At the moment no one actually knows just how much pollen is out there in the Limousin air. This is because we’re the last région in France to get a pollen counting station. ARS, whoever they are and the mind boggles, haven’t yet stumped up the cash for us to have one.

I’ve warned you about about French abbreviations before, and here’s another one – RNSA – but at least I know what that one means. It’s the Réseau national de surveillance aérobiologique. They’re getting together with Limair (not an airline, by the way), the faculty of pharmacy and Allergolim (le réseau des allergologues du Limousin) to finalise the pollen counting station project which is, they all admit, running a little late. So, give them a few  years and perhaps it will materialise!

When we do get it, all the pollen that is picked up on the station’s filters will be identified. Then the RNSA will leap into action and produce a weekly bulletin which its partners will publish on their respective websites. The main benefit will come when the station picks up the most allergy-producing pollens and so can warn members of the public that they’re about to start sneezing.

And Limoges is also to get a pollinarium. Your guess is as good as mine really as to what this is about. I think it’s a collection of anti-social plants with annoying pollen that can be observed so as to pinpoint when they start producing their pollen and when production reaches its peak in another attempt to keep hayfever sufferers apprised of when things are about to turn bad.

But we don’t have either the pollen counting station or the pollinarium yet, so until then, I’m afraid you’ll just have to keep on sneezing in Limousin.

There’s another defibrillator in Nouzerines, attached to the outer wall of the WC in the little park outside the Mairie. I suppose, given the average age of the citizens of Nouzerines, this could be quite useful but so far it appears to have had a quiet life. It’s quite an investment. It has its own dedicated power supply and from dawn to dusk there’s a flashing light on top of it so you know which direction to stagger in through the gloom, clutching your chest.

Chris and I took a closer look at it the other day when we were waiting for Ruadhri’s school bus to roll up. I love the instructions strip-cartoon.

Once you’ve got the plastic cover off the device, you need to use the phone inside the unit to a) get the defibrillator activated, and b) find out how to use it. That information is what gives you the self-satisfied smirk in the second diagram. Now comes the blast of electricity and then presumably you summon an ambulance to get you to hospital for the blood transfusion that you’re clearly going to need! Simples.

I wonder what the initials,  AED DAE, on the defibrillator stand for? My best suggestion is: Amateur Employment of Defibrillator – Death by Accidental Electrocution!

I don’t suppose this machine was cheap and I also imagine there’s some kind of standing charge to pay to Aivia. (I’ve looked on the webiste at www.aivia.fr but you can’t get access to  much without a customer number.) And not forgetting the electricity bill. However, it’s nice that the Mairie has invested in this possibly life-saving piece of kit for the inhabitants of the commune, although since most of us are well scattered throughout the surrounding countryside, we might not get there in time. But it’s the thought that counts!

Ruadhri found a four-headed worm in the worm bin. He was thrilled!

Caiti is keeping Lambo fit and possibly also training him up for the Olympics. He loves to canter alongside when she’s on her bike.

To keep him in tip-top condition, here are his daily rations – on top of grass and hay, of course.

Rors and his dad took time to do some fishing for roach to restock our duckpond.

We finally got the rest of the tomatoes planted out in the polytunnel.

Not so fun, my washing line fell to bits!

But at least it was sunny and warm. Hope you had a good weekend too.

Since we hadn’t, Caiti filled us in. A Parisian arty magazine, Technikart, has slammed Creuse as a whole, and its principal town, Guéret, in particular in a vehemently unpleasant and rude article. One of Caiti’s friends was quoted in it and was very upset at how her words had been twisted and her views misrepresented. Caiti said how a Facebook group had been started over it, Les Creusois Contre Technikart. It already has 759 members, and has only been going about 24 hours.

I had to find out more. Cait gave me a few leads and I trawled the Net for more. Via Facebook, Tweets and some local French newspapers, I eventually tracked down the article here.

It’s unbelievably sneery and nasty and illustrated with horrid photos that someone had to go out of their way to take. Guéret is no Paris, but it’s a pretty little town with plenty of greenery, some beautiful buildings, a pleasant park and nice pedestrian shopping area, albeit small. It has a modern, new library, and Caiti’s lycée, Pierre Bourdan, is a striking two-colour brick building with a tree lined central quad. Of course it has its less attractive industrial and commercial areas, but what town doesn’t?

It describes itself damningly at the very start as a report from the middle of nowhere – nulle part. It says that Guéret is a trou paumé, a godforsaken hole, and that the département of Creuse is the nerve centre of the ‘diagonal of emptiness’ that disfigures the Hexagone (i.e. France). It talks of the quagmire ambience, of how it’s a dead town and that finding cool kids is like finding a needle in a haystack. There’s a lot of inbreeding going on, brin consanguin puisqu’une personne sur deux connais votre mère, with the last part meaning ‘where one person in two knows your mother’. I suspect that implies ‘know’ in the Biblical sense.

