Monday, December 25, 2006
Sunday 17 December 2006
Before we left LNL to go to Paris, a very important garden event took place - the first emptying of the compost bin. This had been filled and refilled many times since it was installed last March, and the level had gone down miraculously each time, but just lately with the colder weather, it had remained full to the top. I had often reflected that as I have half a grapefruit almost every morning for breakfast, there must be between 150 and 200 grapefruit skins in there! The compost was needed for the newly dug iris bed, and N took away about four bucketfuls of compost to spread over it.
As I went to the boulangerie on the morning we left and realised that the next day I would go to my "other" boulangerie in Saint-Denis, I thought how nice it was to be regarded as regular customer in two different boulangeries in two different departements. We left on Thursday afternoon at about 2 pm as usual; it was cloudy in Normandy and we saw Christmas decorations in all the villages and in Evreux, just as we had this time last year when we were just getting to know all these places. Towards Paris it was sunny, but the traffic was slow.
We are now back in Paris for about a week, for two events, the opera next Thursday, of which more later, but the first was on Friday when we went to an Honorary Degree Ceremony at the Sorbonne. This involved N getting out his ceremonial robes, a long yellow gown with black borders all buttoned down the front with a complicated sash threaded through, plus a flat round hat known as a "toque". The robe was made to fit, but is kept in a standard carrying case which is slightly shorter, so that the robe was rather squashed at the bottom - N said he thought that at over 6 ft tall, he is Longer then the Average Frenchman, which we both agreed would make a good title for a novel.
All this we took in two bags on the metro, and once arrived (thinking of the last time were there in June for the examination of the thesis, and it was so hot) we parted and N went in a back entrance for robing. I joined a crowd of other guests trying to get in a small entrance all waving their invitations and elbowing each other out of the way. Ironically, the invitations they were waving had "Séance Solonelle" printed on them, but the scuffle was far from solemn. The reason for the high security was that one of the recipients of an honorary doctorate was the President of Senegal; the other was an American academic. Once I was in the Grand Amphitheatre there was a lot to look at, as there were many ambassadors from African countries plus their wives, mostly dressed in beautiful colourful national dress. There were also many young Senegalese men dressed much more ordinarily, former students of the great man, and a Japanese lady just in front of me, wearing a kimono with all the trimmings, whom I studied at length from time to time. All the professors and emeritus professors walked in procession, N amongst them, and the honoured guests took their places on the platform amongst flags and maces, while the Sorbonne choir and orchestra plus their conductor (whom I recognised from the Saint John Passion in the Circus last April) played and sang "Gaudeamus Igitur".
I had been to Honorary Degree Ceremonies before in Cambridge, plus one tacked on to the end of my daughter Caroline's' graduation at UCL in London, so knew what to expect. (Except that in Cambridge the entire proceedings are in Latin.......) The eulogies and responses were punctuated by more music however, by Mozart and Gluck. All was quite interesting, especially the American who spoke excellent French and was amusing and entertaining, until we got to the final speech from President of Senegal which lasted far too long. The amphitheatre was cold and getting more and more draughty, and when I heard him talking about pesticides, and giving his website address, I thought it had really gone too far. N said later that from where he was sitting he could see the speech on the lectern and each time the president turned over a type-written page there were more beneath!
A short concert was scheduled for 7 pm, but it was already 7.20 when the speeches finished, and all the colourful Africans crowded onto the stage, and the Senegalese students gathered round one of their number at the front of the auditorium, while the orchestra tried to re-arrange their seating. N and I had arranged to meet at a restaurant once it was all over, and after hanging around for about 15 minutes I decided the concert was not going to happen and gratefully collected my coat and made for the restaurant, somewhat delayed by the president and his entourage going down a red carpet and into a very large car, just at that moment. Unfortunately it was no warmer in the restaurant, and some time before N arrived, having managed to get out of his robes and listen to the first movement of the concert. When we had been deciding on a restaurant at which to meet, I had seen notices offering "vin chaud", (hot spiced wine) and was disappointed to find that this one didn't have any. But we enjoyed our dinner, looking out at the lights and fountains in the Place de la Sorbonne, and thinking how unlike La Neuve-Lyre it all was.
On Saturday I had another interesting and somewhat surprising outing; having found "French, American and English Christmas Music" scheduled in the concert listings at the American Cathedral at 4 in the afternoon, I thought I would go along and listen as I'd never been there before. The Cathedral is in the Avenue George V - I'd never been there before either - a very smart avenue with at least two large exclusive hotels and the flagship store of Louis Vuitton (full of Japanese) on the corner. It was at number 23 - I don't think I've ever known a cathedral with a street number before; one can't imagine a door number on Ely Cathedral or Notre Dame.
The surprise came as I went in and was handed a programme; it was a service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The Cathedral was very like an English Anglican church; tall and lofty in pale stone, with sober stained glass windows, banners hanging from the ceiling and a marked absence of the statues and side altars seen in French and Italian churches. As I read through the programme - or rather, Order of Service - I was surprised to realise just how much I had been missing all this; advent services at King's or St John's Colleges in Cambridge; singing with the Cambridge choir at Bury St Edmunds in the cathedral there, the carol singing round the offices which we did at UCLES every December, and going even further back, school carol services which were always based on this model.
The hymns (sung by the congregation) and the carols (sung by the excellent cathedral choir) were indeed a mixture of French, American and English. Everything in the "programme" was translated into either English or French, which made very interesting reading, for example: "for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind = ils avaient peur.") The lessons were read in either French or English, according to the nationality of the reader, but the English was not exactly the King James Version, although very like it. As we all left an hour and three quarters later, I overheard an Englishwoman say "Yes, we've been coming for several years now", and thought yes, what a nice regular thing to do. I felt that the nice American academic and his wife from the Sorbonne yesterday should have been there, but didn't see them. There was a website address and other details on the back of the very efficient programme, so it would be easy to find out the date another year.
The next afternoon I was back in the Avenue George V again; with N this time, as we drove round Paris looking at all the Christmas lights, particularly those in the Champs Elysées. We did this two years ago, when I came to Paris for Christmas as a Mere Visitor; last year we were so glad to get back from working in the empty house at LNL and have a few days peace and comfort over Christmas that we stayed put and didn't go out anywhere. Christmas in Paris is magical; there are so many more decorations on the outsides of houses, shops and restaurants than in Britain, and so many more composed of tasteful foliage and silver lights, rather than coloured plastic. The Eiffel Tower was all lit up and sparkling and there was huge illuminated Ferris Wheel in the Place de la Concorde. It rained slightly and this made the pavements look all the more attractive, with the lights reflected in the puddles. The Champs Elysées was crowded with pedestrians looking at - and photographing - the illuminations, and lots of tourists and children.
