How Blue Is My Valley Read online

  John is sawing away, muttering something about ‘easier with f’n chainsaw... French...chainsaw...’ and I am happily deaf, having observed French tree surgeons swinging from plane trees like manic monkeys, clinging perilously to a branch with one hand while chain-sawing away at another (branch or hand being equal possibilities). I am content that only our tree will lose limbs while I gather branches and occasionally duck.

  In a lull, punctuated by ‘... bloody big .... chainsaw’, I glance across the road and see a flying pig. My instinctive shout, ‘John!’ makes him turn in his perch just in time to catch the flight of about two dozen wild boar across the field into the woods.

  Two minutes later, the inevitable crack of a shotgun suggests why pigs might run so fast. We now have a pretty good idea what it was that dug big holes in the garden and scuffled off when we caught it in the car headlights – at the time we though it might be a badger.

  It is a good day for wildlife. Our regulars have all appeared; the green woodpecker which often drills the ground between the rows of espalier apples and pears, so oblivious of us that it carried on pecking the bark of our peach tree while we stood yards away and watched.

  Then there is the hare that waits until the last moment before starting from its form. Apart from the excitement of our dogs, the hare has an ongoing game of catch-who-can with a neighbour’s Burmese cat, which thinks it owns the orchard. The cat sits, waits and watches; the hare sits, waits and watches.

  Then, at some unseen signal, they are off. The hare has sprint start, sprint middle, sprint finish and, as if that isn’t enough, dodges well enough to play rugby for France. The cat stops, pretends a total loss of interest, and washes itself disdainfully. It returns to sit underneath a shrub where we have considerately hung a bird feeder.

  Although there is a tendency in France to look at something living and suggest which wine would complement it best, there is no shortage of food sold for ‘our friends the animals’, including wild birds. Our Marseillaise predecessor has left tiny troughs to collect water for the birds and a few little wooden structures which act as bird feeders. We carefully filled and hung our RSPB recommended feeders, plastic tubes with perches, and waited. And waited. There was no shortage of birds but they took one look at our modern dining tables and complained about the lack of traditional French little wooden houses. Gradually the bolder birds are risking the odd foreign architecture we have introduced and there is now the full range of tits, finches, robins and some with longer tails, garden birds like wagtails. They are not yet as trusting as those in Wales which swooped in gangs before us as if auditioning for the remake of ‘Snow White’.

  On the September night that we arrived here for good, a barn owl swooped across the road and I saw a chamois poised, a shadow on the verge. At four in the morning, it only took the patches of yellow autumn-flowering crocuses and the familiar stars, the Plough or Sospan as I’ve come to know it in Wales, and we couldn’t have had a better welcome.

  Some people have ‘three bedrooms’, ‘large sitting room’ or even ‘good school nearby’ as the must-haves on their shopping list for the estate agent; I wouldn’t consider anywhere without the freedom to walk into countryside, straight from the house, or without stars. I don’t know how people live without a view of the stars, especially on a winter’s night, but I read that eighty percent of England suffers from too much light pollution for stars to be visible; it is the reverse in Wales.

  I consider it normal, even desirable, to be woken at three in the morning because there is a particularly good view of Mars (which is closer now than for ten thousand years gone or to come). However, I know better than to share these priorities with estate agents; those who helped us still think I wanted a house with three bedrooms and a large sitting room, but even they know that we really don’t care any more about good schools.

  Not all the wildlife has been welcome. When we camped here for two weeks in the summer, I brought only essentials – bedding, cooking utensils, my Swiss army knife and two mousetraps. Let’s get something into the open straight away; most houses get rodents at one time or another but, whereas parents in middle England are now, through necessity, almost able to say the word ‘headlice’ without flinching, no-one owns up to having mice in their attic. I have to protect my friends’ identity so cannot name names but I can tell you that a couple who sold their London house for over half a million pounds, regularly put down mouse-traps in that same house.

