1000 Years

As I mentioned on Saturday, last weekend the de Becdelièvre family celebrated 1000 years of living in the chateaux of Boussay. The first hundred years was in a wooden chateau - until the Vikings burnt it to the ground. They rebuilt in stone, and parts of that chateau still stand. A couple of rebuilds and many alterations later and we have the building that exists today.

We went to view the son et lumière on Sunday night. Here are some of the images (in no particular order). They were all taken on my Fujifilm HS10 camera at f/3.6 • ¼ second exposure • ISO 800 • and the camera was hand held.

Street Art in Preuilly

Gérald's been at it again. More artwork has appeared on the front of his house. He and Françoise live in the house once owned by our friends the Lartigau family, at the top of our street.

 

Gérald's first artwork on the facade of the house, completed a couple of months ago.

Several generations of Lartigaus had lived there, and they were tailors. When Mme Lartigau died her grandchildren inherited the house. Their lives were elsewhere and they decided to sell the house. Gérald and Françoise purchased, and really we could not wish for better neighbours. 

 

 This is what the house currently looks like.

Over the last few months Gérald has been adding artwork to the facade, in a charming acknowledgement of the past. He is well aware of its history, and aware it is a bit sad that the Lartigau family is not there any more. It would have been different if Jean-Pierre Lartigau had lived, but he succumbed to colon cancer in 2011 [here's a link to my obituary of him]. 

 

 Gérald's latest artwork, completed a couple of weeks ago.

Le Rafle de Loches

The French word 'rafle' means 'police roundup' in English. Because of its associations with the mass arrests of the Second World War, most famously the Rafle du Vel d'Hiv, it is quite a toxic term.

On 27 July 1944, at dawn, a German task force from Tours, accompanied by Gestapo agents and French members of the collaborationist parties (fascists, anti-semites or anti-Bolsheviks mostly), stormed the sub-prefectural town of Loches. 

 

Memorial plaque to the clerk of the court, one of the victims of the roundup.

They arrested everyone they encountered in the street, including the sub-prefect, and went to their homes to look for anyone suspected of being more or less active in helping the Resistance.

Among them were civilians such as Marguerite Mallet, wife of Raymond Mallet, one of the leaders of the Secret Army of Loches, Lucienne and René Tocheport, factory owners whose trucks were used by the maquisards, Odette Houlbreque, a nurse who was very close to the maquis leader Lecoze, and Ernestine Denise Charlot, a milliner in rue Quintefol whose nephew had just joined the maquis of Épernon.

 

Memorial plaque to police officers who died in concentration camps after the roundup.

 

They also arrested all the members of the police and thirty-six gendarmes present in Loches, who they reprimanded for their lack of diligence in the search for young men who had refused to join the STO (the compulsory labour service which deported those forced to join to Germany to work in the mines and factories). Since 12 June 1944, all the gendarmes of the brigades of the Loches section had, by order of their senior officers, been assembled at the chief town. So that is, in addition to the gendarmes of the brigade of Loches, those of the brigades of Preuilly-sur-Claise, Montrésor, Saint-Flovier, Boussay, Villeloin-Coulangé and Abilly were all gathered in Loches.

All those arrested, maybe as many as three hundred people, were taken to the courtyard of the girls' school for interrogation. 

 

This war memorial to police officers who lost their lives in the Second World War is in Place des Anciens d'AFN, next to the Agnes Sorel cultural centre in Loches, and the Metropolitan Police Station.

 

At the end of the day, 58 men and six women (including Mme Mallet) were sent to the Henri Martin prison in Tours before being deported to Germany.

The gendarmes were first sent to the Neuengamme camp where they arrived on 1 September 1944. Some of them stayed there, the others were sent to the Wilhelmshaven Command where 29 of them died.

Denis Louis BONNAUDET: Born in 1906 in Chatonnay (Vendée), he was the Adjutant at the police station in Preuilly. Having not taken any action against the Resistance in the area he was arrested and taken to prison in Tours. He joined a convoy of prisoners from Rennes and was taken to Belfort then Neuengamme and later Wilhelmshaven. He died in April 1945 at Luneburg.

