Tag: Laroque d’Olmes

Our socially mobile terraced house: or ’génoises’ – a history

You might have thought we were pretty ordinary types living in an ordinary old terrace house – an ex-butcher’s shop for heaven’s sake – in a run-down ordinary little town.

Well, you’d be wrong.  This house, and the neighbouring ones, was built for minor nobility.  We haven’t scoured the archives or talked to the Oldest Inhabitant to find this out.  We just know.

And this is how we know.  Under the eaves of our houses are three rows of génoises, resembling a child’s drawing of ocean waves, but turned upside down.

Three rows of our génoises, underneath carefully picked out in terracotta paint to show them to full advantage

Back when our house was built, some time in the 18th century, the number of rows you were able to have denoted your social status. Artisans were permitted one row, shopkeepers two.  Minor nobility – ahem – three.  And if you were directly in the service of the king, then you could claim four rows.

You’ll see houses with génoises south of a line that runs pretty much from Bordeaux to Lyon.  It’s thought that the technique, which is Italian, was introduced firstly to Provence and then more widely, by artisans from Genoa round about the mid 17thcentury.

Here at Villar Saint Anselme in the Aude is a rare building with 4 rows of génoises. Look carefully: the swallows – no respecters of status – have built their nests on the undersides

By the nineteenth century, the social implication of the number of rows of génoiserie had pretty much disappeared: people contented themselves with one or two rows for decorative purposes.  We’ve seen our house on a late eighteenth century plan of Laroque, so we know the house, complete with génoises, must have been built by then.

And a family with pretensions to nobility lived in a tall, narrow terraced house?  Admittedly with some nice features, but still nothing fancy at all.  Well, inheritance laws in pre-Revolutionary France had estates divided up between all the heirs, so land and property became shared into decreasingly smaller parcels.  Families graced with extensive land and properties were few and far between.  This helps explain too why the agricultural revolution taking place in England from the 18th century took no hold in France.  Tiny farms resulted in small-scale farming and a near-impoverished peasantry.

And at some point, the house passed into the hands of the previous owners’ family and became a butcher’s shop.  Now it belongs to (almost) the only English in town.  Its noble origins are long forgotten.

Rencontre des chorales

Our Chorale at Laroque’s best friend is the Chorale at Mirepoix.  The Écoles de Musique in each town are best friends too, working together and running some joint classes and performances.

The chorales and other classes get together at least once every season to enjoy singing and playing for and with each other for an evening.  The public’s invited, and comes in encouragingly large numbers.

Those cannelés….

Last Friday, all the singers started wandering in shortly after 6, carrying carefully prepared dishes of buffet food.  The instructions were to bring no more than 6 portions, but nobody took any notice of that.  Robert from Laroque had made a pile of his deliciously chewy signature cannelés, Mirepoix’s William (yup, William’s a perfectly good French name) produced meringues, Mercedes’ plate was full of the cold meats and pâtés they make their charcuterie….and so on.

The rehearsal started, and was less a question of running through the songs than organising the logistics of moving around the dozens of us involved: Mirepoix’s orchestra, their children’s choir, the adult choirs from both towns.  It had to be done to a time-table, because nobody wanted to hurry over eating that buffet or sinking some wine.  ‘Don’t drink too much alcohol beforehand!’ urged Vanessa, our director ‘It’s bad for your singing voice’. I didn’t see anyone taking very much notice. ’Well really’, said Robert ‘How can you possibly eat cheese without a glass of wine to help it down?’

It had been more than 30 degrees for much of the day, so nobody wanted to come back indoors after the meal.  But we opened the windows, finished our preparations, and the audience drifted in for….oh, well before 9.10 for a 9.00 start.

Almost ready to start

The orchestra started things off.  Lots of percussion. All good stuff. I’m always a soft touch for children singing: these were well-rehearsed and sang with verve and enthusiasm.  Joined by the Mirepoix adult choir, they belted out numbers that were old favourites to the French audience and unknown to Malcolm and me.

And then it was our turn.  Our repertoire is a catholic one.  We sang everything from Henry VIII’s Pastime with Good Company (en français bien sûr) and Moon River (en français bien sûr) to old favourites (if you’re French that is) like Mon Amant de Saint Jean.

