Street Party

French social life takes place in June, and consequently June is very stressful because French people find social life stressful, and because of the late light nights, and the impossible volume of events to cram into four short weeks, for example:

• Barbecues which they start heating up at 9.30pm, followed by a long night of the all-pervading smell of charred food and the sound of people talking loudly

• Brocantes and vide-greniers - we pay the Marie (local authority) 10 Euros for right to gather together in the streets, erect small tables and sell our rubbish for ridiculously low prices and buy even more rubbish in return for equally ridiculously low prices
• School fetes and shows, exams, end of term presents for teachers, farewell parties and birthday parties because at last it is warm enough to go outside even if you were born in January
• Weddings
• Music and other outdoor festivals
• Last minute rush for medical appointments before the medical practitioners leave for the South of France
• Street parties - the only chance in the year to meet your neighbours in friendly circumstances

Last night was the night of our street party. This involves:

• Setting up a barbecue in the street in order to char enough flesh for an army (allow wait of at least one hour for your kebab)
• Speakers the size of a minivan to vibrate you while you wait in the smokey queue
• Vast hordes of people with fags dangling from their lower jaw, all of whom seem to know each other and are possibly related.
• Cheap plonk served by male neighbours in strange straw hats

However, there is a brighter side: for the children. The street is closed off officially, and for once the beastly cars are kept at bay long enough for the children to parade the streets with trolleys, skateboards, scooters, bikes, footballs bats and flying objects which are supposed to be hit by the bats. Not only that, after about 9.30, when everyone has drunk too much cheap plonk and the kebab is nowhere near cooked, the children can do pretty much what they like for the rest of the gloriously late night.
On the day of our party, JC and I had been into Paris for a talk on Life and Death, which I can only describe as a Near Death Experience (NDE) - at least one quarter of the audience was asleep, three of them on the front row. After a brief struggle I abandoned all hope, lined myself up behind the head of the person in front so the speaker couldn't see me, and surrendered myself to the world of dreams. For this pleasure, we had to hire a babysitter. Women amongst us will know that this means tidying up the house a bit before the babysitter arrives. After 3 hours of struggle to remove only the most embarassing objects, stains and fluffballs, I was, as usual, red faced, sweaty unbrushed and ill-dressed when the babysitter arrived. I JC meanwhile was in Paris, perusing the book shops. I removed my rubber gloves to shake hands.
The babysitter was a reluctant 15 year old, much vexed by his mother's insistence that he do something useful and jolly well get babysitting, as he had much better things to do, in particular a rendez-vous with Eleanor at 7.30pm. His mother had 'interpreted' the finish time of the babysitting, which I had stated quite clearly as 8.30pm, as 7pm: the only way for her to maneouvre him out of the front door presumably. Some bad feeling ensued. I was even more late and had to I jog to the station.
So, by the time the street party commenced, well after my bedtime, I was not in the best of humours. At 10.45 pm JC and I had managed to hunt down and undercook 2 pork steaks, especially unwelcome as JC is a vegetarian, and a jacket potato. We talked to one neighbour who said the previous owner of our house was his friend as he sympathised with Leftist politics. We slagged off the previous owner of house for all the things we have subsequently discovered are wrong with it, the lack of basic maintenance for 20 years and the exorbitant price demanded. We posed for a group photo which we will never see, and were at last able to head home, thankfully not far away.
I awoke with a start at the stroke of midnight.
'Where are the children?'
'B is home, but R I don't know'.
Horrible groaning noises - followed by an argument about whose fault it was we had not set clear boundaries and who would go out to look for him, I lost.
At 12.13 am I bumbled out into the street in my nighty and was greeted by a surreal sight: a group of children of all ages, some barely out of nappies, circulating under the streetlamp like midges.
'Time to come in now' I shouted at R
'Daddy said I could come home when I want' shouted back R, defiantly, visibly irritated. I reminded myself he is eight years old.
'He said you had to come back at midnight or you will turn into a pumpkin ie extra homework tomorrow if you don't get inside RIGHT NOW'.
A reluctant, hang-dog R leaves the party early. The others continue to circulate.
I will never understand French social life. But the funny thing is, you wake up the next morning feeling you have had a really good time.

Ripples of Social Unrest

I was awoken in the dead of night by a loud crash which I was unable to identify. JC is far too phlegmatic to be woken by such things. I used to be before I had children but now at the slightest noise I find myself on my feet with a sick bowl in one hand and a pile of towels in the other.

