How (not) to cut down a tree in France

Go to Nyer, a small, ancient (gorgeous) village in the Pyrenees mountains, France. This village will have a fast-flowing river running through it, a magnificent restored chateau (now an old-folks home), and will be made more charming by the church bells that trustily chime on the half-hour, on the hour, and then one minute after the hour chime (just to make sure you didn’t miss the time as you were stirring from your slumber, day or night). 

Take three rustic locals. Take one chainsaw. Make sure the rustic local man-handling the chain saw has never used one to cut down a tree before. Take one or two or three fraying lengths of rope (or as many worn-out pieces as you like), and tie them together, not necessarily paying attention to the resulting strength or durability of this constructed rope. Take one very high tree with two main trunks that diverge approximately two metres from the ground. Take two seriously old farm sheds, one made of stone and the other of four precariously positioned upright posts topped by a scattered array of corrugated iron.

NOTE: It is imperative that two groups of happy holiday makers will have, the previous evening, arrived in the holiday houses situated directly next to the tree with two trunks destined for removal. These holiday makers should not be fully awake, nor dressed, nor breakfasted when the church bell tolls at 9.00 am (and then at 9.01 am). Narry less than a second later said chainsaw will start. It should be revved many times to ensure it is in working order. The rustic local with the least knowledge of tree removal and chainsaw etiquette will climb the shortish ladder, ready to apply his limited knowledge to the task ahead. Note the jaunty, devil-may-care attitude to safety. Protective gloves, ear muffs, boots, helmet, clothing? Pshaw! Instead quickly observe the t-shirt, torn overalls and old sneakers. Watch as the rustic, ill-clad local positions himself on the ladder, with one of his compatriots holding it at the base (a nod to safety, I think you’ll admit).

First trunk: Now begin. The nearest branches that can reached with your chainsaw will be removed. Hither, thither, any which direction you choose. If the branches fall towards the ground - bravo! If the branches fall towards you - lean athletically (or arthritically) to one side of the ladder, but be sure to show no emotion on your weather-worn face. Excellent. Two/three big limbs gone. Now for the first of the two main trunks.

Rise a few more rungs up the ladder. Note that in the meantime the rustic local companions will have tied the aforementioned rope around the first trunk, attaching the rope some distance away to another not-to-be-removed tree. A ratchet will then be used to tighten the rope in the direction in which the trunk will naturally fall (ensuring it doesn’t fall on either of the old sheds). Slice randomly and with all enthusiasm at the tree trunk. No movement? Try a bit of haphazard sawing on the other side. It’s good to have your rustic local friends shouting encouragement/suggestions and sometimes curses to you as you progress, in order for this to be as efficient as possible. Listen to a further stream of curses as the ratcheting rustic local realises that one of the knots in the make-shift rope is hindering the progress of the ratcheting process, i.e., the ratchet can ratch no more. Brute force will be required instead. Two rustic locals should therefore hang as heavily as possible from the rope, pulling the trunk in the pre-destined direction. Note with a sideways glance that various other residential locals (ancient, battered, ensconced for centuries in the stones and mountains) are gathering around local paths to see what is disturbing their enjoyment of the church bell tolling. Up behind you and towards your left, see five to ten curious faces of coffee- and cocoa pops-fuelled holiday makers watching from the vantage point of their holiday homes.

After some more random slicing and splicing and sawing and cursing, coupled with jeers and shouts from heavily-hanging rustic local compatriots, shout at them, “I am not an arborist!” With the air cleared, try the chainsaw one more time, this time, notably, ensuring that the blade gets stuck in a selfish crevasse. Then hear a boom and a crash and a bang, which unexpectedly, is the result of the rope suddenly and inconsiderately snapping. Leap out of the way as the trunk falls directly on top of one of the ancient sheds. This is not a good outcome for the shed, but at least trunk number one has been felled (far from where it was intended to fall, but it’s down).

