The choral course

Well, quite a lot has happened since I last posted - a really wonderful, but totally exhausting, musical experience, new friends, and an encounter with a lorry which proved pretty disastrous.

The choral course was the Festival of Jean Langlais, the blind French composer who produced (amongst other things) considerable organ and choral music. The idea was to get together enthusiastic singers together to rehearse a number of pieces mostly from the core English choral répertoire, with a few French pieces, for a couple of concerts and a Mass.

The 'musical director' was Malcolm Archer, a distinguished organist, choral conductor and above all composer (one of whose pieces, 'Finally brethren', we performed). He was truly inspirational: exacting, but encouraging, and knowing exactly how to communicate the music through his body and gestures. So much so that one hardly noticed the hectic schedule of rehearsals - 9.45 to 11, 11.30 to 12.30, and 15.00 to 16.30.

There was plenty of time for socializing - there was coffee, and lunch in the local restaurant, who did us proud. There were also events in the evening - a buffet supper on the first night, an organ recital on the second, at a church commemorating one the many places where Mary appeared, and a soirée musicale, which featured many excellent performances by people whose skill left one feeling at the same time inspired and a long way behind.

All the people one talked to were interesting, and I didn't find it difficult that a lot of people had come together and I hadn't or that a lot of people were taking up acquainances from previous years. Some how just about everybody I talked to we seemed to have a lot to say to one another, from Mireiile, whom I talked to a lot in English and French at lunch time, to Jean, who had been at my school, to the lady who lived in Italy with a northern husband, whom I talked at the last meal.

Altogether I was having a blissful summer at St Germain, then on the Friday something happened to bring me down to earth with a bang, literally, or rather a gréât scraping of métal. I have been taking, and picking up, my dogs to a kennels, in the direction of Parigne, in the opposite direction of La Fentenelle, but on Wednesday and thursday evening, the woman had been late so I decided to leave my dogs at home on Friday, and visit them at midday, which I was doing. I had awoken that morning being very tired, and going down with a cold, I had also had voice coaching and was full of that, and, as I suppose, nervous of the concert.

My memories of what events were before the accident, I am rather hazy on; I had decided to take a previous turn and then ahot past if - perhaps an indication of the state of my mind - but the next thing I knew was a sensation of my car colliding with a large lorry, and it was as if the steel of the lorry was a knife that suddenly sliced through my car (passenger lights side)

Immediately after it happend and I was limping across to somewhere safe to park, what was going through my mind was 'oh no, this isn't happening'. Several people stopped offering cups of tea, French (fortunately I do, though not in shock). Several people asked me if I had seen the lorry, of which I had no recollection, making me feel that I had just careered into it in its own path, but from the drawings the little lorry driver i think I was on the turn left lane with its arrows, and must have strayed slightly over into the path of the lorry, who was in any case travelling very fast.And were the people asking if I had seen the lorry implying that I should have or was there a suggestion that it had zoomed up so fast as if from nowhere?

Anyway, after filling in a form which stated that the parties had agreed on the fault of the accident, and a kind English man changed the wheel for me,I managed to drive the car back to the house, where I was treated to a lot of sympathy and 'calins' by Nelson, who offered me one of his precious tennis balls. There ensued the normal volley of phone calls, to the AA to get the vehicle towed to a garage, to the course to explain my absence that afternoon, and to the insurance.

Everyone was really sympathetic, but the real knight in shining armour prize must go to my new - and much valued - friend John-Charles Tanner, whom I had originally met the previous October. My friend Miranda and I were waiting to board the boat and I was wandering about for fresh air, looking out for people with dogs so that I could pump them on how their dogs survived, and what was the best crossing. I wasn't sure if John Charles was English or French - he spoke with me in a highly cultured English accent and his dog in fluent French (it's a French dog). Anyway, as the conversation strayed from dogs to other stuff, we found that we had houses close to one another, his being in Fougeres.

So, we struck up a correspondence by email, initiated rather nervously on my part, during which we told me about Brenda and the course and the rest is well, history.

In addition to phoning the AA, insurance etc. I also thought about whom I could call locally; I did not feel like telling the neighbours because the whole thing did not show me in a very good light, after all. And I had hardly any friends here - apart from John Charles; there were others, but they usually lived further south. It was decided by the fact that I didn't have my papers with the numbers for the course, and knew he would have Brenda's number.

Anyway John proved extremely useful, picking me up from my house to go to the Friday night concert, where I managed to commit myself OK considering the circonstance,and there was a large party at the Sale Polyvalente at which I consumed three glasses of Champagne

On the saturday night, I had managed to get some people to agree to pick me up, but when thunder threatened, I called it off - i didn't want anyone to take risks for me. So when I got a call from this pleasat couple (at least he was, I think she was a bit fed up) who were trying to find me, and had not got the message. I was, however, pleased to enjoy more time spent at the course, and that concert that evening was just a marvellous expérience.