Monday 18 December 2006
I have received many Christmas cards here at Saint-Denis, which surprised me at first until I realised that friends who contact me once a year would only have this address; when I sent out cards at the beginning of December last year, it seemed a little risky to give the LNL address as my new and permanent one before the signature had taken place! Many of the accompanying letters speak of retirement and grandchildren; I suppose it is not surprising, but makes me feel very old.
Today I have been on a large shopping trip - into central Paris for the fourth day running - and done the bulk of my Christmas gift shopping, to take back to the family when I visit between Christmas and New Year. When we are here N always tries to avoid going into Paris on the train as much as possible; but I always feel that there is so much out there to see and experience that opportunities should not be wasted. And in any case, it is not nearly as tiring as going to work every day; today I left at 10 in the morning and was back by 4, having spent the morning in the shopping centre at the Forum des Halles at Châtelet and the afternoon at Galeries Lafayette, especially in the Food Hall.
I have been to the beauty salon in Saint-Denis to have my eyebrows shaped and at last seem to have struck up some kind of ongoing relationship with the same beautician I saw the time before. She said I was "coquette" which I think was a compliment, and admired my necklace, and we discussed shopping and Christmas, just as I would have done in Cambridge, indeed as I do with my hairdresser in LNL, whom I now think I know very well.
Also in Saint-Denis the Christmas market has opened again like last year; a row of little wooden chalets behind the Hôtel de Ville and animals to look at: a donkey, cows, sheep, a goat, rabbits, chickens and geese. N reckoned that the donkey was the same one as last year, as he thought he looked very experienced. ("I've been in this game for years....") I was given free tastings of foie gras, honey and cheese, and bought honey and also a jar of chestnut jam - this will be a new experience!
Tuesday 19 December 2006
N's latest project is the planning of a trip to Luxembourg and Germany for the end of January, involving maps, guidebooks and routes. He has had the idea for some time, but when I received an invitation to the 60th birthday party of my German friend Erika - whom I knew in Cambridge about 10 years ago, and with whom I have kept in contact - it all fitted into place very well, and he says it is just what the new car needs. The party will be on the edge of the Rhine, just outside Frankfurt where she lives, and conveniently Luxembourg is on the way between there and Paris. Accommodation will be booked for us for the night of the party, and N has reserved us a hotel room in Luxembourg for the night before that. This means that he is very often reading a very ancient copy of "Teach Yourself German" in bed in the mornings, and I'm pleased to say I am doing better when tested than I did with the Spanish, especially when there are sentences like "There are no apples in the garden." They obviously haven't seen ours! We are just hoping that this Winterreise will not be too snowy and icy, and that the weather stays good.
Today we have been into Paris together, mainly to buy my Christmas presents from N which will not to be a surprise. They are a pan which is across between a frying pan and a saucepan, apparently called a "poêle à sauter" which I chose from the large catering equipment shop where we bought the cherry stoner last summer, and a little balance scale for weighing letters to get the right postage. I wanted the pan for the kitchen at LNL as N has one here and it's very useful. The scales came from BHV, N's favourite shop, where we also had lunch and looked at several other departments, glad that we no longer need to buy lights, door handles, bathroom fittings or curtain accessories.
Friday 22 December 2006
Last night we went to Opéra Bastille to see Der Rosenkavalier, by Richard Strauss. This is N's favourite opera, and I had been doing a little preliminary research by reading through at least five of his programmes from previous productions, in both Paris and London. It is, as he says, a bittersweet tale with bittersweet music, music that's rather an acquired taste, and one I am enjoying acquiring. It was an excellent production, with marvellous scenery, and costumes from an interesting range of eras, mostly about 1911. Some of the opera programmes contained pictures of old Vienna, which I am very anxious to visit - at least I shall have to be content with 21st century Vienna - something N wants to do as well, after we have been to Germany. Baron Ochs' jacket has inspired N to get out his German jacket for the party in Frankfurt; he says it has the effect of making people speak to him only in German. It is grey with green banded collar and pockets, and motifs made of bone.
As always, the opera audience were just as interesting to look at as the people on stage; costumes from an interesting range of eras there too, and fascinating people to look at and listen to. Nothing else heard other than French, last night. Sometimes it is a little more international.
Before we left LNL to go to Paris, a very important garden event took place - the first emptying of the compost bin. This had been filled and refilled many times since it was installed last March, and the level had gone down miraculously each time, but just lately with the colder weather, it had remained full to the top. I had often reflected that as I have half a grapefruit almost every morning for breakfast, there must be between 150 and 200 grapefruit skins in there! The compost was needed for the newly dug iris bed, and N took away about four bucketfuls of compost to spread over it.
As I went to the boulangerie on the morning we left and realised that the next day I would go to my "other" boulangerie in Saint-Denis, I thought how nice it was to be regarded as regular customer in two different boulangeries in two different departements. We left on Thursday afternoon at about 2 pm as usual; it was cloudy in Normandy and we saw Christmas decorations in all the villages and in Evreux, just as we had this time last year when we were just getting to know all these places. Towards Paris it was sunny, but the traffic was slow.
We are now back in Paris for about a week, for two events, the opera next Thursday, of which more later, but the first was on Friday when we went to an Honorary Degree Ceremony at the Sorbonne. This involved N getting out his ceremonial robes, a long yellow gown with black borders all buttoned down the front with a complicated sash threaded through, plus a flat round hat known as a "toque". The robe was made to fit, but is kept in a standard carrying case which is slightly shorter, so that the robe was rather squashed at the bottom - N said he thought that at over 6 ft tall, he is Longer then the Average Frenchman, which we both agreed would make a good title for a novel.
All this we took in two bags on the metro, and once arrived (thinking of the last time were there in June for the examination of the thesis, and it was so hot) we parted and N went in a back entrance for robing. I joined a crowd of other guests trying to get in a small entrance all waving their invitations and elbowing each other out of the way. Ironically, the invitations they were waving had "Séance Solonelle" printed on them, but the scuffle was far from solemn. The reason for the high security was that one of the recipients of an honorary doctorate was the President of Senegal; the other was an American academic. Once I was in the Grand Amphitheatre there was a lot to look at, as there were many ambassadors from African countries plus their wives, mostly dressed in beautiful colourful national dress. There were also many young Senegalese men dressed much more ordinarily, former students of the great man, and a Japanese lady just in front of me, wearing a kimono with all the trimmings, whom I studied at length from time to time. All the professors and emeritus professors walked in procession, N amongst them, and the honoured guests took their places on the platform amongst flags and maces, while the Sorbonne choir and orchestra plus their conductor (whom I recognised from the Saint John Passion in the Circus last April) played and sang "Gaudeamus Igitur".
