The Typing Fury

12th November
I needed help with letter writing a couple of days ago, so I paid a visit to my smart neighbours who live nearby. Mme B. is extremely bossy and when channelled into a project she’s a wonder to behold. If I've got past the phoning stage with French utilities companies, she whips out her typing fingers and fires off tart letters for me.

I have talked about the Bontettes here before (see labels) but since we have become good friends I’m in a mood to recap. Mr. B is ex-military and slightly obsessive about his workouts. Mme B, not wanting to risk being caught sans maquillage has had her eyebrows and lips tattooed on, the eyebrows are a little too high, so she looks permanently surprised. Her nails are frankly terrifying. She also has a major shoe fetish - there is a room in their house full of shiny high heels.

Last month I invited the Bontettes to come and help themselves to the walnuts that were falling off our trees, warning them that the land around the trees was very rough and brambley. Mme B arrived with a lovely big basket, I looked at her bare hands and offered my gardening gloves but she waved them away, she would not be actually attempting to handle the walnuts herself, she explained, merely directing her husband where to find them.

Then I noticed her footwear; not possessing any flat shoes Mme B was wearing slippers, the same lumpen plaid style that the old men wear. A very popular item, worn by many French adults. I’ve eyed up these devil slippers on the market stalls afraid to actually touch them in case I fall under their evil spell.

Last Monday at their place, once my letter was written I was invited to stay for lunch – we ate a tart so divine that I ran straight home and recreated it. Despite my resolution that this would not become a foodie site I will tell you how to do it, just in case you’re moved to have a go.

Chicory and Goats Cheese Tart Tatin:
The whole thing is constructed upside down and turned over to serve.

Coat the base of a quiche dish with caramel, cut some blanched chicory heads in half and place flat side down in a vaguely star-like arrangement on the caramel. Slice up a log of goats cheese into discs and place them evenly over the chicory. Drape a rolled-out circle of pastry over all this, tucking any overhang into the dish (brush a little egg wash around the pastry edges if you want to). Bake until the pastry is cooked. Leave to cool a little and then invert the tart onto a big plate. Add walnuts, herbs or nothing to garnish

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.

French Markets Are So Marvellous

8th November
Despite the fact that filming is over and we are on a break. I can’t actually prise The Director away from his directing tools - he is still compiling 'selects reels’ (putting key sequences on dvd) to send to the writers. He never remembers that he always works through holiday periods and is perpetually amazed by the work he still has to do. Our parents have got the hang of this phenomenon by now and just as they deal with the fact that they have to visit us in cold, uncomfortable houses, they understand that their son (in-law) will only be sporadically visible.

Overcompensating a bit, I took my in-laws up into the mountains to a market I’d not visited before. It was a long drive, the town was bigger than I realised and the market very popular, finding parking was difficult. Fighting our way through the crowds we were soon exhausted and felt the need to return home, but I couldn’t remember where I’d left the car. When we did find the car, it was blocked in by a bigger vehicle which had been obscuring it from view.

We did finally get home, lit a fire and started preparing the cépes that we’d bought at the market - they were full of worms.

Territory Marking

6th November
My parents went back home to recover and The Director’s parents arrived yesterday so I took them out for lunch. A café in the neighbouring village offers a 4-course lunch with as much wine as you dare drink for 11 euros, it is run by Jeanne, whose elderly father potters around the dining room pouring the leftover wine into fewer bottles, (I didn’t pay too much attention to this until the last time I came and poured a large, purple hornet into my glass). The clientele are mainly blue-overalled men who work for the utilities companies. A lop-sided man is always there, he eats with his friends, clears all the tables and stays to help with the washing up, I think he's sweet on Jeanne despite her alcoholic husband who sometimes turns up to stand behind the bar and steal money from her till.

Jeanne finds the animosity the British residents show towards each other very funny, and tells stories about her English customers getting on each other's nerves. I have now had the good fortune to witness this comedy first hand.

Yesterday lunchtime my in-laws and I sat near another table of English people, they were getting up to leave as we were served coffee. A lady from their group detoured to us and placed a single small cup in the middle of our table, saying,
We didn’t want this so I thought you might appreciate a real coffee

There was something wonderfully ridiculous about the idea of us taking turns to sip at the tepid coffee. I pulled my face straight and asked why her coffee is more ‘real’ than ours.
We come here every day – the owner here spoils us with coffee from the espresso machine, yours will just be from the cafetiere.

The encounter has made my in-law’s visit, with any luck it will obliterate the experience of finding themselves trapped in their room after having unsuccessfully tried to repair their door handle.

Is There Life On Mars?

4th November
I feel peculiarly isolated out here in my feverish anticipation of the US election results. My French neighbours are not interested in events happening beyond their borders, in some cases this means their garden gate, for the more cosmopolitan the border can be as far as the departmental edge.  The newspapers here have blurry photos on the front page: a car stuck in a car park or some schoolchildren in fancy dress. For most of the population Europe is a fuzzy blur and the US is a sort of gaudy magazine someone's told them about.

I think this might be the case all over France, I was working in Provence on 9/11 when the Twin Towers were hit, I heard the news on my car radio and stopped to ask a few passersby if the news I was hearing was correct, no-one had any idea what I was talking about. I finally managed to find a bar with a telly tuned into a news channel, I was the only person watching the images of planes hitting buildings. That evening I spoke to the man who ran the local taxi company, he hadn’t heard about the events yet. I looked in the national papers the following day, significant coverage only appeared in Le Monde a couple of days later.

I’d got used to all this woolly introspection - then a couple of weeks ago I went to work for some Americans with access to digital tv, commentary on the US election was constant. It jolted me into a world I used to inhabit - it’s very strange coming back to this bunker.

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.