The Chorale de Laroque d’Olmes takes the stage

Nearly the end. Time for all the singers to join together for two final numbers.  A few weeks ago, Mireille had spent half an afternoon explaining one of them, Mistral Gagnant, to me.  It features a man singing to his daughter and the allusions to a host of sweets that form no part of my own youth – carambars, minthos and the mistrals gagnants themselves, had left me totally baffled, though not the rest of the audience.

In true French tradition, we couldn’t leave without doing an encore or two.  In true French tradition, we couldn’t leave – nobody could – without sharing the pot d’amitié.  A glass of something, a chance to meet and talk to friends: the perfect way to end a busy evening

The campaign for a President

During the British General Election we were in France, and kept up to date with the campaign via the French media, with particular thanks to British pundits and MPs with a command of the French language.

During this French Presidential campaign, we’ve been in England.  After the first round of voting last Sunday, a French friend helpfully sent me the results, as she feared statistics of this kind wouldn’t be considered newsworthy in dear old Blighty.

Actually, she needn’t have worried.  I’ve been surprised at how thoroughly the French elections have so far been covered.  The broadsheets, and both radio and television could be relied on to have some slant on the campaign every day.  Much of the discussion has revolved round how the Franco-German alliance would fare if Angela Merkel has to forge a relationship with Hollande rather than Sarkozy.  Other articled focussed on how, for many voters, it was perhaps more a question of who to vote against, rather than who to vote for.

Since Sunday’s first-round vote, after which it became clear that the Front National under the leadership of Marine le Pen had mopped up getting on for a fifth of the vote, the spotlight has changed to the rise of the far right throughout Europe.  Le Pen herself has been the subject of examinations of her career to date, and Sunday’s Observer also carried a double-page spread on François Hollande, as he’s so far a pretty much unknown quantity here.

Hollande's double-page spread in Sunday's Observer

I’ve appreciated this coverage, as it’s been a little hard to get to grips with all the issues in France itself, as the media assumes a basic understanding of the major parties and alliances which we don’t necessarily have.  But we’ll be back there by the time of the second round of voting, and will have a first-hand view of France as it wakes up on May 7th either to a new Socialist president, or, as seems less likely, another dose of Sarkozy.  So far, in our left-leaning corner of France, we haven’t met anyone who’ll admit to ever having voted for him.  In fact the two main candidates of the left, socialist Hollande and far-left Mélenchon knocked Sarkozy into 3rd place in our own commune of Laroque d’Olmes

Sarko - on the way out?

On the path of Cathar shepherds

Montaillou

Yesterday we walked through Montaillou.  It might seem a tiny and unremarkable village now, but it’s the place that’s maybe done most to contribute to our understanding of turn-of-the-14th century village life in the Languedoc when religious strife between the Catholics and the Cathars was at its height.  This is a big subject: it deserves more than passing mention: a future blog maybe.

I’d read le Roy Ladurie’s book on Montaillou more than 30 years ago,and never dreamed that I might one day live in what the tourist offices are pleased to call ‘Cathar Country’.  So it was the shepherds of Montaillou I was thinking of as we began our Sunday walk.  They would come to the annual fair at Laroque d’Olmes, a good 40 km from where they lived.  They would drive their flocks long distances for good pasture, and as national boundaries meant little in these mountain zones, their fellow shepherds whom they met in their travels would sometimes be Spanish.

Blossom and snow

We too were climbing out of Montaillou.  The paths seemed unchanged through the centuries – short springy turf with early spring flowers pushing through. Pale pink and white blossoms busting open.  Narrow streams cutting deep channels through the turf.  Thick forest climbing the slopes.  Patches of snow made the going a bit tough from time to time.  It was warm and sunny, the slopes were steep and sometimes hard-going

Those peaks appear

Then suddenly…suddenly, and so unexpectedly, we reached the top of our first climb.  Around us, to east, south and west were the snow-covered peaks of the Pyrenees, glistening white against the blue sky.  Above us, skylarks called and swooped.  Later, Danielle remarked that she felt as if at that moment she’d received a special gift: that perfect view, the clean clear air, the singing birds which were the only sounds.  She voiced, I think, what we all felt.