I had been to Honorary Degree Ceremonies before in Cambridge, plus one tacked on to the end of my daughter Caroline's' graduation at UCL in London, so knew what to expect. (Except that in Cambridge the entire proceedings are in Latin.......) The eulogies and responses were punctuated by more music however, by Mozart and Gluck. All was quite interesting, especially the American who spoke excellent French and was amusing and entertaining, until we got to the final speech from President of Senegal which lasted far too long. The amphitheatre was cold and getting more and more draughty, and when I heard him talking about pesticides, and giving his website address, I thought it had really gone too far. N said later that from where he was sitting he could see the speech on the lectern and each time the president turned over a type-written page there were more beneath!
A short concert was scheduled for 7 pm, but it was already 7.20 when the speeches finished, and all the colourful Africans crowded onto the stage, and the Senegalese students gathered round one of their number at the front of the auditorium, while the orchestra tried to re-arrange their seating. N and I had arranged to meet at a restaurant once it was all over, and after hanging around for about 15 minutes I decided the concert was not going to happen and gratefully collected my coat and made for the restaurant, somewhat delayed by the president and his entourage going down a red carpet and into a very large car, just at that moment. Unfortunately it was no warmer in the restaurant, and some time before N arrived, having managed to get out of his robes and listen to the first movement of the concert. When we had been deciding on a restaurant at which to meet, I had seen notices offering "vin chaud", (hot spiced wine) and was disappointed to find that this one didn't have any. But we enjoyed our dinner, looking out at the lights and fountains in the Place de la Sorbonne, and thinking how unlike La Neuve-Lyre it all was.
On Saturday I had another interesting and somewhat surprising outing; having found "French, American and English Christmas Music" scheduled in the concert listings at the American Cathedral at 4 in the afternoon, I thought I would go along and listen as I'd never been there before. The Cathedral is in the Avenue George V - I'd never been there before either - a very smart avenue with at least two large exclusive hotels and the flagship store of Louis Vuitton (full of Japanese) on the corner. It was at number 23 - I don't think I've ever known a cathedral with a street number before; one can't imagine a door number on Ely Cathedral or Notre Dame.
The surprise came as I went in and was handed a programme; it was a service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The Cathedral was very like an English Anglican church; tall and lofty in pale stone, with sober stained glass windows, banners hanging from the ceiling and a marked absence of the statues and side altars seen in French and Italian churches. As I read through the programme - or rather, Order of Service - I was surprised to realise just how much I had been missing all this; advent services at King's or St John's Colleges in Cambridge; singing with the Cambridge choir at Bury St Edmunds in the cathedral there, the carol singing round the offices which we did at UCLES every December, and going even further back, school carol services which were always based on this model.
The hymns (sung by the congregation) and the carols (sung by the excellent cathedral choir) were indeed a mixture of French, American and English. Everything in the "programme" was translated into either English or French, which made very interesting reading, for example: "for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind = ils avaient peur.") The lessons were read in either French or English, according to the nationality of the reader, but the English was not exactly the King James Version, although very like it. As we all left an hour and three quarters later, I overheard an Englishwoman say "Yes, we've been coming for several years now", and thought yes, what a nice regular thing to do. I felt that the nice American academic and his wife from the Sorbonne yesterday should have been there, but didn't see them. There was a website address and other details on the back of the very efficient programme, so it would be easy to find out the date another year.
The next afternoon I was back in the Avenue George V again; with N this time, as we drove round Paris looking at all the Christmas lights, particularly those in the Champs Elysées. We did this two years ago, when I came to Paris for Christmas as a Mere Visitor; last year we were so glad to get back from working in the empty house at LNL and have a few days peace and comfort over Christmas that we stayed put and didn't go out anywhere. Christmas in Paris is magical; there are so many more decorations on the outsides of houses, shops and restaurants than in Britain, and so many more composed of tasteful foliage and silver lights, rather than coloured plastic. The Eiffel Tower was all lit up and sparkling and there was huge illuminated Ferris Wheel in the Place de la Concorde. It rained slightly and this made the pavements look all the more attractive, with the lights reflected in the puddles. The Champs Elysées was crowded with pedestrians looking at - and photographing - the illuminations, and lots of tourists and children.
Monday 18 December 2006
I have received many Christmas cards here at Saint-Denis, which surprised me at first until I realised that friends who contact me once a year would only have this address; when I sent out cards at the beginning of December last year, it seemed a little risky to give the LNL address as my new and permanent one before the signature had taken place! Many of the accompanying letters speak of retirement and grandchildren; I suppose it is not surprising, but makes me feel very old.
Today I have been on a large shopping trip - into central Paris for the fourth day running - and done the bulk of my Christmas gift shopping, to take back to the family when I visit between Christmas and New Year. When we are here N always tries to avoid going into Paris on the train as much as possible; but I always feel that there is so much out there to see and experience that opportunities should not be wasted. And in any case, it is not nearly as tiring as going to work every day; today I left at 10 in the morning and was back by 4, having spent the morning in the shopping centre at the Forum des Halles at Châtelet and the afternoon at Galeries Lafayette, especially in the Food Hall.
I have been to the beauty salon in Saint-Denis to have my eyebrows shaped and at last seem to have struck up some kind of ongoing relationship with the same beautician I saw the time before. She said I was "coquette" which I think was a compliment, and admired my necklace, and we discussed shopping and Christmas, just as I would have done in Cambridge, indeed as I do with my hairdresser in LNL, whom I now think I know very well.
Also in Saint-Denis the Christmas market has opened again like last year; a row of little wooden chalets behind the Hôtel de Ville and animals to look at: a donkey, cows, sheep, a goat, rabbits, chickens and geese. N reckoned that the donkey was the same one as last year, as he thought he looked very experienced. ("I've been in this game for years....") I was given free tastings of foie gras, honey and cheese, and bought honey and also a jar of chestnut jam - this will be a new experience!
Tuesday 19 December 2006
N's latest project is the planning of a trip to Luxembourg and Germany for the end of January, involving maps, guidebooks and routes. He has had the idea for some time, but when I received an invitation to the 60th birthday party of my German friend Erika - whom I knew in Cambridge about 10 years ago, and with whom I have kept in contact - it all fitted into place very well, and he says it is just what the new car needs. The party will be on the edge of the Rhine, just outside Frankfurt where she lives, and conveniently Luxembourg is on the way between there and Paris. Accommodation will be booked for us for the night of the party, and N has reserved us a hotel room in Luxembourg for the night before that. This means that he is very often reading a very ancient copy of "Teach Yourself German" in bed in the mornings, and I'm pleased to say I am doing better when tested than I did with the Spanish, especially when there are sentences like "There are no apples in the garden." They obviously haven't seen ours! We are just hoping that this Winterreise will not be too snowy and icy, and that the weather stays good.
