Making Progress

This week I had one of those moments where I suddenly felt all those weeks of French lessons, all the headaches, all the hours spent feeling like my head was going to explode, are beginning to pay off. The occasion was a meal at the home of some French friends. They are a lovely  couple, who are interesting and interested in the world around them. Now retired, they were teachers and have travelled extensively. They also speak very good, clear French and are prepared to be patient with people who are making an effort to communicate.

When we go out with English friends Ian is normally the quieter of the two of us, preferring to limit his discussions to technical bits and pieces. I have always enjoyed a more in depth debate about things and the ability to be able to do more than just talk, but to express my ideas, ask questions and discuss current issues, is really important to me. My aim for my French was to be able to speak it well enough that I was able also to express a little of my personality and humour. Up until now, although I have been able to get by in most everyday situations this aspect has alluded me and when we are out with French people Ian has taken the lead in conversation, with me chipping in, if and when I was able to follow what was being said.

My French had sort of reached a plateau over the past year or so and I hadn't felt I had made much improvement. Fortunately I found a new more advanced class and got back into the studying in September. I hadn't really noticed much progress for a while but last week I spent three days in Bordeaux and suddenly found that I didn't have to think all the time to communicate and that I could make jokes with the students in French that made them laugh (and not just because of my accent!) The meal last week marked a turning point as for the first time Ian was silenced and I was able to talk!

For anyone who thinks that you can come to France and 'be fluent in two years'.. it's taken me 6 years of lessons to get this far!

Too hot to make cheese

Summer seems to have been around for a while now. It's funny how you long for it all year and then when it arrives with a vengeance you soon get fed up with it. It has been the hottest and driest July for several years, with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius on most days.

We have our village summer party next weekend. This is the poster.

 

I put it in in extra large size so you can see the menu. One of the items out of the 7 or so courses is the 'fromage'. This is usually purchased from the local diary who make the cheese from locally sourced milk..and do a very good special offers on their excess produce. However this year there are no deals to be had, as for the past month it has been too hot to make cheese and they are only able to make butter and dried milk products.

The dry weather has crisped up all the farmland nicely and so we are on an alert for fires. If they occur then there are a couple of fire planes that are stationed locally, that will pick up water from the lake to use on the fires. The lake starts pretty much at the end of our field and they have been out practicing. They fly pretty low over the field and it can be quite scary to watch at first as it looks like they are about to land!

Unfortunately they were on their way off by the time I got my camera out!



Anyway, the thing about summer is that eventually it comes to an end, and the cracks are beginning to appear. Such intense heat generates dramatic storms, and on Friday we were on an 'orange alert' for severe storms. That didn't stop us from going out to the local food producers evening. It is an outdoor event held in the summer months, where all the local producers set up stalls. You can choose from hot dishes, salads, grilled meat, deserts etc. all washed down with a bottle of local wine and enjoyed while listening to a local band. We got there early and as we were finishing our food and drink we saw this approaching from the West!

 

 

Fortunately it passed us over, but where it hit the hailstones were the size of golf balls and they destroyed much of the grape crop.

 

Deer

There are quite a few deer around at the moment. I took this picture yesterday morning, just before we took the dog for a walk. There were five stopping off for a bite to eat in the field.

Yesterday, on my way to the shops, I had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting three that ran out in front of the car and this morning I was walking the dog in the bottom field and he suddenly caught sight of something in the distance. Before I could say "Gremlin come here you little sh*t" he had gone. In a flash he had crossed over the stream, through the field the other side and up into the woods. I saw his tail bobbing up and down a bit and then he disappeared from view. He has done this before but normally once the deer have run off he comes back. This time I was calling for 20 minutes, unable to cross the stream myself. Ian left his work to come and look for him the other side of the river. After about half an hour we caught sight of him following a scent home. He approached Ian, turned to look at him as if to say 'it's this way' and then carried on, appearing by my side 5 minutes later, exited, wet but rather tired. By this time Ian and I were soaked and not it in the best of moods. It was good to see that he came back eventually but worrying as once he catches sight of a deer no amount of recall training will break his focus and he can cover some distance in a matter of seconds!