A few of those unending peaks
We keep walking
More distant peaks

We hadn’t reached our highest point: we climbed onwards, always with those snow capped mountains at our side.  And then we were on top: handy rocks provided seats and shelves and we unwrapped and shared our lunches, lingering in the sun, drinking in the views for well over an hour.

Picnic spot

The afternoon walk begins

Soon after lunch, we turned our back on the snowy mountains.  As we faced the hotter, drier Pyrénées Orientales, the equally high peaks there weren’t covered in white.  Our path was downwards now, and soon we had to pass the ski station above Camurac.  Built long after those years when snow could be relied upon throughout the winter, it was an area of scalped earth, snow machines and all-but-redundant chair lifts.  My Montaillou shepherds certainly wouldn’t have recognised it.

The walk draws to a close

But then it was forested paths again, open pasture and spring flowers.  We finished the walk passing a collection of horses, Thelwell style ponies, and appropriately for Palm Sunday, a couple of friendly donkeys.  A good day.

Snow 3: The Market

We woke up to -11 degrees on Thursday (-13 for some on the outskirts). Market trader and greengrocer Patrice and his équipe, who live in Rouvenac, a fairly isolated village 18 miles from here, woke up to -14 degrees.  Thursday’s the day they come to sell in Laroque market. When it’s minus figures outside, who’d want to arrive before 8.00 a.m., set up a stall in an exposed market square, and stay there dispensing fruit, vegetables and bonhomie till about 12.30 p.m.?  Well, if that’s how you earn your livelihood, that’s what you do.  Your only other option is to stay at home and keep warm, earn no money, and watch your stock deteriorate.  Which is what about three quarters of the traders usually at Lavelanet market on Fridays unsurprisingly chose to do this week.

Market square closed for business

But Obé who runs the bar and restaurant up in Place de la Cabanette had other ideas.  He offered them his huge garage down in our street, big enough for 2 large vans and a car, and that became the market place for the day. It’s dark and perhaps a little cramped for several long runs of produce.  But we don’t get out much here in Laroque, especially in a week like this one, and we all found it quite exciting to crowd in together and do our shopping: it gave us something to talk about.  Patrice and co. took turns to warm their fingers at the rather antique heater Obé had dug out.  They needed to.  The temperature in that garage only just managed to crawl up to  -4.

On our way back home, we just had to stop and look at the river which normally tumbles and chatters busily on its way though town.  Here it is, almost frozen over.

An all-but frozen River Touyre


Snow 2

Mid morning sun near Laroque

We Brits are famous for complaining when the Wrong Kind of Snow snarls up the networks.  The trains don’t run, schools shut, and there’s a run on store-cupboard ingredients in the shops.  The Daily Mail or some other self-styled Voice of The People is sure to announce that ‘We’re the laughing stock of Europe and America’.

A deserted field

Well, actually, life grinds to a halt when it snows in some parts of Europe too. Here for instance.  There has been no schools’ transport all week: and with many children living out in the sticks, schools have been half empty.  Markets, where we go to shop, catch up with jobs in town and to meet everyone we know, have pretty much not functioned for 10 days or more.  Clubs and walking groups, concerts lectures and meetings: all have been cancelled or postponed.  We’ve all left our cars at home and confined ourselves to doing what we can on foot.

Rabbit cross roads

Don’t we have snow ploughs here?  Well, of course we do.  In big communes like ours (there are 2000 of us you know), council workers do the job.  In more rural spots, farmers may be pressed into service.  But either way, they’ve all been to the same training school.  After they’ve done their rounds, the ploughs leave an inch of hard-packed, glossily polished snow especially for drivers to enable their cars to take up skating.  Lethal stuff.

The fast-flowing River Touyre begins to freeze

We’d hoped to drive to Barcelona this weekend to see Emily.  Reading the local government website’s travel section soon changed our minds.  We were recommended to use snow chains on several of the roads on our route.  On others we’d be required to use them.  Conditions are described as ‘very snowy’, ‘difficult’, and everyone we know says ‘Don’t go’.  So we shan’t: not till the snow goes anyway.

