Le Franco Phoney

When an English lady called Miranda got in touch to see if I’d be interested in a writers’ retreat just ten minutes from my house, I was hesitant. Okay, I’m a writer and it would give me a break from domestic life to get stuck into some fiction, but I already live in a beautiful part of the world so would it really make that much difference? I went to find out, and I can confidently say that it was worth every cent.

I was greeted by Miranda and Chris from Chalet La Giettaz just on the other side of the Col des Aravis which is the doorway to the Savoie region (La Clusaz is Haute Savoie). I met the lady who was going to crack the whip all weekend, Bidisha, and the three other writers over a tasty, relaxed dinner. As you may gather from this photo, Bidisha is not a harsh person, and the most fierce whip-cracking involved her insisting that we go on a walk to clear our heads on Sunday despite some resistance. I suspect one student may say that the whip only really came out when Bidisha demanded that each student submit 6,000 words of text prior to the weekend for her to critique. Bidisha provided some great feedback and the opportunity to ask questions about the publishing industry and finding an agent.

That might seem trite to someone living in London, but I’m surrounded by French people who speak mostly of snow, sports and cows, so the weekend was really valuable for me to learn about the British publishing industry (where I plan to get published) and writing fiction. Although I can’t say that the idyllic mountain scenery of La Giettaz motivated me to write any more than the idyllic mountain scenery out my window in St Jean de Sixt, the retreat really was a retreat, and the Brits around me seemed suitably satisfied with the views and peacefulness to aid their writing. The retreat enabled me to write for hours, which I’d  fail to do at home (partly thanks to the attention demanded by my cat Bruno and his cream-nagging, small-animal-regurgitating ways), and Bidisha has motivated me to get back to polishing this novel before another year passes me by. Watch this space.

Le Bélier (the name of a local goat-like sheep whose head forms the logo for La Clusaz) is a 27km course around the five peaks of La Clusaz (click here for the map if you want to see the route), which was held today. Participants can run or walk, and the goodies on offer on the way around differ for both. Walkers are offered local sausages and Reblochon cheese while the ‘serious’ runners get water and energy drinks. Walkers can choose to do just half the course (called “L’Agneau”, which means “lamb”), and many of my brave friends did one or the other today (well done to Dave, Alex, James, Paul, Jess, Richard, Samantha, Janelle, Steve, Max, Josh, Elliot and anyone else I’ve missed), with wobbly legs, a torn muscle and bloody toes just some of the outcomes from their efforts. Their reward, apart from the achievement itself, is a free massage and a meal involving more local sausage and some chocolate on bread, amongst other things.

I watched those doing the full Bélier course cross the finish line, and noticed this man who had an innovative take on the cow bell that’s so often heard at ski races in Europe and around the world. He’s stuck a cow bell on an old ski. If you’ve ever held a cow bell, you know how heavy cow bells are. Jingling them takes a fair amount of effort — and space. Carrying them to an event is dedication in itself! This man has all the answers: he can sling the ski over his shoulder while walking to his destination, then let the ski take the weight of the bell and simply wobble the ski to make the bell jingle. Congratulations again to everyone who took part in Le Bélier/L’Agneau today, but most of all, congratulations to this guy for coming up with such a great idea.

Are you ready for a rant? I am. Here’s a money-making idea for someone living in rural France: sell fly-wire screens. There’s an apparent shortage of the things in the Aravis valley and beyond, despite the poo from farm animals such as this cow in La Clusaz ensuring an ample supplies of flies all summer long. I’m prompted to write about this because of the huge influx in flies in the last week with the return of the warm weather. Coming from Australia, I’m used to flies, but I’m also used to fly-wire screens. These screens, made of mesh that’s small enough to prevent flies and other insects from passing through it, allow the air through on hot summer days and nights when flies and mosquitoes are plentiful. During the hot weather, the occasional fly would get in the house, but it was mostly a fly-free environment.

Since moving to France, none of the seven houses I’ve lived in have had any sort of fly wire screens. I’ve looked all around and I don’t see any houses or businesses (and yes, the flies love cheese shops) that make use of this simple approach to keeping flies out. The lady next door comes closest with her door-length fringing. I think it’s actually one of those modern indoor string curtains that has gained popularity in France recently. Perhaps it works, but it still looks like a curtain on the wrong side of the door to me. Fly-wire screens may not be the most attractive adornment either, but they’re guaranteed to be effective against flies.

In May, my trusty old fly swat of two years was broken. It’s my own fault: I’d left it propped up against a wall instead of hanging it by the hole in its arm. A curly swat is not much use. In my desperation to kill the flies, I bought the first fly swat I found — the blue one pictured here. It’s from the supermarket, and it lasted an entire day before it broke. I continued to use it despite bits of blue plastic breaking off every now and again, making the skill level involved in the killing process just that bit higher each time. The other fly swat was a gift (who says romance is dead?): I love the extra detail of the fly on the swat area. But can you see anything wrong with this swat? You can see from the black plastic mesh that it, like my old trusty one, is not flat. It’s not bent a lot, but the reduction in surface area gives some flies a few moments longer to live and requires a few more swats from me. I could buy some sticky fly paper, but I feel sorry for the flies who stick to it alive and have to await their death. At least the swat is fast.

But I can’t help thinking that if fly-wire screens were more common on houses in the Alps, flies wouldn’t make it indoors in the first place. It was some Aussies who live down the road who found me through this blog and suggested someone could earn some money by introducing the French to fly-wire screens. I suspect the French love the appearance of their beautiful chalets a bit too much to ugly them up with the screens I’m so used to seeing in Australia. But with so many non-French around, i can’t help but wonder if they’re onto something. Can someone sell me some screens please?

