C'est Modnifique!: Adventures of an English Grump in Rural France, page 14
Obviously I was always going to miss Natalie and the boys while they were away, there's nothing new there, but it is very different when I'm at home and they're abroad. Yes, I miss them enormously, but it gives me the opportunity to get on with stuff other than winding up hotel receptionists or browsing TK Maxx for hours on end. And anyway, it was only really for three days, so like any good fusspot left to their own devices I'd written a list and was rather looking forward to it all – especially the meals. I could cook what I wanted to eat for a change, and not be subject to the confines of childish palates.
The drive back from Limoges airport was without incident; a lovely sunny evening, the cold wintry sun lighting up the beautiful Limousin countryside. I gently pootled along knowing, from expensive and painful experience, exactly where the speed cameras are located. I knew something was up, though, as soon as I got out of the car at the gate of the house, the amount of noise coming from the animals was like they were all being attacked at once.
First I noticed that Chewbacca, the most troublesome of the goats, had broken into the orchard where the hens also live. This meant the hens were making that low 'I don't like this' long clucking sound, exactly like the slow-motion parts of a Bruce Lee fight scene, but Chewbacca wasn't bothered in the slightest and was happily raiding their coop for any leftovers. Popcorn, a friendly but skittish goat, was attempting to mount Bambi, the small goat newcomer, in a highly forceful manner. I've no issue with goat gayness in the slightest, live and let live and all that, but no is no and Bambi didn't look like he had acquiesced at all. On seeing me, Popcorn dismounted and started running around bleating at the top of his voice the goat equivalent of 'Run, it's the Rozzers', which also disturbed Chewbacca who started doing the same.
It was not the gentle start to my few days alone that I had envisaged. I eventually managed to lure Chewbacca out of the orchard and back into his paddock, all the while trying not to snag my suit on a tree or tread in anything untoward.
That evening, despite everything, I dined heartily on pancetta-wrapped chicken breast with tarragon cream sauce and lemon couscous.
I woke early the next morning and began goat-proofing, or should I say, re-goat-proofing, the orchard fence. I hammered in dozens of tent pegs so that Chewbacca couldn't force his way under the wire meshing. It took hours in the freezing cold wind, and by lunchtime I could hardly move my fingers, but I stood for a while thawing out in front of a roaring log fire and felt relatively pleased with my work. I sat down to lunch and, almost as soon as I had, the doorbell rang. I sneaked a look out of the upstairs window to see who this heretic might be and recognised him immediately, the Christmas Pudding Man. He'd been badgering me almost constantly since the turn of the year about getting him a Christmas pudding from England for a party. I had told him that I would try and I had too, but with no success. Natalie had told him this already, but clearly he wasn't taking no for an answer. 'Sod him,' I thought. 'It's lunchtime; he can bloody wait!' He got back into his car and drove off and I went back to my lunch.
Then the phone rang. Again, for the same reason as you don't knock on anyone's door during repast, you don't ring them up either. I ignored it and allowed the answering machine to kick in.
'Monsieur? Monsieur?' said a voice, either unsure of answering machines or aware that I was there and just hiding. It was the Pudding Man again! He could only have driven about a hundred metres down the road before ringing! Again, I just ignored it.
Part of the routine I'd now set myself at home was an afternoon nap, which on the face of it might have been another sign of an early descent into age-related infirmity, but which was actually for the good of everyone. If I can rest at some point after lunch I will be less cantankerous by the evening; I might also be able to stay up later and enjoy some quality time with Natalie after the boys had gone to bed and not, as had become increasingly the case, get tucked into bed by my youngest son. I think it's a good idea and I was determined to try the routine before the others returned and ruined it.
Fat chance.
I had maybe 20 minutes' sleep before the doorbell rang again and this time in my sleepy fog I went to answer it. It was the Christmas Pudding Man – again! Anyone would think I was supplying him with a necessary heroin fix.
