There is now an authentic Provencal calendar affixed to the wall by the computer, so henceforth when I stare blankly into the middle distance I have something interesting to look at, and it appears that every day of the year has its saint or sainte. Here, for example, is a list of some of the significant dates in the Mathews Family calendar, with patron demi-deities indicated:
January 3 - Ste. Genevieve
January 15 - St. Remi
January 18 (tomorrow?! Ohmigod! I have to go shopping right away!) - St.
Prisca
May 24 - St. Donatien
May 25 (Mother's Day here) - Ste. Sophie
June 26 - St. Anthelme
July 27 - Ste. Nathalie
August 5 - St. Abel
August 9 - St. Amour (appropriate for an anniversary, no?
Did you know about this when you chose the date, Esteemed Parents?)
August 16 - St. Armel
August 17 - Ste. Hyacinthe
August 28 - St. Augustin
September 13 - St. Aime with an accent over the 'e'
October 9 - St. Denis
Those of you born on January 13 might be interested to learn, if you don't know already, that your patron sainte is Ste. Yvette. Yvette? Is there a Ste. Fifi, too? How about Ste. Lulu? I'll have to check.
This week we didn't go anywhere special and we didn't do anything special. We just sat around coming to terms with how boring our lives have become and caring for our sick child, who was stricken with strep throat and needed our help ingesting the FIVE (5) different medications prescribed by our doctor - 4 to swallow, 1 to spray. I can't remember who wrote concerning French medical practice that the most frequently prescribed means of introducing medicine into the system was the suppository, but I'm relieved to report that it wasn't the case this time. After an unusually disease-free fall and early winter, the cold/flu/sick season finally hit last week and the French are dropping like flies (mouches). The papers are filled with stories about it and the word "epidemie" is being bandied about. Mike stayed home on Monday and Tuesday and several of his schoolmates are out today, and our landlord, hardbitten French farmer though he is, is sick as a dog (chien).
Actually, now that I think about it, the week wasn't totally devoid of memorable events. We celebrated our anniversary on Tuesday and Lois' birthday is tomorrow. Bonne Anniversaire, Cherie!
Since we didn't go anywhere I took the opportunity of walking around the farm and taking some photos of our immediate neighborhood. We live on top of a hill in a cluster of old farm buildings which have been divided into apartments. We're on the 3rd floor of the main building and our landlord (when he's not at his fiancee's) and his daughter (and her boyfriend on weekends) live on the bottom 2 floors. The building right across the courtyard is divided into 4 residences. The biggest belongs to another family (the overlapping ownership is very confusing - it must have something to do with inheritances being divided generation after generation for centuries) the members of which are only here for periods during the summer, and occasionally on weekends during hunting season. It has 3 other apartments which are inhabited by: 1. 3 twenty-something guys (Jean-Remy, Chris and David) who are smart, funny, fluent in English and have a heavy-metal band; 2. Celine, a single woman around 30 who seems to be here only intermittently; and 3. Christian, a 50-ish self-employed electrician who has 3 sons and 4 grandchildren, but whose wife, sadly, passed away after a long illness. Less than 100 yards away on the same hill is a newer and fancier house belonging to a middle-aged couple who have lived in the Bay Area, but no one around here seems to know anything about them. Or, knowing the French as we are beginning to do, they know plenty but aren't talking.
The first pictures are of some wheatfields belonging to our landlord, Michel Olive. You can see the faint green which is beginning to appear in all the fields around here, giving a cruel and misleading illusion of spring. It's only mid-January, after all, and winter-cold, but being surrounded by all this beautiful new growth one can't help but be fooled into thinking that it's early May. Until one finds oneself scraping ice off the car in the morning, anyway. I think it's a crop of early spring wheat.
Every few days the wind picks up and howls for some days, in multiples of three according to local legend, and sometimes it is VERY strong. These are some of the recent casualties. The shallow-rooted ones topple over and others just snap right off, even though one of them is almost 2 feet in diameter. That's SOME wind!
The big stucco house in the distance is the neighbor nearest to our little hilltop compound. It's a family-owned vineyard called Villa Minna which, according to an article in La Provence, produces superior reds. Since we drive by every day we're able to witness the whole annual cycle of the grape. During the harvest, all the roads out here in the country are stained dark purple.
A friend of our landlord leases a big field right behind the house which is visible from our windows, and has divided it into smaller lots for her horses. She currently works in real estate but we understand that she wants eventually to operate an equestrian school, and is enlarging her stock accordingly. There were 7 when we arrived and there are about 10 now.
The poultry, mostly roosters, it seems, strut around the place scratching and pecking. During the winter we can't hear them when they go off at 4:00 or so, but during the summer the windows are always open and after a week or two of interrupted sleep we cordially detest them.
