and lived in the local chateau   a few fields away  and an allied airplane crashed on the beach at St Efflam and the 2 pilots were hidden at the chateau then passed on to escape to the UK , but unfortunately the gestapo  came and took the mother away and she died in the camp Ravensbruck in 45 and all the children  ( 10 of them ) were dispersed as they were afraid they would be deported as well, so my neighbour who was a couple years old was put in a monastery where as Jacque ( her husband ) who was 17 and good at telecommunications/ morse code hid in the  loft of les etables while his older brother escaped to England.

I went to a meeting /demonstration on the " toxic beach" at St Michel en Greve last Sunday where there was hardly a trace of seaweed in fact it was the cleanest I have ever seen no doubt due to the presence of the TV cameras and the national press. The consensus seems to be that there should be better policing of the couple of intensive units inland  plus a change of husbandry by the farmers to stop growing maize which is very shallow rooting and leaves the fields bare from November to April  ( unless the farmers put in a green manure crop ) and to grow lucerne a crop with a very deep rooting system. The statistics show on average after the maize is cut there remains about 140 units of N in the ground which then leaches into the watercourse. The other consensus was that the entire team of bureaucrats at the prefecture should be sacked!

There was a bizarre story in the press 3 weeks ago of a horse rider who's horse fell in a hole next to the a river and it died allegedly with its head in the seaweed of a toxic gas given off by the seaweed decomposing in the sun. The weed is known as sea lettuce and would be the equivalent of taking a walk on a pile of rotting garden lettuces which have been left in the sun for 4 weeks, something you just wouldn't do.However it being the age of litigation and no one takes responsibility for their own actions now adays the owner is suing the local mayor in St Michel who already has an action pending against  "X" who are local farmers ( not identified ) for pollution of the water course ( use of excessive nitrates ).

So a week ago the French press did a blitz on  the story and a week later its on Sky news so it must be true. The problem with the English press is objectivity like the swine flu "with the streets of England cluttered with dead bodies due to this deadly menace" so now its too dangerous to open the window of the car at the beach to " sniff the sea air filled with toxic gases " The reality is in the last 20 years there has been 3 or 4 incidents one involving a person the others being dogs and a horse these facts are then taken by the Murdoch press  and sensationalised regardless of the true facts. The beaches are as popular as ever and to my knowledge none are closed, there are signs where its "interdite " to swim but those signs have been in place 30+yrs. The excess nitrates is a long going problem with local authorities  reluctant in the past to take on farmers but the "tide is turning " and the environment is being given a higher priority.

Previously I lived in Cornwall and the answer there to their sewage problems was to build longer outlets and pump it further out to sea.

We had some sad news yesterday my mother in law, Hildegarde passed away Friday night. She hasn't been well for the last two years but had been well looked after by Beep ( Paulien's sister  who is married to my brother ) in Cornwall. She was a colourful character well know to our client/friends  as a slightly eccentric Dutch woman doing yoga and interested in all aspects of life with a very open mind. She was probably the least  materialistic person I have ever met a sad loss for humanity may she rest in peace.

The boys are all moving on this autumn, Max has finished his 3 year stint  at Brest and wants to do a further 2 years at Rennes studing "European law" (exciting stuff ) and Bas passed his bac and has a place at the university at Rennes to do "lange applique "  which is doing the languages Spanish and English with some business studies thrown in, so they will be flat huntting as it makes sense to share and is cheaper per head than having single appartments. Xav is off to the lycee in Lannion  to do a CEP which is a vocational  course and involves an apprentiship in electrics. I hope he isn't colour blind

The European election is one of two elections I can vote in ,the other being the local town hall election.For Europe we have a choice of about 20 parties of which 4 are serious and have a chance of electing a good number of deputies ( 5 if you include the national front ) they will probably get around 10% of the vote. The main players are the UMP (Sarkos lot ) Socialists,MoDem ( a liberal party ) and the greens. The rest of the candidates are more single issue policies,such as "esperanto " "breton party " and extreme left,right and green. The voting turnout is always high in France so should be 50-60% with the polls showing UMP in the lead

Paulien brought home a terrorist last week , he has 4 legs ,looks cuddly but is destruction on paws and dashs around chewing shoes and anything left on the floor. The other dogs do their best to ignore him but that is really differcult.The boys have named him " Bealo" after the village idiot in the film Borat.

I see a bit of blue sky so must go and cast my vote.

