Le Franco Phoney

The tourists have mostly cleared out of the ski resorts now, signalling an early start to road work and the closure of pistes worn down through a combination of warm sun, rain and people sliding down them. However, some tourists remain, as seen wearing novelty hats (sometimes with bells), snowblades and jeans tucked into their ski boots. There should really be warning signs against all of the above, such as: ‘WARNING: That long hat down your back with shark fins will slap you in the face every time you turn’; or ‘WARNING:  Those snowblades will throw you onto your face as soon as you hit a bump or rock, and right onto your bum when you hit ice’; or ‘WARNING: Your legs will get cold and soggy because jeans are not waterproof, and those lumps they cause between your ski boot and your leg will cause pain’.

In the absence of these warning signs, we have this one to the right, pictured in just some of the telecabines in La Balme. It could mean:

1. Beware of stick figures entering the cabin trying to be scary.
2. Leaning out the doors will turn you into a stick figure (as opposed to the suit wearer).
3. If you dance in the cabin, the automatic doors will open as a means of natural selection

The sign really means “Fall risk at the opening of doors” just in case anyone out there was thinking there’s a trampoline below each cabin to have a bit of a bounce on. I can only presume that some of the cabins at La Balme are devoid of this warning in the hope that some of the silly-hat-wearing snow-bladers in jeans will presume there’s a trampoline.

I’m sure you’re aware that Europe has been getting a big dump of snow due to some Siberian winds travelling further south than usual and meeting up with warm, moist Mediterranean air. The result? The photos above.  St Jean de Sixt has a swag of beauty to offer, making photography far easier for an impatient person like me than it should be. As you can see from the usual mannequin photo, all the lady’s friends below the balcony have taken shelter from the cold conditions, but a fake flower shop has appeared to keep her company — perfect shop type for these chilly days. Enjoy the photos.

St Jean de Sixt is home to free-range chicken eggs, some tennis courts and of course some mannequins. If you want to go for a swim, you have to get on a local bus to La Clusaz or Le Grand Bornand. During the off-season, only one of the two bakeries is open and the buses stop completely (but that’s okay because the pools close too). The only traffic jams are caused by cows being moved up or down the valley. St Jean de Sixt is the epitome of a sleepy village.

So what’s this all about? Hidden behind the tennis course is the Bun-J (“j” and “g” pronunciation are reversed in French) Ride ramp, where you can fling yourself off a ramp using a variety of tools, such as this bike, pictured, which has no brakes so you’ve got no chance to change your mind once you’ve left the top of the ramp. Alternatively, you can slide off the ramp with a mountain board in summer or a snowboard or skis in winter. You can jump off the edge if that’s what floats your boat. St Jean de Sixt just got exciting! Way, way below the ramp is a ravine which produces a lovely spooky echo of flowing water as you bounce down towards it before being pulled with ropes to the other side. Back flips are applauded and last-minute swearing prompts evil laughter from onlookers.

If people want to chuck themselves off an astro-turfed ramp, good for them: it’s the blindfolded ones I feel sorry for. Usually, it’s some guy who is about to get married or celebrate some important birthday, and his mates have bundled him into a car with a blind fold and accessorised with either handcuffs, a gorilla suit or other ‘zany’ fancy dress, or a leopard skin thong. Sometimes, it’s all of the above. The poor guy in the blindfold is harnessed up, then led down the ramp backwards and attached to a rope, like he’s abseiling, until he reaches the flat bit near the end. Each time I’ve seen it, the guy gingerly places one foot lower down the ramp, unaware of what is next. I reckon it’s probably more scary than the jump itself — it’s certainly a lot longer. A chair is perched at the end of the ramp for the blindfolded man to sit in, which then gets gaffa-taped to him so that it doesn’t end up in the ravine way below. Just before the Bun-J Ride man kicks the chair off the ramp edge, he removes the guy’s blindfold so he has a moment of horror before the fall itself. Shrug and smile or scream uncontrollably, they all end up over the edge. I’m guessing that the ravine below is partly covered with the same type of presents that the cows leave behind on the roads during their traffic jams.

