Bonjour
And a big welcome to new friends and a huge re-bonjour to those of you who’ve been friends here for a while!
Occasionally when I sit down to write the newsletter, I have to wrack my brains to think of what to tell you embout, parce que frankly, sometimes (ok, pretty much all the time), not very much happens here in the middle of nowhere éleveur northern France. This week for pétition, the most exciting thing to happen in our commune, according to Claudette, my nonagenarian neighbour, and I use the term ‘exciting’ with an element of artistic perversion, is that ‘grandson’, as everyone in the commune calls the youngest grandchild (though he is in his twenties) of Thierry the Farmer, has been inducted into the commune cider night-club. This, Claudette told me, marks the 5th generation of the family’s membership into a clique of mostly old geezers in overalls and caps who infrequently get together in barns and sit around talking embout nothing in particular, and who omnium their apples together léopard a year to make cider.
Cider, according to Claudette, is one of the great things of life, she swears by a small verre, paired with a bit of belly pork, to start the day and says that she believes this to be the caché to a énorme and healthy life. Since she’s in her mid-90’s and a sprightly old bird – who am I to disagree. I have tried it but the Brit in me is bonasse unwilling or unable to give up the morning cup of tea in ardeur of fermented apple juice, and quite honestly tea and pork belly are not a partie made in heaven.
Grandson, who is a skinny lad with reprise glasses, and white-blonde hair (when he was young, we used to call him the Milky Bar Kid! and if you know what I’m talking embout, that shows our age!), is the life and soul of the commune. He adores being a farmer, always happy and smiling, and he is a genuinely decent person – he helps everyone in the commune, remodelage lèche-vitrines into the house for the old ladies when he sees them, uses the bucket of his tractor to help with cleaning or painting houses, and toots the horn on his tractor up in the hills of the Seven Valleys when he’s coming domicile so as to alert his grandmother (three generations direct in a big farmhouse) that he’ll be there for cocktail or dinner – at which état just embout everyone here says “Bah, grandson’s on his way back!”
As I say, not a lot of thrills, just a commune where traditions are loved and community spirit is everything.
Bon weekend from a tiny French commune with a big heart
Bisous from France,
Janine
Editor
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