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Steph & Chris Dagg run Notaires & Alder lakes. Through this personal Blog, Steph is going to describe her experiences of moving to France and living the dream of many UK carp anglers.

1st January every year sees new taxes appearing on the scene in France as the ever-ingenious politicians find new ways to wrangle money out of us.

Amongst 2012’s offerings in France is the sugary drinks tax. A tax of €7.16 per hectolitre (= 100 litres) of such drinks, boissons sucrées, has been introduced. This will mean a 1-2 centime rise on the price of a can of drink. The proceeds are going to help fund l’assurance maladie (the public health insurance that the State provides).

Like the ban on tomato ketchup in schools, this is another tax that will Do Us Good and stop us becoming a nation of fatties, apparently. However, well known French economist Pierre Combris has pointed out the flaw in the government’s argument. Governments want to make money so they actually want us to carry on buying vast quantities of fizzy drinks since they’ll raise more tax that way. But if they achieve their avowed public health aim of putting us off these drinks of the devil, then they won’t raise very much revenue after all. Have they really thought this through?

Coca-Cola has already protested by not investing 17 million euros in its Bouches-du-Rhône factory in France. That’s a big financial blow to the country.

And will the small price hike break the habits of a lifetime? Smokers and drinkers resiliently take the annual increase in the cost of their vices on the chin, and carry on consuming. Will sugary drinks drinkers be equally resolute, or will the tax burst their bubble? We’ll see.

This tax won’t have much effect in our household. I don’t buy a lot of fizzy drinks or premixed squash, just the occasional bottle of orangina or coke at party time or for a treat. So it won’t be making a huge hole in my purse. And food prices have been going up so quickly generally lately that I’m not sure heavy consumers of the boissons will even notice the rise anyway. We’ve all got used to paying a different price for the same food item every week.

And will France be full of slim people by the end of the year? Hmmm …

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Now, don’t get me wrong. We were happy to downsize when we came here since it meant our lives became infinitely more interesting, challenging and meaningful than they had ever been. But there are an awful lot of people in this country who aren’t massively better off than we are. According to INSEE, the average monthly income in France is €2,068 (and 10% of the population are on less than €1,124). That’s an average salary of €24,816 and bear in mind that Paris will be skewing those figures upwards. I’ve also seen reports that give €19,000 as the annual average, and départments such as Creuse are a good bit lower. The net monthly income per household here is given as €1,893 which is €903 per person. Paris, département 75, in comparison is €3,374 per household, €1,769 per person. (Figs from this website.)

I don’t think many politicians, and particularly not presidential candidates, are living on those average levels of salary. So all this got me to wondering how ‘in touch’ those candidates are with real life. Are they affected by any of the austerity measures, or any of these ‘green’ or ‘anti obesity’ taxes that keep whacking up the price of fuel and food items in the shops? Do they even notice them? I think not.

I did a quick dig around and discovered that three out of the four front-runners for presidency are extremely wealthy people. Sarkozy is worth more than 2 million euros. He’s on a salary of €240,000, which he increased from €101,000 when he became President. You can see why people are so keen to get the job if it means you can give yourself a nice pay rise!

Marine le Pen comes from a very wealthy family. Jean-Marie le Pen is a millionaire and his daughter isn’t short of a bob or two either. I’ve come across references to her as ‘la fille riche’ of M le Pen. And François Hollande, when with Ségolene Royal, declared property worth 1.8 m euros alone.

So it seems it’s François Bayrou, the son of a farmer, who is the most connected to the people he hopes to represent because of his humble background and lack of fortune. He’s also the only one of the big four who didn’t have an élite education.

Is it time for another revolution, but maybe without the guillotine this time around? It’s starting to look like wealthy aristocrats are at the country’s helm again. I for one don’t feel they have any real inkling of normal, everyday life in France. But my feelings are irrelevant since, as a non-French national yet tax paying resident, I can’t vote anyway!

Steph & Chris Dagg run Notaires & Alder lakes. Through this personal Blog, Steph is going to describe her experiences of moving to France and living the dream of many UK carp anglers.

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Since this is the land of cheese (around 429 varieties I believe), I thought it was time I started to pay attention to fromage. So every now and again in this blog I’ll be looking at some of the more popular and/or unusual cheeses on offer.