Broccoli is one of those staple vegies that’s available no matter what season it is, right? Well, kind of. I always thought it was, but this week, there was a major broccoli shortage in the Aravis valley. In fact, my local Carrefour was a bit short of everything. I needed to cook a dinner the other night: dips, followed by broccoli and cheese pie and stuffed mushrooms, then chocolate fondue with strawberries and bananas.

Supermarkets here often run out of stock before the end of the day, so I went down in the morning. I started with dips. One dip was out of stock, and for the guacamole, all the avocados were as hard as rocks. Onto the main course: No broccoli, and only button mushrooms. How do you stuff mushrooms the size of a badge? Dessert: there were no strawberries and the bananas were all too green. The chocolate went back on the shelf and I guessed the recipe of an alternative dessert.

Lidl and Shopi, two smaller supermarket chains in France, were also out of broccoli. Intermarché was on my way home so I popped in and found one last piece of broccoli and I’m sure the guy who watched my desperate search thought that I was playing Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter character in Alice in Wonderland when he sees Alice for the first time and says “Alice” with a big mad smile on his face, except replace her name with: “Broccoli”. He also watched as I caressed the broccoli after snatching it to prevent anyone else from taking it.

My half-hour shopping trip turned into three hours thanks to a lack of broccoli, fruit and dips. The latest lesson about living in France? Have a shopping list for the preferred meal, then another for the alternative. And plan ahead for broccoli. I’m now growing my own.

No, you are not imagining things. This really is a photo of a cow in a car — a Renault 5 to be exact. This is a car with only three doors, so there’s not that much space between the driver and the cow. My friend Penny snapped this photo on the way back from Annecy last week. At first, she presumed the brown and white thing was a boxer dog. She then realised it was a cow.

I guess this particular farmer found it more cost effective than getting out the cow transport truck, but I’m not sure how the cow feels about it. Is that a line of wee coming from the cow? And if so, is it really that cost effective? The farmer has to clean up the the mess left behind by the cow.

I reckon this one beats the dog on a bike and the snowman on a car hands down.

A blog reader, Carmen, got in touch with me a while back with a great question which I’ve been meaning to blog about ever since. She asked about the integration between the French and the British, as she’s noticed that some friends in the valley of Chamonix only seem to mix with other Brits. She asked: “Is Chamonix Valley the worst Alps area for this kind of divide or are there others with a more integrated expat/local community?” Here comes a serious post, so if you’re here for light entertainment, you might prefer to check my post about rural fairs or dodgy translation or crazy people or chairlift queueing. For those of you left, here’s my reply for Carmen.

I’m happy to say that there are plenty of places in the Alps where the expats integrate with the locals, including right where I live. Although I’ve never lived in Chamonix, I did spend many winters in the Méribel valley — in the more residential Les Allues, and before that, Brides les Bains. Some of those in the community of expats never bothered to be friendly towards seasonnaires such as myself even though I returned year after year. I didn’t live there in summers, so I guess it wasn’t worth their time to invest in my friendship. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hold it against any of them and I do have friends who live there permanently. It’s impossible to befriend all the seasonnaires. I guess many of them just weren’t my type and vice versa. C’est la vie.

It’s the same with the French. Some expats will gel with some French and some French will gel with some expats, but at the end of the day, expats have some things in common with each other that the French don’t — language and culture are the two big ones that spring to mind — and so it’s not surprising that the two communities tend to hang out separately (but not necessarily always).

I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. I have both French friends and expat friends, and I would say the divide lies directly with the language and comfort: my French friends who can speak English are my best French friends because we can communicate easily, while my non-English speaking French friends politely put up with my dodgy French, of which they have to second-guess the meaning, and I can never feel totally relaxed with them because I’m so busy concentrating on understanding what they’re saying. Also, it’s really hard to go to a party filled with French people and try to chat with music pumping in the background. I get embarrassed asking someone three times what they said, and still not actually hearing it properly to respond as expected. I hope to be able to in the future, but I imagine it will take years to fill my French vocabulary to the point that I can speak French with as much ease as English, and I think many expats—certainly my friends here—feel the same. In the mean time, I still do go to French-speaking parties, but I enjoy the ones filled with English speakers more because we can communicate.

Some might say it would be faster if expats communicated more in French and therefore integrated more with the French, but I think it’s human nature for a lot of us to feel the need to communicate more than the basics if someone is to be a true friend. And I guess in resorts such as Méribel, Chamonix and Morzine, the expat community is so big that it’s a bit harder to meet any non-English speaking French people at all. For example, most bars in Méribel (and plenty of other resorts) are run by English companies with English menus and English staff, and English tourists walk into the shops expecting shopkeepers to reply to them in English. This is partly what prompted me to settle in a smaller resort: a French friend, Gael, who runs Oxygene board shop with his sister in Méribel, said to me one night when I tried to speak French: “Oh just speak in English will you.” His English is perfect, so it made sense. It didn’t help me though. Living in a resort with so many English speakers made it difficult for me to find anyone who wanted to speak French with me. Here in the Aravis valley, many locals have to put up with my bad French because it’s still better than their English.

So Carmen, to answer your question, I don’t know if Chamonix has the worst divide for expats to natives, but it’s probably one of the harder places to get between the two communities. I do know that unless I gel instantly with an English-speaking seasonnaire, I’d prefer to befriend a French speaker who lives here permanently, but that choice would be harder to make in a bigger resort where more expats live.