Today we have been into Paris together, mainly to buy my Christmas presents from N which will not to be a surprise. They are a pan which is across between a frying pan and a saucepan, apparently called a "poêle à sauter" which I chose from the large catering equipment shop where we bought the cherry stoner last summer, and a little balance scale for weighing letters to get the right postage. I wanted the pan for the kitchen at LNL as N has one here and it's very useful. The scales came from BHV, N's favourite shop, where we also had lunch and looked at several other departments, glad that we no longer need to buy lights, door handles, bathroom fittings or curtain accessories.
Friday 22 December 2006
Last night we went to Opéra Bastille to see Der Rosenkavalier, by Richard Strauss. This is N's favourite opera, and I had been doing a little preliminary research by reading through at least five of his programmes from previous productions, in both Paris and London. It is, as he says, a bittersweet tale with bittersweet music, music that's rather an acquired taste, and one I am enjoying acquiring. It was an excellent production, with marvellous scenery, and costumes from an interesting range of eras, mostly about 1911. Some of the opera programmes contained pictures of old Vienna, which I am very anxious to visit - at least I shall have to be content with 21st century Vienna - something N wants to do as well, after we have been to Germany. Baron Ochs' jacket has inspired N to get out his German jacket for the party in Frankfurt; he says it has the effect of making people speak to him only in German. It is grey with green banded collar and pockets, and motifs made of bone.
As always, the opera audience were just as interesting to look at as the people on stage; costumes from an interesting range of eras there too, and fascinating people to look at and listen to. Nothing else heard other than French, last night. Sometimes it is a little more international.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Monday 11 December 2006
Since we came to live in Normandy we have visited several places that we thought would be nice to go back to for Christmas presents, but have only managed so far to get back to one, to Verneuil-sur-Avre for the day last Tuesday.
Our main destination was the grocery shop called Vermillon, beautifully decorated and full of good things, but unfortunately not the particular presents I was looking for. However, N bought several things and in the « foreign » section we found cranberry sauce for our Christmas dinner. It was a nice surprise when they let us take home the red-lined basket we had collected all our purchases in. (It is currently under the Christmas tree with the first few presents in, waiting for more.) We also visited the large cheap store we had been to last time, a stationery shop for brown paper, a boulangerie and a traiteur. We had been unable to park in the square in front of the church as usual, and had ended up in a side street outside an interesting restaurant; this turned out well as by the time we came back to the car in the wind and rain it was about 12.30, just in time for lunch. It was a strange area, quite unlike LNL or Paris, and reminded me, as these Norman towns sometimes do, of small Suffolk towns. We watched passers-by out of the window and ate white fish with boiled potatoes and leek sauce - very comforting in the cold weather and an excellent idea next time we have a glut of leeks - followed by warm home-made tarte aux pommes and cream.
Wednesday 14 December 2006
As might be obvious, I abandoned any idea of taking part in the Saint-Denis chorale concert; I decided to not to go back to Paris for what I assumed would be the last rehearsal, and it was unlikely in any case that we would still have been there on the day of the concert - even if they hadn’t changed it! On Sunday afternoon I tried to make up for it by treating myself to an uninterrupted listening of the Messiah on 2 CDs, while following the vocal score, and singing along quietly from time to time.
This was made even more pleasant by the fact that on Saturday afternoon I had decorated the mantelpiece - a great thick, long wooden plank - with lots of greenery from the garden; plus a few candles, and that the fire was burning well too. I had been waiting for a fine dry day in order to gather enough greenery to make my Christmas wreath; having bought a base rather like a small straw life belt, and some pins, from the garden centre. I had never made such a thing before - always bought them from Cambridge market in the past - so made it up as I went along, with pieces of several different kinds and colours of fir trees, trailing ivy and orange berries from the firethorn bush, pinning them round as I went, and was very pleased with the result! It looks very good on the front door, just filling one of the square panes of glass.
Fine dry days have been few and far between, as winter weather seems finally to have caught up with us, and it is now dark most of the time, just as it was when we were first here in January. The few fine days we have had N has used to widen the flower bed at the end of the lawn known as « the rose garden » so that we have room for more cut flowers in the summer, as least that’s what I hope. We made a quick trip to the garden centre for some very late bulbs to plant in it - tulips, daffodils, narcissi and various alliums, plus a lovely Christmas rose. He has also completely re-dug the iris bed along the side wall and the bed along the front wall behind the enormous fir tree where some peonies and lilies lived in permanent shadow, and has replanted the peonies and lilies in the new wider flower bed, plus some of the irises. The others have gone back in the new improved iris bed, with far more space, and in various other places in the garden. He has also re-dug about a third of the vegetable garden - the same area which took him about two months last winter - while we wait for the last vegetables to finish. We have had some excellent Brussels sprouts, (looking forward to more with our Christmas dinner!) and a couple of late cauliflowers the size of tennis balls, and there are more celeriac and cabbages to come, plus some elderly lettuces.
Last week we managed to get all our Christmas cards written and posted, complete with computer printed labels for the first time, no mean achievement! After that my next job was the packing of N’s family Christmas presents; last year I helped him out as he was making such a hard job of it, and said I would do it all this year if he started early enough. Luckily, as I am visiting my family between Christmas and New Year, I don’t have any to post. N finished all his Christmas shopping in Paris last week, so we laid them all out on my study floor, he wrote the gift tags and I wrapped them all up; with Christmas paper first then made up three very large brown paper parcels with computer printed addresses.
The next day we staggered along to the post office with our parcels in such strong wind and rain that we could hardly stand up. The new post office door kept blowing open in the wind - it was supposed to shut with a magnet - and could only be kept shut electronically, not convenient when customers needed to get in or out. Our friendly glamorous post-mistress seems to have been permanently replaced by a much plainer unsmiling woman, but efficient enough, and she coped admirably with the opening and shutting of the door while processing our three heavy recorded delivery parcels to the UK. N asked me to fill in the forms as he maintained his writing was illegible - I hadn’t brought my glasses so it was a bit hit and miss, especially the spelling of CADEAUX. By the time we had finished there was quite a queue, all muttering about the inefficiency of the new door system. As we left we bumped into Marie-Antoinette, who told us the wind was part of a great storm over Paris, which we later saw on the lunchtime TV news. I then had to rescue my washing, which had blown all over the lawn.
On Monday morning we completed our Christmas decorations by buying a Christmas tree in the local market, nobly carried home by N. It is smaller than I would have liked, but in a pot, and although that has saved us wondering how to mount it for now, N isn’t sure about where we can plant it afterwards in the garden, already quite full of fir trees! It is standing in the salon in front the French windows, the shutters closed behind it for the duration, with the curtains draped either side and looks very good with all my decorations which were in store last year, and on a real live tree for the first time in about ten years.