Ernestine Denise CHARLOT: Born in 1886 at Loches, she was a milliner. She was arrested for having sheltered her nephew, who was in the Resistance, following a denunciation by a woman from Loches. Imprisoned in Tours, she joined the Rennes convoy heading for Belfort. She was deported in September 1944 to Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she was gassed in April 1945.

Noel HAPPE: Born on Christmas Day in 1918 at Hellendoom in the Netherlands, he was a policeman in Preuilly. He was deported via the same route as the others, but only taken as far as Neuengamme. He survived the War and was liberated in the Flensburg Fjord. After the War he wrote a short account of his experience.

Odette HOULBREQUE: Born in 1911 at Fécamp (Seine-Maritime) she was a nurse and close friend of the notorious Resistance leader known as Lecoze (who claimed to be a doctor, but was really just a violent criminal and fraudster on the run). She was sent to Ravensbruck but luckily did not stay there. She was liberated in Hamburg in May 1945.

Marguerite MALLET: Born in 1914 at Lille, she was arrested and sent to Belfort like the others, but after that it is not known what happened to her, and her name is missing from the memorial in Loches. Evidence suggests that she died at Ravensbruck in February 1945. Her husband, a lawyer, was one of the local Resistance leaders and head of the political wing of the Loches based section of the Secret Army.

Lucienne TOUCHEPORT: Born Lucienne Métais in 1907 at Ferriere-sur-Beaulieu, near Loches. She was arrested for having sheltered Resistance members and sent to Ravensbruck by the same route as the others, but then on to another concentration camp and finally Oranienburg, where she was liberated in April 1945.

René TOUCHEPORT: Born in 1906 at Descartes, he was an industrialist, married to Lucienne and living in a charming hamlet just outside of Loches called Les Petites Maisons. He was arrested for sheltering Resistance members and sent to Germany, ending up at Wilhelmshaven and dying there in April 1945.

Paul WATEL: Born in 1914 at Lambersart (Nord), he was a policeman at Preuilly sur Claise. He was deported to Neuengamme, where he died in November 1944.

The Trouble with Honey Bees

The trouble with honey bees Apis mellifera (Fr. abeilles des ruches) is that they are a bit like feedlot cattle or battery hens in terms of their impact on the environment. They are not polluting by contributing to greenhouse gases or nitrogen levels in rivers but they are intensively managed animals in enormously large numbers that are significantly and detrimentally altering their immediate environment. Yes, you read that right. Many honey bees are not the good guys, but the bad guys in their neighbourhood.

 

Honey bees drinking in a stream.

So what exactly is the problem? Surely we need all the pollinators we can get these days? -- that's what the mainstream media is telling us... The problem is that most honey bees are managed intensively, which means that there might be millions of them working over the flowers in a fifty square kilometre patch. By sheer weight of numbers they are out competing the dozens of other species of native bees who do not have the advantage of being cossetted and fussed over by a beekeeper, or the social structure which means that a honey bee colony operates like a single gigantic and voracious foraging entity. Bumble bees form modest colonies of a few hundred members at most, and all the other dozens of wild native bee species are operating as individuals, some of which do not fly more than 150 metres from where they hatched, and who simply cannot survive or reproduce on the dregs left to them if there is a group of honey bee hives placed nearby.

 

Honey Bee on lavender.

Until recently entomologists and ecologists have only suspected there might have been competition for food that was negatively affecting solitary bees, but since 2017 there have been a number of studies, most of them French, which have shown conclusively that honey bees in numbers above about two to three hives (so around a hundred and fifty thousand individuals maximum) are causing a 'halo effect', where inside a radius of 600 metres from the hives, solitary bee numbers are halved. And that effect continues to some extent for several kilometres, depending on how many hives there are.

 

A swarming Honey Bee hive.

The problem is compounded because honey bees are good at collecting pollen, but not particularly good pollinators, so both plants and solitary bees are losing out. Modern honey bees are about 20 times as draining on pollen and nectar resources as honey bees from prior to the 1950s. This is in part due to modern managed honey bees being selected and bred for honey production. In addition, one of the primary sources of pollen and nectar for bees of all sorts is wild flower rich grasslands, a habitat which has declined by about 90% since the 1970s.