Is this not something you’d find in a jigsaw puzzle? I live near it. The close-up with my terrible photography skills does not do this beautiful chalet the justice it deserves. How many flowers can exist on one wall? Walking past this place brings joy to people’s faces and always brightens my day even when the weather isn’t as sunny as it was on the morning that I took this photo. The flowers on the balcony are amazing, but I love the little touches, like the wheelbarrow full of flowers in the yard, and various ornamental pots that were once used as machinery parts dotted around the doors of the house.Every window and shutter has flowers; the wall has climbers; the steps down from the front of the property is lined with flowering pots of goodness.,

In this zoomed-out image, you can see that the detail extends right to the end of the property, with well-maintained flowers and bushes in colours that compliment each other nicely. Something less man-made is the sky: it’s that postcard blue colour that I always presumed was captured with a filter or Photoshop, but here it is in one of my standard, dodgy photos taken without a tripod. Since moving to the Alps, I’ve noticed that the sky is often that fake colour that I’d seen in postcards. Who ever thought it was real? I’m pleased to have captured it in a photo as evidence of its existence!

Back to the jigsaw puzzle question. Is this not a jigsaw-puzzle-picture-worthy house? If I were a better photographer, I’d knock on the door and ask if I could take some photos…maybe stick a few people relaxing on the grass or kids playing with a bat and ball or something, then send the photo off to wherever jigsaw puzzle pictures go and hope to see it in the shops. I’d buy it. Wouldn’t you?

I remember when I first moved to France that mechanics had a pretty bad reputation for being slow. Indeed, one of my friends had terrible problems with her Volkswagen bus: they changed all sorts of things at two different mechanics but it still ran slowly. When she got it back to England, her mechanic saw straight away that the choke cable was stuck on. She had gone through so much fuel and had paid so much money to have things fixed that weren’t broken!

Thankfully, I found a great mechanic just outside of Annecy (Troc Auto at Grand Epagny if you need one and you’re nearby), and for years, my car and I have been looked after well. That all changed when my fuel pump stopped working on my old Golf. Unable to drive it more than twenty metres before it would just stop, I asked a mechanic just up the road to fix it. That was on a Monday morning just over two weeks ago and my car still isn’t fixed. Somehow, it took him until the following Thursday (eleven days later) to sprout some story about how his mechanic was going on holiday so he didn’t think he’d have time to fix it. It took him ELEVEN DAYS to tell me he didn’t have time! I called almost every day and he kept saying he still didn’t know when the part could be delivered and that he’d call me the next day. He didn’t call once.

I limped my car to a different local mechanic where it’s been ever since. They tell me they’ve replaced the fuel pump, but now they’re waiting on the related burnt-out fuse. We can only be grateful these mechanics aren’t paramedics!

In some countries, having a clean-out means holding a garage sale, but the French do things a bit differently. They hold a vide grenier (empty the attic) in the centre of town, where locals can put their unwanted, pre-loved goodies on display for browsers to buy. I think this is a great idea, as I remember my parents always saying: “We should have a garage sale soon to get rid of all these things we don’t need,” but we only had one when we moved house about ten years later. Providing a date for a communal garage sale gives people a deadline to make a pile of stuff they want to sell. More importantly, browsers can check prices of popular items, such as cowbells and kids’ skis, between the different stands. Apart from those benefits, the vide grenier runs in much the same way as a garage sale: buyers turn up too early; buyers heckle for ridiculously low prices; sellers have items that are missing a price tag; sellers run low on change and demand the correct amount whenever possible from buyers; buyers leave with what they think is a bargain after all that heckling only to find that the item isn’t quite right for the needs, but it will do; and sellers dump the unsold stuff in an unused cupboard at home or the second-hand shop in defeat.

St Jean de Sixt recently held its own vide grenier, pictured below. My years of travel have prevented any build-up in unwanted items (sorry Mum, but those microwave slippers are now with my friend Lilly, although she doesn’t have a microwave at the moment either), so the most I could offer is my cat, Bruno, who is about the only excess I indulge in, and I’d never want to sell him despite the live/dead/regurgitated animals that he likes to drop in the garden or the house. With nothing to sell, I traipsed around the sellers’ tables looking for something a bit different. Some old wooden or metal things were so old that I had no idea what they were for. The escargot tray is always a popular item, leading me to think that this kitchen item is the equivalent in France of the novelty teapot elsewhere. To my utter disappointment, I found nothing, or when I did find something, I couldn’t justify the price. I suspect that most of the sellers had put their prices up expecting the heckle, but numbers like ’99′ are hard enough in French (quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, or ‘four twenty ten nine’ when translated to English). With maths involved in just identifying some of these numbers, it’s no wonder I ran away empty handed!

I went for a walk the other morning and found a mannequin being serenaded by another mannequin. I stopped to have a look at the silent scene and drank in the detail. As you can see from the photo below, the mannequin on the ladder is holding a real guitar. But wait, there’s more.

