How Blue Is My Valley Read online

  I have never seen John take such an interest in cleaning products. He is disappointed in the granite; he keeps trying to wipe off the glittery bits, thinking they are breadcrumbs. To me, the granite is cold fire; I see pictures in the pink, brown and gray veins, shimmering as the light changes, and the mica makes me think of dwarves’ hordes, in deep caverns. And you can put hot saucepans on it, too. We can’t wait to try out the hot saucepans on our range cooker but we have to wait for the tiles to go into place before anything can be connected up.

  Meanwhile, in the chaos, I get tea-stains on the new, unused hob. John is not pleased and I find him cleaning the cast iron hotplate. ‘John,’ I tell him, ‘it’s a cooker. We’re going to cook on it. It’s going to get dirty.’

  It is no good; this isn’t a cooker, it’s the new cooker, and we buy special cleaner for the cast iron hotplate and another special cleaner for its stainless steel façade. The two ovens are respectively ‘pyrolitic’ and ‘catalytic’ in their cleaning habits. As long as that means they groom themselves, I don’t care for a translation (from the English, that is).

  I note that ’Mr Muscles Oven Cleaner’ is ‘Monsieur Propre’ in its French marketing. The English does seem a bit sexier than ‘Mr Clean’ who sounds like he’s one of the least popular Mister Men. I also note that the manual for our wonderful new cooker suggests daily cleaning; don’t be ridiculous. As far as I’m concerned, the words ‘daily’ and cleaning’ only co-exist for rich people who get the former to do the latter.

  Time slows to the progress of the kitchen and, believe me, that’s slow. It turns out that we have chosen tiles which have to be imported from Spain by that universal law which means that ‘best’ comes from elsewhere, and which meant that my sister waited weeks for her French tiles to reach York.

  My habit of finding out what each job involves turns out to be a big mistake with the tiler. I am now very well-informed of how impossible it is to put squares onto a three-dimensional surface. I now appreciate that you start in the middle and work outwards but the middle of what? Much head-shaking.

  If you start in the middle of the wall, then the tiling around the sink will finish with a 1cm tiling strip on the far side and that will break when it’s cut... shall we have a baguette here? Disappointingly this turns out not to be a break for elevenses but a plastic strip to finish cut tiled edges.

  Then there’s the sink edging which consists of specially shaped tiles – what could be simpler? Except that the edging drops lower than the hardboard so that the cupboards can’t be opened. The tiler pops out to visit the joiner, returns with chipboard and an hour later my sink surface is 1cm higher – perfect - as long as no-one tells the kitchen designer, who has no doubt considered the finer points of ergonomics (for me? for John? for Ms Average-suits-nobody? I always wonder about the ergonomics=one-person-kitchen equation). Surely that’s the tiles sorted? No, we have a sink-corner-problem.

  We contemplate the two untiled corners and the corner pieces. It’s like one of those psychological tests which show that boys have better visual-spatial awareness than girls. I turn the pieces and compare them with the blanks but the tiler, definitely a boy, is right.

  Whichever way up I hold the corners, they each have one straight side and one curved side, where two curved sides are required. They are in fact the wrong pieces. Why the hell couldn’t he have said so instead of checking whether I could work this out for myself?

  I repeat the test with two ordinary edging pieces. If we can’t get corners which fit, we could cut two pieces and make a mitred corner... ? I have done well, I receive nods... exactement. Except that we only have two straight pieces left... I keep up ‘And we would need four?’ Exactement. So either way, we wait.

  I choose a colour for the grout and then I succumb to decision-overload. Too many choices, however trivial, like when I tried to buy donuts at a Tim Hortons in Canada, or a coffee in Starbucks. There are times you just want a coffee and cake for God’s sake. Even the cheese counter in the market seems too much; as student son pointed out, you can cope with there being different sorts of cheese but four types of roquefort is going too far. A Headteacher friend used to take a week’s holiday from decisions to start the summer break and the words ‘You choose’ are not always as generous as they seem.

  Finally the penny drops. Peter Mayle is a sadist. He has lured thousands of innocent Brits to endless house renovation in the sunshine with the workmen-from-hell and the horror-film flies and the need-to-respect-your-toilet. Thanks to Peter Mayle, those who are not doomed in this way are feeling even worse about not living their dreams and are looking at the rain on the small overcrowded island we used to call home.

