The Fixer

6th May
In the last post I couldn’t bring myself to mention that, apart from my sadness at Zizi’s departure, there has also been a massive row with the pétanque club* who are now boycotting the village bar. I can’t describe how despondent this makes me feel – although, as my desire for harmony here is purely self-centered, this amounts to self-pity which is never attractive.


My role on the tv production happening here is as a Fixer. A Fixer sorts stuff out, sometimes it’s stuff to do with getting sets made or getting kit ordered or fixed and a lot of it is just knowing where to get stuff. The easiest way to do this is to go where everyone congregates and until recently that has been the village bar.

Real live red-faced yelling and soap-opera brawling is great entertainment but counter-productive from my point of view. There are already several rifts among the French population here due to the usual generations-old family feuds, the last elections really wreacked havoc and now no-one goes to events in the village hall any more in case they bump into a sworn enemy.

There was a wonderful period last autumn when everyone came to the bar in regular shifts: If I needed a hornet’s nest or wanted to hire a barn I’d go before supper and catch the farmers. I could tap the Dutch at weekends if I need to borrow garden furniture. The Brits go after supper and many of them are twitchers or butterfly enthusiasts (they tend to do surveys which are extremely useful to us). So if they all fall out or one of these groups feels alienated the bar empties and I have to put a pie in my basket and go visiting instead.


* The pétanque club meets twice a week and is a really popular social event with the French, Dutch and British locals at the village bar where I have been known to do a turn as a waitress.

Brenda Steps In

5th May
Since our village bar was sold last year it has languished in an ever-deepening Vale of Tears. A British couple called Strange bought it for tuppence from a lady desperate to make a quick sale, Mrs Strange thought that a bar would be a nice retirement hobby for her husband but after a few months they suddenly needed to disappear, leaving their eldest son in charge. Kurt The Goth spent the winter emptying the bar’s bank account ... then he also needed to leave, he persuaded his brother Shane The Fascist to come to the village and take over...


Shane is the only member of the Strange family who speaks French, he is an angry young man with a long list of dislikes; top of the list are British people, women and anyone over thirty. He doesn’t drive - for his first few weeks in the village Shane relied solely on the kindness of elderly British women to take him shopping. One day Shane's lovely and extremely camp friend Zizi arrived to help run the bar and do the driving.

Mrs Strange only discovered that Shane replaced Kurt a couple of weeks ago, she has returned and Zizi has gone. I was told that Zizi’s girlfriend was unhappy about him working at the bar - so he’s had to leave - unfortunately.

There is a bright spot on the horizon however – Brenda* has decided to liven things up. While seated at the bar listening to the update of this story my eye wandered over to a pile of bright flyers written in English and using the full array of jokey fonts currently available:

Friday Nite is Brenda’s Nite
For Fun, Frolics and Mayhem
Bring an instrument and a song
At the *** ***** Bar
8 til late

* Brenda is a Liverpudlian septuagenarian, chain smoker, owner of many wigs and recipient of some very large implants.

Arrested

May 4th
Our village is buzzing with gossip about the arrest for fraud of our notorious local estate agent. It was impossible to buy a property around here without Madame Vilaine being involved, new occupiers of property who’d just been (unknowingly) fleeced by her would be approached with the suggestion that they in turn act as agents, introducing their house-hunting friends in return for a cut of any resulting sale. These semi-retired incomers were flattered that their prowess in the property market was finally being recognised and they worked quite hard to deliver more victims to the Vilaine business.

I had an audience with Mme V when I first arrived in the area, I was only looking to rent and I’d happened on a rare day when she was in the office. Seated on a Louis XV chair, she’d sniffed at me and handed over the details of a property that was clearly a garden shed on a rubbish dump, I declined, she heaved her bosom, sighed heavily and told me that I couldn’t be helped - I was dismissed.

I’ve been hearing stories that make my hair freeze, like the one about properties rotten with termites that had been waved through by the surveyors Mme V appointed, but her most common trick was the 10% deposit scam:

In France when the buyer's offer on a property is accepted, they hand over 10% of the agreed price as a non-refundable deposit. This should be held by an independent notaire (legal person). Mme V managed to persuade many of her naïve foreign buyers to give her this deposit directly, she used these deposits to support her other illegal activities, (we’ve been loving speculating on these) using various stalling tactics the sale then progressed very very slowly. This scam depended on a high turnover of sales and a constant influx of deposits and is the reason her empire has now unravelled.

Eighteen months ago The Strange family made a very low offer on the village bar for sale through Madame Vilaine. The previous owner was trying to avoid bankruptcy and agreed to the price for a quick sale. Mrs Strange handed her deposit to Madame V who held onto it for six months, this had catastrophic results for the vendor who still lives in the village.