Since we came to live in Normandy we have visited several places that we thought would be nice to go back to for Christmas presents, but have only managed so far to get back to one, to Verneuil-sur-Avre for the day last Tuesday.
Our main destination was the grocery shop called Vermillon, beautifully decorated and full of good things, but unfortunately not the particular presents I was looking for. However, N bought several things and in the « foreign » section we found cranberry sauce for our Christmas dinner. It was a nice surprise when they let us take home the red-lined basket we had collected all our purchases in. (It is currently under the Christmas tree with the first few presents in, waiting for more.) We also visited the large cheap store we had been to last time, a stationery shop for brown paper, a boulangerie and a traiteur. We had been unable to park in the square in front of the church as usual, and had ended up in a side street outside an interesting restaurant; this turned out well as by the time we came back to the car in the wind and rain it was about 12.30, just in time for lunch. It was a strange area, quite unlike LNL or Paris, and reminded me, as these Norman towns sometimes do, of small Suffolk towns. We watched passers-by out of the window and ate white fish with boiled potatoes and leek sauce - very comforting in the cold weather and an excellent idea next time we have a glut of leeks - followed by warm home-made tarte aux pommes and cream.
Wednesday 14 December 2006
As might be obvious, I abandoned any idea of taking part in the Saint-Denis chorale concert; I decided to not to go back to Paris for what I assumed would be the last rehearsal, and it was unlikely in any case that we would still have been there on the day of the concert - even if they hadn’t changed it! On Sunday afternoon I tried to make up for it by treating myself to an uninterrupted listening of the Messiah on 2 CDs, while following the vocal score, and singing along quietly from time to time.
This was made even more pleasant by the fact that on Saturday afternoon I had decorated the mantelpiece - a great thick, long wooden plank - with lots of greenery from the garden; plus a few candles, and that the fire was burning well too. I had been waiting for a fine dry day in order to gather enough greenery to make my Christmas wreath; having bought a base rather like a small straw life belt, and some pins, from the garden centre. I had never made such a thing before - always bought them from Cambridge market in the past - so made it up as I went along, with pieces of several different kinds and colours of fir trees, trailing ivy and orange berries from the firethorn bush, pinning them round as I went, and was very pleased with the result! It looks very good on the front door, just filling one of the square panes of glass.
Fine dry days have been few and far between, as winter weather seems finally to have caught up with us, and it is now dark most of the time, just as it was when we were first here in January. The few fine days we have had N has used to widen the flower bed at the end of the lawn known as « the rose garden » so that we have room for more cut flowers in the summer, as least that’s what I hope. We made a quick trip to the garden centre for some very late bulbs to plant in it - tulips, daffodils, narcissi and various alliums, plus a lovely Christmas rose. He has also completely re-dug the iris bed along the side wall and the bed along the front wall behind the enormous fir tree where some peonies and lilies lived in permanent shadow, and has replanted the peonies and lilies in the new wider flower bed, plus some of the irises. The others have gone back in the new improved iris bed, with far more space, and in various other places in the garden. He has also re-dug about a third of the vegetable garden - the same area which took him about two months last winter - while we wait for the last vegetables to finish. We have had some excellent Brussels sprouts, (looking forward to more with our Christmas dinner!) and a couple of late cauliflowers the size of tennis balls, and there are more celeriac and cabbages to come, plus some elderly lettuces.
Last week we managed to get all our Christmas cards written and posted, complete with computer printed labels for the first time, no mean achievement! After that my next job was the packing of N’s family Christmas presents; last year I helped him out as he was making such a hard job of it, and said I would do it all this year if he started early enough. Luckily, as I am visiting my family between Christmas and New Year, I don’t have any to post. N finished all his Christmas shopping in Paris last week, so we laid them all out on my study floor, he wrote the gift tags and I wrapped them all up; with Christmas paper first then made up three very large brown paper parcels with computer printed addresses.
The next day we staggered along to the post office with our parcels in such strong wind and rain that we could hardly stand up. The new post office door kept blowing open in the wind - it was supposed to shut with a magnet - and could only be kept shut electronically, not convenient when customers needed to get in or out. Our friendly glamorous post-mistress seems to have been permanently replaced by a much plainer unsmiling woman, but efficient enough, and she coped admirably with the opening and shutting of the door while processing our three heavy recorded delivery parcels to the UK. N asked me to fill in the forms as he maintained his writing was illegible - I hadn’t brought my glasses so it was a bit hit and miss, especially the spelling of CADEAUX. By the time we had finished there was quite a queue, all muttering about the inefficiency of the new door system. As we left we bumped into Marie-Antoinette, who told us the wind was part of a great storm over Paris, which we later saw on the lunchtime TV news. I then had to rescue my washing, which had blown all over the lawn.
On Monday morning we completed our Christmas decorations by buying a Christmas tree in the local market, nobly carried home by N. It is smaller than I would have liked, but in a pot, and although that has saved us wondering how to mount it for now, N isn’t sure about where we can plant it afterwards in the garden, already quite full of fir trees! It is standing in the salon in front the French windows, the shutters closed behind it for the duration, with the curtains draped either side and looks very good with all my decorations which were in store last year, and on a real live tree for the first time in about ten years.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Friday 1 December 2006
The lunch party with M and Mme P last Saturday was a great success. I cooked poule au pot with vegetables from the garden, followed by the caramelised apple cake (tested with M the week before) and preceded by a dish N and I remembered from a restaurant some years ago with five special ingredients - goat’s cheese, dried tomatoes, chives, basil and pesto. This went down very well too. They brought some beautiful flowers, admired the house and the fire, and as we hoped, were able to tell us a lot about the local area and its inhabitants, having seemingly lived here all their lives, Monsieur P having taken over the family business. He said he admired people like us, who packed up and settled in a completely different country speaking different languages, and that we were very « branché » with the Internet; he didn‘t even have a mobile phone. I assured him we didn‘t have mobile phones either. When N mentioned his local history project they said they knew the young historian he had contacted (Monsieur P had been at school with his father) and told us where he lived, not as far away as we thought. We are still waiting for him to make contact. Monsieur P also promised to bring round a copy of a plan of the old Abbey; although N has since bought some ancient books in the post containing such plans and thinks it may well be a copy of one of these. We asked them about the film « Le Trou Normand » too, and N invited them to come round and see it. (It has since arrived in the post, but we think we will watch it on our own first.) N said that we had seen nothing of the neighbours on our right, and Monsieur P said they might be nervous and think we were part of the « haute bourgeoisie anglaise », which amused me but N said later it would have been better to be thought part of the « petite noblesse…. » When they left there was much kissing on both cheeks, which I think is always a mark of having arrived in France.
