QUELLE HORREUR, QUELLE HORREUR (PART DEUX)

The next morning I got up early, jumped in the car and set off to explore the environs. The "hamlet" was nothing more than a collection of crumbling barns, some of which had been converted. Not a shop, not a café, nothing. It was literally the middle of nowhere. The café in the nearest village was apparently British owned, and judging by what I had seen so far, to be avoided. I found the local Intermarché, which was open on Sunday mornings to cater to the resident Brits, evidenced by the large size and poor quality of the wine section and the cases of beer piled high near the checkout. I spoke French and avoided eye contact with my Primark-clad fellow-shoppers as I presented my can of flykiller, bottle of bleach and scented candles to the cashier.

I drove for miles and miles in search of something French, and apart from one very pretty village, Nanteuil en Vallée, a good 50 km away with a preponderance of Type 1 Brits and an excellent restaurant (l'Auberge de l'Argentor, where I treated myself to an al fresco Sunday lunch), found nothing to commend the area. It looked a lot like Northamptonshire, with fields of sunflowers instead of rapeseed stretching for miles. Nothing particularly French about it at all.

L'Auberge de l'Argentor, Nanteuil-en-Vallée, Charente

The other side of Confolens was a village called Lesterps, where La Fête de l'Accordéon was advertised that very day. After miles and miles of deserted roads, I found a couple of thousand aficionados had assembled from all over France, and even Europe, to judge by the registration of the many camper vans parked in the adjoining fields, to see the stars of the "piano à bretelles" and trip the light fantastic. They had certainly dressed up for the occasion, often in his 'n' hers matching outfits. I am a great fan of the accordeon and couldn't resist dropping in for a couple of hours. I heard some virtuoso performers, although none of it in the whimsical style of Yann Tiersen (who did the soundtrack of Amélie) or any kind of wider world music element - such as Louisiana cajun music, or Eastern European bands. This was pure, traditional bal musette, the sort you get at 14th July village fireman's balls, and each number accompanied a particular dance style which was announced formally. "Et maintenant, tout le monde en piste pour un pasadoble!"

Talented young Julie Blocher (14) was one of the stars of the festival

The dancing was fascinating. This was "Strictly French Strictly". Each couple had their own particular dance style which made them stand out from the others. I was particularly fascinated by one couple dressed in matching lime green, whose trademark involved breaking apart shortly after the music had started and twirling individually like synchronised doner kebabs. They didn't manage to stay together for one single dance. I overheard someone ask them, during a pause, why they did it. "Because we like it!" Mr W.Dervish replied happily. The French also seem to have discovered line dancing, which was performed with typical French nonchalance, gazing unsmilingly into the middle distance as if waiting for a bus whilst executing precision footwork. I wished Peter Mayle had been there to see it, he would have painted a scene of rural lunacy, probably with dogs running amok on the dance floor and somebody being taken away in an ambulance.

I returned to Royston sur Vasey, my head filled with more escape plans than Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape. I managed to kill the smell in the kitchen with a combination of chemicals and cigarette smoke, but the bluebottles were proving more tenacious. Sitting outside with my glass of wine, I tried to dislodge one reluctant bluebottle from my arm where he was hosing up my blood from the two neat holes he had pierced. I ended up breathing in so much flykiller that night that I was violently ill and spent a second bad night in the house of horrors, lulling myself to sleep with Scarlet O'Hara's mantra "Tomorrow is another day". Although I certainly wouldn't have been seen dead in the curtains.



The next day I drove West for two hours until I hit the Atlantic coast and was relieved to discover I was still in France after all, in La Rochelle to be precise. The English - and the occasional Irish - were still much in evidence, but in a much more upmarket way, and there were a majority of French holidaymakers in their cut-offs and Vuarnets. I took a decision to up sticks, whatever the cost. I spent a very pleasant day in La Rochelle before returning to the gite to inform Reg that I had, regretfully, changed my plans. He asked if there was anything wrong with the accommodation. Having not yet negotiated the cancellation charge, I lied. He said he would talk to the wife and "sort something out".

