Retro Style

We took Claudette and Célestine on a photoshoot one night recently. At 9 pm no one is parked outside the rather grand Hôtel de Ville in Preuilly, so we arranged them artistically and snapped away. I took this photo, but didn't like the original. Simon has tweaked it in photoshop to get this pleasing retro look.

The Cooper's Tools

At the museum in the Poterne at Preuilly there is quite a collection of tools. On one shelf there are several large axe/adze type tools. They are the gift of the Boutet family, who once ran the barrel making business on the market place that I wrote about here.

The long tool at the back is a splitter, used for making the staves that make up the body of the barrel. The two in the front are adzes, used for smoothing the wooden staves and planks.

Coopering tools.

Barrels came in all sizes and were used for storage, transportation of goods and as measuring devices. They were so important to daily life that there was more than one cooper (as barrel makers are called in English) in Preuilly in the first half of the 20th century.

Don't forget that the museum, which is normally only open during the summer holidays because it is run by young volunteers, will be open for European Heritage Weekend (les Journées de Patrimoine), 14 - 15 September, and it will be free. If you live in or around Preuilly, it's a great chance to connect with the local past. The Archaeology Society of Preuilly will be conducting guided tours of the Abbey and around the town, and some historic houses which are not normally open will be welcoming visitors.

From Little Things Big Things Grow

I photographed two scuties (aka House Centipede Scutigera coleoptrata) the other day in our house.

The first was a fully grown one (body length about 50 mm) which dashed about the staircase for a minute or so before settling down on an oak post. It was extremely well camouflaged and obviously confident of its invisibility, as Simon went up and down the stairs several times, almost brushing the beast without it moving. It had gone into ambush hunting mode.

The second was a tiny baby of about 10 mm, on the toilet wall. It made me think of the line from the Paul Kelly / Kev Carmody song 'From Little Things Big Things Grow'. (Aboriginal readers please note that the all the links in this post contain names and images of persons now deceased.)

This sent me off on a stream of consciousness and memory to another song, Gurindji Blues by Ted Egan and the lines 'Poor bugger me, Gurindji...Work for the good old Lord Vestey'. For those of you now utterly bemused, both songs are about the strike staged by Gurindji Aboriginal stockmen lead by Vincent Lingiari on Wave Hill Cattle Station in the late sixties, early seventies. The trigger for the strike was their shameful working conditions, but it soon became clear that what they wanted was land rights. The pastoralist on Wave Hill was Lord Vestey, chairman of the private company Vestey's Meat, who had made a fortune as pioneers of cold storage and refrigerated shipping.

Vincent Lingiari died in 1988, having spearheaded a great leap in Aboriginal rights. Lord Vestey is the great-grandson of the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, and currently the Queen's Master of Horse. I once drove past the family seat in England with a colleague who knew him personally. For myself, knowing nothing about him apart from the incident at Wave Hill, I was astounded to hear a description of what seemed to be a completely different person to the one who made the news in Australia. I've no doubt my colleague was equally astounded to hear how the man is viewed in Australia.

It's funny how the mind and memory work. People talk a lot about how a smell can transport you back to some memory of past events, but I can't recall ever having a real Proustian moment. Usually the trigger for me is not a scent, but a phrase or an object.

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Change to the Blog: Don't be surprised if I don't publish every day this month. We are having the busiest month ever with LVTT so I've run out of steam and time for blogging. Our bookings this month are good news, but they follow an extremely quiet summer. We are accepting every booking we can in order to get our income up to our minimum target. When I am not taking tours I will be dealing with a fairly substantial apple harvest.

Snags

One of the culinary and cultural differences between Australia and France is the sausage (saucisse). In France they are almost always made from pork, but in Australia they are usually beef. This is presumably a reflection of the respective levels of consumption of different sorts of meat, with pork being the most frequently consumed meat in France and beef coming top in Australia.

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Ile de Ré Reflections: Beehives in the salt marsh.