Despite an unpromising rehearsal, and a rushed meal, during which time I ended up with Malcolm archer and the scholars,all of us in search of a decent meal when most people had brought picnics, the evening performance was one of those occasions when everybody seems to suddenly forget their tiredness and just let the music speak. For me, it was like a mystical expérience, when I forgot myself and was able just to, as it were, give myself over to Malcolm almost in an act of faith, forgetting my need to study the music which, no doubt, were I a better musicien, I would have remembered.

After the performance, there was an post-concert drink with Judith and David and another couple, and it was midnight by the time I was back in La Revenuais, greeted by a couple of 'presents' from the dogs which were entirely my fault, having left them for so long. On Sunday, there was a performance of the Jonathan Dove mass at Parish Mass at La Fontenelle, followed by a lunch at the Salle Polyvalente which was really lovely, beautifully prepared and a lovely chance to talk with some members of the group whom I had only met briefly. It was so lovely to be with a group of people with whom one automatically had so much in common - not just singing, but a certain educational level and an interest in culture, travel etc.

Blackout

Sunday 21st July Well, there I was philosophizing about my existential angst and feeling that I had is sort of sorted, and then a new test of my self sufficiency emerged in the form of electricity outage. A frantic hunt for a large torch ensued followed by a visit to The Neighbour to confirm that this was not just a misfortune that had struck my house – needless to say it was not, we are in the midst of some rather terrifying storms and the whole hamlet, and possibly the village, is without electricity. It’s banal to say that we don’t realize how dependent we are on electricity. Light, TV and the Internet all depend thereon. Gas I do have, so can cook. To sum it up, I have the essentials, but not my entertainment – reading, TV and the Internet, and I’m sorry to be (probably) missing The White Queen on TV to which I was much looking forward. However, there is also a sense in which this is rather exciting and comforting – at least I have my bed to lie on, my dear dogs round me (not literally), a house that keeps out the elements, and a light to read by. It’s a sense of paring down to life’s basics, and living as people used to live, which has a certain novelty value (which I am sure would/will pale if it goes on for more than 24 hours). Today I went to an Elevage (which I suppose means a display) of Brittany spaniels in Saint Lo, an uninspiring little town in lower Normandy, on the borders of the River Vire. I met a nice Englishman, his less pleasant wife who told me that Honda was terribly thin (which I had suspected, but the vets in both countries seemed quite happy), and I also saw her breeder. Perhaps the nicest thing was seeing a lot of other Brittanies, which would have been nice in itself, but what was really nice was that they all pulled on the lead, and I heard other tales of them going off to the next county. I met another English couple who had recently lost a Brittany, and were just about to buy another. I did manage to get from them that the first four years had been hell, but that things had calmed down after that (presumably the Brittany in question had lived well beyond her fourth birthday). Some one else said that if you saw a Brittany walking to heel, it had been tranquillized. I went back via Coutances, famed for its beautiful cathedral, into which I needless to say could not take my dogs, so they and I sat on the steps and contemplated (at least I did) the breathtaking gothic interior. Then home in horrendous heat and this storm, which is still going on, and still no electricity. Which just about brings me up to date – not much more to say, really. I think it will be no White Queen tonight, just more George East on Brittany. So, just a hunt for my slippers (at least in this dark, I do have an excuse for losing things) and off to bed with George.

English sweetmeats - Saturday 20th July

Honda is on heat - official notification of the fact from the nice (?Belgian) vet yesterday, to whom I managed to explain both that I didn't know the word for 'in season' and that I also didn't know whether Honda was, as she was, it turns out, 'en chaleur'.

Anyway, the result is that Honda's social life, already limited to the long lead, is now firmly limited to the short lead. As the vet said (I recall someone in the chemist saying something similar to me in my more fertile days), things can happen very quickly.

I have to say, Honda has been very discreet about her 'condition', no sign of bleeding in the form of marks left on the sofa etc., although she did have a momentous fight with Nelson just now, which I had to separate (I am sure that if I had been in England the Neighbours would have been round by now, but I think in France they are more discreet, thank God).

Talking of neighbours, I had them (in the form of grandparents, Marie Therese and Francois, and parents (of three) Patrique and ?Juliette) to tea this afternoon, for which I expended much effort in baking British afternoon tea sweetmeats (see www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/afternoon-tea) with a varying degree of success, owing partly to lack of skill and partly (I am sure) to difference in French flour, which I am sure is much lighter and softer than the British variety (why doesn't globalization mean that we can all have the same rubbish food?).