It goes on. The reporter describes how he looked for the moins glauque (least squalid) place to go and eventually found the moins naze (least awful) bar in the town. He saw bouseux (bumpkins) everywhere and reckons that the kids here are coincé (trapped). The only vaguely nice thing he says is about how important the library has turned out to be for young people. It goes on to bemoan how there are only shops like Gemo and Styleco to buy clothes from, and no equivalent to the Galeries Lafayette or Hermes. So what? These are good, sensibly priced stores where you can kit your kids out in reasonable quality, fashionable clothes without spending a fortune. Creuse is an area of low incomes, the average salary being around €19,000. Half of all schoolkids are in receipt of the rentrée grant and more than half the population doesn’t pay income tax since their earnings are too low. We couldn’t afford to shop at a designer label store, even if we had one. And actually there are a few nice boutiques in the centre of town if you’re after something a little more upmarket than the chain stores supply.

Lycée Pierre Bourdan

All in all it’s an unprovoked, hateful tirade from an outsider about a friendly (apart from a couple of government departments!), pleasant country town. I suppose its purpose was to win a cheap laugh from its sophisticated readership. Boy, has it backfired! From the editor promising in a Tweet to phone the Maire on Monday to grovel, now a contingent of staff is coming down in person from Technikart to deal with the fallout. I hope they get heckled.

I’ve been to Paris, home of this opinionated magazine. Yes, it’s a stunning city, much of it physically built by the famous and skilled Creuse masons (who are also slagged off in the article), but at least in Guéret you can actually use the public phone boxes because they aren’t full of homeless families. You don’t bump into a beggar or get hassled by a drunk every ten paces. You don’t have to be on constant alert for pickpockets and you know what? Fellow pedestrians actually smile at you and you strike up conversations with strangers as you wait in queues or do your shopping.

The Technikart crowd may think everything is better and classier in Paris, but just maybe it isn’t.

It starts off easily enough with name, addresses etc. Then it gets tougher. What languages does Rors want to do? There’s a choice of Anglais and Allemand as LV1 (Langue Vivante – living language), but we have to say what Rors want to do as his LV2 (second choice foreign language). However, having had Benj and Caiti at collège, they didn’t start LV2 until 4ème (third year at collège). I have successfully confused myself. So we’ve put Allemand as LV1 and Anglais as LV2. It’s best to avoid doing English at school for as long as possible since it avoids run-ins with anti-anglophone English teachers, of which there seem to be plenty!

Now we have to fill in what ‘Formation’ he wants to do and we have a choice of 6ème, SEGPA, 6ème Musique or Autre Formation.  You what? Well, Rors doesn’t want to do a music-focussed curiculum or any other sort of specialised course, so that just left SEGPA to investigate. The form didn’t come with a helpful explicatif so it was off to the Internet to. The French love abbreviations but aren’t too good at actually ever telling you what they stand for. The first set of SEGPA related sites I came across refused point blank to elucidate me. So I tried again with ‘que signifie SEGPA’ in the search box. After sifting through a few more sites I found the explanation. SEGPA is sections d’enseignement général et professionnel adapté which boils down to a course specially structured for kids who need to take things a bit slower. That’s not for Rors so I could at last tick the 6ème box, confident I’d got that bit right.

The final section wasn’t relevant. This was the Demande de Dérogation i.e. a request to go to a state  collège other than the one you’ve been assigned to from being in its catchment area. You’re allowed ten reasons to demand this, ranging from special physical needs, the need to follow a certain type of course not available at the nearest collège, family organisational reasons (where parents work, transport needs) and also, interestingly, bilingualism. Perhaps in some areas there are state schools that provide extra help for non-francophone kids? And there is also ‘Autre’ – other – in the list of reasons, at number 7! I’d have expected it to be at the end in the ‘if all else fails’ position.

So, the form is filled, ready for Ruadhri to hand in at St Marien on Monday. Still plenty more forms to come I imagine …

Jean-Yves will either sleep in the covered trailer he’s bringing along with him, which he’s fitted out with a mini-kitchen and a bed, or prevail upon the kindness of strangers to give him overnight board and lodging. I imagine you’d get some interesting stories in return for your hospitality.

So, if sometime in the next five weeks you find yourself being held up in a narrow country lane by a slow moving vintage tractor with a wagon behind it, try and be patient. It’s probably Jean-Yves fulfilling his long cherished ambition of making this sedate trip. Not everyone is brave enough to live their dream like that.

The full details of the tractor Tour de France route are here.

Pic from Mon Quotidien.

But while giving with one hand, the government is taking with the other in the form of tighter controls regarding the traceability of the meat from their livestock, which are giving farmers onerous amounts of paperwork and often resulting in fines when it’s not being done properly. Truly French.

The main problem is that sheep farmers who retire aren’t being replaced, even though there’s more money to make from sheep than beef at the moment. French mutton is in demand since New Zealand lamb has been adversely affected by the drought there. Also, setting up with sheep calls for less investment than with dairying or cattle. But of course the Schmallenberg virus hasn’t helped either. If pregnant ewes contract this insect-borne virus, the resulting lamb can be deformed or born dead. We were worried about this when we were waiting for our lambs this spring.

So it’s not a particularly good time for sheep or sheep farmers in this part of France at the moment and there won’t be any revisions to the official agrictultural subsidy approach in the form of PAC (Politique agricole commune) until 2013. You can’t help wondering how many more sheep will be gone by then?