(The literal meaning of le trou normand is « the Norman hole » , and it refers to the practice of drinking a glass of Calvados - strong Norman apple liqueur - in the middle of a large meal. In the film it is the name of a restaurant, and it is also the name of a newly refurbished guest-house in La Vieille-Lyre, although whether the film was named after a local restaurant or vice versa, who can tell.)
Our new fruit trees arrived on Saturday too, delivered by our « regular » man from the garden centre and have since been planted by N; the apricot in the vegetable garden next to the peach tree on the sunny summer wall, and the two others on the grass near the cherry tree and the apple tree, to make a sort of orchard area, N says. When the weather improved slightly I picked up two and a half baskets full of the last windfall apples and put them all in the compost bin; but we still have a tableful in the verandah and the best specimens in the first outhouse, plus quite a lot in the freezer. Those on the table are decreasing slightly as I make apple cakes and puddings. I have just made mincemeat for the first time ever (using up a few apples) as I realised that if we wanted mince pies for Christmas this was the only way I was going to get any. I found a reliable recipe in the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book - very like Christmas pudding but without all the steaming - and fortunately had asked M to bring more suet, one thing I cannot buy here.
After Monsieur P and his wife had left I realised we had got to the end of a long line of autumn guests, both those who actually came and those who never turned up. We have no more projected visitors until April, although several people said they would like to come then, or « at Easter » or « in the spring ». The only ones who have booked dates so far are N’s sister and husband.
On Monday I managed at last to retrieve my bicycle from the bicycle shop (where incidentally Monsieur P’s brother was apprenticed, it is a small world here) after variously having been away in Paris, had M visiting, rain and finding the shop unusually shut in the middle of one morning. I said to the proprietress that I thought the only hope of finding tyres and tubes to fit was in Cambridge market where I bought the bike, probably on a visit next spring, when I would ask her kindly to fit them. I had a hard job getting her to accept 10 euros for all her trouble (she reassembled the bike so that I could walk it home) but in the end she agreed it could be « on account » for the eventual fitting. As I came out of the shop a crocodile of small children walked past on their way back to the village school, and there were various murmurings of « Bonjour Madame » and « Regarde le vélo! »
I have also been chatting to our local postman. At this time of the year postmen traditionally come with decorated calendars or almanacs for which they ask a little money, a sort of organised Christmas box really. I expect the dustmen will come too. Anyway, I asked the postman in and chose the nicest of his calendars and we chatted about the local area - he lives near Broglie - and he suggested places to visit. It’s good to get to know him, as we seem to be having so many things delivered at the moment, and a lot easier than trying to talk to him through his crash helmet (he comes on a post office motor bike.) The calendar is full of useful information like street maps of Evreux and Rouen, and the times of high tides at Le Havre…..
Today in the village there is the outside of a living crèche or stable outside the church, but Mary & Joseph etc have not arrived so far. I seem to remember seeing this last year when we arrived on 20 December. There are also two large Christmas trees either side of the church doors, and the beginnings of a Christmas display in the boulangerie. The florist is closing down (I got a chrysanthemum with 20% off) and opening in a week or so under new management.
I am making great progress with the life of George Sand - almost two thirds of the way though this volume - and have arrived at 1812, and am pleased to have caught up with where I was with « War and Peace », although from the point of view of the other side. Although only eight years old at the time, she writes a lot about what she heard the grown-ups saying; no-one seemed to realise that the weather would be so bad in Moscow or to doubt for a minute that the Russian campaign could fail or that it was anything other than a step towards the conquest of Asia and then the world.
N has gone back to Paris for a few days to play quartets and buy Christmas presents ready for posting; I decided to stay as the house has been so cold the last twice I’ve come back, and it saves trying to decide what food to take back and what to leave, which coat to take and so on. This morning I had a phone call from Laurent, the local historian from La Vieille-Lyre, and have invited him to tea on Sunday. I told him N was in Paris at the moment but coming back tomorrow, which I hope made him sound very important and busy. I have been catching up with various sewing jobs and ironing, cooking the last of the green peppers from the garden for a warm salad and making goulash for Saturday evening.
Sunday 3 December 2006
N arrived back safely yesterday and in the afternoon we drove out to Broglie, to try and pick up something he had ordered by Internet, to do with the history of La Neuve-Lyre. It was a strange system, as it was supposed to have been delivered to the paper shop in Broglie for us to collect; at first the proprietress claimed she had nothing for that name, but eventually found it under a pile of larger parcels. When N opened it at home it turned out to be something quite different for someone of another name! He is still trying to sort it all out by e-mail. It meant we had a nice little walk round Broglie, where I had only ever passed through - N had been there the night Clare and family had got lost on our way here and had to be rescued. We liked what we saw of the centre, an interesting church with a mixture of different styles and a vet’s which I remembered seeing the first time we drove through, arranged like a shop with blue cats and dogs painted above the window. We came to the conclusion that if we ever have a cat - a subject raised from time to time - that this would probably be our local vet. As we left I picked up a leaflet about a Christmas market next Saturday.
On the way home, as it had stopped raining, we decided to stop and visit La Vieille-Lyre at last, having gone that way so many times, but now feeling we knew it better (especially N) from the old maps of the Abbey. The current church, on a hill in the centre of the village, is a relic from the Abbey and the guesthouse, or gîte, « Le Trou Normand » is a building which originally formed part of the Abbey. The church was unfortunately locked, but we spent a long time looking at the graveyard surrounding it in English fashion (French cemeteries are usually outside the town or village) As it is on a hill, all the pots of chrysanthemums carefully and respectfully laid on 1 November had all blown over sideways and were rolling about in the wind. We looked at the guesthouse - on the main road through the village at right angles to the church - and when we went back to the car found two locals looking at it, as we had inadvertently blocked an exit. N asked them if they knew anything about the Abbey; not much, but they laughed when he said we still couldn’t understand why La Vieille-Lyre surrounded La Neuve-Lyre like a collar. They also told us that the keys to the church were with the people at the house next to the Mairie. Another time, we said.
Once home and in the warm with tea and cake we watched the DVD of the film « Le Trou Normand » . The principal role played by the actor Bourvil was a Norman Wisdom kind of character, complete with too-short trousers, and Brigitte Bardot made a convincing start to her career. What we liked best though was that most of the action took place where we had been that afternoon, but 50 years ago - in front La Vieille-Lyre church and Le Trou Normand guesthouse. There were also recognisable scenes shot further down our street too, when there were obviously more shops than there are now.