I looked at him and didn't bother to hide my displeasure. I admonished him for disturbing me during my lunch and now my nap, but the irony of an Englishman telling off a Frenchman for not being French enough was lost on him and all he could say was, 'Do you like my car?' It was a Mini Cooper with a Union Jack roof. 'Very English!' he added smiling.
I didn't smile back. I wasn't having any of it. I explained that I couldn't get a Christmas pudding and his face fell. I don't think he actually believed me and he looked a little hurt, 'Come back in November,' I added tersely.
'OK,' he muttered and kicked at the ground like a little boy. Then he raised his head and beaming said, 'I've got scars!' and unzipped his tracksuit top to reveal a scar almost the length of my forearm. 'Heart bypass!' he said with real excitement, though I don't know how he expected me to respond.
'Maybe try the end of October?' I said, pathetically, but he wasn't finished yet.
'And I found your cat!' He ran over to his car and picked out Vespa from the backseat. A decidedly bemused-looking Vespa too who, if she had been lost, certainly wasn't aware of it.
'Late autumn, anyway,' I continued, wondering what else he would pluck from the air for this ridiculous haggle. He seemed happy with that though and left, leaving a bored Vespa in my arms. I don't think she had been lost at all, but if there was even the slightest chance that she had been, the Pudding Man had just saved my life.
That night I dined heartily on sautéed chorizo and noix de Saint-Jacques with a lamb's lettuce salad and raised a few glasses of local Vouvray to the Pudding Man.
I hadn't planned to get up as early as I did the next morning, Vouvray can do that to you, but something told me things weren't quite right. I went downstairs, almost collapsing at the stench coming from the cat litter tray, and saw that once again the Steve McQueen of the goat world was in the orchard and harassing fowl.
It was freezing and blowing a gale outside, and I was in my dressing gown, pyjamas and initially my oxblood tasselled loafers as I couldn't grab anything else. I ventured into the orchard and immediately slipped on a pile of chicken poo, so went back to the house and put on my wellington boots, my first pair since childhood and not exactly a well-received Christmas present, but a necessary one. This time Chewbacca seemed to anticipate my every move and would not, would not, go back under the fence. It took ages, my swearing volume going up at the same rate as my body temperature fell. At one point I even stopped and looked around for a lasso and then tutted at the lack of lasso-type equipment on offer. I mean, what was I thinking? I've never lassoed anything in my life! Like I would know where to start? I eventually cornered Chewbacca as he slid back beneath the fence he had crawled under and, as he did so, all in one move he took one last bite at the longer orchard grass, it was the goat equivalent of Indiana Jones just rescuing his hat in time.
Finally, I thought, and turned around just in time to see Gigi, who seemed to be regressing obedience-wise, scurrying across the terrace with one of my discarded loafers in her mouth.
'Nooooooo!' I wailed. 'You little shiiiiiiiiiiiit!' And went chasing after her.
I was seriously thinking that next time the animals could go to England instead, and we would all stay here and have a rest in their place, and I began to plan that evening's meal of orchard stuffed curried goat in a puppy jus, but first, again, I had to deal with the goat-proof, or rather non-goat-proof, fence. It was a long three days.
The second week of the February half-term, which is much longer in France so that people have time to ski as a family, was marked in our diaries in bright, red ink. In management speak we had a 'window' and it was 'ring fenced'. The boys would be away with Natalie's parents, and various other assorted aunts and cousins, holed up in a ski chalet somewhere in the Massif Central, while we, just Natalie and I, would have a week – a whole week – on our own. We were, to put it mildly, looking forward to it.
Plans had been made for doing bugger all. The odd long walk with the dogs here, an intimate candlelit dinner in a local restaurant there, making wild plans for the future and generally just relaxing in each other's company for a change. Cold days spent browsing antiques markets, long evenings just relaxing in front of a log fire…
In time-honoured cinematic cliché fashion this is now where you hear the soft, stirring strings of a romantic lullaby crudely interrupted by the violent scratch of a vinyl record.
It didn't happen.