Ant Condos

13th March
We’ve been preparing the new homes for the ant colonies that are hibernating in the fridge. We have some fat logs and tree stumps ready for the carpenter ants, a section is sliced off the log and holes are drilled to make a network of chambers, most of the holes will be bunged up on the outside with little corks leaving just two exits/entrances for the ants, when they have settled in we can unbung a hole and put in an endoscope to film what’s going on.

meanwhile down at the bar...
Shane has arrived to run the village bar, Kurt’s younger brother and chief adversary. Kurt was nursing a black eye when I took him and his wife to the airport.

Shane works out a lot, his body is waxed and his hair shorn with a number two blade, he wears neatly pressed white shirts, black trousers and shiny Doc Martin boots. He also has an intense dislike of women, non-French people and anyone over 30 ... he does not possess a driving license. Our village is a 20-minute drive from the nearest shop. Because I would like the bar to survive I have agreed to take him shopping with me once a week until his friend arrives to help him out next month.

Our first run to the shops didn’t go particularly well because I resent being treated like his personal chauffeuse and he doesn’t seem to like the sharp edge of my tongue.

Bar Strife

12th February
In order to keep up with any hot insect-related gossip and generally find out who’s who around here, my best networking territory is the village bar, so I have a vested interest in it’s continued existence.

Mr and Mrs Strange (a British couple) took over the bar last summer, the pétanque club got started, supper events happened, it was popular with the French, British and Dutch communities - then Mr Strange needed to disappear.

One day the Strange parents were replaced* by their eldest son Kurt, a goth rocker/death metal fan and his Scandanavian wife, Courtney. This couple have spent the last few months looking as though they had accidentally pressed the wrong buttons on the teleporter.

Mrs Strange recently came back to visit her bar and there was a big shouting match, this resulted in her son buying air tickets back to Denmark, he has not mentioned this to his mother. Courtney asked me to keep quiet about it because they wanted to break the news at an 'appropriate moment’.

The 'appropriate moment’ didn’t happen and Mrs Strange has gone away again. Courtney said that she thinks the news will sound better in an email. She’d like me to stay quiet about their departure because they are hoping that the other, younger, brother will turn up to take over - a minor obstacle being that he doesn’t want to.

I’m useless at secrets and I really don’t want to keep this one. The pétanque club has just become registered to host tournaments at the village bar, the process has taken months, when it was finalised there was huge joy from the players, match dates for the year are now fixed.

*Mrs Strange did tell me about their flit some time before they left. I was sworn to secrecy on pain of death.

A Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul

3rd February
Mrs Strange came by for coffee - and a rant about her slutty daughter-in-law. I didn't mention the tickets already bought for their return to Denmark but I did ask what will happen if they decide to leave.
That won't happen!
There is so much and nothing to say - luckily my house is too uncomfortable for anyone to want to stay long.

I'm a bit tired of all this and missing The Director. Going back to the UK would be worse, our house there is full of people getting ready for the next session of filming (there will be a machine to knurl metal clamped to the kitchen table and the floor will be scattered with polystyrene peanuts). There will also be people on phones arguing about contracts, scripts and money.

It seemed churlish not to attend the fundraising supper in the village at the weekend, but I hadn't reckoned on Bruno The Knob Destroyer. Bruno's been turning up here with bags of knobbly vegetables a lot lately. I've noticed that his drinking problem is getting worse, his wife has left him again and he smells of wee.

When I got to the hall, a phalanx of big-chested ladies were taking ticket money for the meal. Bruno was waiting at the door and had already bought my ticket, the ladies beamed at me. I gave in and went and sat opposite him on a long table, Bruno attempted to eat soup and focus his watery eyes on me at the same time – it was not a success.

At some point during the meal Mrs Druid got up, stood behind the man seated next to her and started massaging his neck. I find it fascinating what is and isn't tolerated around here, my neighbours believe that Mrs Druid is a member of a (probably) harmless cult, the massage provoked a lot of joking and general ribaldry. Bruno, slowly got up and swayed his way round the table until he was behind me and started stirring his hands around on my head, it was like the pretend hair washing I used to do on my Nan as a child. This had everyone falling about, I managed to convince Bruno that he had achieved miraculous results, even with a very small amount of stirring, he then went round the whole table rubbing everyone’s head a little bit until he found his seat again - He passed out soon after that.