On Sunday afternoon Laurent, the young local historian came to tea. He was pleased that we had lit the fire for him, he said, and appreciated the tea and cake. We learned a lot from him during the course of the afternoon, and felt that he was quite the most interesting and intelligent person we had met since we moved here! (Hope he thinks the same about us too.)
N asked him all about his history of the two Lyre villages, which is to be published as a book next year, but at the moment is in the form of a Blog, and about what he knew about the Abbey and why the two villages split in the 13th century. It seems that La Neuve-Lyre broke away as it was too far to keep going to La Vieille-Lyre church for baptisms and so on; and that La Vieille-Lyre remained an agricultural community whereas La Neuve-Lyre was more commercial. (It is exactly the same today; there is not single shop in La Vieille-Lyre, but here there are half a dozen plus the Post Office and the market.) He also said that the industry in La Neuve-Lyre was based around iron, which is still the case today as this is one of the few villages which still has a blacksmith and the connection with iron is carried on by the Quincaillerie selling nails and other metals. (N thought this a bit far-fetched, but I liked it as I remembered buying nails there by the 100 grams in a twist of paper.) In answer to my question, Laurent was able to tell me that the guesthouse Le Trou Normand had taken its name from the film; before 1952 as an inn it had had various names, including L’Hotel de France, but since the film has always been Le Trou Normand.
He also told us about the twinning of La Vieille-Lyre with a little village near Hereford, as there are links between the two parishes going back several centuries. The twinning is a recent event however, the initiative of the English village, but he is involved with the establishing of it. (I had heard about this in September when N was in Switzerland; at the hairdressers I had remarked that it wasn’t very busy and she told me that lots of ladies were having their hair done the week after prior to the arrival of the twinning committee from the English village!) We said we would be interested in getting involved if there was anything we could do; translating, interpreting or even having people to stay, but gathered it was more a La Vieille-Lyre venture than a La Neuve-Lyre one.
Laurent had looked up N’s publications on the Internet, which was flattering, and N offered him any help he might need with Old French or with Latin, neither of which he knew, or English either. He asked - as many people have - what made us come to live in La Neuve-Lyre, and we said, as always, The House. N asked him if he would like a guided tour, on which he seemed very keen; this surprised me as young people are not usually interested in houses. He was impressed by the two staircases and even more so by the little door in N’s attic study which opens into another bedroom, I suppose it does look as though it only leads to a small cupboard. We told him about all the help we had had from Monsieur P (whom he knows via his father) and Monsieur A who is their neighbour.
Wednesday 6 December 2006
There are now even more Christmas decorations in the village; the Crèche is finished and the hairdressers looks beautiful and the traiteur’s shop bright with Father Christmases and lights. The weather continues mostly mild occasional windy wet days, but still really more suitable for October/November than December. There are even a few primroses in the garden!
The lunch party with M and Mme P last Saturday was a great success. I cooked poule au pot with vegetables from the garden, followed by the caramelised apple cake (tested with M the week before) and preceded by a dish N and I remembered from a restaurant some years ago with five special ingredients - goat’s cheese, dried tomatoes, chives, basil and pesto. This went down very well too. They brought some beautiful flowers, admired the house and the fire, and as we hoped, were able to tell us a lot about the local area and its inhabitants, having seemingly lived here all their lives, Monsieur P having taken over the family business. He said he admired people like us, who packed up and settled in a completely different country speaking different languages, and that we were very « branché » with the Internet; he didn‘t even have a mobile phone. I assured him we didn‘t have mobile phones either. When N mentioned his local history project they said they knew the young historian he had contacted (Monsieur P had been at school with his father) and told us where he lived, not as far away as we thought. We are still waiting for him to make contact. Monsieur P also promised to bring round a copy of a plan of the old Abbey; although N has since bought some ancient books in the post containing such plans and thinks it may well be a copy of one of these. We asked them about the film « Le Trou Normand » too, and N invited them to come round and see it. (It has since arrived in the post, but we think we will watch it on our own first.) N said that we had seen nothing of the neighbours on our right, and Monsieur P said they might be nervous and think we were part of the « haute bourgeoisie anglaise », which amused me but N said later it would have been better to be thought part of the « petite noblesse…. » When they left there was much kissing on both cheeks, which I think is always a mark of having arrived in France.
(The literal meaning of le trou normand is « the Norman hole » , and it refers to the practice of drinking a glass of Calvados - strong Norman apple liqueur - in the middle of a large meal. In the film it is the name of a restaurant, and it is also the name of a newly refurbished guest-house in La Vieille-Lyre, although whether the film was named after a local restaurant or vice versa, who can tell.)
Our new fruit trees arrived on Saturday too, delivered by our « regular » man from the garden centre and have since been planted by N; the apricot in the vegetable garden next to the peach tree on the sunny summer wall, and the two others on the grass near the cherry tree and the apple tree, to make a sort of orchard area, N says. When the weather improved slightly I picked up two and a half baskets full of the last windfall apples and put them all in the compost bin; but we still have a tableful in the verandah and the best specimens in the first outhouse, plus quite a lot in the freezer. Those on the table are decreasing slightly as I make apple cakes and puddings. I have just made mincemeat for the first time ever (using up a few apples) as I realised that if we wanted mince pies for Christmas this was the only way I was going to get any. I found a reliable recipe in the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book - very like Christmas pudding but without all the steaming - and fortunately had asked M to bring more suet, one thing I cannot buy here.
After Monsieur P and his wife had left I realised we had got to the end of a long line of autumn guests, both those who actually came and those who never turned up. We have no more projected visitors until April, although several people said they would like to come then, or « at Easter » or « in the spring ». The only ones who have booked dates so far are N’s sister and husband.
On Monday I managed at last to retrieve my bicycle from the bicycle shop (where incidentally Monsieur P’s brother was apprenticed, it is a small world here) after variously having been away in Paris, had M visiting, rain and finding the shop unusually shut in the middle of one morning. I said to the proprietress that I thought the only hope of finding tyres and tubes to fit was in Cambridge market where I bought the bike, probably on a visit next spring, when I would ask her kindly to fit them. I had a hard job getting her to accept 10 euros for all her trouble (she reassembled the bike so that I could walk it home) but in the end she agreed it could be « on account » for the eventual fitting. As I came out of the shop a crocodile of small children walked past on their way back to the village school, and there were various murmurings of « Bonjour Madame » and « Regarde le vélo! »
I have also been chatting to our local postman. At this time of the year postmen traditionally come with decorated calendars or almanacs for which they ask a little money, a sort of organised Christmas box really. I expect the dustmen will come too. Anyway, I asked the postman in and chose the nicest of his calendars and we chatted about the local area - he lives near Broglie - and he suggested places to visit. It’s good to get to know him, as we seem to be having so many things delivered at the moment, and a lot easier than trying to talk to him through his crash helmet (he comes on a post office motor bike.) The calendar is full of useful information like street maps of Evreux and Rouen, and the times of high tides at Le Havre…..