We had planned to spend our week largely talking about what we were going to do with ourselves. We really were now in a position where we rarely saw each other at all. January and February had now become my busiest time of the year, but even when I was at home Natalie either had her teaching job in Châteauroux or was successfully building up her private lessons locally and also now running an English language club for adults in the area, putting our classroom, finally, to good use.
Their brief trip to England had put paid to such marital navel-gazing, however. Having gone to England ostensibly to see family, the trip had actually resulted in them piling themselves up with more germs than a dirty protest in a Beechams laboratory. First Samuel got sick, then Natalie and finally Thérence. Maurice doesn't get sick as such, that would get in the way of his constant need for physical exercise. It was obvious, therefore, when I met Natalie et al at the airport that 'our week' would be compromised somewhat. Samuel and Maurice were fine to still go away, but little Thérence definitely could not, though even as a three-year-old he was aware how much Natalie and I had been looking forward to some time alone together and was convinced that he would be packed off anyway. When we told him that no, he was definitely coming home with us he beamed a sickly smile of relief, like a Dickensian waif told that he'd been sprung from the workhouse. That may have been the week's high point.
I have to confess that one of the reasons for wanting Natalie home was that I could relinquish my farm duties. By the end of my time alone with the beasts a kind of uneasy truce had set in, but they were obviously missing her even more than I was. Chewbacca, while not actually managing to escape further, had taken to walking the entire length of the paddock fence and actually leaning into it hoping to find a weak spot, like a furtive thief trying car doors. Junior, now apparently recovered and back to his simmering, poisonous best was jostling me aggressively when I tried to feed him. The cats had decided that litter trays were obviously too bourgeois and now preferred rugs instead.
Natalie, though, was too ill on her return to deal with the animal upkeep, so the look of resentment that Junior gave me when I carried on feeding him, even though he knew Natalie was about, was positively evil. Then the snow fell. Three or four inches isn't much snow, obviously, but when one of your (forced) daily animal chores is horse poo collection, it's a definite hindrance. There's an art to horse-poo-picking-up and Natalie had given very clear instructions: which tools to use and which pile this week's collection needed to go on.
And so, with as much dignity as I could muster, every afternoon I was in the field digging out horse excrement from the snowdrifts and, croupier style, raking the stuff on to a shovel. The whole task is ignominious enough as it is but when the horses, working as a team, are literally dive-bombing you as you do it, it's also quite dangerous. Junior was definitely trying to tip me over, while Ultime would go charging around and then run straight at me, daring me to stand still instead of diving through the fence like a rodeo flunky. All the while Natalie watched from the warmth of the lounge, grateful for my stepping into the breach no doubt, but also bewildered by my incompetence.
Even Toby, normally an oasis of good humour, was joining in the revolt. An evening glass of wine, thoroughly deserved I might add, had now become a target for his new party trick. I'd sit on the sofa, glass in hand and he'd creep up and 'nuzzle' my drinking arm therefore tipping the wine all over me. It was an act of pointless, wanton mischief, like coarse graffiti, and our relationship became somewhat strained.
The cats, while continuing to find increasingly more obvious places to defecate, had decided that the supermarket own-brand food that I bought in haste was beneath them and were permanently camped out in the kitchen demanding an upgrade. They were positively mutinous. Also, Flame appeared to have had a run-in with a barbed-wire fence and torn one of his ears in half down the middle from the top to the bottom; making it look like he had three ears and he seemed determined to live up to his new found ex-con looks by strutting about the place looking for trouble like a football hooligan. Vespa, normally placid, started whining at me whenever I turned the television off. She'd become addicted to the snooker and didn't take kindly to not seeing the end of the Judd Trump–Dominic Dale match in the Welsh Open. Gigi, seeing that the cats were on some kind of go-slow, was killing mice on their behalf and bringing the cadavers in with her of an evening.