Seven Things

31st October
A 'seven-things' meme landed  in my in-box, here are seven memorable kitchen moments:

1. I am 18, in Athens, I have a job in a restaurant kitchen. I arrive in the morning to wash up piles of plates stacked on the floor. There is a toy sink in a room the size of a shower cubicle. I have tepid water and the last gasp in the bottle of washing-up liquid at my disposal. As I pile up the plates on the draining board the cats start using them as stepping stones to come in from the roof through the ceiling window.

2. A few months later I’m in Amsterdam, an employment agency has sent me to a family home where they have told me that I will be required to babysit for a couple of hours. I am met by a woman in a hurry to leave. She says that I should have dinner on the table by 7pm and I’ll find what I need in the fridge. At 7pm there is an old man shouting at me to get the table laid. While I’m doing that, the chops catch fire. The food I set before these people has many faults but the man decides to focus on the fact that there is no gravy, he gets really noisy. I hear his plate hitting the wall as I run out of the door.

3. Aged 19 I am supposed to waitressing in a restaurant but I am in the kitchen watching the chef at work.

4. I am being interviewed in a pub kitchen, I have applied for a job as a barmaid, the bar manager hasn’t actually read my cv,  just the name of the restaurant I last worked at (as a waitress) he assumes that I am applying for the cook’s job. I went along with it - and got the job.

5. Three months later I bump into the chef from kitchen 3, now working at a posher restaurant she asks me to be her sous chef. In this restaurant kitchen the proprietor tells me that the waitresses will classify the customers by putting an alphabetical code on their order, AA being the best, these customers will get favourable treatment. I ask what happens if I see a 'C' on the order
It’ll be a couple of lesbians drinking tap water - give them the bum end of the paté or anything else you want to get rid of

6. Aged 22 and working as a freelance cook, I have a contract to provide lunches for a Sexy Beast architect and his clients in a country mansion. Sexy Beast’s wives wear fishnet tights, shorts and thigh boots. Lining the corridors are explicit photographs taken by the Beast. The house is built around a central courtyard which has been roofed over and turned into a tropical-themed swimming pool with a wave machine, there are trees clad in orchids and parrots. I have to carry food across a suspended rope bridge from the kitchen to serve lunch by the pool.

7. Two years later I’m attending agricultural college during the day and cooking vegetarian suppers at a recording studio every evening. Although I change my clothes at the end of the day there is nowhere to shower. Halfway through a week when I am working in an intensive pig unit I arrive at the studio kitchen and see that we have an extra guest for supper. It is Kate Bush, wearing the most pristine white top I have ever seen, she looks utterly sparklingly clean. All I can think about is the intense piggy odour emanating from me.

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.

Star Wars Soup

29th October
Hercule is a robust six-year old, I met him over the weekend at a communal picnic event. I was so impressed by his gourmandising that I invited him for lunch. He bowled into the Lovely House, sat at the table, spotted a bowl of beetroot and made a grab for it. His mother restrained him while I served the soup. I commented that it was made from the remains of a Coq au Vin and had some wine in it. Hercule took a spoonful and became Yoda
Unusual wine in soup to have - it is strong - but rather good

After lunch Hercule had a go at mending one of the cameras with The Director and the Camera Boys. This somehow resulted in a Star Wars fight with torches.

Hercule's mother, Florence is lovely and looks a bit like Amélie. I've been wearing my yeti shrug constantly since I bought it last week, the picnic was no exception - Florence thought it a wonderful thing, then we discovered that we find the same sort of things funny and that we have eerily similar music collections. Florence went to the supermarket before meeting me yesterday, they were selling rubber wellies shaped like cowboy boots - she bought us a pair each, we wore them on our pre-lunch mushrooming expedition.

We went looking for something that I had sloppily translated as 'Love Trumpets’. When the name Trompette de la Mort is explained to me (they should be gathered by All Soul’s Day – 2 November) I suddenly realise that we are actually picking Death Trumpets. We collected lots and I must now lay them out on newspaper for a few days to dry.

Timelapse Filming

27th October
The boys are finishing the autumnal establishing shots. A technique we like a lot is timelapse photography - ideal for recording events that take place over a long period like flowers blooming and dying, insects making cocoons or spiders spinning their webs. One simply pops a stills camera on a tripod in front of the subject, set the timer to take a snap every few seconds or minutes. Then, when it's done, run the frames at 25 frames per second and Hey Presto! you see the process fast forwarded. Here’s an example and I really like this one

Timelapse is a good way to show time transitions i.e day to night, sunrises, sunny day turning to bad weather, and so on. In this case it gets a lot more complicated partly because the light changes more, which will have implications on shutter speed and aperture settings. The other complicating factor is that The Director and the Camera Boys have been experimenting with mechanisms that move the camera during the period of the timelapse so that the camera can follow the arc of the moon rising, or sweep the horizon as rain clouds gather. To make these mechanisms one needs a lot of big Meccano-type bits and some clockworky stuff, then you set up your moving tripod and hope the weather does what you’ve predicted. It’s all trial and error but somehow very beautiful and satisfying when it works.

I've just been searching Youtube for a good example of a tracking timelapse - and failed which might make us world pioneers or it might just mean that I'm a bad researcher

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.

Showgirls and Boys

25th October
Mme Bontette and her friends are all in their late fifties and older. The women have hair and nails done weekly and are slightly competitive about grandchildren. I have so far completely failed to correctly judge the dress code/formal tone of events I’ve attended with these people.

Mme B had suggested that I dress up - and said that she would be wearing leather trousers. Keen to match her Marianne Faithful, I went all out on my version of Girlfriend-of-a-Rolling-Stone look. The car was late to pick me up, so I continued to add decorations to my person while I waited.

When the car did arrive I saw a lot of denim being worn. At the venue we piled out of the cars, I towered above my companions in my shiny, spiky shoes. Mme B was not leather-clad and I guess was just hoping I’d wear clothes without mud or food on. But I have learned that older French people do wear strange and flamboyant outfits, often with vivid hair colourings, my outfit was not out of place at our venue and my friends were delighted with my efforts.

