Hello Readers,

Back on the road again. This time, it’s our new trip – Human Odyssey – the Origins of Man – (cudda saved a lot of money and walked around some bits of Brooklyn, but our punters want even better…). This was an instant bestseller of a trip when it came on the market over a year ago, but then September 11th happened and we are now going around the circuit with 21 pax such a waste of time and effort, not to mention costing us a fortune.

I started in France – no problem for me to go there – any chance I get, I take it. Took some days off beforehand, chez brother Dick and wife Janet, in the departement of Mayenne (and I bet none of you can put that one on the map) – kinda about three to four inches west of Paris, about halfway to Brittany). Just pure rural France, the leaves barely turning, the roads muddy with soil from passing tractors, odd gunshots anytime (the French farmer basically considers anything that walks or flies as fair game – Dick says the first day of the hunting season sounds more like the Battle of the Somme and the papers next day are full of reports as to the human toll …… he stays home that day and wears a red hat indoors just to be sure). We did some gentle touring around to look at rustic villages and local markets and sort of did nothing on a rather large scale and the weather cooperated wonderfully, with thin sunshine and no rain, so a good time was had.

There were many mounds of gently rotting apples around and the air was gently scented_ This is the Calvados producing area and it appears that it is all the better if the fruit has started to ferment naturally. Huge barrels were being cleaned out and soon a visiting apple crusher would arrive in the village and everyone would have the basic juice, which later would go to the still and then to the bottle and then down the throat – a wonderfully natural progression. Dinner around here will always end with ‘un petit calva’.

When out driving around, lunching in a Routiers cafe is just great. The trick is to keep your eyes open for a line of white vans parked outside some unassuming building at 12 noon. These men know where the good food is. Inside, Madame runs front of house. Monsieur is in the kitchen. The oilcloth table is ready laid with bread and an opened bottle of red wine. You take a seat (or as the French say – I always love saying this: “On s’installe”) and next moment there is a nice fresh salad plate, home made zingy dressing -veggies that came from the market this morning and had been grown, heavens above, exposed to the weather and passing animals – then perhaps a steack frites (that IS spelled right, we are en france, remember, though the spelling is becoming old hat I have to admit) or a stew of some kind and then a choice of local cheeses (Do we need more wine???) and a sweet rice pudding or fruit and coffee and you pay USD12 a head all in …….. I could go everyday just to see what they do next. Madame was having trouble wondering why I kept looking at her and I was wondering just how the hell they did it. She had her regulars in this particular restaurant and we were rather the bump on the log (and foreign to make it worse), so she watched us and I watched her. Seemed fair.

We made courtesy calls on various ancient neighbors, whom I had met last time and who wanted to check how I was. On Sept 11, apparently, there was much enquiry after my wellbeing, which was rather touching. Dick, ever resourceful, advised the boulangerie, as the Madame there is the biggest gossip in the village, that I was fine, having actually been in China on that sad day, so about as far away as I could be. Thus the message was effectively, accurately and cheaply spread that I was okay. I made a ritual appearance there later to buy a loaf of bread and got the once over from Madame, who has is pretty tough and not the type to take prisoners. She and hubby are retiring soon, which of course is creating a HUGE scandale in the village – but due to some bizarre sort of French governmental regulation, a BRAND NEW boulangerie is planned for the village (and u should remember this place in MINUTE) and in the meantime the bread wilt be shipped in and probably sold at the restaurant and it’s the sort of thing around here that will remove Mr Bin Laden from the front pages – we DO have our priorities and I think they are, of course, totally right. The chance of the village of Gesvres being bombed is somewhat of a longshot, but living without a boulangerie, well THAT is life itself. French governments have fallen over less.

We visited a sweet lady in town. with sparkling brown eyes and a mop of naturally curly (but rather greasy) hair. Her BO is strong and it’s not even high summer. Dick and Janet’s house had been in her family, though in her time, it was a barn and not a primary residence as it is now termed. Always smiling, she shows no sign of the fact that her husband is terminally ill in hospital on a long term basis. She is a laundress at a small hotel (“beaucoup des anglais”) in a nearby village and has a girl and boy teenage children, who obviously adore her and an elderly mother parked by the fireside – almost Norman Rockwell gone to France. The kids are shy to practice their English, though the girl went with Dick and Janet last year to England and came back with a passion for, of all things, English sausages – “les bangers anglais” were a success fou and she would not ask, but if they bring some back, she will be “ravie”.

Seated around the table in the small, cluttered backroom, with a few momentoes of visits to places like Lourdes (there’s lotsa Virgins in plaster around here) and sepia family photographs of unhappy looking and long dead relations, the white wine bottle is produced and also the blackcurrant and oversweet kirs distributed – the kids of course have theirs. Toasts have to be exchanged, even with grandmama. We hear the latest village news – who is in and who is out, with the sort of fervour that Jane Austen would have brought to the news that Mr Darcy is worth five thousand pounds a year – meanwhile le tele is going in the background. Dreadful French game shows with middle aged housewives who look like the just left half the dishes in the sink and peeled off their bright yellow rubber gloves to go to the studio and make fools of themselves, but somehow you feel that the local news is still more important than matters afar removed. New York may have had its problems, but what about the boulangerie ???? This is une vrai probleme and there is much shrugging of shoulders and the end of the world is almost within sight. Think I’d probably unplug le tele and remain blissfully unaware of what is happening more than 20 k’s away. Innocence is bliss.

Later, one splendidly old couple (both well over 80) arrived on Dick’s doorstep and had to be formally seated at the kitchen table (MUCH seems to happen around oilcloth covered kitchen tables here) – Dick and Janet on one side and they on the other and me at the end, like some kind of game show referee – I felt I should be awarding them points and the Pastis bottle was produced and rituals of asking about each other’s health extensively gone into. If there’s anything a French person likes, it’s an investigation into one’s internal organs and how they are variously functioning. Nothing better than a “crise” of some kind -you are almost a nonperson if you don’t have something to complain about and the French patent medicine industry must be a sure profit maker and it’s my stock tip of the week. You have never heard so many opinions given, all hands-on-bible stuff as to how to be cured from this or that, but the only thing that is a given is that everyone will chime in and EVERYONE WILL BE RIGHT.  I suppose the Brits do it with the weather – big difference being that you can do sod all about that, but a malfunctioning liver can be investigated ad nauseam. The old lady, Madeleine, in her many indeterminant layers of ragged sweaters, wanted to know if Dick would like a rabbit ? We realized immediately this was not some cute bunny to have in a hutch, but rather tomorrow’s dinner. Seemed they raised them on the side and they love Dick and Janet so much that a rabbit was up for grabs. Great clincher line was did they want it alive or dead ??? Well we knew that if arrived with a twitching nose, then all we wudda done would be to let it go in the fields outside – none of us was up to murder or the ritual skinning and dismemberment after that. We decided dead was better, which amused them no end – what wimps we are – seems this sweet little couple are mass murderers in a quiet way. But, she said, she would save the blood … oh Joy. It arrived next day and only the head had to be removed (given to the guard dog at the adjacent building which wolfed it down in almost one gulp) and we had a nice rabbit dinner and did not dwell on its provenance. That’s the glory of being at the top of the food chain.

Anyway, after some local living, like going to the supermarche (where there had been a punch up the very same day we were there, between some staff members no less) and drooling over all the things that I don’t find in its equivalent chez moi, it was time to go off to work.