  There is a certain relief in knowing that you can’t win and I return to the job in hand. I take Jean-Baptiste at his word and phone him at home after 8pm to arrange the fitting of the granite against the wonky wall.

  Perhaps it is my imagination but his wife sounds a little suspicious when she asks who’s phoning. It is Friday evening after all. Even more worrying is the fact that she seems to know who I am straight away and she relaxes when I give my name and stutter about my kitchen. How funny am I exactly? Ever cheerful, Jean-Baptiste arranges to cut the granite on Monday evening. That might well have happened if John had not exited the bath into a full washing-up bowl, smashed a plastic box and flooded the bathroom at the exact moment Jean-Baptiste arrived.

  Torn between rescuing my bathroom and deciding where a cupboard should go, I said ‘yes, yes.’ Always a mistake. However, Jean-Baptiste had forgotten his glue-gun – did we have one? No, sadly, we did not have one among the interesting objects left in our outbuildings. Now if Jean-Baptiste had wanted a rusty tin of any size, various antique cold chisels or a bee-keeping outfit, there would have been no problem.

  When John emerges, very clean, Jean-Baptiste has gone and it seems I have said ‘yes yes’ to leaving the granite uncut and the cupboard in entirely the wrong position. Tuesday sees the return of Jean-Baptiste but – inevitably - this time without his cutting tool. I grovel. He doesn’t give me so much as one of those ‘I-hate-bloody-women-who-can’t-make-their-minds-up’ looks but merely re-re-arranges for Wednesday evening. He gives the granite worktops one last polish before he goes.

  I have a bad feeling about Wednesday, D-Day.This should be the day the kitchen becomes somewhere to cook, wash dishes and feel contented. Why should anything go wrong? I have checked again and again with the designer that it is the fitters who will connect the oven, sink, washing machine and finish off fitting drawers.

  The fitters turn up on time and from the moment I mention plumbing and electrics, I know this is not going to be a good day. Monsieur Speedy wants to know why I didn’t get my plumber to sort out the sink, he does not do electrics and I am piggy-in-the-middle as I relay what I have been told, which only annoys him more as he is le patron, not anyone else.

  John goes shopping, a long way away. I listen to the sounds of a very pissed-off workman not singing while he directs plumbing and electrics. He tells me that one power-point does not work. No problem, I say, that’s for the electricians to sort out. Sod’s law decrees that they are working away this week but I phone and they promise to be round within two hours.

  I pass this information on but it does not lighten the atmosphere. Monsieur Speedy regards my magnificent range cooker with distaste. There is no way he is touching the gas for the hob. I can’t say I blame him and I tell him so but point out that I am merely saying what was agreed. He hates me.

  At lunchtime I see the vanishing backs of the fitters, no ‘bon appètit’, no ‘à tout à l’heure’. I shrug. Poseurs by name and posers by nature. It is not the first time I have faced an adolescent with a chip on his shoulder.

  ‘Bonjour les chiens’ is the first sign of the electricians, exactly as promised, and the dogs welcome them like the long-lost friends they are. They look at the installation of an undercupboard striplight. ‘Putain de merde, qu’est-ce qu’ils ont fait ici?’ sugg
ests that Monsieur Speedy was quite right to say he shouldn’t be doing electric work.

  I have forgotten how cheerful they are as they sort problems, then vanish. John switches the oven on and off, and it works. After a month of fast food microwaved or boiled on a camp kitchen, he has been getting cravings for potatoes in potato-shapes and for meat in a big lump. I would quite like fish in fish-shapes rather than cuboids. How – and why - do they do that in frozen meals?

  I leave phone messages with the kitchen designer to say that my workmen will sort the cooker out, and with my plumber, to ask him for just that. I check my watch; lunchtime seems long today. I gradually realise that lunchtime is beyond long and they are not coming back. We look around. They have left their ladder and taken with them the undersink bin. We are bemused and I phone the kitchen designer who is not there. Nor would I be. Perhaps he is pinned against a wall?