More Secrets and Lies

2nd February
Mrs Strange has come back to France to visit her bar and see how her son and his new wife are coping. I thought it would be nice to drop by for a coffee and say hello - too late I realised that I’d stepped into the aftermath of a massive row. Mrs Strange has stormed off to town and Courtney is steaming behind the bar. She has been online booking tickets for a flight back to Denmark at the end of the month, she tells me this adding:
Don’t mention it to anyone as we have to wait until the cow has calmed down before we tell her
This has happened to me before

Fancy Dress Bar

16th December
I am entranced by the weekly markets in France, after I've bought food I usually go to the hardware stalls where I buy little plastic briefcases for transporting my eggs, novelty plastic fly swats and jugs. I am intrigued by the bundles of small rectangular carpet pieces, hessian-backed and blanket-stitched around the edges - I guess one places them under the feet while watching TV or eating dinner. From what I can see most French people have ceramic tiles or lino on their downstairs floor - perhaps they’d rather have carpet. I imagine one starts off buying just enough to place a piece under each foot, gradually building up a collection that can be placed, like stepping stones, along popular routes around the house.

Women’s clothes on French market stalls are very particular, lots of strange hybrid things; two or three different styles and fabrics are spliced together resulting in the bastard offspring of, for example, a pin-stripe pencil skirt, a gypsy skirt and a lacy curtain. Last week, at the market with Mme Bontette I succumbed to a very cosy coat/dress (droat?) in two-tone green and black; fleecy on the inside, it has a mandarin collar and zips hem to neck on either side. It’s tunic-like and, worn with black tights and boots, makes me feel that I should be on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Down at the bar it’s all a bit depressing. The big supper last month must’ve used all their battery power because since then Kurt can’t be bothered to cook very often. He usually sits very close to the big screen watching car racing. The French people have been in a few times since the supper event but as Kurt refuses to take his eyes off the screen and his wife can’t speak French they’ve gone away again. Also Kurts friend Ed has problems with alcohol and frequently needs to make use of the bathroom as a vomitorium and keeps missing whichever receptacle he’s aiming for.

I went there for the weekly pétanque game wearing my new outfit this weekend, Kurt watching telly in a 'Satan Rules' t-shirt, Courtney behind the bar in full bondage gear and Mrs Druid sporting a colourful stripey jumper and rainbow harem pants, Mrs D. took a long look at me and said
What a curious garment

Kurt's First Supper

9th November
I went down to the bar for a game of pétanque yesterday. My fellow pétanquers are stunned by the sudden, unannounced disappearance of the senior Stranges. Their replacement by Goth Rockers feels like we’re suddenly extras in a remake of Village of the Damned as directed by John Waters .

Courtney opens up the bar at some point in the afternoon. Wearing a black satin mini-kimono (= instant forgiveness by lingering male population for missing lunchtime) she clears up the remains of the previous night’s party looking a little hungover.

Kurt gets up a bit later, he has announced himself as the new chef and we’re all curious to see what his food’s like. The Director put down his computer to join us for the after-pétanque supper at the bar. The man had made a big effort and it really wasn’t bad at all. After supper we all said it was great, he unscowled and became really rather friendly.

New Blood At The Bar

2nd November
The filming really is done for this year, the Camera Boys have returned to the UK - we are now in visiting season. Since Bruno's August visit we have been without doorhandles - he replaced the original knobs with a set that can’t be made to stay fixed on. My parents arrived here a few days ago. They have known me long enough not to expect much in the way of comfort but I bet they had hoped for door handles. No matter - once given a pair of pliers and a monkey wrench they soon got the hang of getting in and out of their bedroom. My mother hasn’t really got the upper body strength to haul the front door open on her own yet though.

We were also suffering from a smelly drain problem. Our squalid kitchen has a concrete sink with a hole through the back wall. The water, and whatever else you put in the sink, washes through to a concrete gutter running the length of the back of the house. Over the years it has silted up and grown over with weeds, the autumn rains have made the area behind the kitchen swampy and putrid. My repeated calls to Landlord and plumber have been ignored. Mum put her foot down, The Director and my father got out the shovels and a wheelbarrow, dislodging unspeakable hideousness to make a drainage channel.

As a further treat for my parents I took them to the bar for some of Mrs Strange’s gin. The Senior Strange’s have already slipped away. But Kurt the tattooed son has returned from Copenhagen with his wife and turns out to be perfectly good at serving gin with flat tonic in a dirty glass from the iceless bar.