We were celebrating the end of Michelle's messy divorce, her son Yves had choreographed the night’s entertainment, a burlesque event – with lots of boys. Yves, wearing a very flouncy white shirt, joined our table. As he greeted us Mme B, worried that I wasn’t keeping up, whispered in a voice that would carry above the other noise,
He’s a homosexual you know

The show was hilarious, Near nude girls pirouetted with feathers while male dancers in a series of hastily velcroed-on outfits (they were bell boys, they were sailors…) danced and flirted with each other. We applauded like mad things during the finale as the boys descended to the stage on ropes, gyrating slowly and dressed as flames while the sound system pumped out Crazy Arthur Brown’s Fire.

I'm off to pick up The Director from the airport when I've finished putting the antiseptic dressings on my feet.

Shopping With Vera

24th october
Vera and I have decided to try and become friends. We're a similar age, childless, both foreigners in France. Never mind the slightly bumpy start, we're bound to get on - aren't we? As a bonding exercise we arranged to go shopping together yesterday afternoon. My chic neighbour Mme Bontette has invited me to join a group outing to a dinner spectacle tonight, I have never been to such a thing. Mme B has said that I should ‘dress up’. I only have one ‘good dress’ and need some sort of jacket to wear with it.

Vera’s style icon is Doris Day and she loves malls. I agree to start our expedition in one of the shopping centres on the edge of town. I say that I’m looking for something fluffy. After she's held up some preppie cardies I suggest we go into town. I head us to les fripes (vintage clothes shops) and find a fake fur jacket. The jacket illustrated above is a bit tame. Imagine that I’d waylaid a yeti and decapitated it, then snipped the body off below the armpits to make myself a yeti bolero with sleeves - it’s more like that, very ‘rock chick’- great! I can see from Vera’s face that she's neither keen on it nor the fact I've dragged her into this kind of place. Undaunted I bagged it and we went for a drink where she told me some stories and I discovered that she is astonishingly promiscuous - the day then became a whole lot more entertaining.

Food - and Yoga

23rd October
My reasons for not mentioning my background as a cook to French people are different from my UK reasons;
a) They will laugh heartily at the idea of an English person cooking. French people from all regions and in all age groups absolutely love recounting stories about their friend's old auntie, who once went to England and how terrible she found the food.

b) French people like the idea of 'stability', people who chop and change careers, are instable - and if you do use that word in a sentence when you're discussing someone, say it with a shocked upturned note.
I let my neighbours assume that I have the correct insectologist and fluffing qualifications and have been doing this job constantly since graduating.


I’ve joined the weekly yoga class that takes place at our Salle des Fetes. Half the class are couples; The Bontettes the Bic Biros and the Sheep Farmers, then there is a pregnant postlady, the lady that cleans the church and Jeanne who runs the lunch café in the next village. My bank manager takes part and Scary Eena does the session in her slippers. The instructor is lovely and helps Eena and the Postlady into reclining postures while the rest of us find new ways to stand on one leg.

The evening always starts with lots of kissing and lengthy greetings. After this week's session Mme Bontette declared that next week we should have a group picnic supper after the class and that she will provide fish soup, Scary Eena immediately volunteered her rilletes, Mme Biro offered a salad and Mme B then told the rest of the class what they must bring – having failed my tomato-chopping task at last month’s sports day I am appointed bread monitor.

Translation needed

21st October
I've just got back from my cooking episode - one of my American clients uttered a phrase that has been buzzing around in my head puzzling me.

She was teling me about her church (episcopal) and said
We're having pastor trouble

In what way?
Well the congregation feel he is too European

Is anyone reading this who can translate, What would a priest do that is specifically European and considered bad form - buy unpasteurised cheese?

The Great Escape

19th October
In Real Life I’m a cook, but I try not to let on, once people know what I do, I find that I don’t get invited to supper.

With what turns out to be uncanny timing, I’ve accepted a job cooking in a chateau for a few days. I don’t know this area, nor had I previously met the owner. I arrived just before the guests, meeting the Chateau Owner briefly before he dashed off back to the UK. He spent the little time we had together explaining the peculiarities of the tv remote control unit.

I ask what he does, he says that he works ‘in the City’ advising people how to invest.
Are you busy?

Well no there’s nothing to do because my clients only invest borrowed money and no-one is lending - I still go to the office but I’m getting all my photo albums sorted out.

This is the first time the property has been let out. The kitchen is a classic TYPE I MAN KITCHEN; fashionable wide drawers, lots of stainless steel and granite. Eight industrial-sized gas burners and not a single pan big enough to sit on one. The big drawers contain electric drills and the small ones have a collection of corks, corkscrews and orange neoprene Champagne wrappers. The cooking equipment is not dissimilar to what I had in my first bedsit; mismatched, slightly broken things. Clearing cupboard space I collected up eight part-used super-large ketchup bottles, several opened boxes of Chocolate Nesqik and many bags of marshmallow-based sweets.


The Chateau has a very grand website, one would expect to arrive at a high class private hotel. The guests are American, half the party are elderly and they are horrified that there’s not a proper grown-up in charge. None of the bedrooms has a bedside table or reading light. They spend their first day moving tables and lights upstairs, I spent mine trying to find a town that isn’t an extended gift arcade so I can buy cooking pots.

There is a plague of flies in the Chateau, originating from a circular room, sort of done out as a bar, in that it has a bar and bar stools but no liquor or glassware, the flies are coming from somewhere in here that no one wants to investigate. We shut the door tight and listen to the buzzing in horrid fascination when we walk past. Downstairs the lamps have all disappeared. In the gloomy candlelight we now appear to be part of a Murder Mystery event where someone has cut off the power - no-one can work the telly either.