Saunder's Case Moth

One morning at the swimming pool in Australia in December last year I noticed a movement on the lawn. It took me a few seconds to take in what I was seeing, but finally I realised I was looking at an absolutely humungeous case moth caterpillar, munching its way in a fairly lively manner across the lawn. Luckily, I had my camera with me, so despite Simon hissing at me not to do anything weird, I photographed it. I wasn't the only one to notice it either -- a group of young women watched it for a while too. I was very pleased to note that there was no screeching or hysterionics, just a 'wow! look at that! it's huge!!' sort of interest.

Once I got back to France I did an internet search to see if I could identify it. Turned out to be easy, thanks to the Museum Victoria 'ask the experts' page. I have a real soft spot for this museum. As a child I remember having to visit the orthodontist a number of times in Melbourne, and my parents took the opportunity to include a visit to the Museum when we made the 100 mile trek to the Big Smoke. The great Australian racehorse Phar Lap, cruelly poisoned when he took on the Americans, is the star attraction in the museum.

Saunder's Case Moth is a common species, with a very large caterpillar. The case, which is made by the caterpillar out of silk it manufactures and debris it picks up, can be 15 cm long. The adult male moth is as striking as the caterpillar. The caterpillars eat a wide range of plants and are highly mobile.

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Ile de Ré Reflections: A typical salt marsh view.

Mollusc on the Move

Whilst you can eat Common Garden Snail Helix aspersa, and people do, their cousin the Roman or Burgundy Snail H. pomatia, the species in these photos, is much more prized. You don't see them out and about that often. This one was making its way across a track in the grounds of the chateau of Candé. Simon picked it up and popped it under the laurels where it would be safer.

The Kitchen at Candé

This abandoned and derelict looking kitchen is in the basement of the chateau of Candé. The underground rooms have been opened to visitors for a brief few weeks over the summer, unrestored but cleverly illuminated by some art installations made from old slide projectors and such like.

These rooms, which look to have been untouched since Fern Bedaux's death in 1972, are an insight into the below stairs work that went into maintaining the glamorous life upstairs between the wars. There is a telephone exchange, to service the first private house in France with a telephone. The huge cast iron range cooker meant that meals could be elaborate affairs unthinkable in the late medieval days of the chateau when cooking was more or less limited to the vagaries of baking in a bread oven or roasting and boiling on an open fire. The range also augmented the constant supply of hot water, in a house which had the latest in American style plumbing. Above the range and along both sides of the wide corridor behind it there is food storage space, fully screened with fine brass mesh.

A Lavoir in La Guerche

This lavoir (public laundry) is spring fed and a neighbourhood pump is positioned above it. This place would once have been the centre of the immediate community.

Montgolfiere Central

The circles are singles and the ovals are twos -- balloons seen from the village of Mesland on a balmy September evening last year -- 14 in all, not all pictured.

French Online News: A post I wrote about the mushroom caves at Bourré has been picked up and republished by French Online News. If you don't already know this publication, I recommend it as an excellent way to keep up to date with what is important in France as well as learn a lot about its past. It's something different to the usual regurgitations of press releases.

Wildlife Watching in the Touraine du Sud in September

Praying Mantis Mantis religiosa and stick insects Clonopsis gallica will be about. This female Praying Mantis was munching a Devil's Coach-horse beetle Ocypus olens on a farm track two years ago.

 September is fairly reliably warm and dry, a beautiful month to be here, with days that are still a good length.

Both Swallowtail Papilio machaon (below) and Scarce Swallowtail Iphiclides podilirius caterpillars are not abundant, but can be quite visible in early September. They are large and colourful, nearly ready to pupate. Look on or near their host plants (umbels like Fennel Foeniculum vulgare, French Hog's-fennel Peucedanum gallicum or like this one, Wild Parsnip Pastinaca sativa for P. machaon -- it's even worth checking your garden carrots. For I. podilirius try fruit trees).

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A la piscine hier: Yesterday was the last open day of the season for the Preuilly pool, and Laurent's last day as the maître-nageur. We took down a couple of bottles of wine and some homemade blueberry muffins and invited everyone at the pool to apéros. I saw lots of people exchanging email addresses and Gérard, the deputy mayor, got his ear bashed about the Chapelle de Tous-les-saints.