Apart from the girl on the balcony being serenaded, there’s a newly-married couple of mannequins behind the pretty little chalet with all those lovely, well-maintained flowers. The bride seems to have no hair or face, but the groom is decked out well with a top hat and a scarf around his neck. But wait, there’s more. A baby is sitting with a woman who, let’s face it, is dressed in much the same way as the baby. Who knows why the baby is propped on a log or why there’s a married couple with a bald bride in amongst the serenading couple’s scene. I just love the randomness of the scenes that regularly appear in this cluster of gardens and buildings.

And it’s great to know that the scene-setter has not given up; during the summer holidays, some of the mannequins were vandalised. They were placed head first in a water tank with their legs sticking out. Maybe this is why the bride’s face is blank — her features washed away by water. In a wave of crime the same weekend, some number plates were stolen and some houses, including mine, were strawberried. Someone threw strawberries at houses, causing no damage but a lovely smell. I’m pleased that even when vandalism does strike here in St Jean de Sixt, it’s not on the scale of what I’ve seen in the cities I’ve lived in.

Anyway, the little chalet pictured is no doubt just a storage shed. Is this not the most ornate and well-decorated storage shed that has ever existed? May the mannequins and flowers continue.

I wrote a little while ago about the demise of the St Jean roundabout, with the shed removed and no more mannequins on display. So what’s that you see pictured above? Yes, the mannequins are back! There’s a couple sitting at a table with a bottle, and behind them is a policeman with binoculars. I have absolutely no idea what all this means, as usually the mannequins depict a holiday or event happening locally. Is this a warning that the police will be checking for drunk drivers tonight or something?

Who knows. And frankly, who cares! My faith in France flouting ridiculous health and safety rules has once again been restored (although this was helped along with the monster truck display a few weeks ago too. Happy days.

I’m sorry about yelling that, but last week, St Jean de Sixt was covered in posters advertising a monster truck extravaganza, and we all know that a monster truck means a crushed car or two. Brilliant! Bring it on. Some friends and I meandered across the road and paid the €12 for a standing spot (it was €3 more to sit on some raised planks of wood which we decided wasn’t necessary).

After stalling for about ten minutes (probably so they could tell late-comers that they hadn’t missed anything yet and get a few more people in), the show commenced. But before we saw the crushing of cars, we had to watch a pre-teen kid on a quad bike, a relative of his do handbrake turns too many times, and a variety of dangerous-looking things involving kids and audience members that would have health and safety officials in shock in some other countries. Here’s a quick photo gallery.

Did we come here for the kid on a quad bike (they start young in this family)? NO.

Did we come to see the kid’s brother hold on to a car while another family member (dad/brother? who can tell) did handbrake turns? NO.

Did we come here to stick our kids in a truck that raises off the ground, with no seat belts on and the window low enough for them to fall out? NO! (But well done to those kids for performing the most dangerous stunt of the day.)

Did we come here to watch fellow audience members sit in the passenger seat of a Renault Twingo, unseatbelted, while the driver does yet more handbrake turns? NO. (I did that as a teenager in my brother’s car, and again in his mates’ cars, and more recently in a car owned by that passenger pictured in various snow-covered car parks.)

I imagine that trapeze artists don’t really like wind blowing them off course while they’re trying to catch each other and swing around in the air. However, St Jean de Sixt last week put an event involving wind and a trapeze. Let’s start with the exciting stuff — the trapeze. Both children and adults were allowed to have a go at this trapeze. Shoes must come off and a harness applied, but otherwise, off you go. Once up the ladder, someone on another swing would swing back and fourth while you get launched onto a swing, then get instructed to hold on with your legs and dangle your hands down, then the trapeze expert swinging opposite you grabs your waiting hands and you let your legs get loose of your swing, thus completing the trick.

And once you’re done, you can try your hand at one of the many musical instruments set up to capture the wind, or fly some of the kites on offer, or make a little boat and watch it sail with the wind on a big swimming pool. The whole event was staged on top of a hill — the windiest part of St Jean de Sixt, which doubles as a ‘ski resort’ (two drag lifts) in winter. I heard about it from a friend. The week-long event was free, which, according to my friend, happens in July when the villages and ski resorts want to attract as many holiday-makers as possible. Freebies help ensure there’s a flow of people in July, while it’s almost guaranteed in August. So, if you want cool freebie events when you visit the mountains, remember to come in July, not August.