 

This many hives indicates a commercial apiarist, or a serious hobbiest who has a sideline in selling honey. The position and time of year indicated that sweet chestnut trees in flower were the target. They make a premium honey.

 

It is for this reason that ecologists are starting to support the idea that hives should be banned within a 2-3 kilometre cordon around nature reserves.

An Antique Butter Kneader

I spotted this unusual hand mill at the annual summer brocante (flea market/garage sale) in Preuilly. I wondered what it was for and asked the vendor. As soon as he said 'c'est pour malaxer le beurre' I knew exactly what it was because I'd seen the process performed in modern stainless steel on video. It is for kneading butter after it has been churned and before it is shaped into pats. An apparatus like this is for the best butter, so the object is rare because not all farmhouse butter producers did a thorough kneading.

 

It is for working the butter so that the last few drops of buttermilk can be squeezed out, and salt crystals can be added and evenly worked in. The salt will also draw out even more liquid, so that the butter is said to 'weep'. If you want to see a malaxeur à beurre just like this one in action, visit La Maison de Beurre in Saint Malo (Brittany) and check out the very similar machine used by Bordier [link]. A lot of people consider this to be the best butter in the world.

Traditionally these 19th century machines are made of teak, so I assume that is what the wood of this one is.

I can remember my mother making butter, up until I was about 10 years old (ie 1970). After the house cow was milked, by hand, the cream was separated from the milk in a centrifuge with an electric motor housed in a small shed at the bottom of the garden. Then the cream was beaten in the stand mixer. Once Mum had something that looked more or less like butter it was flushed a couple of times with water, then tipped out onto the bench and beaten and squeezed with hand held wooden paddles rather than run through a butter kneader. Then with those same paddles it was shaped into blocks (pats), making sure to give a nice pattern from the ridges on one side of the paddles, before being wrapped in waxed paper for storage in the fridge.

A Thousand Years

The chateau of Boussay has been lived in by the same family for a thousand years. (I'll just let that sink in for a while.)

They are celebrating this weekend with a series of events:

At the height of the plague we made a video about the village of Boussay, its  chateau and church. I drove Susan mad making it, but we're quite proud of it.

A Very Social Day

Yesterday was the annual Assumption Day* classic car gathering at Lesigny, held in association with their brocante.

We've been before, in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The event didn't happen in 2020 and 2021 because of the plague, then we had clients the past two years.

This year we attended with Anne (from "Anne and John across the road"). We had invited them in thanks for John stacking our wood earlier in the week but John had work from home to do and couldn't come.

We arrived at 8:30 for the casse - croûte: bread, terrine and cheese, and then coffee. After a bit of sitting around and socialising we went for a short 15(?)km drive before returning to Lesigny for lunch.

The crowd gathers

On the road, in convoy

We had our yummy picnic sitting at tables set out in rows by the Lesigny Comité des Fêtes. We had taken melon and ham, followed by camembert tart, vegemite scrolls, smoked salmon, pickles and home grown tomatoes, then chocolate and biscuits. The cheese remained uneaten because we were too full. Our new picnic set (complete with our newly purchased faux laguiole cutlery) had it's first outing, and did the job very well.

Lunch!! Anne and Susan spreading the feast

Entrée 

We left soon after lunch - I was starting to tire, what with the heat and still being not quite 100%. It was an excellent event as ever: fun, social, and free of pressure to do anything but enjoy oneself.

Lots of older cars

Claudette hiding behind a Hummer

After a nap we headed out again, this time to Angela and Dennis' for their annual dinner and music gathering. It also was excellent, with great company and food and music.

An evening of conviviality 

Two social events in one day is unusual for us, but both were worth making the effort for. I may be sleeping all day today...

*Feast day of the Assumption of Mary, one of the Catholic holy days of obligation. (It's a public holiday in Austria, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia, Burundi, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, France, some states in Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Italy, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritius, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Senegal, Seychelles, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Togo, and Vanuatu)

Heading Out

If you're reading this blog post as it is published, right at this moment we're in Lesigny with Claudette on the annual August 15th gathering of old cars and brocante. It's our first proper car event for quite a few years.