The Chateau Owner has written lists of instructions but couldn’t print them, he has asked me to get everyone to read the file on his computer. They are mostly things you have to do to take care of his chateau. It has become a parlour game; the guests take turns to go and have a look, when they come back into the room they recite their favourite part while the rest of us roll around laughing

Please ensure the chateau is secure when you leave
To close the kitchen shutters you need to climb first onto the worktops and then on to the window sills, then you will be able to lean out, and, using the hooked stick, pull the shutters in and fasten them.

The guests are here to celebrate the birthday of Mother, her children and siblings are here with their partners.

Mother is the neatest, trimmest cattle rancher you ever did meet, someone who knows how to take care of antiques and 'doesn’t like a fuss’. On our second day she sought me out to reassure me that she wasn’t wearing the same clothes every day
It’s just that I have five identical sets of black slacks and peach blouses in my luggage.
Then she admires my jewellery and says,
I have some turquoise earrings but they’re too pretty to wear

The elder daughter tries to control proceedings, I am not sure whether style-wise she is channelling Groucho Marx or Deputy Dawg but I’m finding it hard to resist the urge to offer her a cigar.

The brother is as misshapen as his sister but he has inherited her share of charm, he recounts a childish escapade and his mother laughs heartily, the daughter whines
Hey, whenever I did that I’d get into trouble
Mother snaps at her
I know you all did the same stuff - it’s just that you were so irritating when you did it I couldn’t help but bawl you out

I am just beginning to build a head of sympathy for the daughter, when they get the television going and Barak Obama comes on, her attention is riveted, she yells at the screen.
Tow-well Heead

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.

A New Sort of Back Therapy

In the bar at the weekend we met the people Mrs Strange suspects of druidism. My druid knowledge comes from the Asterix books so might not be accurate. Mrs Druid is grey-haired and earnest. She does a lot of peering over her glasses at us. The Director mentions that he has done something to his back, she says that she'll heal it for him. He tells her that he is leaving in a couple of days and won't have time to visit her,
Oh you don't have to be there, I just need your age
The Director, slightly flummoxed gave that information and soon after that we went home.

Sunday was mayhem here, The landlord stuff, the shooting ... plus The Director and the boys were preparing to go back to the UK. In the midst of all this Mrs Druid arrived with two sheets of paper closely handwritten on both sides. It was unintelligible, Mrs Druid launched into an explanation of all The Director's psychic problems. We were gape-mouthed in fascination. I have never seen The Director so unable to deal with a situation. I think he has forgotten about his back problem though.

Damn!

13th October
I was out scrumping figs this morning, on my way home I saw Mme Bert walking back from her mailbox. We exchanged the usual pleasanteries and I asked how her husband was doing.
His hip is giving him a lot of pain, he was at the hospital on Friday
I thought maybe he had rheumatic problems and asked what treatment he is getting,
Well the cancer is quite advanced, so there's nothing much they can do now.

Getting Shot At By The Landlord

12th October
It was very misty this morning and the Camera Boys were out around the house getting atmospheric shots of dewy spider webs at sunrise. Suddenly I heard them running in and shouting that someone was shooting at them. We all went out to see who was there and the figure of our foxy-faced landlord in his brand new hunting clothes loomed towards us, proudly carrying a very small dead bird in his pocket.
I'll be back later for lunch
He strode off and we put camerawork on hold for the morning.
I was disgruntled

He came back for lunch having done no more damage apparently, he seemed impressed by all the work we'd done clearing up the outbuildings. The Director wanted me to establish if we could be there another year at least, so I asked the landlord if he was planning to put the property on the market, he said no, we could be there as long as we liked. I then asked about laying a concrete floor in the barn adjoining the house so we can set up a filming studio there, the landlord has agreed to pay half the cost of doing this.
I'm still disgruntled

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.

Discombobulation

7th October
Today, instead of snoozing though interminable alarm calls, something possessed me to leap out of bed, and go straight off for an early morning walk (OK I dressed first). Mist rising off the rolling hills – very poetic. I stopped in with M and Mme Bert for coffee on my way back. M. Bert is the twinkly man who first showed me the Lovely House he has an impeccable potager, and is an archetypal French Paysan, bright blue trousers, dark wrinkly skin, always in a hat. Mme Bert is tiny and has bright blue eyes that she uses to gaze in admiration at her husband the expert shot, collector of mushrooms and gardener extraordinaire. She follows conversations mouthing along with the talker, which is disconcerting. She tells me to check my walnuts.

There are great numbers of crayfish in the lake, of various sorts but dominated by a very invasive species; the Signal Crayfish which they are keen to eradicate in France. I’m doing my bit for the cause – these days the crayfish are busy having sex at the edges of the lake. I put on a rubber glove, creep up behind them and put them in a bucket.

I accumulated masses of live crayfish, so I delivered a bowlful to Mme Bontette, the French lady tells me at length about the court bouillon she will make to cook them in and all the rest of her planned evening menu. I then took a bowlful to Mrs Strange from the bar, she has just been round to return the empty bowl. She told me that she couldn’t be bothered with them and just dumped them out (still live) in the stream at the bottom of her garden.

I went to check the walnuts, their skins are splitting, I picked a few and took them round to the Berts to see if they are ready enough. M. Bert tells me to take off the skins and leave them in the open for three days. My fingers are like prunes from wearing rubber gloves to catch crayfish so I do the walnut job bare-fingered. I now look as though I have a very heavy smoking habit.

For our supper I made a bowl of aioli, salad and steamed potatoes to eat with our crayfish.

The landlord phoned this evening to say that he’s coming by next weekend (he lives a four-hour drive away) and would like to see us. Having fallen in love with this place and anyway dreading the day when we will have to go, I am now convinced that he has decided to sell the property soon and is coming to ask us to leave. An hour after the call The Director is already tired of the sound of my gnashing teeth.