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A la cuisine hier:  A really simple tomato sauce made from fresh seasonal ingredients and served with GF spaghetti.

An Australian Swimming Pool

As Preuilly's pool closes for the season, Pittsworth's pool opens.

 Rainwater tanks.

I thought European readers would be interested to see some pictures of the public swimming pool I grew up with. It makes quite an interesting comparison with our local pool here in Preuilly.

The paddling pool.

Run by the local authority (as is Preuilly's pool), the basic facility of an outdoor 50m pool (cf 25m in Preuilly) with an additional paddling pool for little kids, surrounded by lawn and paving, with changing rooms to one side, open from September to April (cf July and August, plus weekends in June in Preuilly), is exactly as it was in my teenage years.

Lifeguards are not babysitters!

Much has changed though -- now there are rainwater tanks down one side of the grounds, saving precious water so that the pool can be topped up even when there are water restrictions due to drought. The paddling pool is completely covered by a shade canopy, and the shallow end of the big pool too. There is a barbecue area tucked away beyond the paddling pool! No shade and no barbecue in Preuilly!

More rainwater storage and a small grandstand for watching competitions.

I can't remember what the opening hours were in my youth, but now it is open from 5.30 am on weekdays, till 6pm (not sans interruption, it has to be said, as there are a few hours closed in the morning, presumably for maintenance or training sessions). On the weekends it opens at 10 am. In Preuilly the hours are 10.30 am -12.30 pm and then it reopens after lunch for the afternoon, daily except Thursday. Before 10 am there are private swimming lessons and other activities.

The barbecue area.

We swam every morning when we stayed with my parents, from 6 am to 7 am, along with half a dozen locals, most of whom must have got there on the dot of 5.30 because they were always there and in the pool before us. (Australians tend to get up earlier and go to bed earlier than Europeans, due to the pattern of daylight hours and higher daytime temperatures.) The pool is now solar heated to a pleasant (I'd guess about 22°C) but not warm temperature (used to be unheated). The entry fee is currently $3 (= €2.40) for adults. Preuilly pool is heated to about 28°C by the communal biofuel pellet burner (which also heats the primary school and the salle des fêtes) and the entry fee is €2.50.

 The pool entrance.
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Il de Ré Reflections - Rare Birds: In several places on the salt marshes we encountered stilts and avocets. They were clearly breeding as both species became very agitated and vocal if anyone or anything passed by. They gamely took on big gulls and other birds much bigger than themselves. At the LPO reserve we were rewarded by the sight of two Stilt chicks. According to someone we got talking to there, the Pied Avocets are in very low numbers this year and last. No one quite knows why. Their breeding success rate has suddenly plummeted, and something is predating the eggs and chicks. It could be coypu taking the eggs at night, but the big gulls, known as gogos by the French bird watchers, are probably responsible for taking a lot of the chicks. They are a big problem on the island, and they dominate the salt marshes. The avocets are not strictly speaking rare, having a very large distribution range and total population, but they are special and it is sad that they are declining on Ile de Ré despite the LPOs best efforts. Ironically, the gogos are declining over much their range, although a pest on Ile de Ré. The Black-winged Stilts are also of conservation concern in France, although not in the wider scheme of things, and much prized breeding migrants to the salt marshes. It may or may not be the same species that occurs in Australia (the taxonomy has yet to be sorted out). They are really sweet looking birds with their big dark eyes, and check out their amazingly long pink legs! Look carefully to see where the legs join their reflection in the water. Simon took some video of the stilts in action which you can see here.

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A la cuisine hier: Actually, it was more like 'au jardin hier' as Simon barbecued some pork that he had previously soaked in his secret pickling brine for several hours. Once on the barbecue it was glazed with his cherry marinade and imbued with the smokey aromas only proper charcoal barbecuing can give. The veg -- leek, onion, tomato and aubergine were also done on the barbecue, while the pork was resting. It was all tender and delicious.

