Fame

4th December
Mme Bontette filed her first stories for the local newspaper a week ago, This is the newspaper most commonly found in the bars around here, there is also a regional daily paper, these two papers are the only ones I've seen in the local people's houses.

Having just missed  one deadline Mme B has put in a bumper amount of village news this week; the film show, the weekly yoga class and a rivetting piece about the day last week when it rained and Vera and I went out and played pétanque with a couple of other people (that's me in my new yeti jacket).












Tha has pretty much used up all available local stories. Mme B doesn't approve of the new people running the bar, so she won't write about them, and since the elections she's at loggerheads with quite a lot of the rest of the village. Next week could see an exclusive 'Woman Re-homes Two Cats' story.

Yes the cats are still here, they flee the moment they catch sight of me and find places to spy on me, so I still haven’t seen them properly yet, there is a grey stripey one and a dark grey one, they share the distinguishing feature of only having half a tail each. I feel they should have names - I’m trying out Brian and Janet

The Film Show

24th November
I’m still reeling from going through a year's worth of dramas these last two days. The Director spent Saturday morning setting everything up at the Salle des Fetes – and nothing worked. The speakers were duff, the screen turned out to be puny and the projector wouldn’t work until we figured out how to screw the bulb in properly. Sometime during the afternoon we ditched the tiny screen and wiggled stuff in the right way to make sound happen.

On Sunday while The Director was doing last-minute adjustments I put out some chairs, I wasn’t sure who’d turn up so I put out about 50 and started fiddling around with bowls of pretzels. Our friends set up the drinks table and we realised that Mme Bontette, who is a bit distracted by her new job, had made us a tooth-achingly sweet rum punch so we collected up all the supplies of lemons and limes we could lay our hands on and squeezed them into the mix. Then people started coming - and they kept coming and we were all pulling out stacks more chairs because the hall was filling. The advertised start time was 6.15 but by 6pm there was a room full of people looking expectantly at the bit of wall where the projector was pointing, they weren’t interested in rum punch or Ricard they were just waiting. So we rolled the film which was a shortened version of the pilot with subtitles (thanks Florence!), followed by a series of sequences that we’d filmed over the last few months. At the end everyone cheered and asked to see it again immediately.

Mme Bontette is loving her new job as a reporter for the local paper and has bought a new set of reporter’s outfits which are very glamorous and seem to be mostly furry-edged, she was taking a lot of photos.

Then we cleared up and went down to the bar which was heaving. The Goths had gone to town with candles and drapes and stuff, the tables were put together to make a big U shape and set with pitchers of wine and baskets of bread. Trays loaded with glasses of Cava were passed round. The meal was great: bowls of salad and the famous cassoulet – and they’d even done the crispy crumb thing on top. The really fantastic thing though was that there were people there who’d told me they’d never be in the same room together and there were French women there who told me that they’d never go to a bar because it wasn’t ladylike. Anyway the whole thing went on late and it was a great party. And now The Director and our friends have returned to the UK and I feel completely discombobulated.

Cat Fail

21st November
I went to collect some cats from a market gardening couple who moved in to their property recently and discovered an extremely fecund feral cat living in their woodshed. They doped some food and managed to get a batch of sleepy kittens to the vet to be sterilised but the wiley mother slipped away and hid (and then got pregnant again). The cats are now eating all the dog's food and I have agreed to take a pair to see if they'd like to live in my wood pile. When I got there the Gardeners had failed to catch any. We've hatched a plan and I'll come back next week.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for The Director, some friends and a projector to get back from the airport. Then we're all set to do the film show in the village hall on Sunday. I'm having a lesson in making rum punch from Mme Bontette tomorrow, she called this morning in high excitement - she has just secured a job as a reporter for the local newspaper. Our film show will be her first assignment.

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.

Cocktail Hour

30th October
After the yoga class this week we had our picnic supper in the Salle des Fetes. Pulling together six small plastic picnic tables we were completely dwarfed by the cavernous hall. Bic Biro brought out his apperitif drinks; bottles of Muscat (sweet wine), Ricard and a French brand of Whisky. Mme Bontette had got her fish soup simmering away on the bar counter and was in exuberant mood. She wanted everybody to try a Manhattan - which in her head means equal parts Muscat and Whisky. We don’t have ice and the bottles have not been near a fridge. It takes very special circumstances before I can look at cheap, warm whisky with anything approaching desire. French people think it’s very odd that English people often opt for red wine as an aperitif.

Despite the echoey, swimming-pool quality of the hall I asked Bic if I can use it as a venue for our film show, he’s thrilled with the idea - we have a date.