Pollarded plane trees by the church before sunset

As in the UK, radio TV and the local papers are filled with stories of the Big Snow.  The empty roads, the jack-knifed lorries (actually though, HGVs are kept off many of the main arteries and have either to turn back or make use of temporary lorry depots opened up for their use), the utilities failures, the heart-warming human interest stories – they’re all there.  The snow stopped some days ago, but the sub-zero temperatures remain, and so the snow’s till here.  What is different from England though, is the sky.  Through the day, we’ve enjoyed a cloudless duck-egg blue sky.  And that’s something to be relished.

Sunset viewed from la Castella at Laroque

Red kites

One of the daily pleasures of our Life in Laroque is watching the birds of prey, particularly buzzards and red kites, wheeling above our heads, catching the eddying breezes.

One of our pleasures here back in Yorkshire, is doing exactly that, now that red kites have become almost common round and about Harrogate.

It was back in 1999 that red kites were first re-introduced to Yorkshire, to Harewood.  Back then it was a rare treat to spot one, a newsworthy event to share with all your friends.  Gradually they became more common, though no less exciting.  Then last time we were here, we spotted one lazily coasting over the Yorkshire Showground, only a very few miles from Harewood as the kite flies.  Later that day, there were others, this time over the relatively urban Knaresborough Road estate.  This visit, we’ve spotted them for the first time in the part of north Harrogate where we used to live.

And then today, after lunch catching up with a good friend – thank you Cath – I took myself off for a walk.  Soaring above me, then plunging down, so very close that I could clearly see his breast plumage, was a red kite, nearer to me than one has ever been before. It made my day.

Calendar Boys

The calendar....

Christmas is coming.  How do I know? Not from the Christmas decorations or shops full of Yuletide Cheer, although that’s beginning, a bit.  No, here the first sign of the impending end-of-year festivities is the appearance of The Calendar.

The other day in Laroque you’d have passed two volunteer sapeurs pompiers (Fire and Rescue service) in full uniform, trudging door-to-door with a pile of calendars.  They need us all to make a donation in exchange for one.  I wouldn’t dare not.

....and January.

They don’t expect very much money: the loose change in your purse is fine.  After all the calendars are entirely paid for by the adverts inside and all the rest is profit.  But you’ll get a receipt, your first Christmas card, and your first calendar, with each month illustrated by some thrilling event in the life of our local stations.  Photos of the local crew too.  Though not the sort of hunky photos you sometimes see in England, with Mr. Universe types stripped to the waist the better to display their tanned and rippling muscles.  These men and women are all the guys-next-door.

Anyway, don’t think that this purchase represents the end of calendar-buying for this year.  Any day now it’ll be the Majorettes, and after that….who knows?  But there will be others.  And we’ll have to buy from all of them.

Little Donkey: An Everyday Story of Country Folk

Every now and then, in among all the banns of marriage and planning notices on the information board at the town hall here in Laroque, there’s a poster about a stray dog that’s been found.  Not cats or hamsters. Just dogs.

Last week, though, my eye was caught by this:How does anyone lose a donkey?  And what do you do with it whilst you put out an appeal for the owner?  ‘Oh he’s fine’, said Thierry, our Community Copper, ‘We’ve put him to work in the office in the Mairie’.  I decided against saying the obvious, that he would be bound to be doing a far better job than the Mayor.

Image from Unsplash.

It took a week for his owner to show up.  He – the donkey that is – had an exciting time.  First of all he was rounded up by the three blokes who first spotted him in the road just outside town, but who had no idea how to set about the job.  Then he was frisked for tattoos or identity chips.  None.  Next he was sent to stay with our friend Henri’s donkeys (Thierry was fibbing about the office work).  That had to stop when Henri’s female donkey got all excited at the new arrival and came on heat.  Then he went to stay with the vet’s partner.  He escaped.  Amateur detectives all over Laroque and Lavelanet tried to find out where he came from.  Eventually, after a week, his owner showed up, really rather cross.  ‘Why didn’t anyone think to get in touch with me?’

There we are.  That’s our excitement for November over.

Image from Unsplash.

For non-British readers: Little Donkey is a Christmas song much favoured by UK muzak producers at this time of year.  One reason to avoid shopping there during November and December.  Whereas ‘an everyday day story of country folk’ is ‘The Archers’, a daily radio soap opera full of story lines such as the one above.  It’s been a permanent part of the BBC schedules since 1951.  You could join the fan club.