  In case you think I am trying to deflate housing prices in the south-east by rumour-mongering, I also have friends in the north of England who couldn’t sleep at night – more from the thought of their little lodgers than because of the delicate pitter-patter of unwanted tiny feet. Even if we’re willing to share our planet with our fellow creatures, most of us are unhappy about sharing our house with them and we certainly don’t want anyone to know about it.

  You can’t live with cats without meeting mice – and shrews, and even a baby rabbit. There have been interesting rodent moments, such as my first meeting with my nineteen year old belle-fille, where we were sitting on the edge of easy chairs making polite conversation while I watched a shrew scuttle across the living room like a clockwork toy, disappear under a bookcase and then scoot back again.

  Neither of us referred to the entertainment although I suspect our eyes were tracking its progress like a tennis match throughout our non-conversation. One of my cats had presumably brought in its plaything and been distracted. At that time I had seven cats so you can imagine how pleased I was when I was woken nightly by thundering paws across the attic floor – and I don’t mean delicate mice patters. Think rat. Think big rat.

  After giving a pep talk to the cats (pedigree Birmans, what can you expect?) I bought a kind rat-trap and was given the usual good advice (totally contradictory) as to what to use for bait. One old ‘expert’ swore by Christmas cake (fine but this was May and I wasn’t making a Christmas cake specially for the rat – would any old home-made fruit cake do? Ambiguous response).

  A kind rat-trap is a plastic box into which you tempt your rodent and it then shuts so you can let the little sweetie-pie out in the field. The major disadvantage is that you have to check it twice a day (or you will kill the rat through suffocation or starvation – much worse than a neat guillotine, and a crime for which I will one day have to atone, with regard to a mouse ....) The other major disadvantage is of course that it doesn’t work.

  The nightly rat parties were driving me crazy. Imagine the worst few weeks ever with a baby crying every night; then imagine that you’re not just allowed to, but that it’s actually your civic duty to murder the source of your sleepless nights, and you’ll understand why I went out and bought a proper rat-trap.

  I narrowly avoided another visit to A & E, just missing my fingers when I checked how it worked, and laid the trap. This didn’t work either but I know exactly how big that rat was because I found him (why are rats always ‘him’ to me?) or rather his corpse, lying beside a drainpipe – and the night parties stopped after that. I guess that one of the cats finally earned its keep, or, more likely, the rat had a heart attack at the sight of seven cats, however fluffy. The rat was enough for me and I was glad not to live in Canada, where everything is bigger, and where my uncle had fun and games with a raccoon in his attic.

  Post-rat, there were some occasional run-ins with field mice which ran into the attic, into the kind mouse-traps and out into the field, with strict instructions never to darken my doors again. It was therefore with resignation that I visited the cellars with Jean-Marie on our house-warming tour, and heard the exclamation ‘Souris!’ as a mouse flickered past, heading up. The crucial word is ‘up’.

  Above the cellars are all the living rooms of the house, including the kitchen. Alone in our new house, the morning after, I quickly realised that these were not chocolate hundreds and thousands underneath the sink, but signs of a regular route to the rubbish bin. Down went the mouse-traps with great success.

&
nbsp; The first morning I got up, checked the trap, told John ‘Got one!’ took the trap to the orchard, gave the usual speech and released the mouse.

  The second morning, ditto. The third morning I was less enthusiastic. By the fourth morning it was ‘Sodding mouse’ and by the fifth I’d reached, ‘John, will you do the mouse?’

  We carried out this routine six times before we’d got rid of all the mice - or the same one six times until he got bored or eaten by the Burmese, as John insisted. I had vague plans, encouraged by a daughter, to paint it with nail varnish or mark it in some way to settle the debate, but the day was sunny and life was too short, so we will never know.

  My sister, Anne, on her parallel house-hunt in the Pyrenees, was also considering the implications of unwanted wildlife. She and her husband talked about their plans to the couple whose holiday cottage they were renting, who took great interest, explaining to them that an area they fancied would be no good because of the ‘mice’.

