Every Thing in its Season

As I pass my days driving about the oh-so-beautiful lanes of Creuse, I experience a continually renewed wonder at the immediacy of the seasons here. I've always been an outdoorsy sort of person, but not since I was a student, longing for those wonderful, lazy, library-free days of Summer, have I been so acutely aware of the passing months. Before coming to France, I spent most of my life in the south-east of England, where the seasons go through their cycles in a kind of lacklustre manner and don't seem to impinge very much on daily life.

 How different it is here! Things are rarely grey and boring in these parts; the weather has a tendency toward the extreme and one is never allowed to be unaware of the season. In the decade I have lived here, I have known temperatures as high as 43c and as low as -18c. Thankfully, both of these were abnormalities, but even so, the range does illustrate that we have proper, defined seasons.

And each one is a joy: the summer, of course, is wonderful with the long, long, sunny days, eating outdoors, late afternoons at one of the many local lakes, the countryside groaning with greenness and everything so drowsy and buzzy.






 

 Yet, by late summer, it's all beginning to get a bit too dry and heavy and the first showers of autumn are a real treat. Many flowers which disappear in the height of summer re-bloom in September, and coupled with the gorgeous autumn leaves, this is a very colourful time.

Plus, we have nature's bounty to enjoy: apples, chestnuts, pears, raspberries, blackberries, mushrooms. People spend every spare moment bottling, preserving and jam-making.

As winter begins to take over in December, there are stunning frosty mornings to enjoy, lots of startling blue skies, the stark beauty of the stripped-down landscape and usually at least one proper snowfall.

By March, we are all weary of the cold, so it is viscerally exciting to notice the buds forming and the first hints of green beginning to shade-in the landscape. For a while, it is as though everything is holding its breath and there is a great sense of anticipation in the air. Then comes a day with a certain balminess in the air and POW! ...it all bursts forth with life. Suddenly, I am again driving about surrounded by greenery and wild flowers. It's hard to express just how uplifting this annual renewal is, but the feeling is impossible to ignore and it affects everyone's spirits.


Then before we know it, les grandes vacances have arrived and everything is once again spooling down towards chestnut time and the smell of woodsmoke in the air.

The Gallic Shrug

I suppose everyone is aware of the infamous Gallic shrug, and unlike many stereotypical characteristics, it not only exists but is an essential tool in the conversational armoury of a French speaker.

Before I lived in France, I had a concept of the Gallic shrug as a gesture encompassing an attractively laid-back attitude; a wry, "Well, that's just the way things are and it's not worth getting your knickers in a twist about it"; a charming counterpoint to the Anglo-Saxon drive to fix everything. It was laissez-faire and c'est la vie and que sera, sera.

The reality of the Gallic shrug is subtly but crucially different. After 10 years here, I have mastered its use. This is what it is really for:

The shrug is a way of disavowing responsibility. The shrug says "Look, you are not seriously expecting me to try to sort this out for you?". The shrug says "Oh, for goodness' sake, it's five to twelve and I want my lunch and I really can't be bothered to try to find a way around this problem". The shrug says "Please, do not attempt to lay this issue at my door because I am perfectly sure without even thinking about it that it must be somebody else's business and not mine".

It is a powerful tool and its judicious use can work wonders. When faced with a builder playing dumb about unsatisfactory work, an obstinate shop-worker refusing a refund for faulty goods, a local government official pursing his lips about some trifling irrregularity in his paperwork or similar, there is no mileage in insisting too forcefully on your rights or pointing out the idiocy of their stance. Simply sit back, adopt a polite and rather vague half-smile and then at just the right moment, throw them a shrug. It will, almost without fail, neatly volley the ball out of your court and back into theirs.

Just make sure you get your shrug in first, though.

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker

People often remark that life around these parts is "Just like the UK 50 years ago". Perhaps this is no more than sentimental nostalgia, but there is certainly a quaintness to the way some things are done.

One of the traditions which persists in spite of modern pressures is the statutory noon-to-2pm lunch, which takes some getting used to. Shortly after arriving here, hubby was driving the lanes on some errand or other when he realised he was in need of refreshment and the time was 11.50am. He knew that after noon there would be no shops open, so he pulled over in the next village, where there was a little row of three shops: baker, butcher and small grocer.

He first tried the baker, where a wizened lady aged about 90 appeared from the back at the sound of the door opening. He asked if she had any ready-made sandwiches. She did not, so he said he would take a baguette and try for some ham or similar in one of the other shops. The lady duly wrapped his bread with painstaking care and wished him a cheery farewell and he bobbed into the butcher next door.

Again, the shop was empty when he entered, and this time he had a wait of a couple of minutes before there was movement from the back and eventually in shuffled ... the same lady. With ne'er a flicker of recognition in her demeanour, she explained apologetically that she didn't have any ham available. Hubby suggested that he would try the grocer and she agreed this might be a good plan.

So, into the next shop, where there was also no sign of life. After a slightly longer wait, he was a bit dumbfounded to be greeted once more by the very same old lady. Again, she behaved as though she had never laid eyes on him before, and he had to repeat the entire conversation before obtaining a couple of slices of ham.

Well, he got his lunch eventually, but you do have to learn not to be in a rush.

Foreign Fields

It's not a straightforward thing to move to a foreign country. It might seem much like moving down the road at first, but then you begin to realise that everything you thought you knew is now turned on its head. In fact, the longer you stay in a foreign land, the more foreign it becomes. It's all rather fascinating but also a bit exhausting.

A little over ten years ago, my husband and I decided to make the leap; rather naively, as it turned out. Within 18 months of that decision, we had bought and renovated one little village cottage, set up a new business, sold the house, had a baby and bought another house which was huge and consisted of not much more than four good walls and a roof. Along the way, we made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of high times and many low ones, climbed a very steep learning curve and overall just about lived to tell the tale.

I hope with this blog to create a small window on our experiences and offer some insight into what living in our little corner of France really means.

Welcome to all my readers!