Kurt’s wife, Courtney has translucently pale skin, she has only recently started her tattoo collection, they both dress exclusively in black. They tell me that their band had split anyway and that they are going to liven up the bar with 'live bands, gourmet food and that kind of stuff'. Courtney is animated, she says that Kurt’s great in the kitchen - I’m not sure if she means he can cook. Buoyed up with enthusiasm for their plans (and feeling guilty that I’ve now booked to show our film at the village hall) I suggest that they put on a supper for after the film show - I’ll publicise it on the flyer I’m going to put around the surrounding villages next week. Kurt is a sullen kind of chap, he asks what sort of thing I have in mind,
I suggest casserole-type dishes; a daube, coq au vin … a cassoulet?
I’ll do a cassoulet
Something about his response is not putting me at ease.

Supper and A Lap Dancing Exhibition

26th October
The Director and two Camera Boys flew in from the UK last night. On the way back from the airport we decided to stop at the bar to see if we could enveigle a bit of supper out of Mrs Strange. It was getting late and most of the After-Pétanque diners had gone home except for Vera and the pétanque club captain who were snogging on the barstools. This surprised me a bit because it did look quite uncomfortable and also because he is French and Vera has recently been very scathing about the erotic talents of French men.*

Mrs Strange asked me to help her with the supper so that she could make sure that I’m keeping quiet about her departure in a few days. She tells me that she’s trying to persuade one of her sons to come back and take over.

*if anyone is interested in Vera’s preferences vis a vis Nationality of Lover, I haven’t had time to compile a comprehensive league table yet, but her Top Lover is a motorbike-riding German, his being a mendacious psychopath and married are considered negative factors however they are outweighed by two large positive factors.

Too Much Information

14th October
The boys have gone back to the UK to prepare studios for the pre-edits which start later in the month (editors will make rough cuts of the footage, The Director and the writers will start writing scripts). There is also a film festival going on next week - The Director will be showing our work there.

We have decided that in November we’ll put on a film show for the villagers to show what we’ve been doing here. I wanted to use the local bar and their big screen telly, I fixed a date with with Mr Strange at the bar and have started telling people about it - before Mrs Strange told me about their secret plan to disappear. Mr Strange does not know I know, nor must he.
I wish I did not know.

Secrets and Lies

11th October
I've worked out that I probably can find other places for us to film if the landlord decides to reclaim his property, so I'm back to holding tripods and making fun of the neighbours. Landlord's said that he'd turn up end of the morning tomorrow so I've suggested he has lunch with us.

We went to the bar last night and Mrs Strange was going on about her (druid?) neighbours again - when they walked in. Which was interesting because
a) I don't think I know any druids
and
b) they came in to book a Christmas party and Mrs S said yes lovely but I know that Mrs S is planning to do a flit next month. But I can't tell anyone or she might have to kill me.

I think that's a bit naughty.

Pacing

October 9th
I’m impossible to have around now that I’ve got worked up about what the landlord’s impending visit might mean. Apart from the fact that I don’t want to leave - ever, the more pressing need is to be able to finish the filming next year. What we’ve done so far is just research; getting to know the area, find good habitats and set up systems for filing and storing the footage. We’ve also spent a lot of time clearing out the outbuildings in preparation for studio filming.

We didn’t actually have a contract for the series when I came location hunting so I hedged my bets and made a 3-month notice agreement with the landlord. Only idiots or mad people would consider buying the damp, crumbling pile that is the Lovely House. We have those qualities in spades but we also have plenty of debt - that idea must be put firmly aside.

I am in danger of getting stabbed if I don’t get out of the house so I accept Mrs Strange from the bar’s suggestion to take a walk together. Mrs Strange spends most of the walk being very agitated. When I tune in, it seems to be about her neighbours - I don’t know them but I have noticed that they tend to wear matching stripey jumpers which must be annoying her, but Mrs Strange also thinks that they’re into 'weird stuff’ - druids or something - and Mrs Druid parks on her driveway sometimes too.

As we got back to my place Mrs Strange tells me that she and her husband are going 'abroad’, they will both be leaving next month - but I mustn’t tell anyone. I think she wanted to talk about it, but I excused myself as I’ve formulated a plan, actually it’s not a plan - but it might become one if I can go somewhere and pace in peace.

I Get a Proper Job at Last

5th October
I went along to the bar to join the Saturday afternoon boule game which was unusually busy and found Mrs Strange in a flap about supper, she was booked out and shorthanded, I said I’d waitress that evening if she wanted.

The pétanque players are mainly retired people, the expats come with their spouses and the elderly Frenchmen come in their slippers and bring family members who are visiting for the weekend. There are a few single people; local men whose dental state and dress sense are possibly factors in perpetuating their single status. And there is Vera, a bubbly, flirty Dutch woman who likes to be the centre of attention, she has not spoken to me before, but today she fizzed up to me and demanded.
Who are you, do you have a husband – where is he???
I pointed out that it would be foolish to bring a husband along, given the man-hunting opportunities for me here.
Well don’t you hunt my man she warned me, turning on her heel.
I am intrigued – which one?