Gather together with fellow rustics. Try not to look bewildered or bothered. Be calm and act as if this was supposed to happen all along. Observe five to ten astonished faces at their windows, stunned to see the rope broken, the trunk down (albeit on the shed), with the stubborn shed still standing, by good chance. Note that an formerly observing residential local has wandered back to his house and got a real rope - no splicing, fraying, knotting, or cobbling. What a beauty! Attach rope to the second trunk and to same tree, with ratchet in position and ready to work.

Second trunk: Send novice arborist up the ladder again and watch him proceed in a similar manner; hacking, slicing and sawing at will. It’s quicker this time as the novice arborist is much more experienced now, so it should not be a surprise when the rustic, local, chainsaw wielding novice arborist suddenly calls out, “Attention! She’s falling!” Look in astonishment as the second trunk makes a bulls-eye hit onto the second ancient stone farm shed, not however, onto the cleared land in front of all concerned, where perhaps she was intended to fall, given the new rope and the functioning ratchet.

Ah well, job done.

After the chiming of the bells, the clinking of pastis glasses and the patting of backs, only the downsizing of the tree trunks remains as the job in hand. The most experienced, shouting, cursing rustic local now takes over with the chainsaw. His agility, his speed, his skill, his unsystematic cutting is a sight indeed. He doesn’t seem so happy however when a large limb of the trunk disappointingly tumbles on top of him, seriously wedging him belly-over another limb, with feet flailing and face turning redder as the church bell tolls. Watch him wriggle this way, wriggle that way, but on no account call out for assistance. Note the novice arborist is frozen with indecision - should he help and acknowledge a lack of safety, skill or ability of stuck companion, or should he ignore his plight with the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude. Finally, with a deft and balletic sideways lurch, the stuck rustic local becomes free and back in control. The sawing up of the firewood can proceed and there’ll be warmth for all this winter.

In New Zealand we would have:

• a cordoned off area
• possibly distributed notes in letterboxes informing of removal of tree and likely disturbance between specified hours
• superior and mandatory safety equipment including high-visibility vests, sturdy steel-capped boots, protective gloves, helmet and ear muffs, plus being roped securely to the tree
• the tree removed from the top down - carefully, precisely and successfully
• a team working together to achieve this (location dependent).

We were all ready to run to the other side of our holiday house should the tree start falling in our direction. It was not out of the range of possibilities but it was just so heart-in-mouth, exciting to watch, and the perfect way to start a tranquil holiday in France.

This method shown here is too systematic and does not necessarily guarantee the unexpected outcomes described above.

Toulouse Guided Walks with Elyse Rivin

Last Friday I was really lucky to join English speaking tour guide Elyse Rivin on a 'Money and Markets: Toulouse the Trading City' tour. For 15 Euros I (and about 17 others) had a really interesting guided tour around the city of Toulouse. We went to: 

• the covered fresh produce market at Carmes. It's a crying shame because the building is a 1960s monstrosity (concrete and so ugly compared to the beauty around it), but inside it is full of little stalls selling crisply fresh produce and still twitching fish. We then wandered through the wobbly, wonky streets, passing an enormous map of the old district of Toulouse attached high on a wall to: 

• rue de la Bourse which is where the first stock exchange was established in Toulouse in the 1500s. We popped ourselves into the neo-baroque Tribune of Commerce and were suitably impressed by the light and openness of the upstairs mezzanine walkway (a Roman inspired design). I think I am right in saying that the market building that used to be at the Place de la Bourse was disassembled, moved and reassembled in Lourdes. From there we made our way past the doggy-do-dos to: 

• the Victor Hugo covered markets, another fine example of the catastrophy that is 1960s architecture in the city. This is the largest food market in Toulouse and honestly I don't know how you get to choose your favourite place to shop. It just all looks so darned good. And fresh. And tasty. But the most important part of our walking tour visit that day was: 