  They spoke no English and the word ‘mice’ did not strike a chord with the Hemel contingent’s rusty French so it was time for a mime. The gite-owners gave a wonderful impression of fluttering wings – it clicked straight away.

  ‘Moths,’ sister and husband agreed with satisfaction. Everyone was happy and smiling with the pleasure of communication and Monsieur decided to extend his dramatic repertoire. He stood in the doorway and showed how big the ‘mice’ were, repeating the waving and flapping. Six feet. This was bad news however you looked at it. I mean, who would want to live somewhere frequented by six foot moths?

  Alternatively, if it was not moths, what on earth was it? Frustrated again, Monsieur found a book with – wonderful! – a picture of the ‘mice’. Yes, there it was, waving in the breeze, six feet high maize, or ‘maïs’.

  Monsieur explained that it was boring to see nothing but maize fields and, with two crops a year (one for the animals), that was all they would see if they went there. Sister and husband were suitably grateful to be warned about the mais and went to bed, remembering to skate across the bedroom on dusters specially placed for that purpose to protect the new, varnished floorboards.

  It wasn’t until October that we suffered our next minor infestation. We had been surprised at the lack of flying insects in the summer, possibly helped by the exceptional dryness of the by now infamous ‘canicule’ (heatwave) but as soon as temperatures outside dipped slightly, the flies zoomed inside in squadrons. These were not Welsh flies. These flies laid eggs in cat food as it came out of the packet and before it went into the cat. They buzzed in your hair and stamped their dirty feet on your chopping board. Sister Anne explained that I should clean my house with bleach – she seemed to think that what the septic tank didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt it - I wonder where I’ve come across that line of thinking before. She has the family weakness of finding solutions for other people’s problems and, after research, faxed me a list of ancient remedies for household pests. I printed them out, suspecting I’d need them all at some stage.

  By now, we had tried two varieties of sonic deterrent which plug into an electric socket – we only have one reliable electric socket in each room so they didn’t last long; two different types of poisonous plastic flowers which adhere to windows – supposedly dangerous to small children but I don’t think there’s a market for that, and they do bugger-all to the actual flies; three different types of aerosol fly killer – satisyfing to use with accompanying ‘Take that’ but totally ineffective whether used in individual target practice or in overnight treatment of a closed room. Having diminished the air quality of the planet shamefully, we tried Anne’s green solutions.

  We burned lavender oil, we wiped surfaces down with lavender... even the dogs smelled of lavender. It worked as well as anything else – that is, it didn’t. By the time we found some revolting old-fashioned sticky fly-paper, we were down to one fly in each room, so we won’t know if that works until next year – if we’re lucky enough to have the same visitors back.

  Life is too short to worry about flies – when you can worry about the electrics, the walls, the windows, the plumbing and the heating. In addition to our wonderful modern central heating, we have a wood burner and an open fire. Is this another small sign of winter conditions, I ask myself?

  Keen for the comfort of real flames again, we lit the open fire, confident in an expertise gained in the coal valleys of south Wales. The Marsellaise had told us that it didn’t draw properly and they thought it needed a higher chimney. We were sceptical and wanted to see for ourselves. Once the fire was lit, we could hardly see at all. They were definitely right about the fire smoking back into the room – it was so bad the flies were dropping like ... well, like flies, so at least there was one side-benefit. Workman number ten? eleven? is required – enter chimney sweep.

  Booked two months ago, the chimney sweep finally arrives. At last, a proper Provençal workman, two hours late with a big smile and no hint of apology. He stays a further two hours, spending ten minutes sweeping the wood-burner chimney and two hours discussing the other one – and life. I now know why he was two hours late. I also know that he has eight sisters and that when he retires he wants to sail the Atlantic and so he wants to learn English.

  Don’t get the wrong idea; every word of the two hours takes place in French, except for a few numbers in English. John comes and goes, unable to keep up with the sociability. The ‘ramoneur’ is wonderfully patient with my French and when I tell him how much it helps me that everyone is so patient with me, he looks at me as if I’m very stupid. Of course everyone is patient with me.