One of my simple pleasures ( perhaps childish ) assuming its the correct result is buying "L'Equipe " and reading it in the bar on the Monday and asking somebody French to help explain some words in the article. Its a really good wind up and then I have to see my friend Yves the pharmacists ( he's a real rugby nut we watched the semi finals together in 2007 ) so I enter the shop and all the girl servers start giggling so I say " hi is Yves around or is he too depressed to work or just hiding" A head appears from the back of the shop and we have a good laugh together me more than him. Still it makes my day
I made a "faux pas " the other day , someone from the town band is always sending jokes which I usually delete as it gets boring ,however he sent me one of a Dutch carnival which was a bit "risqué " . I mentioned it in the bar and a Sophie said email to me so I can show it to my friend, I immediately forgot but later in the day I had an email from a Sophie to something virtuous such join a petition against genetic modified something, so I hit reply and posted the Dutch Carnival it wasn't till the next day I realised it wasn,t the same Sophie as I don't take a lot notice in the surnames. I think its a Sophie from the jazz band who I hardly know so quickly sent a grovelling apology. A good lesson in deleting rubbish straight away.
Bas has received his "permis conduire " but seems to be very sensible he put all the seats in the Boxer and took his mates to the night club the week after he passed the driving test. When they left the night club they were stopped by the police , he was breathalysed and they put sniffer dogs in the van looking for drugs. Fortunately they were clean on both accounts.

Sarkozy sees himself as a modern Napoleon and is in a position to redraw the internal map of France. At present there are 22 governing regions and it is proposed to be reduced to 15 for Brittany it would mean a fifth department with Nantes being re-united to the rest of Brittany. It was Vichy France which separated it in 1941, there could be a competition for the regional capital Rennes or Nantes. Rennes is more central but Nantes is bigger. Normandy is proposed to be united for the first time since John II lost a chunk of it 800 years ago and its also proposed that Paris copies London GLC and represents most of the inhabitants ( including the "revolting" banlieues) instead just the bourgeois centre. There would be a few losers Picardy and Poitou-Charente which by co-incidence is the fiefdom of Segolene Royal who was the presidential rival candidate in the last election. Those regional groups would be merged and disappear in the new regional set up as proposed by the committee of Edouard Balladur. The Bretons are happy but no doubt there will be demonstrations and protests against the reforms
Bas passed his driving test this week and now drives around with an "A" on the back of the car because he did the accompanied approach he only has it for 2 years if you do purely lessons and pass you have the "A" for 3 years as statistically the accompanied drivers have less accidents and their insurrances is marginally cheaper

We had a cold spell last week and on two consecutive days had snow but it disappeared late afternoon but it made driving very tricky for the school run at 7 in the morning, I had to resort to loading the Boxer with a pile of stones to give it better traction on the roads. The first day (Monday ) the buses were on strike so I had to drive into Lannion I think the council workers were also on strike as the roads weren't treated that day but the next day they found their salt stocks and all the main roads were very drivable. The minor roads stayed treacherous until the snow melted.
Max my eldest son has at last received a letter of confirmation of French nationality, its only taken 3 years and they seem to ask for the same documents three times but I guess it keeps the bureaucrats in a job. You need to be French national if you want to work in the civil service which is probably half the jobs in France, but at least there will be less jobs lost in the looming recession.There is a big motor construction sector but they have been lobed a few billion to tide them over and Sarkozy is taking of abolishing the professional tax in 2010 ( an illogical tax on business ) which is causing local government to worry over future revenue as they are the main benefice of the tax.I guess they will have to radically increase the "taxe foncier" or " taxe d'habitation"
I found a good source of spare parts for my Peugeot classic last week a mechanic in the garage found a local 305 being scrapped so we stripped off the parts I needed for nothing and I just gave him some cash for helping me.The garage had quoted 240€ for just one of the items!
My brother who is a wizz in marketing has been on at me to join "twitters.com" its an insane chat site where you can't post more than 140 syllables but allegedly all the "bright things/people" use it.I manage a couple of posting but don't really understand it and then you get followers, who log on to your 140 utterance,bizarre the death of intellectualism.

Yesterday was "jeudi noir" as most of France was on strike and the boys didn't go to school. Even Lannion had a demonstration of 5000 in the afternoon, I was asking people in the bar why there were strikes and demonstrations and nobody had a sensible suggestion. So half the population doesn't like Sarkozy but the other half does and helping out the banking sector isn't popular but letting it collapse would be worse, but what do I know.
A good or bad example of French industry was last week I had to order a small item for the pool, the pipework is by a British company called Certikin and I was told to get in touch with the Perpignan office as I lived in France.Over the next couple of days several telephone calls and emails produced zero response , they weren't interested so I asked for a English company to deal with,one telephone call and the product is in the post. OK its not a lot of money but its an attitude problem they need to learn to love their clients.
The pounds continuing decline although making life more expensive if you are sterling dependant makes the UK much more attractive for shopping so I'll have to make a list a do a shop in the spring.My middle son bought a laptop from PC World about 150€ cheaper than he would have paid here and it also keeps him off my PC as well.
Its our annual band dinner on Sunday I think its the 30€ menu + wine all paid for by the municipality of Lannion, not sure if they are getting good value.