An hour later he was back to tell me that they would not refund any of the money I had paid up front. I spent a third semi-sleepless night battling with the bluebottles, who had by now decided they loved me and wanted to move upstairs with me and take turns to sit on my nose all night. I was starting to feel like Pig Pen.




The next morning I was packing the car when Reg and Beryl returned from walking their dogs. She barely acknowledged me, and gave me her best Corrie scowl before disappearing into the house. God knows why, they'd received full payment for the week and now had the place free for the next four days. With nothing left to lose, I told Reg what I really thought about the accommodation. He was less than gracious, even defensive, as I had expected, but carelessly revealed that they had been "kicked out" by the French gite rating system. Hardly surprising. He did at least return my deposit (cheque drawn on a bank in Bury - which was pretty much what I wanted to do to Reg and Beryl) and I departed, taking every last tea bag and nobly resisting the temptation to hide the remains of a very ripe Camembert somewhere in the furniture. I was £200 out of pocket, but as Keith Richards wisely said, it's the price of an education. That'll teach me to spurn the advice of Gites de France.

It was depressing to reflect, as I drove away, that the very worst of England was now seeping down into my beloved France. They're even broadcasting "Shameless" to the French on a satellite channel. We must be mad or masochistic, or both, to give the French even more reason to feel superior to us - as if they needed one. So when you notice a particularly unsavoury foreigner in your area, speaking no language known to man or goat, with traces of unidentifiable food in his beard and smelling like an old Afghan coat, rest assured that we are exporting even worse examples of our race to foreign parts. If we carry on like this, the French will be paying us to pull out of the European Union.

My hols got radically better within two minutes of leaving Royston sur Vasey, but I'll save that for next week. I didn't, in the end, renounce my British nationality.

Frank Gallagher - proud to be British

(N.B. A Blue Peter badge to Mr McChé for the nifty bit of bilingual photoshopping at the top)

THE HORROR, THE HORROR (PART ONE)

There are two kinds of expat Brit in France.

The first kind is retired, upper-middle-class, patrician, to be found mostly in the Dordogne or Provence, well established for 20 years or more. Public school and university education, very comfortably off thank you on their mandarin's pension or share options, they are to be found discreetly integrating into the prettier villages of rural France. Only identifiable by their UK registered cars and their Church shoes, they pass unobtrusively, speaking charming Eton-inflected French and ordering wines with an expertise that causes a Périgord sommelier to suck his teeth in admiration. Les Anglais, after all, are the greatest tastevins in the world. The men are tall, broad-shouldered, aquiline-nosed, trim silver moustaches lending them a military bearing, vaguely reminiscent of John Cleese, sporting linen jackets and Panama hats; their wives petite, thin-lipped and copper-bronzed, in Jaeger linen dresses and Pinet shoes. They wash their Jaguars and Range Rovers on a Sunday (owned by who? Tata? Indian? some mistake, surely) and always book a table in advance.

The second type are younger and not quite so well-off, usually couples in their thirties with a brace of young in tow. They are unconditional francophiles, often French teachers, and fit in well, adopting the French holiday uniform of pedalpushers, deck shoes and sunglasses permanently on the head. The children will have French names like Amélie or Ottilie, and Félix or Raphaël, and are being groomed to eat mussels and snails at 9 p.m. like French children. They are unobtrusive and you'd only know they were British by sitting next to them in a restaurant, where the telltale well-thumbed copy of "Rough Guide to France" will be sticking out of the side pocket of hubby's North Face rucksack.

o o o O o o o

Then there are the people who owned the gite I booked for a week in the Vienne, the second least desirable department of France after, perhaps, the Creuse, but on the map deceptively close to the Dordogne. The photograph looked fine. In retrospect, I should have paid heed to the fact that they were not affiliated to any reputable French tourist organisation, but they're British, I thought, how bad can it be? We have standards.


