Deux Petite Canards

Deux petite canards

It’s been another busy week in this 24/7 city that never sleeps ha ha!! Who would have thought that life in a sleepy little village in rural South West France could offer so much in the way of entertainment during the winter months?

I touched on the Birthday Drinks Bar Crawl in my last blog mentioning that we had been out until the unearthly hour of 2am drinking, and that I had a hangover the next day. To be honest I thought that would probably be my last night out this side of Christmas.

But no!! Or should I say “mais non”? This week has seen lots of adventures and late nights. Firstly, we went to celebrate Carol’s birthday at Carole and Bernard’s house on Monday evening where they made us a lovely vegetarian curry, and lots of gin and tonic and red wine was drunk. That was a lovely evening – and very good to see Bernard looking so well after his recent spell in hospital.

Then Tuesday evening we went to play pool – which wasn’t a late night as such, nor a drunken one as by then I had decided to make a concerted start to my December “Pre-tox” in preparation for January’s “De-tox” (for me this means eating no meat (easy as I am a veggie), no wheat, no dairy, and no processed food, and no alcohol for the whole of January. In December I plan to do a “light” version of this which means following the plan for any day which is not a special occasion – so as to avoid it getting in the way of the party season. Anyway, my “boisson de choix” on Tuesday was “Thé Vert Menthe”. I played one game with Peter which was not my finest hour, but then when my second game came around with a bit of coaching from my trainer “Mr Traynor” I managed to surprise myself and everyone else in the back room of “Café de la Poste” by getting a few balls down in one go!! It was my closest game ever…well at least in this decade (I used to play quite well for a girl in my misspent youth). I got down to 1 ball but I still lost!! Peter won 10 games in a row that night – he was on fire!!

On Wednesday I decided that now my knee is feeling much better it is about time I started to join Martin on the evening dog walks down to the village. In our former life in Chandlers Ford we used to walk each evening in December after dinner and count how many houses had their Christmas Lights on. Although the houses with lights on are few and far between, the village in itself has some really awesome lights – which we think must be funded and organised by the commune, and are really quite lovely to see. Starting at the end by the Rugby Club bar there are lights which are sort of in the shape of a tree but not quite tree shape – which I have nicknamed Christmas Pile – as it’s reminiscent of a pile – although a pile of what I do not know.

We can actually see Christmas Pile from our small deck outside the motorhome up on the land and it is very reassuring and comforting to see how close we actually are to civilisation now that the Winter is drawing in.

Then as you walk through the high street there are lights on the Halle, and over the arches of the Hotel du Commerce, in the windows of most, if not all of the businesses as you walk down towards the end.

It all finishes up at the Mairie which has a rather spectacular Christmas Rocket and a Blue Tree. I love it!! The whole walk takes us about 45 minutes if we stretch it out and pause to look at any new lights each evening. It’s great entertainment for us – they say that the best things in life are free and it certainly gives us some fun to look at them.

During this walk we passed the hall where the choir meet – and yes, I did say that maybe we would go back, and then Martin said he would go back even if I didn’t, but actually as we listened to them practicing inside and it was the same “O Salutarius” as before we realised that the choir probably is not for us!! Never mind – we gave it a try but it was not to be!

Thursday heralded the arrival of the replacement doors for the garden house at last!! This means that we can finally crack on and get the raised deck for this, and then the actual garden house erected. And not a moment too soon!! As always, a week or so away does us good but then when we return to this life in the motorhome it doesn’t take long before we feel the strain placed on us through life inside a 21m² home. Two large wet and muddy dogs contribute to a, let’s say “difficult” situation, and tempers sometimes get a little fraught!! Occasionally, an ill-timed comment can lead to a furious exchange of words. For example, Martin discovered that to say the words “why didn’t you bring that in before you started cooking” to an extremely stressed woman who was attempting to cook up a lovely, healthy, nutritionally balanced meal from scratch, with fresh vegetables in approximately 12 inches in total of food preparation space – was not the best thing to say!! He was reminded in no un-certain terms that he would travel far and wide to discover another woman prepared to live in these conditions AND deliver 3 meals from scratch a day and that if he preferred to live in a yurt and eat out of tins he was welcome to try that out…..or something similar…there may have been a few extra words…I can’t quite remember!! Anyway, we won’t dwell on that and are friends again, and he has been working hard on getting the deck done since. This is what we are hoping it will look like when complete, and hopefully this will bring us some reprieve in the way of extra space (and dare I say it the chance to not be in the same room as each other all the time).