I made sweet dark cherry sponge, from our frozen homegrown stock, with the addition of a couple spoons of vodka syrup soaked sour cherries to add emphasis. Unctuous and sweet.

The Naturalists' Bookshelf

So, what does the well-travelled Australian naturalist have on their bookshelf?

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Ile de Ré Reflections: The little sign says 'Zone of Tranquility for the Wild Fauna. By not penetrating into this zone you are participating in the conservation of the fauna. Thank you.' 

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A la cuisine hier: I carefully decanted and filtered the liquid from the batch of sour cherry liqueur I have had steeping on the kitchen bench for 6 weeks. It's a nice dark rosé wine colour and quite sweet, so useable in small doses already. I got just over a litre. Hardy souls could drink it now as the sugar masks the lack of balance that comes with a year or two's aging. 

The remaining undissolved sugar and pale vodka sodden sour cherries I have gently heated up to make a syrup to go in a sorbet or something. The cherries have imparted most of their colour and flavour to the liqueur, but I'll strain the remains and see how it goes. The result may be too medicinal to contemplate.

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In the Pantry: MICE! They are extremely stinky, but don't seem to have gnawed anything. I have only managed to catch one, an adult female House Mouse Mus musculus. I may have to borrow Pepsi.

French Clichés

I reckon these three photos show glimpses that fit most anglophone notions of what romantic and picturesque France should look like.

I can't decide therefore whether it is ironic or inevitable that all these properties are owned by incoming but well integrated anglophones.

Does France Have a Drink Problem?

The short answer is 'yes', and it has always had a hidden drink problem, but the problem has changed recently, and is much more openly discussed.

Alcoholism, liver disease and alcohol related cancers, heart disease and accidents appear to be significant killers in France, but nobody knows exactly how many people die of alcohol related causes every year, because the authorities have not standardised the data collected. The figure is probably somewhere between 30 000 and 50 000, with twice as many men as women dying of alcohol related causes, and nearly half of the deceased under 65. Alcohol related presentations at hospital Accident and Emergency clinics are definitely on the increase, as are hospital admissions due to alcohol related diseases (up 80% and 30% respectively in the last 5 years). I tried to get comparative figures from Australia, to give the French figures some context, but after a frustrating hour or so searching on the internet, it seems Australia does not present its statistics in the same way, so I can't compare apples with apples.

What is curious is that overall the number of people who drink alcohol is decreasing in France. This decrease is particularly striking amongst women. Older women and young women are much more likely than not to drink, but in the 30 - 60 year old age group, nearly half do not drink at all.

A decade ago and earlier, wine was the tipple of choice (along with pastis type aperitifs if you were a man). Beer and spirits didn't get much of a look in. Most people drank a glass or two (often more) of wine every day, but it was mostly in company and with food. It wasn't perceived as a problem, but as an important part of French culture. Being bien arrosé was a good thing (the phrase literally means 'well watered', and contains a sort of pun referencing the 'rosy glow' one gains after a glass or two and a good meal). A glass or two was good for the health. Until the 1980s no one thought anything of drinking and driving, but a very successful drink driving campaign has curbed the habitual nature of such behaviour.

Many French towns have a character who in small town Australia might be known as the aging town drunk, but here alcoholism is rarely mentioned and I've had such people described to me more than once as spécial. In French, to describe someone as 'special' generally means that the person can be intensely irritating, but generous and tolerant allowances are made on the grounds of how talented, creative and artistic they are. Alcoholism and mental illness are considered part of their personality, the tragic price one has to pay for the once extra ordinary mind. My personal observation is that these individuals are known by the locals, looked out for and looked after and not violent or frightening in any way.

What we do not yet have in this part of rural France to any great extent, but I am sure will come, is young binge drinkers. This is the new phenomenon that has France facing the fact that drinking can be a problem. Health warnings on bottles of alcohol were introduced a few years ago and the age people can legally buy alcohol raised to 18. The culture of introducing children to wine at a young age, in a family setting, seems to work just fine -- for wine. What the French hadn't counted on was the influence of travel and television, and their young people enthusiastically adopting beer and spirits, and the practice of drinking simply to get drunk. Drinking like this is often done in public, and is associated with violence and other anti-social behaviour. The drinking and the behaviour come as a package, learned from the UK and Germany in particular. You can tell it's now entrenched, as the Ministry of Culture has just approved the official French expression for binge drinking -- la beuverie express.