They are often accompanied on their perambulations by some rabbits. It's like those PBS nature programs where herds of different species congregate at waterholes.
Suddenly, the peaceful scene is shattered as a giant crocodile lunges out of the still water and seizes a baby rooster in its monstrous jaws and --- . Whoops! Sorry. I guess I've seen too many of those shows. Curse you, David ("Why Does Dickie Always Get the Knighthoods?") Attenborough!
The cat (can you find him?) just recently appeared and has been sort of adopted by the little community here. He's a great animal and Mike has fallen in love with him and wants him to live up here, but we can't, and that's final!
Well, WE may be leading a boring existence, but the French are having a helluva time! First, in an echo of the American experience of several years ago, the recently selected Miss France has been divested of her crown and tiara as a consequence of having been photographed in suggestive, blasphemous (there was some religious symbolism involved) and scantily-clad poses in ads for a lingerie company. (She was STRIPPED of her crown! Get it?). The first runner-up, who would normally have inherited, has already moved on to school or something and turned down the honor, so the second runner-up is now Miss France.
They take a lot of polls here, and the latest shows President Sarkozy's approval rating at its lowest ever, below 50% in fact. Some attribute this precipitous decline to one thing, some to another. His waffling on his campaign promise to do away with the 35-hour work week? His constant jetting around from one country to another like a hyperactive mosquito? (Although every time he makes one of these visits, the headlines trumpet the multi-billion- [milliard-] euro deals he has concluded with the various sheikhs, generalissimos and presidents-for-life shown shaking his hand and looking guilty.) His butting in and undercutting and contradicting the cabinet members he himself appointed? His lurid and increasingly public private life? (Cecilia, his recently divorced second wife, is quoted in a new unauthorized biography, the publication of which she tried to block, as saying that he has a "serious behavioral problem" and throws himself on women whose names he doesn't even know! I read a biography once of Napoleon III, who was a strange character, a demagogue who almost certainly wasn't actually related to the real Napoleon, who threw himself at every woman HE met [the book didn't mention whether he knew their names or not] and who led France to sudden and complete military collapse and abject surrender to Bismarck's Prussia.) As of today, no one knows if he and Carla Bruni are married yet or not - there are rumors of a secret ceremony being performed at the Elysee Palace, and all those who are supposed to know are being very cagey about it. It's considered a possibility because some of the countries he's scheduled to visit (India, for example) have expressed unwillingness to treat him and Carla like husband and wife. They feel the conservative sensibilities in their countries would be offended, so it would be a pragmatic political maneuver for Sarkozy to legitimize the relationship with her before their scheduled tour, thereby enabling him to continue his post-holiday sales of jet fighters and nuclear power plants. After all is said, done and analyzed in the papers, their president is beginning to make the French nervous. We can certainly relate.
The NFL Conference Champsionships are coming up (if you're not sure what they are, ask a football fan - there's one in every family, somewhere. Usually in front of the TV.) and I'm feeling all, like, sentimental. For years I've had the pleasure of hosting a guys-only (we INVITE the women and children, but, oddly enough, they always seem to have prior commitments) two-game double-header TV and sandwich extravaganza, a veritable ORGY of lunchmeat, chips and salsa! I wasn't able to follow the season with my usual obsessive scrutiny and was pleasantly surprised to find the Chargers and Giants still in contention, and I'll be pulling for them to meet in the Super Bowl. Also, like any true fan, I get a lot of satisfaction, unholy glee you might say, in seeing certain teams beaten. Or rather, crushed! Humiliated! Squashed like bugs!! Like Indianapolis. And Dallas. I like Brett Favre, but since he'll probably play till he's 60, he'll have a lot more chances to win the big one. Just not this year.
I watched, on the tube, my local soccer team, Olympique Marseilles, the most popular team in France, lose in the 91st minute last night (there was one minute injury time added on) at Auxerre literally seconds before the end. The referee, or whatever he's called here, actually had the whistle in his mouth to signal the end of regulation time and the beginning of overtime, when one of the dastardly opponents snuck right by a noble defender, who was taking a well-deserved short nap, and crossed to a sneaky forward who headed the ball into the net past the hard-working goalie, Steve Mandanda. (Speaking of good sports names, like Baskerville Holmes the basketball player, there's a soccer player [in England, maybe?] named Titus Bramble!). A bitter loss, very bitter. But I have every confidence that they'll pick themselves up, brush themselves off and start all over again blaming the weather, the officials, and the lousy visiting team buffet. Why? Because they're highly-paid professionals, that's why!
And now I'm going to pick myself up outta this chair, brush myself off (Lois baked cookies tonight and I'm covered with crumbs. Chocolate chip pecan!) and start all over on the long walk down the hall to the bathroom again. Until next time,
Au revoir!
Tom
P.S. I wonder if Judy Garland was born on Meet Me in St. Louis Day
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