Ceci et Cela

Last week we finally found a street market!  Who doesn’t love a French market with its exciting mix of cheap clothes, bric-à-brac, jewellery, soaps, baskets etc.. etc. and of course food!  Well actually, for those who spend long periods of time in France, for instance second homers, and are endlessly taking enthusiastic guests to these weekly markets, I believe it does begin to pall.  We have a market here in Caunes on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings.  It has so far consisted of three vans.  One is the ‘Quicherie’, another sets up counters of fruit and vegetables and the third is some sort of unexciting boucherie/charcuterie, that appears to sell chickens and not much else that is either recognisable or something one would want to eat.  So to find ourselves in the familiar country of olives, cheeses, interesting fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices, not to mention ready to eat temptations, was such a treat.  There were also a number of stalls selling clothes, mainly Italian and colourful, at temptingly good value prices.  We walked through three or four streets of stalls and took the dogs with us on leads.  There were a number of other dogs on leads, and the four legged were as courteous to each other as the two legged.  We have found that having dogs with us initiates many a good conversation with passers by, very similar to pushing a pram with a baby in it!  To my surprise, the ancient white ‘mongrel’ (for want of a better word!) Annie attracts just as much, and sometimes more, attention as the handsome, chocolate coloured, elaborately coiffured little spaniel.  On our daily run to the Boulangerie there is one woman in Caunes who insists on giving both dogs tiny torn off pieces from her freshly bought baguette if we bump into her.

We stopped for a coffee towards the end of our shopping, enjoyed a touch of ‘people watching’ and heard a lot of English being spoken.  Market day in Olonzac every Tuesday is clearly a regular part of life here for the ex.pats.

Pine Processionary Caterpillars 

Earlier this year, in February, we noticed high up in the tops of some pine trees what looked like spun, spiderweb-like nests.  I took some photos and only a week ago, during a conversation at the English French Conversation coffee morning, found out what they are.  They are nests belonging to the pine processional caterpillar.

 

The pine processionary moths are known for their caterpillars.  These caterpillars overwinter in these tent-like nests high in pine trees and emerge to process, nose to tail, in long columns, protected from predators by their severely irritating hairs.  They are orange-brown and hairy with blue bands.  Lengthy processions are formed when fully grown caterpillars abandon their host tree in search of pupation sites, when apparently as many as three hundred caterpillars may travel long distances looking for soft soil in which to bury themselves and form cocoons.  I remember coming across one of these processions some time ago, on a walk in France.  We stood for some time watching this long procession of caterpillars crossing the path and, fortunately for us, did not attempt to touch them. The hairs on the caterpillars cause harmful, and in some cases allergic, reactions in humans and other mammals.  I was warned to make sure the dogs didn’t touch them as those hairs can make them very ill indeed.  These caterpillars are also a grave danger to the pine trees in which they nest, as they emerge at night, while they are maturing, to feed on their host.  They are a registered vermin in France.  A word of warning! There is another species of processionary moth called the oak processional moth.  This too makes nests for its caterpillars in trees, but this time the oak tree.  These moths have reached England, have spread from London to the surrounding regions in the South East, and some have now spread even further, to Colchester, Reading and Milton Keynes.  Apart from the danger to humans and animals, they can severely damage an oak tree and are feared and hated by landscape gardeners.

French Television

We discovered early on that French television has very little to offer.  I suspect most expats get themselves set up with a means of accessing UK television via internet.  We weren’t really keen to do this as we're here to live ‘comme vivent les Francais’, and anyway we discovered early on that our iPads weren’t actually up to the job.  We found a channel on french television that has a news and discussion programme in the early evening and we watch it nearly every day.  This has kept us in touch with what has been in the news here in France since we arrived in January, and helped with learning to understand the language better as well.  It has been interesting to discover that generally the problems here are almost a mirror image of the problems being faced in England.  We have found this faintly comforting!

Back in January the news was all about the angry French farmers, blocking strategic motorways, driving phalanxes of tractors and other huge agricultural vehicles up the Champs Elysée in Paris and dumping piles of general farm muck wherever they were protesting.  We weren’t troubled by any of this type of protest around here, but the local farmers did their bit to show their support by turning road signs with the village names upside down!

Comme ça!

Shopping

I am really talking supermarket shopping here.  There is a reasonably large Carrefour a ten minute drive from here, and that is where we do our shopping for household stuff and anything more interesting than the rather basic stuff stocked by the old fashioned little supermarket in Caunes itself.  Now there are a number of aspects of shopping in this Carrefour that I have found makes the whole exercise more difficult.  The first irritation is that there are no overhead signs giving one a clue as to what you might hope to find in a particular aisle.  This meant that for many weeks I spent my time wearing out the wheels on my ‘chariot ‘ going up and down aisle after aisle in search of a particular  item.  Secondly, at home in Sainsbury’s I do the zapping thing, known as Smartshop.  I scan each item as I pack it into a bag in my trolley and when finished I go to an unmanned checkout till where my shopping is electronically added up, I pay and off I go!  Quick, easy and stress free.  Here I have found myself back in the irritating checkout queue, eyeing the neighbouring queue with frustration as it always seems to move faster than the one I’ve chosen!  I have to unpack my chariot and then sprint to the other end to pack my shopping into the assortment of bags that I’ve brought with me.  It’s a long time since I’ve been doing this and I don’t like it!  And then there’s the husband.  Richard practically never shops with me in a supermarket in the UK, but here he has nearly always accompanied me.  The draw is not predominantly to be helpful, although I’m sure he would insist it is, it is the choosing of the wine!  I find it very hard to concentrate when he’s with me.  He darts off and returns to pop one or two of his favourite french titbits into the chariot, and as I open my mouth to suggest he goes to find something that is on my list he’s gone again.  If I do manage to send him off on an errand, I will trundle round a corner into another aisle only to find him empty handed and looking rather lost and desperate, having failed to find what he was supposed to be looking for.   In the early days here he would disappear with the trolley when my back was turned and I’d end up with armfuls of stuff playing ‘hunt the husband’.  Usually he was easy to locate at the far end of the shop, happy in the wine corner.  It was particularly frustrating when he was not to be found in his favourite corner and a search began.  My strategy is to walk the length of the shop looking down each aisle to the very far end.  On a good day, we’ll spot each other, I can unload my armfuls of shopping and all is well.  On a bad day, I’ll spot him at the very far end of an aisle, marching purposefully parallel to me and not looking left or right.  By the time I’ve battled to where I saw him, he’s disappeared again!  To be fair, we’re getting better at shopping together and our ‘who gets le chariot’ strategy has been fine tuned to our mutual satisfaction.