• a cheese-tasting accompanied by a glass of wine at Betty's, the most important cheese purveyor in the city which has been there for over five generations. It does seems a rather odd name for a cheese shop (une fromagerie) but it is exceptional. They have a stall in the Victor Hugo market and a shop directly over the road. 21, place Victor-Hugo, 31000, Toulouse 05.61.22.17.81. We enjoyed a sample of rocamadour, roquefort and another softer cheese but I forget which. There are so many varieties of cheeses it is hard to explain. Lovely husband and I went to the shop once and we started to help ourselves to what we wanted and were gently advised that we were to be served. So we waited, and then staff dealt one by one with the customers, enquiring as to the purpose, timing, other food at the meal at which the cheese was to be consumed, etc, in order to make the best recommendation. They can also recommend the most suitable wine to go with the cheese selection. There are English speaking staff who work there so you can make yourself understood if you are salivating too much to speak French adequately.

If you want to get in touch with Elyse Rivin, she can arrange special tours on request and she comes highly recommended by me and many others. Her website is: www.toulouseguidedwalks.com.

And even better, I met a lovely woman on the tour whose daughter lives in New Zealand with her husband and their three boys. Yes, I knew Wellington - we lived in that city in New Zealand. Yes, I knew the suburb that she lives in - just down the road from where we used to live. ‘I wonder if I know her,’ I asked. ‘What is your daughter’s name?’ Yes, I knew her. But of course!

Next month we are going to have a tour called Romans, Power, Portraits and Women, around St Sernin and St Raymond. More later. I'll take some photos!

JACK IN THE BOX - a cool new English language school in Toulouse

I recently met a lively young thing here in Toulouse called Emma Nelson (English by birth). She's married to a Frenchman and they have three children. After being a stay-at-home Mum with her kiddies for a number of years she decided to do her TEFL training (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), and I met her through a friend who had completed her training with Emma. She's quite an entrepreneur I've decided, as she has seen a bit of a gap in the market in Toulouse and has decided to set up her own English language school for children. Phew!  

Jack In The Box founder, Emma Nelson, with her three children

If we lived closer to the centre of Toulouse we would definitely send our children to her classes but we are too far out of town to fit it in to our other Wednesday activities. It is such a great idea to offer these classes for children whose native language is English. It's tricky knowing how to keep the children's English language development (reading, writing, spelling, etc) going, especially for our youngest child who was too young to learn to read and write in English before we moved to France. Thankfully all of our children like to read books, and that should help their English to progress, to some extent anyway.

Anyway, Emma's school is called ‘Jack In The Box’, and she will be offering English classes to English-speaking children every Wednesday afternoon from September 2012 in Toulouse, for kids aged 5–11 years. The school will offer courses for those who are starting from scratch in English and for others who are ready to improve and develop on their existing skills. The courses will follow the National Curriculum guidelines for English at Key Stages 1 and 2. Emma is very fortunate to have the extremely experienced Jackie Maclean as her teacher at the school, a former Scottish primary school teacher with 20 years' experience in the state school system. To find out more, visit: jackintheboxtoulouse.free.fr. 

Jack In The Box ...for English speaking children in Toulouse

You can read more about Emma at www.france.mumabroad.com where you will find an interview with Emma Nelson (Interviews with Local Mums) and a blurb promoting her Jack In The Box school (Mums in Business). You will also find an interview with author and proofreader Sara Meade, who is promoting her new book called 'Waking Up In France' plus her English proofreading business (ahem, that's me!). 

There. That's my plug for my friend Emma, and I hope she gets lots more punters lined up for her new school. There's great interest in it already!