  I say that I hope everyone in England is patient with him when he practises his English. I consider the likelihood. I picture someone trying out very bad English and the patient response he will get. The only place I can picture this is in a Refugee Centre. I am a cynic. I am betraying my countrymen. I hide the terrible secret that when I watched the French TV special on Celine Dion, I wet myself laughing as the beautiful French host referred to the song ‘My aaart muzt goo-on.’ I do not deserve the patience of French speakers.

  Discussion with the ‘ramoneur’ involves John and me in lying on our backs and looking up a chimney in torchlight, while listening to a stream of French that includes the words for stove-pipe and flue. As I don’t really know what a flue is in English, I ask some very stupid questions.

  Monsieur Silvestre is as patient with my ignorance as he is with my French. He insists that there is no mystery about chimneys and that if I do not understand, I must say, so he can explain it better to me. I have worked for twenty years in schools and I am humbled; I have no doubt that this is one of the best teachers I have ever met and that if there were a degree in chimneys, my ramoneur would get me a first in it.

  When we don’t understand a particular word, we are treated to a mime; Monsieur Silvestre points to his trousers, he pretends to rip them and look sad, then he mimes sewing them up again; this – he shakes his head and his finger – is what he will not do to our chimney because it is not safe and not legal. We get the idea – cowboy repairs are not on the agenda. He will do a proper job or nothing.

  This is not the first time we have been told this and although cynics might say that there is more money to be made in a bigger job, that is not the impression I get of our ouvriers’ attitude to their work. There is far more work for them than they have time so if they wanted to turn a fast buck, they could easily take on more jobs.

  Monsieur Silvestre is not only a chimneysweep; he also fits pipes, inserts and does all the associated work. Although he debunks the mystery of chimneys, he leaves us in no doubt that he is a skilled craftsman as he points to our twelve-inch thick wall and says it would be easy to put a hole in that, giving the air needed to force the smoke up and out.

  He draws us diagrams to explain the pipe and the funnel; his eyes light up as he describes a modern insert design with air holes underneath the doors which blast the glass doors clean. When we look dubious and mutter ‘cost?’
he remains cheerful, says there is always a way, and tells us of a retired engineer who adapted the design principle so he could do it himself. By now I am truly ‘fired up’ and I ask my usual question, ‘How soon can you do it?’ I will never learn; last time I asked, the builder and the joiner teased me with ‘Tonight?’. This time, my ramoneur says, ‘Doucement, doucement, vous êtes en Provence.’ (Slow down, you’re in Provence).

  I am mortified, not by the gentle reminder, but because it is the sole sentence in the French vocabulary of my five-year old niece. On one holiday in France, Ellie heard ‘Doucement’ so often that she can reproduce the exact adult-to-impatient-child tone. I have not seen myself in this light. To re-establish myself in the eyes of my ramoneur as a mature, capable grown-up, I offer him a drink... a petit café, a tea, a sirop...

  This is something I cannot get the hang of in France. Welsh workmen drink tea non-stop, with ladles of sugar in it. Occasionally an oddball prefers coffee but no Welsh workman has ever looked at me reproachfully, said ‘When I’ve finished the job,’ and then asked for water.

  This has happened several times now so it seems to be as ingrained as shaking hands on arrival and departure. This apparently slight change of habit has a major consequence for someone whose French is dodgy; your ouvrier settles down for a good chat, usually in your kitchen, while he sips his water, and you have nowhere to hide.

  ‘John’ I squeak but he has already vanished. Monsieur Silvestre tells me that there are a few English around here now. ‘Mmmm,’ I respond non-committally. Perhaps I should tell him that his water’s getting warm? ‘Did you hear the radio?’ he continues.

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘There are seventy English people moving into one small village in the Gers. They are all getting so much money for selling their houses in London that they are buying places in France.’