A friend of ours, who works in the wine industry, recently told us a story about going through the checkout at the supermarket with her weekly shop. A kid in his early to mid teens was in the queue behind her. He put his stuff down on the belt and both of them went through the checkout. What our friend hadn't realised is that he had surreptitiously put a bottle of wine amongst her purchases, which went through as hers and she paid for. As she was exiting the shopping centre the kid tapped her on the shoulder and said 'Excuse me, but you have my bottle of wine'. She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt by thinking that he had been sent by his mother for a bottle of cooking wine (it was in a plastic bottle and cost €2) but she is fairly sure that what he was actually doing was circumventing the possibility of being challenged about his age, and was just after some cheap alcohol for himself. She said it was extremely subtly done.

Mobile Bottling

When we visited Domaine Joël Delaunay at Pouillé with Jean-Louis and Suzanne in July this mobile bottling rig was parked outside the chai (where the wine is actually made). The winemakers around here are almost all small to medium sized and hire all sorts of equipment for a few days of intensive use rather than invest in machinery that sits idle most of the time.

 

Non au feu rouge !

It seems I'm not the only one who reads the local council minutes. I mentioned a few weeks ago a plan to trial traffic lights on rue Chaumont-Patin from September. Someone clearly doesn't think they are a good idea.

ERDF ('Electricity Grid of France') vehicles on their way to lunch approaching the pinch-point in rue Chaumont-Patin.

The problem is that there is a bottleneck where the former Eglise de Notre-Dame-des-Echelles sticks out at an angle, making the main road out of town narrow. Those going up the hill and leaving town have right of way, but if you are coming into town you have to enter the problem zone before you can actually see if anyone is coming, so those with right of way frequently end up giving way to people coming the other way, through no fault of theirs.

Probably what triggered this move to trial traffic lights was the destruction of a corner pillar at the old doctor's house by a truck trying to squeeze past about 12 months ago. Heavy vehicles use this road a lot, as it is the main road to Loches and Preuilly does not have a by-pass like many towns in the area because vehicles have to cross the river Claise. Crossing the bridge brings them right through the middle of town. Moves to reduce the parking on the Grande Rue have already been put in place, so the traffic lights are part of an ongoing plan to mitigate the traffic issues.

 Someone in town doesn't want the traffic lights.

Personally I don't see how the traffic lights will work. I think they will cause traffic to back up and exacerbate the problem, plus it may result in a certain amount of rat-running.

Autumn Lady's Tresses

Remember to keep your eyes peeled for these tiny, rare and exquisite little orchids in the next few weeks. Autumn Lady's Tresses Spiranthes spiralis.

Dubious Dtella

 Isn't that just the best name? The Dubious Dtella Gehyra dubia is a common gecko, widespread in the north east of Australia. Some observers are beginning to have concerns that the introduced Asian House Gecko Hemidactylus frenatus is displacing this native species. There are 60 native species of gecko in Queensland and one alien. A lot of them are 'house geckos' like this one.

This particular gecko and her family have lived in my parents' house for years.  She eats insects attracted to the lights in the kitchen and is most often seen on the window above the sink. Sometimes she will vocalise, making sharp chattering sounds. Click on the image to enlarge it so you can see the details of her toe pads and scales.

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Ile de Ré Reflections: This female Moustached Darter Sympetrum vulgatum was photographed at the LPO reserve. Like all yellowy darters, she was not easy to identify, but I think her moustache and visible vulvular scale settle it. She has a number of orange mites attached to the veins on her wings. They are parasites feeding on the haemolymph ('blood') flowing through them, but they are probably not causing her much inconvenience. Click on the photo to enlarge it and you will see them.

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A la cuisine hier: Blackberry and Apple Crumble Tart. This was to use some blackberries I picked the day before, after doing my Boussay butterfly survey for August.