Pic from purepeople

We have a new president, or will have some time between now and 16th May which is the latest date by which he must have his investiture. Sarko is going to have to get a move on to pack his goods and chattels and vacate the President’s chief residence, the Élysée Palace in Paris. And not only that, he has to clear out of the other Presidential properties, namely the Fort de Brégançon, in southeastern France; the Hôtel de Marigny, next door to the Palace; the Château de Rambouillet; the Domaine National de Marly and the Domaine de Souzy-la-Briche. Some of these places aren’t used much but Sarko might have a toothbrush in them that needs removing.

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande is our new guy. He gained the support of 51.67% of the voters, so he didn’t win by a massive margin – but he won. In our commune of Nouzerines he obtained 91 votes, Sarkozy got 61 votes and 12 wicked souls spoilt their ballot papers, rendering them ‘nul’, which is what Marine Le Pen had asked her supporters to do.

Hollande is a socialist, and the first left wing French president for 17 years.

What can we expect from him? He’s talked about creating 60,000 more teaching posts in the state sector – good, good, good; more civil servants – bad as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried dealing with them; raising corporate taxes – bad because they’ll get pushed down to the consumers so we’ll see prices going up; taxing millionaires at 75% – good although should I ever become a millionaire (I still live in hopes) it will be bad, and he’s generally anti-austerity – presumably good.

What his stance is regarding autoentrepreneurs, time will tell. A lot of politicians are deeply distrustful of we small, struggling independent traders, even though there are now a million of us in existence, but I’m in the union now and will help fight any moves to get rid of us.

The general election takes place in five weeks’ time to establish the new parliament and then M Hollande will be rolling his sleeves up and really getting stuck in.

And now that he’s President and can award himself whatever salary he wishes, I imagine I won’t get any more emails from him asking for a fiver …

Relocating fish. We have too many carp in the smaller of the two Notaire’s lakes so we’re moving around twenty or so of them to the other two lakes. This will leave us with about thirty fish in a one-acre lake where we can feed them up and leave them to grow on into super, big carp.

But of course we need to catch our fish first! Luckily we have our friends Paul and Annette to help us. Paul is an excellent angler and is spending the week helping us out while Annette helps him! He arrived Saturday night and by 7 am Sunday night he had three carp waiting for us in his carp sack.

We weighed them – 11, 17 and 21 lbs – and then carefully carried them separately in the sling to their new home.

Here’s the biggest of the three with Paul:

And here he is with Chris ready to swim off into his new lake.

There he goes …

At the moment we’re only having to cross the track to relocate the fish. Soon we’ll need to take them down to the big lake so we  need to rustle up a carp-friendly transport device. Watch this space!

We’ve also been contemplating a mystery today. Something is nibbling our radishes in the polytunnel. Here’s the evidence.

Chris reckons it’s a slug but I’m thinking along rodent lines. Whoever it is had better beware! I’m not having secondhand veg …

When you think of the French, you tend to think of robust – the bureaucrats who couldn’t care less about helping you, the drivers who take no prisoners, the elderly ladies who steamroller past you in queues. Zarafa is a robust film. It tackles slavery, colonialism and racism head on. The King, when viewing Zarafa for the first time in his Jardin des Plantes, makes a tasteless joke that one of the monkeys in the zoo has escaped when little African Makis steps up and speaks to him. You wouldn’t get that in a British or American made film, certainly not in kids’ films. It’s definitely cringey, but this is the country where naughty black Smurfs aren’t replaced by purple ones and people say handicappé without a second thought. Tactless it may be, but it made for a very powerful film. No holds barred. It wasn’t overly mawkish à la Disney, but had its hilarious moments and its pathos. It’s a touching, entertaining film. I was engrossed. I don’t see it appealing to more delicate audiences overseas which is a shame, since it’s refreshingly honest and realistic.

A contemporary sketch of Zarafa from 1827

Most of the film is fiction but it’s based on fact. Zarafa really was the first giraffe to arrive in France in 1824 and she really was a gift from the Pasha of Egypt to the French King, Charles II, in the hopes he would help Egypt. In the film it’s to get French help to beat the Turks who are attacking Alexandria, but in reality it was to try and persuade the French to stop supporting the Greeks, whom the Sultan of Turkey wanted the Pasha to help him fight. The animated Zarafa travels to France in a hot air balloon with two cows to provide her with milk. She continues her journey as far as the mountains when the balloon is damaged. Real Zarafa went by ship with three cows and walked from Marseilles all the way to Paris. In both versions she was a sensation in Paris and giraffe-spotted fabrics and giraffe themed items became all the rage.

All the rest of the film is made up, but it’s well done and as convincing as a cartoon can be. It’s an old fashioned cartoon i.e. with none of the 3D Pixar type effects, and it’s lovely! Maybe I’m slightly biassed since I’ve always loved giraffes. One of my three main toys as a child was a toy giraffe made from flowered cotton and with a black wool mane. I called him Wahay Such Giraffy! I was heartbroken when he eventually fell to bits.

Three cheers for Zarafa!