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

Hornet Fans Forever

3rd October
Whenever I mention hornets to a French person I get told that,
Three stings from a hornet could kill a man

The Director snorts with derision at this, apparently hornets are just large but non-aggressive wasps. He is a big hornet fan, last month he spent days filming a hornet going backwards and forwards from a pear hanging on it’s tree. The pear rotted and fell off the branch while it was being eaten, I had to sew it back on the branch so we could continue filming the whole pear disappearing.

I have great faith in The Director but, faced with the three-sting line from every single resident I’ve met, I’ve not been pushing to find a nest. Wednesday afternoon, with my invincible hair, I bit the bullet and headed to the bar to scout out farmers. I found a stocky man whose own head of dark hair stands up vertically and starts from an unusually low hairline, he is known by the local girls as Hérisson. When I said we needed a hornet’s nest he told me about a felled oak in one of his fields,
it's full of hornets, you can come and film that if you want.

Yesterday morning M.Hérisson took us to his field with the oak.
I’ve just thrown a rock at them to see if they're still there

We wanted to film the nest entrance and the way hornets organise security - they’re like night club bouncers, checking out everyone who wants to come in. The rock stuck in the entrance did make getting a good camera angle a bit tricky but we persevered. After a day with the hornets I’ve come to really like them and their wobbly flying.

That is the last of the insect footage that we expect to get until the spring. Insects tend to hibernate or die off for the winter so the next couple of weeks will be concentrating on getting establishing shots of landscape and habitats. Then the production goes back to the UK to edit the footage we have(100 hours so far) and write the scripts.

Hornet Conquering Hair

1st October
French ladies get their hair done a lot more than English ones and, possibly as a hint to get myself sorted out, I was recently given a gift coupon to use at a coiffeuse in the nearby town. I came back from Paris feeling a little grungy and have just used my hair coupon.

The vogue around here is for a helmet effect, either a shiny bobbed one, or, as the girl sitting next to me was having done, the wig-on-backwards look, where the hair is brushed forward and winged out in front of one’s face. Strong colour effects are a bonus to any style obviously. I have emerged with solid hair, the sort of thing you might clip onto a lego lady,  with such powerful hair I now feel confident enough to tackle the task I have been avoiding since July - finding a hornet’s nest to film. I will be marching the Director and the Camera Boys to the hairdresser tomorrow to get the same invincible hairdo - and then we will conquer the hornets.

Sleeping Arrangements Part II

30th September
It’s an age thing isn’t it, wanting your own room to fart and snore away in to your heart’s content. But as a child I loved sharing a room, especially with other kids. Between the ages of five and eight years I slept in a lot of other households and had some very ‘formative’ experiences, mostly in a good way. There was the Grandmother who let me share her big feather bed - I imagined it as our ship, sailing through the torrid waves of smelly, peach-coloured full-body corsets, vests and big knickers that surrounded our vessel. My grandmother would fetch us coffee with a big slug of rum in the morning and then we’d sit in bed getting sozzled while she read me the latest episode of her blood-and-guts novel.

The only sleeping place I wasn't keen on was at the Sunday-School Aunties who had picturess of morbid subjects like The Slain Wives of Bluebeard on their walls. When I stayed here, a door was laid over the bath for me to sleep on - which was a bit like having an en-suite now I think of it, except that other people could come in and have a pee in the night.

Sleeping Arrangements

29th September
Last week some camera kit needed to go to Paris – urgently, to be fixed and for various reasons it needed delivering in person.

I went for the late sleeper train on Thursday evening. The kit was packed in a large orange rucksack which was so heavy and full that I couldn’t take any personal stuff apart from the toothbrush and spare knickers that I stuffed in my jacket pocket. I was at the station early and staggered with my load to the nearest table in the cavernous station restaurant. A waitress ran out, shouting at me and sent me to a table of her choice. At this point the drunk in the corner lit a cigarette and the waitress transferred her wrath to him. The drunk tried to leave but was too unsteady, he heaved his rucksack on and fell backwards, lying like an upturned tortoise until the furious waitress gave him a hand to help him up and fell on top of him. So - a comedic start to the evening!

I was a bit nervous about the train journey, I wasn’t sure what to expect from these mixed sleepers. In my wagon, nearly all the six berths were already filled, I climbed to a top bunk and there, across the bunk space, a mere arm’s length away was a virtually naked, gorgeous young man. Below us in the middle bunks were a father and his daughter and in one of the bottom bunks an elderly man. I’d just settled myself, when a lot of huffing and puffing, shuffling and grunting sounds came from the corridor, our carriage door opened and a little woman with big crinkly hair wheezed into our carriage struggling with two cages full of birds, she was anxious and distressed and talking incessantly to them/herself. The semi-naked god leaned over from his bunk and calmed her down, she got her birds settled and there was no further incident.

In the few French homes I’ve visited I often see rooms filled with beds where everyone bunks down together when they come to stay, it made me consider the cultural issues of personal space and what we (me/my friends) think of as acceptable. Earlier this year, two writers came for a week to our UK production offices to work with us, I suggested that they might prefer to share a two-bedroom apartment rather than have hotel rooms. The idea was unacceptable because it meant they’d have to share a bathroom.

By contrast, when I got involved in a student exchange to Romania. The Romanian students gathered to claim us and take us back to their homes. Irena took me and another girl to her family’s tiny apartment in a vast Stalinesque neighbourhod on the outskirts of the city. Her parents and grandparents would sleep in the one bedroom she said, then led us into the living room, the sofa was given a push and lo! A bed was produced for the three of us girls to sleep in for the week.

Looking for the Chicken Nugget Tree

25th September
Most of the British population here are attending French classes as a way of trying to get to grips with the language. Fat Dad however, has taken the osmotic approach to language learning, that well known process where simply being in France makes the language absorb through the skin. He doesn’t believe in school so his children don’t go. And because it’s really hard communicating with French people when you don’t speak the language, the osmotic method is slow.