Anyway, they ate them quite happily, MT having checked that I had indeed baked them. (May be I feel it is some test of authentic womanhood to show that one can bake, which I must pass having failed to produce offspring?) However, I found the whole business quite stressful, I was given the feeling that they were doing me a favour, that they were only coming to see l'anglaise out of politeness, a blip in their busy lives. As a foreigner, you can feel very much the outsider.

I woke that morning feeling stressed and odd about having spent (comparatively) so much time on my own. The feeling continued throughout the morning and intensified in the afternoon, and I started to feel very differently about being in France. No longer did I experience the sheer joy of being here in this lovely house (as I read George East, I realise how lucky I am to have been able to buy this lovely conversion, apparently so many are just so badly done). Instead I started to feel a sense of alienation and anomie, and to miss things about England. This is what I miss:

My friends

Having good friends close by

Newspapers

My support network, especially for the dogs - so easy when I am going out for a long time just to get someone to dog walk or let them out

The punctuation of my days by my regular commitments, such as French, art history, visiting the Old people's home with my dogs

I don't miss the snottiness of my neighbours, the way the English have spoilt the countryside, or the constant pressing presence of too many people, cars etc. But I do realise that I have done what many people do when they move (or half move in my case) to another country, which is to create a romantic fiction about the other place as an escape from everything one dislikes about one's present life. So in my case, France was somewhere where everyone was welcoming, where there were endless stretches of beautiful countryside, and far fewer cars.

In fact, a lot of the above is true: many of the French I have met in St Germain have been very friendly

The one-armed photographer

I think it's fair to say that my new dog Honda has caused me a fair amount of grief, between her enthusiasm for 'going' and her unreliability of coming (seems her motto is, 'better to travel than to arrive'). Our daily walk - or rather, the anticipation thereof - normally has my stomach in knots, or rather, something more fluid.

However, things have taken a turn for the better, not because I have got the better of Honda's pulling (the latest technical device, a Halti harness, I find needs a special sort of lead which will no doubt take ages to come from Amazon, which, however reliable it has been in England, seems totally to lose its way in France).

What has cheered me up considérable has been the sheer beauty of the countryside through which I now walk. Instead of a flat field, and the threat of grumpy riders who seem to regard all dog owners as latter-day thugs and yobos, I have a beautiful countryside which looks all the more marvellous in this glorious weather.

It's a countryside of quiet roads, stone buildings, wooded hillsides, haystacks - bocage country, which is mainly distinguished by the fact that fields, which in England are enormous, with minimal boundaries, are here much smaller and with plenty of trees in between.

I should say that the reference in the title refers to the utter inability to capture this glorious landscape with an Apple iPhone 4 phone held in one hand, the other busy handling Honda!

Alone again

A bit banal as a title, but I just wanted to capture what I have been feeling over the last few days. Some people are naturally fairly solitary, other would argue that it isn't natural to be solitary, we need other people. I think that we do need other people, but it can be important to learn to be alone, because we are destined to spend quite a bit of time on our own - parters die or leave, we can't always have friends and family around.

Honda says: I'm hère!

In my middle thirties, when others were busy having families or planning to find a way of having them, I finally learnt to live on my own. I had moved, for a job, to rural Northamptonshire, unfortunately the job fell through and I was left to survive somehow with freelance work. But I did learn to have a reasonable appreciation of my own company.

I'm not going to get into the philosophical debate of how much one needs other people, but it just seems to me practical to be able to be reasonably content on one's own, and have things that one likes doing, without needing company all the time, or even a good proportion of it. Apart from anything else, it gives one better choice for the company one chooses (I remember at one stage befriending someone who was clearly mentally disturbed not merely out of sympathie, but also out of loneliness).

Anyway, back to the present, my ability to tolerate time on my own seems to have diminished since being with Derek, and his death. So, the thought of time spent on my own here in St Germain (5 days, then a whole 3 weeks) did make me feel slightly alarmed. And I did have, on waking on Wednesday morning, a tinge of the old knots in the stomach.

Well, it's now Thursday afternoon, and I am feeling perfectly happy and normal. I seem to have got into a routine: in the morning, I take the dogs for a long walk (a delight and torture at the same time, and the subject of a separate post), do domestic things, then in the afternoon it's errands (preceded by a siesta, necessitated by the heat) and then free time in the evening, for reading, writing, and watching télévision.

The errands themselves lead me into an interesting world, the world of French hypermarkets. It's a world which to me is the total negation of what I consider to be the essence of French-ness: good food and style. Far from style, we seem to have a bland sameness: lots of different types of biscuits, and imitations of French delicacies which taste nothing like the original, as well as powders which you can mix up to imitate the delicacies which will also taste nothing like the original; rows and rows of tins; a lot of not very well dressed French who are frankly overweight.