Lunch is a shared picnic. We spent yesterday in preparation with posh picnic cooking. Susan has made a boiled fruit cake and vegemite scrolls, I made a camembert tart. Add some pickles, a melon (Charentais) and sliced meats, and there's a picnic you.

We'll report on the day later.

Reasons to be Thankful

One of the many reasons we have to be thankful is for having lovely Franco-Irish neighbours, Anne and John. On Monday John very kindly stacked most of our three tonnes of firewood that had been delivered that scorching hot day. I did half an hour of stacking and probably got about half a tonne done in that time, but it was as much as I was willing to risk in one go, with my torn shoulder tendon. Simon isn't allowed to do lifting and carrying until the end of the month.

John volunteered, and turned up at about seven thirty in the evening so he wouldn't melt. It took him around an hour and a half including raking up all the debris. We are so grateful and a cake is being baked for delivery over the road. John says he quite enjoyed turning a jumbled pile of wood into neat stacks, with the debris in trugs. I say he's a hero.

A Brace of Citroens

We had to do some car shuffling last week. Claudette had been in Amboise with our friend Olivier, so we arranged to meet at Chenonceau while Susan was working.

It wasn't until Claudette and the Cactus were parked next to each other that I realised that although they are separated by exactly 60 years, they both contain Citroën idiosyncrasies.

Later that day the Cactus went to have its windscreen replaced after picking up a stone chip. We had hoped it could be repaired, but it was right in front of the driver, so replacements was necessary.

Shellfish in the Stream

Most years I go to the summer fete at Séligny (population 250). This is because I have several friends who live there, the natural history association Botamyco37 that I'm a member of puts on a display, and one of the best melon producers in the area sells their delicious Charentais melons at their peak. 

 

This bloke had excellent saucisson, from Maine et  Loire to our west. I bought wild boar, wild mushroom and bull.

 

This year I had lunch with friends Jean, Michel and Michelle. The menu was melon, moules frites and tarte fine aux pommes. Simple and classic. 

 

The Charentais melons on this stall come from a farm just outside the village. I bought three.

 

My friend André lives in a house on the edge of the village that was his grandparents before him. Everyone in Séligny not only knows one another, but they are related. Jean told me his grandmother married three times, so almost everyone is greeted with 'ah, mon/ma petit.e cousin.e !'. This term is used in French to indicate a familiale link that is not as close and direct as first cousin, but might be several times removed.

 

The village restaurant.

 

André informed me that the mussels for the fete menu had been stored overnight in the brook that runs through his garden. He also told me that back in the day, his grandfather used to keep the community oysters fresh in the same brook. But in those days many people's untreated sewage discharged straight into the stream, and André's house is downstream of the entire village...

 

The remains of our meal.

The menu for the day.

A Brocante Win

I wrote last Saturday about our local brocante.

We managed to get down to the plan d'eau nice and early, before it got too hot. As is our want, we strolled the field, chatting to various friends along the way, deciding that there was nothing to interest us. I then decided I needed a drink, so we headed to the comité des fêtes bar for a refreshing cup of cordial.

On the way I spotted something we've been looking for as long as it's the right price: a wicker picnic basket. A bit of crafty haggling from Susan and it was ours. We paid 10€ for it which we are happy about even though the contents are missing.

On Wednesday we had various bits of business to deal with in Loches, so we visited Action and bought 6 plastic picnic plates (1€29) and 6 matching plastic goblets (also 1€29). We then called into Centrakor and bought a 'waxed' tablecloth for 4€99.

We have combined them with some items we already owned, but we'll soon have our classic Traction Avant worthy picnic basket for special events. Now I have to look for a nice (but very cheap) 6 piece cutlery set, and we'll be set - all for under 20€.

The War Memorial at le Grand Pressigny

Recently I photographed the war memorial (Fr. Monument aux morts) in le Grand Pressigny. We parked near it for a doctor's appointment, and a couple of names caught my attention. I didn't quite understand who Femme Gallien was, or what the AFN referred to. So I posted the photo on Facebook and tagged my friend and font of all local history knowledge, Fabrice Doucet. I can now reveal to you what all this means, thanks to him.