My French teacher, Delphine

My French teacher here in France is an older lady called Delphine (older being somewhere between 60 and 75 years old - I just can't tell!). She's a darling. We met at the local community French lessons offered by kindly retired people for the small sum of 10 euros a year. I didn't go there much after the first six months because I couldn't follow what they were trying to (kindly) teach me...and to boot we were in a pre-fabricated type building, not a centuries-old, aching with past memories and dripping with gorgeous history kind of stone building. Not at all. Anyone who went to school in New Zealand from about the 1980s onwards will know what I mean by pre-fab type buildings, only this one was bad and seriously ugly. My problem was that I absolutely could not be in beautiful France and have French lessons in an ugly building. The feng shui was just all wrong for me.

Anyway, Delphine and her husband Jean-Pierre had a granddaughter who had worked on an alpaca farm in Christchurch, New Zealand (but of course!), and Delphine was very keen for us to meet. One Saturday we met them at a local restaurant for a delicious French lunch and we got to know them all - Delphine and Jean-Pierre, their daughter and her children. After that, dear Delphine generously invited me to her house for French lessons, and I keenly took her up on that suggestion. I have now been going to her house once a week for the last two years, and we send each other postcards whenever we are away on our holidays. Delphine used to teach English so she slips between the two languages gracefully.  She laughs a lot too - often at me - but I don't mind because it stops me from being embarrassed at my mistakes as I join in with her for a good laugh. I'm not even sure that I blush anymore!

She and I are looking through the manuscript for my (recently-published-now-available-for-sale-on-amazon-websites-for-example) book called 'Waking Up In France', and slow line by slow line we are translating it into French. This has to be the best type of French lesson I have ever had! Seeing words I have written in English gradually transformed into a real French sentence with the correct words in the correct order is a joy to behold, and kind of makes the French make more sense to me. And so I come home and type it all into my computer so that my brain will register it all the better. I even use the 'insert symbol' option to make all those clever e-accent acute, e-accent grave, a-accent grave, etc... Quite a job! 

But what made me laugh was that Delphine and I were working through the manuscript - the first page of the prologue in fact, and she was laughing hard. That wasn't unusual, but then she said something that made me hoot. She said, "Sara, this is really, very good. You should write a book!" 

Holidays, a couple worth mentioning

A ‘gite’ is a holiday home that is available to be rented. You have sole occupancy of the home and access to all the usual amenities. You can find them through all sorts of websites here in France. Our first experience of a gite had been through the local town council in Angoustrine, in the Pyrenees mountains, not far from the Spanish border. Our French friends, Jerome and Marijo and their three children, invited us to join them for a weeks’ holiday and hiking in the mountains in the endearingly and deliciously warm springtime of southern France. We leapt at the chance. We stayed in a very basic collection of adjoined cottages, and ours was the smallest - with the most people to bed down. One of the children took turns having sleep-overs with our friends. We had a wonderful week as we explored the region by foot.

After our second French summer holiday back to winter in New Zealand - waving goodbye to summer-frocked friends in France - we were seriously sunshine-deprived. We wanted Vitamin D, and fast. This time we wanted a gite to enjoy a little bit of the French summertime before it disappeared into the marvellously long but slightly cooler autumn. So, we went to Pays Bearn, not far from the Mediterranean coast (where the French accent is stickier than thickened porridge).

Monsieur Lafargue met us, as pre-arranged by text and through the friendly reservation people at www.gites-de-france.com, at precisely 4.00 pm at Maison Lafargue just outside of the village of Morlanne, with a bisous and a warm smile. This ‘maison familiale’ (old family home where he grew up) included a lovely outdoor covered swimming pool, fruiting fruit trees and grapevines and an enormous locked barn and outhouses.  It was hard to tell exactly what the house was like from the photos on the website but we had few choices, given our late booking and non-negotiable requirement of a swimming pool to cope with the over 30 degree Celsius heat each day. It ‘ticked the boxes’, so we parted with a few hundred euros. When we saw the place on our arrival, we were definitely happy with our choice, in fact it was better than the photos.