There were no clues that evening either as Vera sat with a group of women, the 'eligible’ men were all getting red and sweaty on their own table which I supplied with large of amounts of Ricard then large amounts of red wine then large amounts of beer containing shots of peach- or mint-flavoured syrup.

Have got Wednesdays hairdresser glue out of my hair which is now in plaits, I'm totally channelling those stein-carrying maidens you see at German beer fests

Tart Rejection

17th September
It’s gone all quiet here, The Director and the Happy Camera Boy are back in the undergrowth with the insects and suddenly I’ve got time to catch up on village life.

I had a big cook up and ended up with a surplus tart on my hands, I decided to take it over to Bruno the Knob Destroyer who is still leaving bags of vegetables on our gate. He intercepted me as I was heading up his drive;
What are you doing?
Bringing you one of my tarts – it’s a thank you for all the tomatoes
Well don’t, my wife will get suspicious – go away

I offloaded my tart on nice M Bert across the road and pedaled on to the bar to join in with the pétanque, the club is now a busy, international affair (by village standards). The Strange parents are running the bar double-handedly now that they have been abandoned by their children, their eldest son married his Danish bride and they've gone off to join a thrash metal band in Copenhagen. The other son has also disappeared, possibly to stock up on military outfits and stiff leather boots.

National angst

19 August
The flood of Northern Europeans, particularly the Dutch and British, into France is a well-documented phenomenon. France has every kind of beautiful landscape, great weather, good food and above all space. Us Northerners who are fed up with being cramped, cold and damp are pouring into this country in our millions.

The French are worried about the dilution of their culture and lots of other issues.They don’t want the damp, decrepit old properties that the Northerners love. But they do love the price foreigners are willing to pay for these 'money pits’, they take the money and run off to buy a new build on the edge of a town then complain that their young people can no longer afford to live in the country. Any French person I meet who's wanting to sell a house will ask me if I know an English person who'd like to buy it.

The Dutch seem to be completely at ease on the issue, but the English are full of angst, loudly declaiming against the bad sort of English who are just here on an endless cocktail party behaving badly with their compatriots in bars and refusing to speak French (I have not yet found this particular party - must get better contacts).

This tension can become especially hilarious at the local café. Rural bars are closing all over France, mainly because of drink-driving law enforcement but also because a lot of French people consider it 'inappropriate’ for women to drink. Older French women are very conscious of this, but they don’t like their men going out drinking without them - unless there’s footie on the telly and they’d rather have them out of the house watching it.

So our bar is mainly patronised by foreigners. The Strange Family who run the bar really don’t like the English. They tell me they would like more French customers, I think that if they put on the sort of things French people like to do: Belote (card) evenings, Lotto, Food French people might come. I also think they'd get more local custom if they wrote their advertising flyers and bar notices in French rather than English.

Garden Envy

13th Aug
I have become afflicted with garden envy. Not for the leisure sort of garden with grass and flowers because most examples of that in the area are rubbish. I want a potager like my neighbours have. Great lush ranks of artichokes, beans, courgettes and potatoes flourishing next to high, burgeoning tresses of tomatoes. Bright lettucey things in neat rows and big bushy herbs lining the paths. The potager at the Lovely House has not been looked after for many years and is full of nettles and brambles. Digger Man tearing it up to fill a hole in the dam earlier didn't really help either. I've repaired the worst of the damage, cleared the weeds and started a compost heap, but apparently we're supposed to be making a film, so I’ve had to be content with gazing longingly over Mr Bert's hedge on my way to the phone box to call France Telecom (sigh, still no landline), watching him pick leaves off things and tie-up stuff.

I'm still picking mystery vegetable packages off the gate, Mr Bert claims no knowledge of who it might be.

If I go in the other direction towards the bar there are other gardens but I have to stand on my bicycle pedals to see them over the hedges as I wheel past. Arriving at the bar today people are playing pétanque outside, Mrs Strange is behind the bar, she tells me that some Dutch people have set up a pétanque club.

The bar reopens

5th August
The local bar has recently reopened after a long period of being closed. A British family have taken it over. I find their decision to open a bar, given their open hostility towards most of their fellow humans, strange – have they come to punish us? Mother and father both dislike the English, They have a Goth/rock'n'roll son with a lot of tattoos and a neo-Nazi/closet-homosexual son who hates women, foreigners and middle-aged people. The Goth will marry his Danish fiancée here in the village later this month. He tells me that if they got married in Denmark all their friends would come wanting a free meal.