  Unbelievably, the plumber arrives and with his usual patience, works his way through the instructions for changing injectors from natural to propane, adjusts the flames and chats with Jean-Baptiste who is once more thwarted in his attempt to cut granite. He doesn’t seem to mind, accepts a petit cafè and reveals the reason for his equanimity. This is his last job before he returns to Chablis. He has had enough of the attitude in the south, the petty backbiting, the racism. He offers advice on the height of the flames and then helps Monsieur Robin move the monstrous cooker back into place. He polishes the granite worktops as he talks.

  ‘When southerners come north, we welcome them... they bring a little bit of sunshine with them and we appreciate it. All they do when we come down from the north is pass comments behind your back... I hate that. ‘

  I know that Monsieur Robin is from Normandy originally and has no regrets, as he told me when I mentioned that student son missed Wales. ‘You’ll catch cold up there,’ he tells Jean-Baptiste.

  ‘I love the countryside here. I’ll be back for holidays... you can’t beat the hunting...’ and Jean-Baptiste tells us where the best spots are. He pours scorn on the sorts of people who ‘massacre’ animals – that’s not ‘le vrai chasse’.

  I suggest that it will take me a few years before I head for the hills with my shotgun but I tell them that I used to go fishing and that Wales is fisherperson’s heaven. I don’t tell them that I once owned a trout lake or rather, I once co-rented a trout lake, to which my friend and I had sole fishing rights, for less than the price of a rugby season ticket.

  With a last joke about returning to live with the eskimos, Monsieur Robin leaves, and I find out more from Jean-Baptiste. He warns me that the English are all ros-bifs behind our backs. I consider my time being English in Wales and I think I can live with ‘ros-bifs’. I also consider my twenty-five-years-Welshness, including a Welsh accent, and I am not afraid of starting again the process that turns outsider to friend.

  Beh oui, Jean-Baptiste will of course still be working with stone in Chablis. He runs his cloth, impregnated with magic solution, over the spotless granite, caressing it one last time. Not stone like this, you understand. Marble is beautiful but the work here is repetitive, basically cutting rectangles.

  ‘And in Chablis...?’ I ask, and discover that Jean-Baptiste is a stone mason who will be restoring churches and other historic monuments. How people escape from the boxes we put them in! Why should a craftsman not be an artist? We give Jean-Baptiste a bottle of pastis, a thank-you and an apology, and he promises me a ‘piece of stone’ when he sculpts one. One of his brothers is a vintner and as we talk, I can taste Chablis, the flavours deepening from the first chilled freshness to the richness of the chardonnay grape. I know that from now on Chablis will always taste to me of cold stone, marbled on my taste buds.

  10.

  The Badlands and Olive Oil Chocolate

  There is more to life than a kitchen – or even a house – and so we fill in forms. Our application for a carte grise, to register our car in France and get French plates, has been bounced yet again, or, as the nice lady in the mairie said, ‘I told you – they like their paperwork at the préfecture’.

  We check the forms together, add some, change some and I explain that we can’t send the old carte grise with our dossier because we don’t have a carte grise in the U.K system. In fact, as I have explained in a polite letter to the préfecture, the whole point of sending the dossier is in order to get a carte grise.

  The nice lady understands this perfectly but we both know how little chance there is that this will crack ice at the préfecture. We wish the dossier luck as we send it once more on its way. The only thing which cheers me up is the knowledge that French bureaucracy has dealt a worse hand to le Pen, the should-be-leader of the French National Front.

  After a recent near-thing in the run-in for President, where the abstainers nearly left the National Front in national power, le Pen’s luck ended this year with him unable to even stand for his own constituency because of – yes – for not filling in the right forms.

  After it was too late for him to do anything about it, he was informed that he did not meet the residency requirements and could not stand. I picture the glee with which a civil service clerk sat on this information. I think of my dealings with the préfecture and go a stage further, imagining the planning that went into downfall by paperwork. My conspiracy theories are outdone by le Pen’s rival, who declares that le Pen deliberately messed up his residency forms to gain publicity.