This is the Second World War side, listing regular soldiers at the top, both conscripts and career, who would mostly have died very early in the War; then members of de Gaulle's Free French (the Resistance); then those sent to concentration camps and forced labour camps, including a woman; and then someone from the independence wars with North African colonies. Below the names on the black background is a single name on a white marble plaque, of a soldier from le Grand Pressigny who was killed in Afghanistan in more recent times.

To clarify the term AFN, Fabrice told me (I've translated):  "The term "AFN" covers the conflicts that took place during the decolonization of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, otherwise known as "Afrique Française du Nord". The Algerian War was the most deadly, and it was often conscripts, ordinary soldiers doing their military service, who lost their lives. This was clearly the case for Roland RIBAULT, born in le Grand-Pressigny on 6 November 1932, who "Died for France" on 12 July 1956 in Algeria. As such, he is listed as a native of the village on this war memorial. There were also professional soldiers killed during this conflict, but Roland Ribault's age of 23 suggests that he was a young conscript (the official length of military service, which was 18 months at the time, was sometimes extended by the French authorities to 28 or even 30 months)."

On the subject of 'femme Gallien' Fabrice did a bit of digging and found this (once again, translated by me): "For the GALLIEN husband and wife, it was a terrible story, like so many others during the Second World War. They were a farming couple, both natives of le Grand-Pressigny. They were married on 5 April 1921. During the War, they were members of a Resistance network called "Marie-Odile", whose main task was to shelter Allied airmen shot down over France, then transfer them to England. They took part in welcoming Allied soldiers, eventually leading to their escape. Jean (Baptiste) Gallien was arrested in February 1944, along with his wife. First imprisoned in Tours, he was deported from Compiègne to Auschwitz on 27 April 1944. He died in the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 12 September 1944. Renée (Gabrielle Eugénie) Gallien (née Dechêne) was also deported and gassed to death in the Ravensbrück camp on 9 March 1945. She is therefore the "femme Gallien" of the inscription. It's a singular inscription, but in the slightly misogynistic mentality of the time, when a woman only existed through her husband... As a native of le Grand-Pressigny, Renée's first name was well known. And Renée was recognized as a Resistance fighter in her own right. There are few women on the war memorials, and virtually none in the First World War. Jean Baptiste Gallien and Renée Gallien were posthumously awarded the Médaille de la Résistance in 1947. There you go, that's the result of a quick search..."

Thanks Fabrice! It's good to know these stories, tragic though they are.

Look Out For Jersey Tigers in the Touraine Loire Valley

Jersey Tiger Moths Euplagia quadripunctaria (Fr. Ecaille chinée) are found in Europe and the Middle East.

 

When they are at rest they sit with their wings flat, in a triangle, and the front wings obscuring the hind wings. The front wings are zebra striped and the hind wings are bright orange red with black blotches. Both sexes look the same.

It is a moth of woodland clearings and scrub, flying both day and night. The caterpillars eat nettles, plants in the mint and willowherb families. The adult moths feed on nectar from flowers in gardens and fallow land. They are particular attracted to thistles, knapweeds, oregano and hemp agrimony.

It is a migratory species. It is not scarce, so not protected but there is some concern about how habitat loss is affecting it.

Look Out for Purple Moor Grass in the Touraine Loire Valley

Purple Moor Grass Molinia caerulea (Fr. Molinie bleue).

Purple Moor Grass has lots of names in French -- paleine, canche bleue, molinie d'Allmagne, guinche, jonchée.

 

 

It is a perennial grass, growing in clumps and up to 2 metres tall, usually in acid soils. It can make dense monospecific grasslands.

 

It is named after a Chilean botanist and for its purpley blue panicles (flower heads).

 

As anyone who has tried to identify grasses knows, the structure known as a ligule is important for ascertaining species. It's a sort of 'gasket' or 'reinforcing ring' at the point where the leaf blade stops hugging the stem and becomes free. Botany students learning grasses spend a lot of time carefully peeling back blades of grass to reveal the ligule and checking it in their key or field guide. In Purple Moor Grass the ligule is reduced to a row of hairs.

 

The grass flowers from July to September, producing long loose purple inflorescences. 

