1] Four rush-hours. Four. There are the normal ones in the morning and evening. But even in the local towns these are not exactly rush-hours, more like half hours with ten minutes of minor blockage after which the roads are clear again. Compared with Manchester, these are small beer. But, and this is my main point, in this area, they also have two more rush half-hours hours at lunch time. And people really do rush. They drive like nutters. They shop like nutters. They toot their horns and curse the drivers in front of them. This is because toute le monde goes home for dejeuner and picks up their kids and takes them back to school/nursery again afterwards. And the shops shut for at least two hours so all the shopworkers can drive home for lunch and then get back again. Of course, the good part of this is the eating en famille et cetera, but it makes everywhere manic in the middle of the day. This may all have made sense when most French people worked a few doors down from la maison, or in't fields, and when women didn’t go out to work [how do working women get on with this en famille lunch-cooking business, I wonder?] but surely they can’t keep it up in t’modern age.
Eat butties at your desks like the rest of the workaholic world, French people!
2] Sunshine but no ice-creams.
This is a metaphor. Anything of a vague holiday-ish nature is only open in the period officially laid down in the constitution as holiday time, that is Juillet and Aout. I made that up about the constitution but it could be true. By holiday-ish I mean campsites, outdoor swimming pools, beach cafés, ice-cream stalls, beach activities, boats, et cetera. In this area they are mainly all closed for 44 weeks of the year. Now I know this also has its good side. The area isn’t overrun with tourists, people maintain their quiet lifestyles and order and tradition are maintained. Holidays are holidays and work is work. Yet there is high unemployment and depopulation in Limousin, young people move away to the towns and cities and the population gets older. French people don’t seem to have the habit of going away for weekends in the country as English people do, so there are no autumn, winter and spring tourist seasons in this area, even though it has great potential.
So, if you want somewhere quiet, lonely, unspoiled, this is the place. But if it's outside July and August, bring your own ice-creams.
3] Snakes in the grass
Well - one snake. In the garden. A big one - at least a metre long. Not pleased at being disturbed so it did that neck curling thing they do in films just before they do the rattle and leap at your throat. I exaggerate but it was a bit unnerving. No wonder the cat had been reluctant to go out. We were also extremely reluctant to go out until we checked it on another website and asked our friend H, l'homme who knows everything, and found out that it wasn't poisonous. Not an adder or a viper, not even a rattlesnake, just a Couleuvre - a grass snake. We haven't seen it again.
4] Scutigera-Coleoptrata. I had never heard of this until I came here. I bet almost all of you haven't heard of it either. Let alone seen it on the ceiling or walls of your bedroom, coming out from behind the wardrobe and waving at you with one of its antennae or legs - difficult to tell which. And I am almost sure none of you have pulled back the duvet to find it nestling in exactly the place where you were just going to lie.
You should be grateful.
Once seen in the flesh, Scutigera-Coleotrata can never be forgotten. Here it is.
It's a centipede. Apparently they like stone houses, old barns for instance, so to be fair, they were probably living here long before the house was converted. They can grow up to a few inches in length, they can move very fast and they live for years. This isn't just a French creepy-crawlie - apparently they're everywhere. I got these pictures and more information than I really needed on a website dedicated to them by a chap called Chris Shaw who teaches maths at the University of Maryland and who has been trying to get rid of them for years. See his site here.
But French or American doesn't make a lot of difference. Just knowing they exist means that life will never be quite as safe or secure for me again.
5] La Poste is on strike. I don't know what it's about and don't presume to comment on the rights and wrongs but this means that I can't get the parcel that I ordered from Amazon. Stuff the revolution, comrades, I am bookless in Correze.
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2 comments:
I don't understand about the picking the kids up bit - I thought French school dinners were a gourmet experience that no right minded child would want to miss? Denise says the child up the road comes home with the following weeks' menu for perusal en famille!
Isn't the reason French people don't go away to the countryside at weekends because most of them live there anyway? (And if they did, they couldn't get home for lunch!)
Snake looked quite sweet really.
But the centipede/s ... you don't day whether your discovery was singular or plural or very plural... would make all the difference to me. Have you got a new pet or an infestation?
Since the turn of the centuary and coming out as a free spirit i have taken to wearing rose coloured glasses for short periods - usually while I am on my bike riding in between the rush hours - it has the effect of making the countryside more attractive, I think I look cool and reduces the number of insect attacks. It is not half as much fun with out them! Come home and I'll get you both a pair of glasses.
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