Le Franco Phoney

Driving along a back road toward Thônes one day, I discovered a roadside statue of Mary, protected by some lions and surrounded by candles, flowers (both real and plastic) rosary beads, statuettes and water features. Here’s a close-up of one of the two protective lions. It features a scary eye and an even scarier missing eye, some cob webs, and a rather big snarl.

Meanwhile, below is a photo showing just how close to the road this monument is (you can see a close-up of Mary and the trinkets that surround her in the top right corner, or click on the image to zoom in further). Yes, that’s a grotto on the left and Italian-style lions at the man-made gate right by the roadside.

The soft trickle of the water feature in front of Mary is drowned out every time a car zooms by on the country road, but it carries on regardless. Wax from melted candles forms stalactites near the statue of Mary alongside plaques draped with rosary beads. There is no graffiti and no signs of security against theft or vandalism. The marks on the grass by the roadside opposite suggest that many stop at the monument, but I’m unsure whether they’re here for religious reasons or, like me, out of curiosity. So many religious monuments exist by road sides here in France, but they’re normally much smaller and more secure from vandals.

Why is it here, right next to a road? When was it created? Who commissioned it? Who goes there? So many questions, and no answers at all. The only clue: some Latin inscribed below one of the lions with a passage from the bible, but I’ve no idea what it means, nor which part of the bible it’s from. I waited for a local to appear, but nobody arrived in the half an hour that I explored. It remains a mystery.

Here is a photo of some horses standing outside a local community hall in Thônes. Let me explain. Last year, I wrote about the hay bail competition and the cows and tractors for sale at the local fair called la foire de la Saint Maurice. I couldn’t find the hay bail competition, but I did see the best young cow of 2009 presented with an award. She did a poo as soon as her proud owner had taken the award. The local horse riding school had some well-groomed horses out on display, which is why the horses are in this photo. The crowds at the cow competition were too deep to get a decent photo, so the horses were second best. Well, third best if the hay bail competition had been on.

As I wandered around the fair, I noticed that some things are always the same: the beer stands were surrounded by a stagnant crowd of men, making it harder to get past for everyone else while the kids hung by the sweets stands. More than one stand-holder called out to me to check out his wares. There was a trash’n'treasure held by the local school, which was different only in that most stall holders had kids’ skis for sale, but that makes sense given the love winter sports here. So all in all, a typical fair. Topped off with some melted cheese in a roll, I’m going back again next year, determined to find the hay bail competition.

The off-season in the Alps means the road workers are busy resurfacing roads before winter hits. For the past four off-seasons here (that’s two years), the road workers have been changing the layout of the roads and car parks and updating the drains underneath at the same time. It’s involved a lot of work, so I’m not surprised it’s taken this long.

However, there’s a road that joins Thônes, ten minutes from here, to Annecy-le-Vieux which has not been so lucky. When I first moved to La Clusaz exactly three years ago, this road was only open on one side, forcing traffic through single file. Then winter came and the roadwork signs and lower speed limits stayed in force but the workers were never there. Finally, by June 2007, the road was fixed! It was lovely to drive on, and cyclists were happy that they had a bike lane.

Then disaster struck in August 2007 — just two months after the road was finished. A dam on the hill above burst and caused a flash flood on the road. People had to dump their sodden cars and save themselves from the flow of water, but no lives were lost. The road was, of course, closed. Within a few days, it was re-opened, but roadwork signs reappeared and the cyclists’ lane was once again closed. The road workers never appeared, but the lower speed limit — to protect the absent workers — is still in place to this day. This week, the workers turned up! In three years, the road has been fully functioning for two months, yet trucks use it every day.

Meanwhile, the private driveway to my apartment was also fixed up this week. There had been huge pot-holes at the bottom of the driveway, plus a concrete drain with pointy corners that jutted out about 20cm near my garage. The entire driveway has a kind of wave system in its unevenness which acts as a rollercoaster ride. So, the lovely owners of the apartments resurfaced the driveway, but I think they must have run out of money. The potholes at the bottom are gone, but the drain is still jutting out, with the roadwork only covering the first half of the driveway. In addition, they’ve left the stones loose, so the sun warms the tar underneath each day, leaving splattered tar marks on the side of cars driving on the driveway, along with chip marks from the stones. The loose stones have started to diminish and the waves are coming back. Before,  I just avoided the potholes. Now I can’t avoid the stones or the tar, while most other obstacles remain. Still, it could be worse. I could have had roadwork signs and speed limit restrictions for the past three years.