 

In acid wet heaths Purple Moor Grass forms a characteristic habitat of hummocks made from decades of past years' vegetation which accumulates and is very difficult to walk through. These hummocks shelter all manner of creatures, especially newts, salamanders, frogs and toads, for all or part of the year. The Purple Moor Grass will take over in an environment where a spaghnum moss bog has been degraded. This seems to also be important in allowing a succession of plants such as heathers, birches, pines, blackthorn and buckthorns to evolve a site. 

 

Nevertheless, Purple Moor Grass is an opportunistic generalist, with tiny windblown seeds that can travel far. High levels of airborn nitrogen, the drying out of soil and wild fires can all prove advantageous to such an adaptive species.

 

This species is native to North Africa, central and western Asia, and the whole of Europe. Since the mid-20th century its distribution in western Europe has been rapidly expanding.

 

It can be found from lowland grasslands to woodland understorey, and up to 2300 metres above sea level. It thrives in full sun but is tolerant of shade, and will survive great fluctuations in soil moisture levels. It's probably a species complex, with two ecotypes -- one adapted to acid soil and one adapted to calcareous soil.

 

Purple Moor Grass is traditionally used, with bramble, to make coiled baskets.

Wild Strawberries

There are several wild strawberry species, but only one is worth eating, so it is worth learning how to identify them. They are considered one of the greatest treats you can wild forage, and archaelogical evidence suggests we have been eating them for thousands of years.

 

Barren Strawberry.

Around here there are three species that are frequently confused. They are Barren Strawberry Potentilla sterilis (Fr. Potentille faux fraisier), Mock Strawberry Potentilla indica (Fr. Fraisier d'Inde) and Wild Strawberry Fragaria vesca (Fr. Fraisier des bois).

 

Barren Strawberry.

One has leaves that look just like a wild strawberry plant, and white flowers that greatly resemble the true wild strawberry. Many people will delightedly leave these growing in their garden when they turn up, but then be disappointed because they never have any fruit. That's because they are Barren Strawberries and if you know what to look for there are ways of telling them apart by looking carefully at the tip of the leaves and flowers.

 

Mock Strawberry.

Then there is another one, which does have alluring looking red fruit, but when you eat one they taste of nothing. Luckily they aren't toxic, so you won't do yourself any harm if you eat them, but they are disappointing. These are the Mock Strawberries. They are not native, but introduced from Asia and have naturalised.

 

Mock Strawberry.

All these species grow in the same season, and in the same habitats. It is not uncommon to encounter a mixture of species growing intermingled.

 

Wild Strawberries.

 

So here are my top tips for telling them apart:

Wild Strawberries

1. White flowers with rounded petals which overlap.
2. Drooping or hanging conical fruit.
3. Strong sweet floral strawberry flavour.*

Mock Strawberries

1. Yellow flowers with a ruff of green bracts that sits just below the pointed calyxes and extend beyond the flowers.
2. Globular fruit on erect stems.
3. Insipid taste.

Barren Strawberries

1. White flowers with knotched petals that do not overlap.
2. No fruit.
3. Leaves have a central tooth at the tip which is shorter than the ones either side.
   

 

Wild Strawberry.

*I know most people who know Wild Strawberries rave about them and are thrilled to find them, but personally I find them a bit too soapy tasting.

The Preuilly sur Claise Brocante

Today is Preuilly-sur-Claise's brocante. Brocantes are a combination village fete, car boot sale, and market. If you're into that kind of thing, brocantes are brilliant and you travel miles every weekend. If not it's your duty to support your local brocante, sample a local fare or two, say bonjour to everything you meet, then dive off home to the (hopefully) cool of your house.

Susan is one of those kinds of people, and I'm ambivalent.

Our first Preuilly sur Claise brocante was 18 years ago - except we missed it because we arrived late in town, avoided "whatever is going on over there" and picnicked on the opposite side of the river. Two days later we signed the compromis de vente on our house.

Prostate Cancer

This is a public service blog post. There will be no photos, which I am sure you will appreciate.

I'm a lucky man.

My GP had been prescribing - although I didn't realise it - PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) tests for me, done in conjunction with blood tests for other stuff. In August 2023 she rang me and said "you'd better come in", which is not a phone call you ever want to receive. My previous PSA level (2021) was 4, it was now 22. She was reassuring that it didn't mean I had cancer, just that I should be checked.