It was certainly off the beaten track. There was a reason for that, I later found out - nobody's ever wanted to go there. I nearly missed the half-hidden sign to the village of Royston-sur-Vasey. There was nobody about when I arrived at the exact time I had informed them to expect me. A line of grey baggy underwear was hanging on the washing line. I knocked on the door, and eventually a blonde woman appeared, apologizing that she'd been reading and "Reg" had been watching the Ashes on Sky. Reg emerged, pot-bellied, long greasy grey hair, baggy shorts, singlet, flip-flops. Like a cross between Roy 'Chubby' Brown and Frank Gallagher. His wife, Beryl, was a pinched-faced middle-aged blonde out of Corrie. By the accent (forgive me, Pat, don't read any further if you don't want) from somewhere round Oldham. Or Burnley. Barnsley. BNP country. McChe has a theory that as a baby I must have had a terrifying experience with a babysitter from somewhere round there, as a certain kind of trans-Pennine accent can make me foam at the mouth and show signs of epilepsy.

His, for example

My cottage was dark, dingy, and unpleasantly furnished. But it was late and there was nowhere else to go. The kitchen smelled foul and there were a lot of bluebottles. Because they're cutting the wheat at the moment, they said, which is probably what the French peasant who sold them the ramshackle dungheap told them before he scuttled off to the Crédit Agricole, cackling. We exchanged pleasantries, if you can call them that. They'd been in France 8 or 9 years, and spoke not a word of French. I wondered what they'd done before in the UK, but couldn't bear to prolong the conversation any longer than necessary after Beryl told me - with not a flicker of irony - that they didn't want to go back to the UK as it was overrun with furriners. In the awkward silence that followed, I decided that he'd been either a drug dealer or a professional unemployed. It was as if Frank Gallagher had never made it back from that trip to France. They knew I worked in Brussels. They probably had it in for me already.


They had not offered to provide a meal and left me nothing to eat but a packet of biscuits, but luckily I had stopped off at a supermarket on the way, so made the best of a cold supper - I gave up on heating anything up when I saw (and smelled) the condition of the microwave. Everything in the cottage seemed to be cast-offs or bought from a car boot sale. There was a stack of books (Maeve Binchy, Catherine Cookson - not even Peter Mayle) and DVDs (Die Hard 2, The Grinch) and a huge pile of tourist information, most of it at least a couple of years out of date. A visitors' book was thinly inscribed, the last entry dating back to April said: "Great gite - apart from the flies". Two above-ground swimming pools took up some of the space of the vast garden, which had nothing else to commend it. There was at least Sky TV with 400 mostly unwatchable channels, all in English. I watched something about child beauty queen contests in Milton Keynes and couldn't work out if the programme was for or against. I retired early to bed and spent a fitful night on a wonky mattress, between faded and very worn sheets.


(to be continued tomorrow, if I can bear to relive it)

ONE FOR THE ROAD

Thanks to the miracle of Blogger, I can post as if I am with you! When in fact I am at this very moment boulevarding in gay Paree. It's spooky, isn't it?

While I'm away, enjoy a glass of Louvain's finest.

WE ARE COMING (TO TAKE YOU AWAY) (HA HA) - Spoiler alert

I've been riveted to the screen at 10 p.m. every night this week by Torchwood, to which I must admit I was impervious up to now. As usual, I have managed to catch up with the bus just before it reaches the terminus. Russell T. Davies is a genius. Not only did he turn around Doctor Who and make it cult viewing, but he has devised a spin-off which stands up on its own merits and can knock many other Sci-Fi series into a black hole.

I was only watching with one eye until the end of Monday's episode, which ended on a bombshell - Captain Jack Harkness grabbing Welshman Ianto Jones for a goodbye snog. This was something new and unexpected. (I should point out at this juncture that I didn't start watching Dr Who until David Tennant took over so missed the earlier demonstration of Captain Jack's ambidextrousness). I was totally hooked from that moment on. Every episode has been packed with twists, turns, references to previous episodes (luckily an earlier series is running on Sci Fi channel at a different time, so I'm trying to catch up in the margins), and the quirky sort of humour we have been enjoying from the new improved Doctor Who, and each episode has ended on a cliffhanger that leaves you panting for the next episode. If this was going out weekly I would be climbing the walls. I had to record last night's final episode and won't have time to watch it till tomorrow, SO DON'T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS, RIGHT?

The big vomity alien, known to his friends as the 456, announces its arrival through the voices of all the world's children, who all start chanting "We are coming" in unison, in a scary way. Then they all announce "We are coming tomorrow". The next day they all chant "We are here". It transpires that "we" have been to earth before. Remember "We are a grandmother"?