When I went to check the house for intruders, the cat came with me, peering into each room, and afterwards smoothing my legs with her velvet fur and pressing her nose into my fingers until I felt sleepy again and went to bed. No sooner had I fallen into the sweetest of slumbers when I was awoken by a further crash. This time the feline culprit was caught in the act on the kitchen floor, disentangling herself from underneath a saucepan lid, and was invited to leave the family residence by the nearest exit. I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning and having horrible dreams about my husband in a series of wrongdoings for which he took no responsibility, and was very grumpy the next morning.

It must have been one of those days because when I went to collect the children from school half the girls in R's class were in tears before they reached the arms of their carers. It was one of those ripples of social unrest which occasionally afflict the Girl Community.

The girl I pick up, S, broke into keening and wailing when I stroked her back and asked her what was the matter.

'Something Has Happened aa bo ha hooo'

She sobbed desperately for the next half hour. Her younger sister L, when she could be bothered to look up from her play with her equally unaffected friend V, threw in a series of sensible but heartless questions, in response to which S wailed,

'Stop asking all these questions, it makes me re-live the whole thing and it's UNBEARABLE! We are all guiltyoooahahah mmfff'.'

We eventually ascertained that S and her girl friends had sworn a pact of secrecy, so that she could never tell anyone about the terrible thing that had happened.

'If we tell the mothers they will all be..' gasp, gulp 'on the PHONE to each other TALKING about itoooaaaaaa' No, she would have to bear the burden Entirely Alone.

'Well', I chipped in from the driving seat 'I've just seen L sobbing to her Mum and I'm sure she's grassing you up, so you won't be the first. Anyway, your Mum is going to notice you are crying, she's sure to get it out of you. Much better to talk about it and sort it all out'.

Sniff, wobble.

I was wondering about the moral implications - it seemed certain that some horrible crime had been enacted, such as murdering a puppy or vandalising their beloved teacher's car. Should I phone the Mum, thereby doing the very thing which S dreaded?

Once the girls were safely out of the car, R said coolly 'I know what happened'.

He and his friend E, clueless boys, had spent an entertaining afternoon playing Sherlock Holmes and Watson, skulking in the shrubbery and earwigging on whispered conversations. He and E were now able to make the following Detective Report (I translate):

• some girls had said some nasty things about some other girls, not sure who said what about whom or why
• then a girl from the fifth class had taken N aside in the girls' toilets and told her she had overheard N's friends saying that N had Big Ears and Big Teeth which stick out
• an attempt to resolve the situation ended in N saying that she would Forgive No-one because L had told her, not only that she was Not Her Friend, but she had Never Liked Her
• this was considered such a moral outrage that the whole Community of Girls turned against L who now has No Friends (except for A).

'Enough' I said, holding up my hand. 'Goodness, it's complicated being a Girl. You boys don't do this sort of thing do you?
'No. If we don't want to play with someone anymore, we don't say nasty things - we just tell them to go away'.
'Oh, why do you tell your friends to go away, aren't they upset?' (girl question)
'Well, sometimes we are playing a game that only needs two people so the other two have to go away. They just play another game'.
'Mmm, but you do get annoyed with each other sometimes' I said
'Yer, well, then we just have a fight'.
The fighting does upset teachers and Mummies, but I suppose there is something to be said for a short sharp shock of physical violence which can leave those involved injured, but never Wounded (for days on end). Many times I have lectured R on the merits of resolving conflicts peacably, and hauled him in front of some boy to make an apology, only to observe both boys smirking, and the 8 year old 'victim' reassuring me that it really wasn't anything serious.
Which leaves me with the question: why did I waste so many of my Sunshine Years worrying about these Boy people, wondering what they were thinking, what they meant by that, why they did this, talking about them with other girls, falling in love with them and wishing they would fall in love with me, when all along they were very... Simple.

Yes, summer

Yes, summer, the fledglings are at large. A family of great tits arrives as I sit on my favourite little bench under the below-mentioned tree. The babies push and shove on the branch and shout very loudly,

DI DI DEE DEE DI DI DI DEE DEE DEE DEE!





They are proclaiming to the local cat population:


FLYING SNACKS AVAILABLE HERE!





The neighbourhood cats materalise, turn their headlight eyes full beam on the babies, and jitter with unmet desire.


The parents, who are looking worn and grey, feathers at all angles, try to restore order and call out pointedly in their adult song,

TEA -CHING, TEA-CHING

They whirr to the bird table, snatch up a sunflower seed, whirr back up to the babies on the branch, tap open the seeds, eat the seed in front of their young, yum yum, and drop the husks on my head.

DI DI DI DEE DI DI DI DEE DEE DI DI shout the babies. They don't get it. They don't understand the seed thing. They want Mummy and Daddy to keep putting live worms in their open beaks, and who can blame them? The parents persist,

TEA-CHING, TEA-CHING-CHING

Ah, summer

Ah, summer, best taken lying down, under a tree, looking up...there's something in the air...