  In a country where prosecution for corruption seems to be a fundamental requirement for following high office, I am definitely an innocent abroad. Where are the minor sexual scandals, the marital infidelities, the nepotism that fascinate the British press and destroy their politicians? Hardly worth mentioning, here, not when you have key politicians implicated in fraud on the scale of millions.

  There definitely is more to life and we head off to explore the Badlands. They really are referred to as the Badlands, even in French, and only now do I discover what the word actually means. To our children, the Badlands are the wastelands where the baddies hang out in post-nuclear sci-fi films; to me, they’re the rocky American deserts where the baddies hang out in cowboy films.

  Both generations have missed part of the point. Badlands, so my dictionary informs me, are ‘wastes of much eroded soft strata in southern Dakota and therefore any similarly eroded region’. Our badlands are iced over, cliffs of shimmering white rock, sheer above green valleys, the domain of trolls and cave bears.

  I know that the last time a bear was seen in the Vercors region was in 1938 but that doesn’t mean it was the last bear there, does it? When I was a child, my father told me that an uncle of his was hugged to death by a bear in Russia. I was later, more reliably informed that this adventurous Scotsman did indeed go to Russia where he fell for a local lady and never returned to his wife. If he was hugged to death, it wasn’t by a bear, but it’s always the first story that stays in my mind.

  You can understand why a local farmer might worry about what lurks in these mountains. There are some attempts to re-introduce wolves here, to the fury of the farmers who take their sheep and cows onto the high pastures in the summer. We stay in the valley, watching clouds travel the length of a stone ridge, their enormous shadows flitting like nazgul across the cliffs.

  As the sun hits a section, the ice flashes silver, then broods ebony again in the shade. Dazzled, we look down. On the ground, our own tiny shadows cling to our feet. We escort them home.

  The wilderness has swept us clean and we feel able to play with the other humans again, finding Nyons in festival mode on an unseasonably hot Sunday. Nyons boasts a Roman bridge built in the fourteenth century (presumably by Provençal Romans who missed the march home); a medieval chapel which leans drunkenly over the village, like a wedding cake with its stone tiers and figure on the top; and black olives of outstanding quality, the famous tanche variety.

  Nyons olive oil is one of five to have gained appellation controllée status, the others being further south in the Alpilles, the
Alpes de Hautes Provence and Nice, and Nyons a.o.c. sells for four times the price of imported extra virgin.

  I only have to cross the road from home to buy local, traditionally produced extra virgin but my neighbour shocked me on my first visit by telling me that he imports the olives themselves from Spain. What’s more, he told me, so do all the others round here, even those who tell you differently. Spanish olives are just so much cheaper and it is so expensive to produce the oil in the old ways, who can afford to pay the prices for French olives? It is hard enough for a family business to compete with the good, cheap oil imported from Spain, Italy and Greece. Unless you are Nyonsais, where the a.o.c. label keeps the high price attractive and where the olive groves stretch both sides of the river Eygues, perennial silvery-blue in the sunshine.

  On the drive to Nyons, we leave our St Maurice and the Vercors mountains behind to wind along the River Lez, still in lavender country, where the corrugated fields hug every curve in the road or impossible slope. On high bends, we can glimpse to our right the industrial plains of the Rhône, the plumes from Tricastin nuclear power station and, on a clear day, the bluffs of the Ardèche gorges on the far side of the Rhône.

  To our left, the hills gradually become orchards, we leave the narrow river valley and the first olive groves flash blue amongst the fruit trees. ‘You are now in apricot country’ the sign tells us and we know that a little further to the east are the tilleuls, the limes of the Baronnies, where France’s biggest herb trade takes place. Just twenty minutes drive from home, we see the giant landmark of the Vaucluse, Mont Ventoux, its bald head unmistakably white, whether with snow or from rock catching the sun.

  Just below its highest point is the memorial to Tommy Simpson, the British cyclist who, his body overstretched with drugs, died there on a Tour de France. Passing cyclists contribute to the bizarre collection of tributes left there, which include plastic water bottles, cycle clips, a compass, and of course flowers. We have watched the amateurs struggle up Ventoux, we have seen the professionals challenging the mountain and whenever we drive that way, the first sighting draws one word from both of us, ‘Ventoux.’ And then we drop down through the groves and orchards into the bustle of Nyons.