But some groundwork to do first. Cheese comes in families in France, and there are anything between 3 and 8 of them, according to the source you look at. I’m going with the eight families, since we might as well do this properly!

1. Fresh cheeses – fromages frais

These are the white, rather runny cheeses with a high water content (up to 82%). They’re made without using rennet and aren’t aged at all. Familiar examples would be fromage blanc and Petit Suisse.

2. Soft cheeses with natural rind – Fromages à pâte molle et à croûte fleurie

Brie and camembert are examples of this family of soft cheese made from cow’s milk which has a distinctive floury rind. They’re aged for about a month.

3. Soft cheeses with washed rind – Fromages à pâte molle et à croûte lavée

These cow’s milk cheeses are literally washed during the aging process to stop surface moulds forming. They usually have bright rinds. Pont L’Évêque is such a cheese.

4. Pressed cheeses – Fromages à pâte pressée

Right, these cheeses are pressed while they age and this rids them of some of their moisture content. They’re also washed, brushed and turned to give them nice even rinds. Cantal is an example of this family of cheese.

5. Pressed and cooked cheeses – Fromages à pâte pressée et cuite

Emmental comes into this category. Cheeses in this group are heated before they’re pressed. They’re left to ripen for a long time.

6. Goat cheese – Fromages de chèvre

I don’t think this needs any more explanation! There are over 100 different types of French cheese made from goat’s milk.

7. Blue cheeses – Fromages à pâte persillées

These are the smelly cheeses (like the one I wrote about in this story) which are aged for a long time before they’re eaten. They have the distinctive blue veins running through them. Some are made from sheep’s milk, such as Roquefort. We visited that factory – I can still smell it!

You either love this type of cheese or hate it.

8. Processed cheeses – Fromages à pâte fondue

These are made from a blend of cheeses and often have herbs and flavourings added. Delicious Boursin falls into this category.

So that’s a quick introduction to the main groups of fromage.

This Tuesday’s cheese is Emmental, you know the one with holes in it. I usually buy this cheese pre-grated in 1 kg bags at the supermarket. We get through vast amounts of it. It’s one of the most popular and cheaper cheeses. It’s mainly produced in the east of France and the Emmental from certain areas (for example, france est central) has an IGP label (Indication Géographique Protégée – a quality mark). Not the sort that I buy though!

Almost half a million tonnes of Emmental are produced in Europe each year, and France makes approximately half of this, using 13.1% of all the milk produced in France. It takes 12 litres to make 1 kg of Emmental. It’s made in big  loaves of up to 80 kg, which is a lot of cheese.

So where do the holes come from? Carefully controlled mice? Nope. A bacteria is introduced which produces carbon dioxide while the cheese is aging and this is what gives rise to them. So now you know.

It’s reckoned that on average, French people eat about 3.3 kg of Emmental a year. Well, if that really is the case then a lot of people can’t be eating anything like that much since we Daggs are heavily skewing figure upwards. We really do eat an awful lot of it! I blame the adverts that used to run in Ireland, funded by the cheese marketing board. ‘With cheese, please!’ was the motto, and the ads encouraged you to add a thick crust of grated, sliced or melted cheese coated cheese to everything you consumed, from your breakfast muesli to your evening mug of hot chocolate.

OK, I’m exaggerating, but only slightly! We’ve been totally brainwashed by them and have become cheese junkies as a result.

Now you know a bit more about Emmental. Do come back and discover another French cheese in next Tuesday’s blog.

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Having had a very mild and dry winter up to now we’ve managed to get the lake spring clean finished a lot earlier than usual.  This is really good as last year due to the snow and wet we working up to the week before our first guests arrived in March.

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We have strimmed all the banks and raked them.  It’s something I always do as it encourages the wild flowers to grow and helps keep the nettles and brambles down – why is it that weeds always grow and flowers sometimes struggle?

We have cut back all the trees around the lake as these sometimes caused problems for guests with the wind blowing the line over branches, but still left plenty to give a bit of a challenge to reach those fish.

Today we worked on the house swim and cut down all the old bulrushes.  I put on my waders and went in to clear their roots that were spreading across the lake edge and sticking out from the end which made landing fish harder.