Sometimes I stop by his gate and let Fat Dad lecture me, he always has a lot to say about the evils of processed food, he doesn’t allow his children any sugar or salt and wants them to grow up eating food that they have grown or foraged themselves, living off the land 'like the French do'. Their vegetable garden isn't going yet, so it’s down to foraging for the moment. He asks if I have any idea what is around that they could gather. There are figs everywhere, I get him a plateful. He looks mystified - I show him how to eat the fruit. He tries a little and decides that figs are not going to be on their menu, they’ve also rejected tomatoes and apples - I’m curious to know what they do eat.

It was the eldest child’s birthday today, Fat Dad took his son to visit neighbours so they can announce the event. I passed by with a card and was invited into their house for the first time. The kitchen is dominated by a huge table mostly covered with power tools, screws and nails, children and mother are sitting at the table happily munching away from a big tray of cold white oven chips, a dish of hard boiled eggs and a tray of chicken nuggets. This is the food they like, Fat Dad says,
on special occasions we have this for a treat.

Digging Stops

Finally yesterday, after two and a half days of digging, the main chamber of the wasp’s nest is located. The Camera Boys wield a teaspoon taped to the end of a bamboo stick, gently scraping away at the wall of the chamber to make a hole big enough to insert an endoscopic lens. The camera is set up by the nest on a mechanism that controls it remotely. People are getting stung now and one of the Camera Boys has a hand swollen up like one of those foam things people wave at football matches.

By the end of the day we'd started getting some pictures - and it is fantastic, the wasps construct thick paper shelves of cells where they lay their eggs, there are layers and layers of this densely populated shelving. The wasps arriving all the time with food for wriggling larvae.

More Bloody Wasps

23rd September
A few months ago I allowed myself to be nominated the Health and Safety Officer for this insect filming project. The Big Controller wanted risk assessment forms completed and for someone to be responsible, I’m the one with the most recent First Aid certificate so I got the job. I’ve never felt responsible for anyone before and I’m not really sure how to do it. I’m still the laughing stock of the village for turning up at the Maire’s office in June wanting to know what usually killed people round here.

Now that we’re back to the full household complement of The Director, two Camera Boys and me, work has to start on items on the filming agenda that I’ve been trying to steer away from;

We need to film inside wasp’s and hornet’s nests, will you find us some Lulu ?
Let's have a party
Hey look there’s a wasp’s nest right here by the house.

The digging started yesterday and is being done very quietly so the wasps don’t guess what we’re up to, a bit like The Great Escape, but in reverse. It’s important not to actually break into any tunnel or the chamber, so work is proceeding very slowly. The aim is to find the main nest chamber and put in a tiny lens to film waspy activity. The nest entrance is a hole in the ground where (if you put your head really close to it and peer in) you can glimpse a tunnel veering to the left, The Director made a guess as to the likely location of the chamber (a bit further on in that direction), but the clever wasps have found a hole with a circular tunnel (the nest is made in an old animal burrow) and there is now a sort of moat virtually encircling the site.

There can’t be many wasps actually in the nest because they are all in the house with me and what's left of a big box of oozingly ripe figs that somebody generously contributed to Sunday’s party. Obviously I can’t join in the digging as I need to turn this potentially lethal health hazard into tarts.

Two Crowds

22nd September
More people than I’d expected turned up to the Grand Sunday Barbeque. I’d asked everyone to bring along something to share: a salad or tart perhaps? an elderly neighbour handed me a huge washing up bowl full of cooked green beans and told me to get them dressed immediately while they were warm and that I’d better find a larger bowl to do it in.

I have a suspicion that Mme Bic Biro is a school teacher, she has short, shiny, stripey hair and a voice for reaching the far end of any school playground. When I realised how many people were turning up, she conjured up extra cutlery and made enough rice salad to feed a small country.

It was really hot yesterday. The French and non-French contingents kept pretty much separate during the afternoon, the two groups were clearly differentiated by the fact that the French guests sat in the shade and they did not bring their dogs.

We’re all trying not to scratch our itchy red aoûtat bites. I'd never come across them before coming here, my body looks like it has measles.

Party Invites

20th September
It looks as though weather will be good for the weekend so we've decided to have a barbeque party at the Lovely House tomorrow. Since the local elections earlier this year the village has been divided, into at least three factions, everyone seems to be mortal enemies with each other. When I went round inviting people, I noticed a look of panic frozen on the faces of my invitees and then some muttering about having to ask the husband. They don't want to be rude but neither do they want to risk a 'difficult' situation. Either that or word has spread about my previous soirées.

I went into town to load up on food and beer and, fired up by my game of pétanque on Wednesday, I decided to go and buy some boules from a proper sports equipment shop. In these places a serious-looking man measures your hand and asks if you’re a tireur (throw the balls hard) or a pointeur (genty roll them). After my first game I haven’t quite found my style yet, so I said ‘both’ – I've been sold the most expensive set of boules in the world. I've also bought a carrying case for them but have stopped short of buying the little duster and piece of measuring string.

Tempting... or maybe not

19th September
Bruno arrived at the front door yesterday morning, bag of beans in hand, he said that he hadn’t meant to be rude the previous day.
Then he got closer.
You know what women are like he whispered conspiratorially. But If you want to thank me, a nice kiss would do the job

What with the alcohol that had clearly been consumed and the fact that Bruno is not a friend of soap and water, he was quite ripe. I suppressed the next ten things that came to my lips, and finally came up with;
That's a lovely offer Bruno, but my husband would never allow it.

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.

Radio Gaga

16th September
Last week we had ever more brilliant ideas about fast things we should film with the Speedy Camera.
We could pile up those old tv’s and explode them
Too dangerous
OK lets fill that rain barrel with milk and drop things in it
like what?
A person - someone could jump in the barrel naked - from up there
and so on…

Our brilliance was edited and I charged around finding props for the filming. A side effect of all this creativity is that the camerawork is eating up computer disk space so I’ve also been buying terabytes by the carload.