The Ute

No Australian ever refers to a coupe utility vehicle. They are universally 'utes' and are a style of vehicle that has made its home in Australia. It is rare to see a ute in Europe, and in the US they have pick-ups. For an overview of the differences, see here.

 You simply cannot get more Australian than the ute. The number plate on this one had the strapline 'Real Australians drive a ute'.

I was absolutely thrilled when my friend Trish L arrived at my parents' place in her ute to pick me up for lunch in December last year.

Ute backs lined up at a rural auto dealers. Are they waiting for cabs and chassis or have they been ditched in favour of the tray back style?
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Ile de Ré Reflections: One of the oyster raising areas on the island. Oysters are huîtres. The oyster beds are known as parcs ostréicoles in French and oyster farmers are ostréiculteurs. They are the only people allowed to take vehicles onto the beach, but otherwise it is a public beach. The oysters are over the other side of the water in this picture, growing in wire cages. To harvest them the farmer lifts the cages out and loads them on to the flat bottomed boats, which are then run up onto a trailer and towed back to the shed.

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Première sortie: Claudette had her first proper little outing with clients yesterday -- a picnic for guests of Chateau Valcreuse.

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A la cuisine hier: Stuffed Tomatoes and Peppers -- cook a cup of rice; char 3 or 4 peppers on the gas; slice the top off 3 or 4 large flat bottomed tomatoes and scoop out the seeds and flesh; cut the peppers in half and scoop out the seeds; fry 400 - 500 g mince (I used pork and veal) then add a small chopped onion and half a dozen chopped mushrooms; chop the tomato flesh and add to the meat, cooking on a lowish heat for 10 minutes; add a teaspoon of harissa paste, a dollop of tomato paste, a crushed clove of garlic and some salt; mix the cooked rice with the cooked meat then spoon into the peppers and tomatoes; top with a little grated cheese and bake for 30 minutes at 200°C.

Taillerie ou coutellerie?

The other day I was chatting with the owner of the little Vival supermarket in Preuilly. I happened to look up at the house opposite, and saw something I had never noticed before. There is a pair of scissors carved into the window lintel on the first floor!

This meant the house must have once been a tailor's or a dressmaker's, so I took some photos and consulted Roger Lezeau's notes on buildings in the town, published over several editions of Les Cahiers de la Poterne, the journal of the Société d'archaeologique de Preuilly (SAP).

Roger says the house was the dressmakers Lieutard and his former apprentice Lucaire, but I am wondering if that is quite right. The house next door, according to Roger, was the millinery, fashion and haberdashery shop of Mesdames Ribotton and Lerat. The initials on the keystone are L and R, and I am wondering if he got the two buildings mixed up.

In the early 20th century there were at least 5 businesses in the fashion trade, 3 of them in a row in this small section of street, plus a tailor two streets away and another haberdasher across the road. Now there is just one, a dressmaker, in a building only a few steps away from the original dressmaker's establishment.

To practice your French comprehension and learn the difference between a tailor (tailleur) and a dressmaker (couturier) check out this video, part of a series by TV5MONDE called Merci Professeur.

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Beer O'Clock: I don't remember ever experiencing an unpleasantly hot wind in Europe before, but yesterday was hot, with a stifling breeze. Nevertheless, by 6pm yesterday Simon had given Claudette a second waxing and she is the shiniest car you have ever seen. I had dug the spuds. It was clearly time for a Leffe Blonde.

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Wildlife News: I was pleased to see a Southern White Admiral Limenitis reducta yesterday, lurking about one of the honeysuckles Lonicera sp in the orchard. This is a beautiful butterfly, a species having a good year this year (I never thought I'd be saying that about any species this year the way the first half of the year went!). Honeysuckle is its host plant, so hopefully I will get babies in due course.

Also nice to see was a Common Goldenring Corduligaster boltonii dragonfly, whilst swimming at a friend's place. No photos, as I was in the swimming pool. (Catching a quick rest between laps, in case you are wondering how I saw it -- half a kilometre yesterday, which is a lot for me.)