I also cleared all the iris and bulrushes that were slowly blocking up the swim to the right, so there is now more room to land fish and also to put your pods or bank sticks.

I also spent some time picking up some rocks that were close in and may have caused problems.  I moved any I kicked and took them out the lake.

Tomorrow I will start my trips up to the local saw mill and get a few trailer loads of wood chip to top up the swims and help to keep the mud down and fishing gear cleaner.  It also helps to keep the bank side noise down.

We have been feeding the fish all winter and over the last week they have been very active and feeding heavily.  This will hopefully reflect in the weights this year, and hopefully that first carp over 45lb will come out.

Hopefully anyone taking advantage of our early season offers will have some good fish out and if they continue to feed as they are now I can even see a new lake record coming out early on.

Tight lines and we will publish more as the big tidy up continues,

Best wishes,

John and Lesley, Bletiere

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www.rod-box.co.uk

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The ducks back!

As I promised before Christmas I will this weekend (28/29^TH Jan) start to publish the air and water temperatures every week here at Bletiere.  You can follow it here.

I know a lot of anglers found it useful to see what the weather was doing here in France and it also gives you a guide to how close to potential spawning we are as you follow the rise in  temperature.  At least it will give you a rough idea if the carp are likely to start spawning near your visit.

I have taken a look at last years on the forum as its still there.

I started it in February and it was 6 degrees air and 8 degrees in the lake.  Today it is 9 degrees in the air and 10 degrees in the lake so a big difference.

As long as we do not get the usual cold weather in February it’s looking good as it will get the fish feeding with the warmer weather we get in March, and hopefully for any lucky anglers taking advantage of our early fishing offers  they will get off to a good start.

Tight lines, John

La Bletiere

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A rare Ripsaw Niger Catfish

TopCats , Thailand, is home to over 26 species fish and one lucky customer had a shock when his bait was picked up by our Niger Catfish.  The take was slow and steady but once the hook was set it ripped off like a torpedeo!  The lucky man was Joe from USA.  Well done and good luck next time for another rare one.

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2011 was the hottest year in France since 1900, beating previous record holder 2003. The average temperature of 13.6 degrees C was 1.5 degrees higher than ‘usual’. This resulted from a warm spring and a warm autumn. Summer was actually quite disappointing with July being colder than normal.

The warm weather has continued into winter. This is the first in the six winters we’ve spent here when the lakes haven’t frozen over before Christmas. We’ve had practically no snow and that’s very unusual too. A couple of daffodils have even poked their heads out of the ground, three months earlier than in previous years.

Is this a sign of climate change, or just a natural variation? It’s too early to tell yet, but two hottest ever years within eight years of each other could be indicative of generally climbing temperatures. We’ll have to see what happens over the next decade.

The warm year meant that crops ripened early and many plants produced another flush of flowers. A lot of wild birds and animals managed to squeeze in an extra brood of babies. Our swallows had three sets of youngsters this year. That’s amazing, considering that in May 2009 ago most of them were killed by the blizzard in May. Maybe it’s Nature’s way of redressing the balance.

The hottest ever recorded temperature in France was 44 degrees C in Toulouse in 1923, while the coldest is -31 degrees in Chamonix in 1905.

(Worldwide records are 58 degrees in Libya in 1922 and -89 degrees in the Antarctic in 1938.)

There are generally reckoned to be seven climate zones in France and they’re shown nice and clearly on this map. LINK:

http://www.meteorologic.net/climat-francais.php

The zones are:

• Climat Océanique
• Climat Semi-Océanique
• Climat Méditerranéen
• Climat Semi-Méditerranéen
• Climat Continental
• Climat Semi-Continental
• Climat Montagnard

Generally, the océanique and semi-océanique zones are wet and fairly mild, the continental and semi-continental have hot summers and cold winters, the méditerranéen and semi-méditerranéen have hot summers and warm winters, and the mountain zone, well, that’s techncially imprévisible i.e. it will do what it wants! However, you tend to get a lot snow in winter.

Here in Creuse we fall into the Climat Semi-Continental zone, but this year so far haven’t had the usual brutally cold hiver that we’d expect.

But there’s still two months of winter to come and that could all change …

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