However, here's some problems with staying in a former 'maison familiale': an overwhelming desire to look through the locked doors and rifle through the cupboards; a longing to hear the stories, see the family gatherings, taste the cooking, experience life in France (not really so long ago) when there was no inside plumbing, water was from the well outside, and light was the glow of candles or kerosene lamps, etc etc. When it was time to leave it was incredibly hard to say farewell to the armoirs full of ancient everyday china and beautiful porcelain, just part of the stock of the house that was wanted by no one else and therefore deemed suitable for the gite.

We explored the area, and had a wine tasting (our first) at a cave at Chateau de Cabidos. It was fabulous, and our French flowed far more freely after a few samples of their favourite flavours. We saw multiple legs of ham hanging salted and strange at the working Musee de Jambon in Bayonne, and we galloped around the grounds of the old castle at Morlanne. (I’ll post some photos soon).

And then we went to lunch at the Café des Sports in Arzacq. The restaurant was typically French, so imagine outside seating under a shady exterior of drooping grape and wisteria vines, happy people cheerfully downing delicious local wines, the aroma of fine in-house cooking hurling out through the open doors to greet us, and the happy shouts and merry clinking of glasses as the local tradesmen sat down to their obligatory two hour sustenance stop.

Our eight year old daughter Olivia waited patiently for her entree – an extremely hearty soup of the region and a particular award-winning speciality of this restaurant. It arrived in a large, functional, stainless-steel bowl so that we could serve ourselves. Olivia brought the spoon carefully to her mouth, gently blowing the steam away. She tasted, she swallowed, she exclaimed, “Wow. This is delicious! I never knew the French could cook so well.”

It was in fact a ham soup, called garbure, just like my New Zealand mother makes, only swimming with all winter vegetables and borlotti beans (this is at the height of summer but they serve it every day because it is their speciality). A pertinent tip from someone who knows is that if you want to try the garbure then don’t also choose the 17 euros lunch option, as we did, which had four more courses to follow  (well, we were on holiday!). Our three children were very happy with their steak and fries, followed by the unmissable bowl of icecream for the kids.

I'll post some photos in the next couple of days. Since then we've been to Luchon for some skiing and exploring. Different location, different climate but the same gorgeous France.

Pretty miserable

The leaves are snowing outside! There’s a storm brewing off the Atlantic Coast of France right now and people have been warned to stay inside. Here in Ramonville St-Agne, the almost bare trees are dropping their leaves in a swirling mess; actually a really beautiful swirling mess. It's time for a walk, after sitting at the computer for too long. I hope I make it back.

Autumn here in France is just gorgeous, and this year it was particularly wonderful with weeks and weeks of summery temperatures and still, long days. The colours on the trees made me gasp, and the leaves stayed firmly attached to their branches, willing you to look at them and admire their beauty before they became compost.

The tall plane trees that line many of the main streets here drop their leaves like you wouldn’t believe. The council works very hard to sweep them up, and teams of men with a little truck with circling brushes tidy things up nicely. I prefer the scattered leaves to stay where they are - they look so lovely and it’s so much fun to kick your way through them on the way home from school with the kids. (Just watch out for doggie calling cards though - that can be a bit messy.)

But now, autumn is over and it’s almost Christmas Day and the shortest day of the year (the darkest depths of winter in Europe).  It’s very hard to get moving in the morning when there’s no light, but after school in the late afternoon the kids like nothing better that to gear themselves up to go rollerblading down our driveway, with only the light from the outside bulb and their dynamo torches.  It’s mad fun, and they come inside buzzing and gleaming (with cold and excitement), ready for a big, warm meal.

It hasn't snowed yet, but it probably will before winter is over. During our first year here it snowed three times - good, proud dumps. Last year it was only a measley scattering on Christmas Day. We are going to visit a ski town after Christmas, called Luchon, nestled in the Pyrenees mountains. The ski lift leaves the town of Luchon and goes straight up to the ski slopes which is perfect for lovely husband and the boys who like skiing. Olivia and I will be soaking in the Luchon thermal pools instead. Aaaah.