The urologist saw me 10 days later for the dreaded creeping finger of indignity, which showed an enlarged, but not hardening, prostate. I don't know what chatup line he used when younger, but with me he led with "if you do nothing, end of life care in France is very good". Which was sobering, scary, and gave completely the wrong idea of how far the disease had spread. Susan and I felt shell shocked.

Three weeks later I had the biopsy (mine was through the rectum, 12 shots) all of which showed signs of cancer. It was undignified but not over painful, and for the next couple of weeks I was uncomfortable. 

That was the cue for multiple trips through the atomic donut - I had 2 MRI scans and a scintigraphy scan. Luckily the cancer hadn't metastasised, because that's a word I struggle to say, and the one word I found truly scary to contemplate. My cancer was diagnosed as ISUP2, which was explained to us as concerning but not serious.

All this was happening while the house renovation was happening. I might have pushed myself too hard some days, but I felt I had to finish something. I was chided by the GP at this stage for wearing myself out, but that was the day I spent 19 hours working on the stone wall.

Then came the time to chose treatment. I'm lucky, my GP is very easy to talk to, and being in France also has time to talk. I have a friend who is a retired GP, and I know a number of people who had treatment. All were reassuring and outwardly not seriously concerned for me. It did feel, though, that the urologist left the decision to me with not quite enough information to feel my choice was properly informed.

The choices were between radiotherapy and having the prostate removed. I chose the radical prostatectomy, after the urologist told me that if radiotherapy didn't work the operation would be the only option and much more difficult. Once that decision was made I was scheduled for another MRI, this time a full body scan.

Then - at a conference between the urologist and the radiographer it was decided I then had to have a colonoscopy because one of the latest scan had picked up an "interesting" looking nodule on my bowel. The colonoscopy was done in a hospital in Tours under a general anaesthetic and came back clear.

The Operation was done on Wednesday 26 June this year in Tours. It was done by robot over four hours, and consists of five holes in the stomach - four small ones for the cameras (and to rearrange my internal organs) and a large one in my navel for the extraction. They took the prostate and a nodule from the urinary tract and left me with a catheter, and a drain for the wounds.

After the operation all was looking good, before I had a massive setback on the Thursday night. I had a migraine that meant all I could do for 24 hours was lie down and chew painkillers - in addition to the paracetamol and morphine drips. I didn't eat anything at all on Friday, which they understood whilst not being totally happy about.  Then I fainted in the shower - completely out. I had someone in there with me so I didn't fall.  I was better on Saturday, ate two half meals and sat up for a bit. Then I fainted in the shower again.

Then, on Monday, when they were supposed to be releasing me, I got them to help me to the bathroom, got them to pose me because I thought I wanted a to use the toilet, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor with them trying to lift me. That gave me a huge egg on the forehead, a black eye, and a bruise on the cheek. All that meant I had an extra 2 days in while they did tests.

I think a huge contributing factor was the lack of nutrition - the food was disgusting, grey, over salty, and unappealing. I didn't finish one single meal while in there, and many meals I couldn't face eating anything. Once Susan had bought in an industrial size bag of pear drops my stability improved rapidly and I was sent home with a catheter and a prescription for 28 days of daily visits from a nurse for anticoagulant injections. 

Before I went into hospital I had told family and friends I had cancer, but not announced it publicly. For some reason, I found admitting to myself that I had cancer difficult, and telling someone else I had cancer really difficult, almost as if there was some shame in it. Once I was out of hospital I wrote on the blog and Facebook, and harassed my family and friends to get tested (most of them already do). 

As soon as I arrived home my condition rapidly improved - good food, comfortable conditions, and keeping downstairs dry (the catheter leaked continually) put me in a much better state of body and mind. Susan cooked amazing meals at my whim - lots of curry, chilli, some fried chicken and - for my first meal at home - amazing over topped pizza.

The daily injections have now finished, as have the weekly blood tests. I'm not sure I exactly enjoyed the daily nurse visits, but it was painless and Hey!! I had a visitor.