Then a fire in the Channel Tunnel last week mucked up all the pretty travel arrangements I’d made for people and kit coming and going over the weekend. (we had to give the camera back – big sighs all round) and I had to go to the UK, retrieve a car and drive it back to France.

In the Lovely House I can get a local radio station that consists of someone reading out small ads, Mimi in Marciac would like to swap a dog for a brown sofa, sort of thing, it involves streams of phone numbers and is mesmerising, so probably not ideal for driving along to. However, I did fancy a bit of company for the epic drive back here. I set the radio to ‘search’ but it discovered only a series of ‘pop’ stations. French pop comes from a bin labelled Merde and makes me want to shoot myself. The CD player was broken, so I finally I settled on a 'phone-out’ programme where, between records, a DJ makes a series of calls to recalcitrant fonctionnaires on behalf of listeners who are having problems with insurance claims and legal issues. I would never have listened to an English equivalent of this (is there an English equivalent?) but I find this kind of thing compelling in other countries.

What Are We Like?

14th September
Now that I've decsribed our work colleagues and neighbours, it seems only fair that, at this point that I should try to describe what The Director and I are like:

The Director is mostly quite clever but he can sometimes be a tiny bit like Mr Bean. There are as many as three pairs of glasses on his head at any time. Invariably a pair falls off and he treads on them, or the pair in his pocket gets crushed - his path is littered with spectacle body parts. He likes shiny camera-related objects and dead animal remains - our house is full of fossils and skulls.

Impossible to describe oneself, you can see from the banner that I wear reinforced underwear and have a penchant for pointy hats and big skirts, I am also very keen on food. I asked The Director to describe my inner beauty but had to discard his first attempt, mainly because I took exception to phrases which included grumpy, abrasive and cow. I also think stingy is a little uncalled for. I am trying to control a budget here, so yes, the arrival of another lorry-load of camera lenses, tapes and computer hard drives will raise my volume a notch.

I asked him if I resembled a fictional character or screen icon, I made some suggestions: Audrey Hepburn, Gina Lollabrigida, Isabella Rosselini…? He thought a bit and said 'That girl from the Peanuts cartoons - Lucy'.

Living with Boys

11th September
The newly arrived, very young, Camera Boy is here for the week to help with the Speedy Camera work. He expresses geeky joy at the sight of a new computery thing and lollopy enthusiasm when faced with a big sandwich, he is something like a combination of Scooby Doo and his mate Shaggy – Shaggy Doo? His specialist subject is playing Jimi Hendrix guitar tunes.

Shaggy retains an adolescent naiveté about domestic issues. When The Director asked him for a glass of tonic water with some slices of lemon in it Shaggy cut a whole lemon into 4 quarters, rammed the lot into a small tumbler and tried to fit some tonic in around the pieces.

Happy Camera Boy used to be a bit like Shaggy, we’ve lived through several episodes like the one when he used his t-shirt as an oven glove and the plastic motif on it melted, fusing him to the metal pan. He’s all grown up and mature now, although having had a lifetime’s diet of bad films and trashy telly, his specialist subject is still funny sound effects and singing old theme tunes.

Big Bangs

10th September
It’s Big Bang day over at CERN in the Jura, I haven't quite got to grips with it yet although this cool video I came across on Jacob Russell’s site helped.

Our Speedy Camera see post below is just like having our very own particle accelerator - OK it’s nothing like - but it does show things you can’t normally see. There was a lot of insect filming with it the last couple of days and that was all great but...

Obviously it would've been madness not to have a go at filming other fast things; explosions, smashing stuff, spillages – and someone had the idea of throwing a dart into a water-filled balloon. At 9,000 frames per second you see the dart piercing the balloon, ripping it into 3 sections, leaving a ball of shining jelly water hanging in the air. The dart’s silhouette cuts through the water, slicing up the wobbly blob which explodes into a millions of sparkly drops – bloody brilliant.

Big Head Ornaments = Small Penis

9th September
As a postscript to the fluffing thing below, I tend not to get asked to fluff if it can be helped, I am considered stupendously impatient, particularly if I have to work with The Director, it is a bit true - somewhere around the two thousand and fiftieth take, when I’ve snipped and brushed and poked with tweezers and I’ve used up all the beetles I’d collected (they fly away when they've had enough), I can get a little scratchy.

I’m not good with figures actually, when I hear statistics I go a bit blurry and when I try and pass on the information I tend to shift the decimal point around. If it’s important, I need someone to tell me the information slowly while I write it on my hand and then try and embed the information as an image in my head. I’ve written the next bit while the Director is hovering nearby.

The Speedy Camera has arrived – with a Youthful Camera Boy, it films in high defintion at up to NINE THOUSAND FRAMES PER SECOND. Filming at normal speed goes at twenty five frames per second (fps) so this camera is something else. The fuzzy wing beats of bees (150 times per second) for example are transformed into graceful balletic gestures. We’ve got it for the week and so far we’ve just been trying it out. I expect I’ll go on about it a bit more another day.

Interesting article in the New Scientist this week. A scientific study on four populations of the same species of horned beetle showed that the ones with the biggest horns had smaller penises, the scientist observes that:

'Strong male beetles use their horns to fight for females, but weaker males prefer to sneak off to mate while competitors are fighting.'

Wasp Fluffing

6th September
Below the Lovely House there is a sunny, overgrown path sloping down to the lake, densely inhabited with Wasp Spiders (Argiope).
The Camera Boys have been hunkered down on this alley (not today, it’s pouring comme vache qui pisse) trying to film Mrs Wasp Spider catching and wrapping up some prey. This has been going on for days. There is a wasp’s nest close to the house and rubber-gloved boys swoop around with large butterfly nets trying to catch wasps which are then loaded into catapults and propelled into the spider’s web. Surprisingly difficult to film this one, many wasps end up getting overshot or fly away before they hit the web.
Crickets and grasshoppers are good though. These animals are completely random with their jumping, they just take off and hope for the best, often landing in a bad place like a spider’s web. Sometimes one of them will just catch the web with the coarse bit of a leg, he'll dangle there, trying to keep as still as possible, looking a bit worried, while he works out how to jump clear before the spider notices him - and sometimes he succeeds - and leaps straight into another web.