Last night we ate venison casserole. The venison was a gift from the local hunt as we allow them to hunt on the land. It's arrival was not for the squeamish. The chairman of the hunt knocked on the door, plastic bag dripping in blood with a deer foot sticking out the top in one hand, and a fag in the other!  Ian cut it up and we kept some and gave some away. Normally we have been given a front leg, but this year we got a hind leg. The meat was beautifully tender.

Before I came to France I was determined to stop  hunting on the land as soon as possible, but after living here a while you see that there is a balance here that is perhaps best to accept. The deer have no natural predators and left alone the numbers would soon rise and they would become a pest, eating many of the crops. The hunt are allowed to kill a certain number each year. It is quite carefully controlled. (I say quite carefully because there are always one or two that will poach the odd one or two). Furthermore, as the hunting population is generally fairly elderly hunting day looks like an Age Concern outing with rifles, so I am not even sure whether they manage to get their targets every year. So, if we ever get llamas and horses on the land we will have to restrict it, but while it is prairie we don't rock the boat.

Pigeons, boar and snakes for dinner?

So the French really do eat everything and anything! In a way it is an admirable trait as the concept is environmentally friendly and non-wasteful, but it certainly requires us to toughen up and lose our squeamishness!

Ian  returned from the farmer with a bag bulging with freshly picked cherries. It is that time of year and everyone has ripe cherry trees and can't pick them, eat them or bottle them quickly enough. He also had a bag with what looked like quail in, which he presented to me as 'dinner'. It turned out not to be quail, but four pigeons, freshly caught, killed and plucked. Apparently they are a nuisance on the farm as they eat the chicken feed, so the young ones are promptly dispatched and rather than thrown in the bin, they are prepared for the pot! We were given four because in reality, the farmer doesn't like them much! So, I asked around and Googled how to cook pigeon and ended up removing the breasts, marinating them in ginger and garlic and stir-frying them. I have to say that although they were okay  I wouldn't rush to eat them again! I attempted to make a stock from the remains but after smelling it decided against using it. However, the cat enjoyed the cooked pigeon liver!

Yesterday we went to another hunt dinner, this time in our village. Hunting is a very traditional country activity around here and whether you approve or disapprove, think it is cruel or a poor sport it has gone on in France for centuries. Unlike in the UK it has never been seen as something that rich people do just for fun, but has been a legitimate way of feeding your family, and hence everything that is killed is eaten or used in some other way. At the annual dinner a feast is prepared of the season's kill, interspersed with a few token vegetables and lots of alcohol. Unlike many of the feasts and fairs, those attending are mostly French and of the older generation. And so, it happened that we found ourselves seated next to an elderly French couple that we had not met before. He was a man of few words but she was happy to talk to us and reminded me of the French equivalent of Nora Batty. She was large and bold and definitely the boss. The lady sitting next to her was around the same age, with no teeth but that didn't stop her polishing off a huge plate of tough old wild boar steaks, cutting them skilfully with her opinel knife! I felt quite sad that my French isn't fluent enough to really communicate with them as their stories would be interesting. These are the last generation to remember the second world war. Most would have been children but, like my mother, would vividly remember the war years, when this part of France was occupied by the Germans. There is a plaque on the war memorial to the local Maire, who was taken into the woods and shot at the age of 69, and the older villagers remember the tanks being driven up and down the road outside our house. During occupation and shortly after the war food would have been scarce and hunting probably saved many from starvation. We were telling Nora Batty about our encounters with snakes. She told us that the best way to deal with the large 'coulerves' is to slit their throats; take a knife and run it down the length of their underbellies, peel the skin off, slice them up, fry them in butter and eat them! I would not like to meet her on a dark night! Formidable!