I'm now in the nappy stage of recovery. Having a catheter for two weeks means the muscles get lazy, and anyway, the bladder drops into the void previously occupied by the prostate. I'm regaining control, but not as quickly as I'd hoped. It should be all good within three months - I hope so, because wearing a nappy feels slightly dehumanising, and carrying a nappy bag and having to be hyper aware of where the nearest toilet is really cramps your style.

My follow up with the surgeon is in 3 weeks - almost exactly a year after the original phone call from the GP. I don't yet know if I'm clear, but fingers are crossed.

Mentally I've sort of been in denial most of the time - I assumed the doctors all knew what they were doing, so I left it to them to do the thinking. At other times my life felt like a scene from Alien: I had a thing in my body that at any moment could break out and kill me. My job was to try not to catastrophise, stay healthy, and not let on that it's a bit bloody scary when you realise you're not immortal.

There is a way you can avoid this. If you're a bloke, get tested annually, and get the cancer treated before an operation becomes the best option. And if you know any blokes, suggest they do the same.

The comedian John Holmes has made an excellent, very informative, and quite rude BBC podcast. Give it a listen and pass it on. It may save someone's life.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020s52

Look Out For Hummingbird Hawk Moths in the Touraine Loire Valley

The Hummingbird Hawk Moth Macroglossum stellatarum (Fr. Moro-sphinx) is a day flying moth that is known for its habit of sucking nectar from flowers with its long tongue while hovering in front of the flower. It is a medium sized moth with a chubby body, and front wings that are beigey brown on the upperside and hind wings that are orange. Underneath it is orangey brown. The body is grey brown with a black and white checkerboard pattern on the sides.

It is accessing nectar other insects cannot reach and is very partial to violet, blue or white flowers, especially lavendar and sages. The caterpillars eat bedstraws Galium sp. (Fr. les Gaillets).

They are amongst the speediest moths, able to achieve 50 kilometres an hour, and averaging 40 kilometres an hour. The species is migratory and roams the greater part of Eurasia and North Africa. In the warmer south it will fly all year, but here in central France we see it primarily in the summer.

It visits flowers in gardens, meadows and scrub and is very easy to see because of its abundance and distinctive behaviour.

Sunset on the Golfe du Morbihan

I can't believe that this photo was taken over 6 weeks ago. An awful lot has happened since then.

My health is continuing to improve. There are still a few (not inconsiderable, but I'll spare you the details) niggles, but I'm noticing a general improvement.

Once Upon a Time in Loches -- Exiting the War

 

"The Liberation of Loches was not synonymous with the end of the War on a national level, or even a return to normal. The restrictions, controles, and rationing continued, the black market persisted. There was also the progressive return of prisonners and those who had survived the camps.

Municipal life was reorganised bit by bit.  The old municipal council was dissolved. It was replaced by a municipal delegation made up of the great figures of the Resistance from Loches, like Raymond Mallet. The municipal elections of April-May 1945 saw the women of Loches voting for the first time. It was the Republican Union, led by Elie Rossignol, who prevailed. Many maquisards continued as combattants on the Atlantic coast or of course, on the Eastern Front.

The town of Loches received two prestigious visits in the spring of 1945 -- that of Marshal De Lattre de Tassigny on 8 March, and then that of General Leclerc some weeks later. They came to visit their troops resting in Loches before re-entering combat on the Atlantic coast. The passage through Loches of these two heroes, leaders of the Army of Liberation formed by General de Gaulle, made a great impression on the residents of Loches.

The year 1945 was also the time of judgements and cleansing. Arrested on 21 October 1944, Captain Lecoz was accused of 18 murders and assassinations. He was judged at Angers by the military tribunal in October 1945, condemned to death and shot on 14 May 1946. At the same time numerous residents of Loches accused of collaboration were taken prisonner. Some women, suspected of having helped or seduced Germans, were shaved and publically humiliated. About a hundred inhabitants of the Sud Touraine were also convicted by the Courts of Justice and the Civil Chambers, specially created to punish acts of collaboration."

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This poster is part of an exhibition in the Chancellerie on 'Loches in 1944' https://www.ville-loches.fr/expositions-article-3-10-56.html