Strawberries and cream: choose a cream thick enough to coat the fruit, put one teaspoonful in each bowl, stir in small teaspoonful of sugar and some vanilla essence. Wash strawberries and cut in two, fill each bowl, stir up with the vanilla cream...and ENJOY.

The cherry season, short and intensly pleasurable, is upon us. We have cooking cherries in the garden so I made a cherry clafoutis, this recipe worked well:

150 g of plain flour

4 eggs

300mls milk

vanilla essence

Make this into a batter by whisking or in a machine, and set aside in fridge.

Heat oven 180C

Stone cherries.

Butter an oven proof dish, heat to bubbling in hot oven, fill with cherries and cover with 3 heaped dessertspoonfuls of sugar (more or less, depending on sweetness of cherries or according to taste). Put into oven until cherries lightly cooked and sugar in a syrup. While still as hot as possible pour in stirred batter and cook for 25 minutes, until risen and golden brown (do not open oven door whilst rising as will fall). Serve with dusting of icing sugar.

Easter Broadcast (late)

I can't move on with this blog without mentioning Easter, which I failed to tell you about.

Find an egg as large and strong and pale as possible.

Take a trinity of coriander leaves, and bind them with the leg of a pair of tights, tighter than a bank robber's head.

Fill a large pan with onion skins and top up with water. Bring to the boil.

Gently lower the egg into the pan, and simmer for ten minutes, or until egg has become a golden or rosy brown.

Remove carefully, leave to cool, unveil.

Wood Between the Worlds

The library at the top

...and the middle section of our house.

Loft and Basement

You are looking down from the mezzanine.

The top half of our house, known as The Loft, started out as an architect's studio, white and bare.

We are proud to have renovated and divided it up into rooms using ecological methods and materials, to have furnished it with things found in bins and brocantes, and with the the cheapest and most ecological that IKEA can provide, and to have decorated with ecological paints.

I'm very pleased with this little number, made from two IKEA ladder shelves, and some untreated wood box files stained in sun colours.

The large yellow wardrobe we hauled on our backs from where it had been abandoned by the previous owner in the basement, we re-constructed it, cut it to fit and painted it. It houses our computer among other things.

Every last little corner was organised, beautified,



...the tasteless curtains were made from a 1970s tent liner, abandoned in a scout hut, the cupboard cost 3 Euros in a brocante.

The Loft was transformed into a veritable Temple to the Sun God...

...and just as I arranged the last art and craft tool in the last jar and wedged the cupboard door shut, feeling like Lucy the Prehistoric Woman, my back bent double and my knuckles brushing the floor, it was obvious there would be no more box lifting for me for a while, yes, just as I found myself late for the cooking dinner and getting children to bed shift, bereft of a single shred of strength, my husband J-C said to me...

'Tomorrow the people are coming to tile the basement floor'.

Lightening flashed, horror film chords struck,

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH'

whimpered Lucy the Perhistoric Woman.

'THIS IS SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE...you are maaad, maaad maaad...' (collapses on floor face contorted in a gruesome mask of pain).

What is the problem, I hear you ask. This is the problem, yes, here it is, exposed. You are going down into the basement...

SHOCK

HORROR

PROBE

Yes, while I was waxing lyrical about beautiful boudoirs and palaces to the Sun God, the horrible truth was lurking below. Shock, horror probe! Yes the sordid truth is, that while we were gagging with horror and snorting with superiority over How Clean is Your House, secretly, our Hell Hole Basement could have qualified for an entertaining episode.

How did it come to this, the interviewers would ask, as Aggie ran her pastic gloved finger over the cement dust?

This lot was dumped in the basement two years ago, when we moved in, and while we converted half of our house from an empty office into a house.

It was like this: on the day we moved house, I said to the removal men said I ' Put all boxes on these tables, not more than 2 boxes high as we will have to store them here for some time, while we renovate The Loft, and I want to be able to access my things.

'Yes madam' they said, as they rushed by heaving and dumping...my boxes, 16 boxes high, anywhere they fancied.

Then we found out the concrete floor had never set properly while the foundations were layed, and was effectively, 5 centimetres of carenogenic lung-caking cement dust.

Life happened, we rummaged, we added to it, mixed it up, kneaded it, turned it over, rummaged in it again - until it was done. As you can see.


This was the beginning of the end, the day we began the basement.

And the basic fact is, since then, we have been sorting out the basement...

We are still doing it. One day, our whole house will be organised. I hope this has karmic significance. If not, I may ask the question; what happened to our life?