Today in the village there is the outside of a living crèche or stable outside the church, but Mary & Joseph etc have not arrived so far. I seem to remember seeing this last year when we arrived on 20 December. There are also two large Christmas trees either side of the church doors, and the beginnings of a Christmas display in the boulangerie. The florist is closing down (I got a chrysanthemum with 20% off) and opening in a week or so under new management.
I am making great progress with the life of George Sand - almost two thirds of the way though this volume - and have arrived at 1812, and am pleased to have caught up with where I was with « War and Peace », although from the point of view of the other side. Although only eight years old at the time, she writes a lot about what she heard the grown-ups saying; no-one seemed to realise that the weather would be so bad in Moscow or to doubt for a minute that the Russian campaign could fail or that it was anything other than a step towards the conquest of Asia and then the world.
N has gone back to Paris for a few days to play quartets and buy Christmas presents ready for posting; I decided to stay as the house has been so cold the last twice I’ve come back, and it saves trying to decide what food to take back and what to leave, which coat to take and so on. This morning I had a phone call from Laurent, the local historian from La Vieille-Lyre, and have invited him to tea on Sunday. I told him N was in Paris at the moment but coming back tomorrow, which I hope made him sound very important and busy. I have been catching up with various sewing jobs and ironing, cooking the last of the green peppers from the garden for a warm salad and making goulash for Saturday evening.
Sunday 3 December 2006
N arrived back safely yesterday and in the afternoon we drove out to Broglie, to try and pick up something he had ordered by Internet, to do with the history of La Neuve-Lyre. It was a strange system, as it was supposed to have been delivered to the paper shop in Broglie for us to collect; at first the proprietress claimed she had nothing for that name, but eventually found it under a pile of larger parcels. When N opened it at home it turned out to be something quite different for someone of another name! He is still trying to sort it all out by e-mail. It meant we had a nice little walk round Broglie, where I had only ever passed through - N had been there the night Clare and family had got lost on our way here and had to be rescued. We liked what we saw of the centre, an interesting church with a mixture of different styles and a vet’s which I remembered seeing the first time we drove through, arranged like a shop with blue cats and dogs painted above the window. We came to the conclusion that if we ever have a cat - a subject raised from time to time - that this would probably be our local vet. As we left I picked up a leaflet about a Christmas market next Saturday.
On the way home, as it had stopped raining, we decided to stop and visit La Vieille-Lyre at last, having gone that way so many times, but now feeling we knew it better (especially N) from the old maps of the Abbey. The current church, on a hill in the centre of the village, is a relic from the Abbey and the guesthouse, or gîte, « Le Trou Normand » is a building which originally formed part of the Abbey. The church was unfortunately locked, but we spent a long time looking at the graveyard surrounding it in English fashion (French cemeteries are usually outside the town or village) As it is on a hill, all the pots of chrysanthemums carefully and respectfully laid on 1 November had all blown over sideways and were rolling about in the wind. We looked at the guesthouse - on the main road through the village at right angles to the church - and when we went back to the car found two locals looking at it, as we had inadvertently blocked an exit. N asked them if they knew anything about the Abbey; not much, but they laughed when he said we still couldn’t understand why La Vieille-Lyre surrounded La Neuve-Lyre like a collar. They also told us that the keys to the church were with the people at the house next to the Mairie. Another time, we said.
Once home and in the warm with tea and cake we watched the DVD of the film « Le Trou Normand » . The principal role played by the actor Bourvil was a Norman Wisdom kind of character, complete with too-short trousers, and Brigitte Bardot made a convincing start to her career. What we liked best though was that most of the action took place where we had been that afternoon, but 50 years ago - in front La Vieille-Lyre church and Le Trou Normand guesthouse. There were also recognisable scenes shot further down our street too, when there were obviously more shops than there are now.
On Sunday afternoon Laurent, the young local historian came to tea. He was pleased that we had lit the fire for him, he said, and appreciated the tea and cake. We learned a lot from him during the course of the afternoon, and felt that he was quite the most interesting and intelligent person we had met since we moved here! (Hope he thinks the same about us too.)
N asked him all about his history of the two Lyre villages, which is to be published as a book next year, but at the moment is in the form of a Blog, and about what he knew about the Abbey and why the two villages split in the 13th century. It seems that La Neuve-Lyre broke away as it was too far to keep going to La Vieille-Lyre church for baptisms and so on; and that La Vieille-Lyre remained an agricultural community whereas La Neuve-Lyre was more commercial. (It is exactly the same today; there is not single shop in La Vieille-Lyre, but here there are half a dozen plus the Post Office and the market.) He also said that the industry in La Neuve-Lyre was based around iron, which is still the case today as this is one of the few villages which still has a blacksmith and the connection with iron is carried on by the Quincaillerie selling nails and other metals. (N thought this a bit far-fetched, but I liked it as I remembered buying nails there by the 100 grams in a twist of paper.) In answer to my question, Laurent was able to tell me that the guesthouse Le Trou Normand had taken its name from the film; before 1952 as an inn it had had various names, including L’Hotel de France, but since the film has always been Le Trou Normand.
He also told us about the twinning of La Vieille-Lyre with a little village near Hereford, as there are links between the two parishes going back several centuries. The twinning is a recent event however, the initiative of the English village, but he is involved with the establishing of it. (I had heard about this in September when N was in Switzerland; at the hairdressers I had remarked that it wasn’t very busy and she told me that lots of ladies were having their hair done the week after prior to the arrival of the twinning committee from the English village!) We said we would be interested in getting involved if there was anything we could do; translating, interpreting or even having people to stay, but gathered it was more a La Vieille-Lyre venture than a La Neuve-Lyre one.
Laurent had looked up N’s publications on the Internet, which was flattering, and N offered him any help he might need with Old French or with Latin, neither of which he knew, or English either. He asked - as many people have - what made us come to live in La Neuve-Lyre, and we said, as always, The House. N asked him if he would like a guided tour, on which he seemed very keen; this surprised me as young people are not usually interested in houses. He was impressed by the two staircases and even more so by the little door in N’s attic study which opens into another bedroom, I suppose it does look as though it only leads to a small cupboard. We told him about all the help we had had from Monsieur P (whom he knows via his father) and Monsieur A who is their neighbour.
Wednesday 6 December 2006
There are now even more Christmas decorations in the village; the Crèche is finished and the hairdressers looks beautiful and the traiteur’s shop bright with Father Christmases and lights. The weather continues mostly mild occasional windy wet days, but still really more suitable for October/November than December. There are even a few primroses in the garden!