I should say I speak as one whose eating habits are not totally healthy, who is over fond of a glass of wine (or three) and who is presently clad in a Super-U dress which unkind people would say looks like a table cloth. And anyway, having taken the plunge of asking my elderly neighbour for tea on Saturday, and given myself the challenge of baking English foods for tea. Which meant that I and my dictionary had great fun in Super U: I added to my vocabulaire the different words for various types of flour, and sugar.

Arrived in France

Well, here I am, I have now been in France for nearly a week. I arrived on Friday evening (July 12th) very late, with my friend Sandy, after a longish journey (200 miles plus crossing, made more nerve wracking by the attempts of my inadequate navigator to save us a few yards and thereby to send us into confusion).

Much relief to arrive, somewhat marred by the fact that I realise that the keys to the carefully packed box on top of the car are not in fact on my key ring, but are (probably) on the key ring hanger at home. I go into panic mode, but Sandy is very good, and sensibly suggests that we go to bed and look for a solution in the morning.

I am the sort of person who plans for weeks when I am expecting a visit, cooking casseroles etc. and leaving them in the freezer. So, to have a small house party (our friends Peter and Sheila, whom we met in Sicily, are due at 'tea time' the following day) when the only meal I have prepared is in the inaccessible box, whilst the gas cooker isn't working because the gas bottle is running out, is a test of my sang froid to say the least.

However, it feels lovely to wake up the following day deep in the French countryside and in glorious weather. The latter is not common in this part of (northern) Brittany, so the countryside has that special glow that lush landscapes have in the sun, the marvellous confluence of green and blue.

We go off to Super U, where Sandy busies herself getting salads and cold meats whilst I manage to get my box lock picked by a helpful garage which is even more helpfully in close proximity to Super U.

Great relief to be able to access box, now it remains to change the bottle on the cooker. I manage to prize the gas bottle away from the tap linking it to the oven, a minor victory for someone as impractical as myself, and find somewhere open (the local all-purpose plumber and ironmonger has unhelpfully decided to close over the weekend all July and August) where I can exchange the dead bottle for a full one. I don't quite manage to get the gas cooker working, although Peter helps out by pressing a green button, and we are good to go for our evening meal of lasagne, which is delicious and much appreciated.

Sunday is Bastille day, and after a nice late start and a langorous breakfast we wander down to the village of St Germain en Cogles, to see how they are celebrating this momentous day in French history - with a vide grenier it turns out.

I should explain that my house is in a small hamlet, called La Revenuais, about half a mile from the aforesaid village. St Germain is part of a group of villages in the area known as Coglais, which boasts not only lovely French villages with hanging baskets etc. but also wooded hillsides, lakes and castles - see http://www.coglais.com/Tourisme.

It's in an area known as the Brittany Marches, which means borderline Brittany: now, a string of pleasant medieval towns (or towns with médiéval centres) runs from St Malo and Mont St Michel down to Rennes; then (i.e. in the Middle Ages) it was a territory which put up a life and death struggle against anyone who tried to invade, and capture, the sovereignty of Brittany. Geographically, it's close to Normandy; drive a few miles along the A84 and you are in Manche, a departement which definitely belongs to lower Normandy.

We enjoy a pleasant walk in the woods above the village, although I think that both I, handling the mad Honda, and Sheila, who is still suffering from the after effects of an accident to her hip a few years ago, find it quite a strain and are glad to get back to the 'bourg', and to the local bar for a nice lunch of sausage wrapped in pancake, and chips. After which we wearily walk home and enjoy a nice siesta. Later in the afternoon, I manage to provide entertainment for the whole hamlet when my dogs both manage to escape over a low stone wall onto the farm. I have a large audience who all seem to be enjoying my futile attempts to catch the hounds - a real contrast to England, where people are very touchy about their property.

On Monday, I give people a choice between the Parc Floral de la Haute Bretagne and the Château de Fougeres - no contest, as the former will be (and is) in all its glory. It consists of a number of differently themed gardens - bamboo, mediterranean, Italian, Chinese, with plenty of water features and a great number of different plants. In the evening, we have a lovely meal at a restaurant in Fougeres, St Laurent, right in the centre, very French with red check table cloth and excellent food. I have something which I am told is like a boeuf bourginogne, advertised as something to do with a taureau (bull). It's certainly delicious.

The following day is departure day for my friends, off to their busy lives in the UK. Although in some ways I am looking forward to the solitude, having had quite a sociable time over the last few weeks, being here on my own represents something of a challenge as I know very few people, and my next visitors don't arrive for about a month. I wander round the pretty town of Avranches, where we have had lunch, then drive back and join my dogs and start to tidy the house.