In footballing terms I had, it seemed, 'lost the dressing room'. I had no authority whatsoever. I had a three-year-old who was obviously quite unwell and therefore stroppy with it and Natalie, equally unwell, had decided the only medicine that could possibly improve her health was to repeatedly watch a Take That live DVD, adding further to my woes.
I felt particularly betrayed by Junior, though. A few weeks earlier he'd been craving my support as his health deteriorated, now as his recovery gathered pace, it was like he was embarrassed by his weakness and was determined to make up for lost time. A month ago I had to help him up from the floor and felt, naively it seems, some warmth; this week I'd given him a wheelbarrow load of hay and he had tried to bite my arm off in response.
The talk in England was all about the 'horse meat' scandal, as it was, surprisingly, in France too, though with a subtle difference. Actually eating horse isn't the problem (though it very much is for Natalie) – far from it – it's all about the labelling. Horse is eaten with gusto in France, but they like it to be called horse, not beef; whereas in the UK there is some kind of taboo about eating horse – whatever it's called – and yet this from a nation that will happily eat 'saveloy', a meat product of indeterminable if not totally dubious origin. From my own point of view I have no idea how I would ever control Junior and Ultime, two of the most cantankerous equines ever to belligerently stomp the earth, if I couldn't occasionally threaten them with a visit from 'the Findus people'.
But it was by now becoming seriously unwise for anyone except Natalie to venture into their paddock, which made feeding them hay a tad difficult because of the electric fence. It was a necessary installation when we first got Junior, as he kept turning up on the doorstep in the middle of the night demanding food with menaces; in the intervening time however the voltage had to be increased, as subsequently the goats took over the mantel of Farmyard Escape Committee, until it stood at just under 'Texan State Penitentiary' wattage and crackled away in the background like Frankenstein's laboratory. It nearly killed me.
For some unknown reason I decided I had no need for the warmth of my parka, and so in an act of dress-down folly, one which won't be repeated, I had put on my denim jacket instead and gone outside to feed the angry throng. Natalie's instructions for feeding the horses were clear, before placing their feed buckets over the fence, TURN THE ELECTRIC FENCE OFF; I hadn't done so up to now, being taller than Natalie, and though I'd brushed the fence a few times the military outerwear Parka had obviously protected me against any shock. The denim jacket didn't, however, and the metal buttons on the breast pockets didn't help…
The pain was intense and in the brief throes of the violence I could almost picture myself, cartoon-style, as a glowing, throbbing skeleton. I was thrown about three metres across the ground, screaming. My chest felt like it might explode and my mouth had a taste of burnt coal, in fact everything seemed like it was just smouldering. The horses looked up from their buckets, then looked at each other as if to tut and then carried on eating.
I sat up, everything ached. I stood up, and immediately fell down again. I stayed sitting down for a good 20 minutes, trying to gather myself. I'd had a genuine escape, not only that but supposing the worst had happened? Natalie would have eventually dragged herself outside possibly when one of the animals looked a bit peckish and found me, insubstantially dressed in the thawing snow… Here lies Ian Moore, born in hope, died by nipple-button-pocket electrocution.
I felt peculiar for a good few days afterwards, my tooth fillings especially seemed to throb with pain. In cartoons or comics, of course, when such things happen to a fellow he's rewarded with some kind of superpower and goes on to fight crime and the like – not me. I sat on a train a few days later trundling through North Wales, convinced I could smell burning. I was surrounded by a large hen party, slurping vodka jellies through willy-shaped straws and planning their weekend around various levels of alcoholic oblivion.
In truth, it was just about the most peace I'd had all week. So much for my supposed bucolic idyll, some would say deathtrap – soon I'd be back working the late-night clubs again and standing up to random acts of travel bureaucracy unpleasantness, doing what I do best. In all the madness we hadn't had a chance to sit down and talk about our future, more specifically my future and how I was going to travel less and be at home more. But just for now, as I cocooned myself into iPod heaven, drowning out the banshee hen party, I was just happy to be away from electric fences and shoe-chewing puppies, it was good to get a bit of peace and quiet for a change.