Note 1: In the spider's world the girls are usually much bigger than the boys, sometimes to same sort of ratio as a London bus and it's conductor. We film the bigger thing because it's easier - plus the girls are usually much better at hunting.

Note 2: The correct term for a person who handles and tries to control animals on set is a 'wrangler’ but we prefer fluffer. The fluffing job can involve brushing the insects off if they're looking a bit dusty and clearing the set of extraneous debris such as unnecessary foliage or other beasts who might have wandered on set.

What Are We Doing Here?

5th September
Thank the Lord, Sarah has given back the camera and it should be with us on Sunday – how apt.

Just in case this blog is giving the impression that I’m just here to poke fun at the local population, I had better make it clear that I am here on a very serious undertaking – I am helping to make a series of television programmes about small invertebrates (insects, bugs, worms and whatnot). Obviously they will be unique, never-seen-before sort of programmes but if I had to make a comparison Look away now Director! they will be more Microcosmos than Miniscule.

I’ve not really yawned on much about the filmmaking side of things. The novelty of this picturesque landscape, with it’s curious population and their funny habits has taken all my attention, like a child given new toys. Also, the main news from Camera Control often seems to be that something is malfunctioning, or broken, or missing and that’s just not fun to report. A two-hour drive on a hot day in a strange town trying to track down a semi-chafed pivot grommet - or Mr Potato Head’s nudie girls - which would you rather write about?

The main thing to know about making wildlife documentaries, and particularly those about very small things,is that it’s very very time consuming. Think of the longest time you can think of and double it by infinity – it takes that long.

Filming insects is not a spectator sport either, the creatures are mostly so tiny they can only be seen by the person peering down the viewfinder (OK there’s usually a monitor but that’s just in monochrome). Often the animals are so fast that you can’t see what's been filmed until it's played back, or they’re so slow that you leave the camera to taking an image every few minutes and come back the next day.

So today, The Director stood by by a fruit tree all day, waiting for the wind to drop and the moment to happen, catching one in-focus, correctly framed, minute of ants milking honeydew from aphids.

Lost in Alaska

4th September
There seems to be a bit of an Alaska theme going on at the moment. We have a camera stuck there – Sarah Palin, send it back to us, you all round Bad Woman you!

We have booked to hire a very Special Camera - high definition and ultra high speed. It should’ve arrived in the UK today, we have people poised to collect it and drive with it to France, but it is stuck in Alaska apparently because of bad weather. The plane did take off last night but had to turn around and go back.

Weather is the big big issue in our lives. Trying to guess how the seasons will be is The Director’s obsession, not only does it affect whether we can actually film or not but it affects what creatures do and when they do it. And the seasons are always unseasonable, this summer was unseasonably wet but the winter was unseasonably dry. And before you know it things are hatching before they’re supposed to, or not hatching at all and havoc is played with our filming schedules. We need good light for this Special Camera plus insects and flowers, and that’s summer isn't it? and summer is running out fast... so come on Sarah give us back the camera.

Mr Potato Head's Nudie Girls

3rd September
I'm going to our local woodyard a lot these days to get timber for the film sets. The yard rambles across several properties, involving about four houses, one of which is a burnt-out shell and used as storage. The whole estate is strewn with wood in every state, huge tree trunks some sliced into planks, pile upon pile of structural timbers and everywhere the flotsam of rotten pallets and bits of packaging. The establishment is run by a sweet-faced man who looks like a potato, and his father, an old man in shorts and a bandaged knee. The mother is short and fierce. If I turn up and neither of the men are to be seen she calls their attention by shrieking like a film heroine suddenly coming cross a horrid murder.

When I’ve selected my timber I have to wade through yapping dogs to get to a tiny office where I wait while the son laboriously writes out a bill in copperplate handwriting. The office is stuffed and the walls are completely stuck with bits of paper. The most prominent items are the girly calendars. There are about four of them, all a bit out of date. Only two pages are visible because they are hung in two sets and doubled up, one calendar over another. The girls have been changed each time I go in. Father and son seem to be continuously locked in combat and I wonder at what point, after years of arguing over which Honey is to be on view, they decided to have a girl each.

Sports Day

1st September
We’ve just had a Fete des Sports. Given that on any summer weekend there will be at least two villages nearby having a Fete Locale identical to the one we celebrated in July the low population level here means that attracting participants can be tricky. Villages have tacit agreements to support one neighbour over another and supplementary fetes are a bit of a risk, especially with all the boycotting going on in our village lately. Undaunted, the Entertainments Committee organised two days of activities which included several meals, a cycle race, ping pong, card games and pétanque.

In my role as Chief Community Liaison Officer for our household I’d offered my services for the event. Last week I sat in on a meeting where schedules were made and tasks delegated. I was assigned the role of assistant tomato chopper for Saturday lunch.

The schedule posted on the door of the Salle des Fetes bore no relation to actual events, preparations for Saturday's midday barbeque (with tomatoes) started at 3pm. Unfortunately I'd failed to stay au courant and in a convoluted misunderstanding I missed the opportunity to show off my tomato-chopping prowess.

What was really needed was bodies. On Sunday afternoon, the last game was won at 6pm, the winner zoomed off on his motorbike and the few spectators ebbed away. Half a dozen of us remained resolutely spinning out our drinks, waiting for the 8pm closing ceremony. When the time finally arrived, two visiting dignitaries solemnly waited to present the prizes. Bic Biro and the President of the Entertainments Committee made speeches and we applauded as the dignitaries held aloft the trophies that would have been handed to the victors had they been there.