She had a deep voice, and spent a lot of time hanging around MI5

BVA wants to kidnap 10% of the world's children for purposes unknown, and the British politicians are hatching a plot to bottom-feed from the sink estates and failing schools and thereby get rid of the next generation of the underclass as well as ensuring their own little darlings are safe. Torchwood have pledged to fight, which is really a bit daft, as BVA has promised to wipe out the human race if he doesn't get what he wants. I would have offered them Northamptonshire. I mean, who would miss that? I would also throw in all News International journos (Rebekah Wade first), the Taliban, bankers, hedge fund traders and Boris Johnson, the Isle of Sheppey, San Marino, the Belgian trade unions, the entire European Parliament, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Any other suggestions for the 456 appeasement package?

I shall be away in the country (I'm not saying which country) next weekend and the weekend after that, without internet access, so see you when I get back.


P.S. After assiduous research on YouTube, I have finally located the famous World War II episode which tells us all we need to know about Captain Jack Harkness.

THE DRUGS DON'T WORK

Nice to see the old people enjoying themselves

As every year, I've been watching highlights from Glastonbury. How nice that they had good weather for once. And with all those geriatric rockers on the stage, the spirit of Woodstock almost made a comeback. Crosby Stills and Nash were one of my favourite bands, and they did not disappoint. I noted with a quietly xenophobic smirk that the British one has aged better than the Americans. Although to be fair, David Crosby always looked like a fat truck driver, now he just looks like a white-haired fat truck driver. Stephen Stills "on the electric guitar" as Graham Nash quaintly introduced him - as opposed to what, the gas guitar? - can still play a mean solo, but his singing was pretty incoherent and tuneless and he looked like a wreck. His drug use was legendary, as was that of Neil Young, who appeared separately. He has not aged well either, which is a shame, as he was very cute in the days of "Heart of Gold".

"Rocking in the free world" may well be one of the great festival anthems of all time, but forty-three reprises of the chorus was threatening to wear out even the infinite patience of the Glasto crowd. And then came the proof that old people with a previous history of recreational drugtaking should be put to bed at a reasonable hour. Breaking his guitar strings and indulging himself in 10 minutes of Stockhausenesque free noise was really not becoming in an old git of his age. His nurse was too busy accompanying him on guitar and vibes to remember his medication.

Compare, if you will, with the eternally dignified Tom Jones, who does not attempt to relive his youth but somehow manages to remain attractive, in an avuncular way. Employing your son as your manager is an astute move. Jones Junior is not going to allow his old man to make a fool of himself. He looked quite delighted that the kids were enjoying his old tunes. He was interviewed on The One Show the next day, and questioned about drug use. It rang a bell with me when he said that he had never taken drugs because he didn't know what was in them. And this is surely the best argument against legalising drugs. If they were legal and properly labelled and attractively packaged and on the shelves in Tesco, we'd all have a go. Probably.

I was very surprised to learn in a documentary about Steve McQueen that he had gone a bit trippy in his later life. Nobody straighter, you would have thought. That was the secret of his cool - he didn't compromise, when everyone else was sporting flowing locks and psychedelic caftans and dropping LSD, he remained short-haired, focussed, soberly dressed. He did not mix with the hippies, he was more interested in cars and motorbikes. But no! When he succumbed to the hubris of fame, he sank into a welter of booze and spliffs and lost his dignity not to mention two wives.

And the moral of this story is, be you young or old, practice restraint in all things. Yes, Mrs Pouncer, that means you.








I'm always interested when two famous people expire within a couple of days of each other, as I imagine them escorting each other up to the pearly gates. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson made a nice pair, him liking a mature woman as he did. But Mollie Sugden and Karl Malden were lessons in growing old gracefully. I'm just surprised no-one ever cast them together as the romantic leads.

The Boss, wearing his own wellies

Finally, one old rocker from the other side of the pond who's ageing quite nicely thank you did a great set at his first ever Glasto. Sadly, there are no clips yet up on YouTube, but in honour of the national day of our American friends, and now you're back in the fold, I'll allow you five minutes of shameless nationalism. Welcome back guys. We missed you.