Let’s start with the dumb. This letter from EDF arrived in a letterbox in Annecy last week. You can see from the date circled at the top (click on the letter for a larger image) that the letter was printed a month earlier. This seems to be standard practice with utility letters: it’s as if companies print out a huge pile of letters, then get someone to stuff one per day or something. Anyway, three weeks after the date, the letter arrived.

Now, three weeks seems like quite a long time when there’s only fifty-two of them in a year. But check out the other circled date. Yes, that’s December 2007 — almost a year ago. What’s the significance? Well, this is the date that the recipient requested a new service. This letter confirms the request, but then requests that the recipient call the number again to confirm once more — more than ten months after the request was made!

I know this is France and paperwork is relaxed, but tenants have come and gone in less time. And what makes the letter even more unbelievable is that it urges the reader to speed up the process two times. Great, so if your new service still isn’t working almost a year later, call this number and maybe you’ll get it after a further six months because you get to talk to the person who stuffs one letter per day between taking calls on missing letters and delayed services. Just so you know, the service still remains unused by the recipient.

On the other hand, the French postal system comes up trumps. What it lacks in speed it makes up for in service. A friend of mine received this postcard. As you can see, I haven’t had to blur out the address: it was simply addressed to my friend, with her surname spelt incorrectly, in La Clusaz. The postcode is wrong (that’s the sender’s postcode in Thônes, down the road), and no effort was made to describe the address. In the whole of La Clusaz, the post office tracked down the right person, with nothing more than her first name to go by, and delivered the postcard.

This certainly counteracts their placement of a large parcel for me in my letterbox. They wedged it in from the side that their key works in, but on my smaller, framed side, I had no way of getting the parcel out. For almost a week, it was wedged in despite the explanatory note on the letterbox. Each day, I’d fish out the new letters from around the wedged box until finally the postie saw the note and knocked on my door with parcel in hand, apologies and an embarrassed smile.

But these things are not so rare. As I type, I have a router ready to be installed, but the letter with my login details has never arrived. An insurance company who demanded I pay my renewal even though I had followed all legal routes to cancel my insurance still send letters telling me that, as a member, I can vote for their board members or something. I did quite like my water bill for 48c (if only they were all like that!), and I’m still waiting for an electrician to arrive, who promised in a letter to be here in October. We’re all, of course, only human, and French utility services certainly show their human side.

Nothing says ‘You live in the country’ quite like experiencing the local fairs. If donkey racing at the Fête du Reblochon was not enough, last weekend’s fair in Thônes, the Foire de la Saint Maurice, topped it off. Now, just to give you a bit of background, the 22nd of September is the memorial day for this particular saint, who is the patron of many and varied things, including soldiers, weavers and, of all things, cramps. Thanks, St. M, but I still get terrible cramps in my right foot when surfing, so can you do something about that please. Eating a banana before surfing just doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Anyway, back to the fair. Thônes, pronounced ‘tone’, is a small village between Annecy and La Clusaz. Its highlights are tours of a local small cheese factory, a steep rock climbing area, and a choice of two supermarkets. Parking is free: it’s not a busy place. But that all changes with the fair. The never-used car park at the end of town, that sometimes has a truck parked in it while the driver takes a sleep break, was completely full of cars, with fair-goers making full use of the free shuttle bus to town. The roads were lined with parked cars, but I decided, being more local than many of the visitors, that I should try my luck in the Lidl car park. This involved going through two ‘No entry’ gates, which others with the same thoughts as me had kindly left open. Anyway, the signs are more of a suggestion than an order. My luck was in and I parked my car.

The fair itself offered the usual regional stands: sausages, cheese, cheap clothes and sweets. The rural aspect of the fair was reflected in the row of horses tethered outside the town hall. But three other things really made it stand out as a rural fair for me:

1. tractors for sale;
2. cows for sale; and,
3. the hay bale competition.

Yes, that’s right, a hay bale competition. Sadly, I did not have my camera to capture the moment, but the competition was a bit like a pole vault competition, except instead of people vaulting themselves over the teetering horizontal pole, they were chucking over bales of hay. I think I must have arrived at the time when competition was fierce, as the pole was high and the bales were low: someone must have made some freak high bale throw and nobody else could attain the same height. I couldn’t stand the tension in the crowd and opted for a crepe instead. Bring on the apple and donkey fête in Serraval next weekend!