Friday was “cinema date night” for us. We went to watch French film Grande Bain in the village. It’s amusing to say the least that back in the UK we were spoilt with the choice of no fewer than 10 films which each ran a few times a day for many weeks – yet we rarely went to the cinema. Yet here in VduP we get excited when it comes around – the monthly film!! In French, no English sub-titles – just our own imaginations to work out what is going on. This one was quite easy – very similar to The Full Monty but involving a group of fairly lost, middle aged French men who formed a synchronised swimming team! It was very funny and definitely had some “laugh out loud” moments in spite of the language difficulties. And in any case, the cinema is warm and dry, and has comfy seats and enough space to stretch our legs out comfortably!!

And then to conclude our very full week of entertainment, whilst strolling around the village on Saturday morning after popping down to see what all the fuss was about for the Telethon (a fundraising event) and seeing the Pompiers doing a charity car wash and having a guided tour round a fire engine, we bumped in to Beatrice and Bruno who invited us to the Bingo that evening. Now, during the Bar Crawl when I was, let’s say a little tipsy, I had a conversation with Beatrice about the possibility of becoming her Bingo caller at the campsite next season…so this seemed the perfect opportunity to find out more about French Bingo. So, we said we would love to go!!

Beatrice said doors open at 7pm but Bingo starts at 9pm, so we arranged to meet them there about 8pm. We figured that if it started at 9pm we would be finished by 1100. We got settled down, had a cup of tea and a crepe, and a chat with Beatrice and Bruno whilst we waited. The French system involves buying Bingo cards as it does in the UK, but instead of marking the numbers with a pen you re-use your card – and cover the numbers with counters. The regular Bingo goers all have a fancy magnetic counter holder, but we had to borrow some counters from Beatrice and Bruno from their campsite game.

Like the UK though the players often have a lucky charm to touch to bring them luck. There was a lady at another table with a little Buddha, and the French lady next to me had a little duck. I told Beatrice that in the UK I might have had a lucky pen, but as we didn’t need pens that would not be the case. I quietly wondered if now might be the time to consider my knickers to be “lucky pants” but once I found out what some of the prizes would be, I changed my mind and decided that tonight it would be the taking part that would be important and not the winning!!

Just before 9pm the very lovely Vicky announced the Bingo would soon start and the balls were placed into the dispenser. All went quiet…eyes down…. you could hear a pin drop. The numbers were announced one at a time …in French of course!! Beatrice and I soon worked out a system that would not only help me improve my understanding of French numbers, but would also ensure that I did not miss any. I listened to the number…attempted to work out what it was, clarify with Beatrice and then she would place her counter after I placed mine. So, each time a number was called I would say, quietly…what I thought was the number in English. I hoped I was not distracting the French lady next to me but she didn’t seem to be annoyed. We had a lot of giggles during the games, and I discovered that I have some serious mental blocks with certain numbers – including 84 – which is quatre-vingt-quatre – I was convinced that this was 88 each time – which raised a laugh and Bruno’s eyebrows!! Both Martin and I found the way that Vicky said the number ten – Dix, Cinq et Cinq (10, 5 and 5) to be hilarious and couldn’t really understand why, until Beatrice explained that Dix sounds a lot like Six (6) and then we really cracked up laughing when Vicky announced Six, Trois et Trois (6, 3 and 3). But, on a serious note, my improvement from the first game to the last game was about 200%. The French lady next to me actually commented to Beatrice about how well I had improved from the start to the finish. It was a great way to get my head around the number system, which I have to say is a little weird. I mean 1 to 10 makes perfect sense, 11 to 19 is reasonable, 20 to 69 is very straight forward, but then… 70 is 60,10, 60,11, etc. And then it gets really weird – 80 is 4, 20…how weird is that? Then 90 is 4, 20, 10. Martin made this observation to Bruno who smiled, raised his eyebrows and then laughed and said “yeah… Five Ty – right”. We all laughed – there are flaws in both languages.

There were so many games!! We started at 9pm and had a 15-minute break about 1030pm, at this point I thought the Bingo had finished and we then moved on to the Basket (tombola) but no, there were even more games of Bingo following on from this. I will say this for the French system – you certainly get your money’s worth. We paid €5 for 6 cards each and played these over and over again – the reusable cards are a great idea!!

So, the aforementioned prizes. Unlike the UK which often has cash prizes, in France the prizes are food, wine, or objects. In this case…. for many of the games the prize was either “Foie Gras” or Ducks. Not just any old duck – proper, legs akimbo, little feet poking out of its wrapper – ready to cook duck. So, this found me switching between a silent mantra of “oooh chocolate – let me win” to “please, no, not the duck”.

Martin actually had a “sweat on” for a line. A “sweat on” is where you are down to one number. He was waiting for the number 22 which as any English person will know is “two little ducks”. Ironically, the prize for this round was indeed “deux petite canards” which thankfully Martin did not win.

Later, as we were leaving, happy and laughing at 1230AM, we saw the “canards” leaving the building in a most unceremonious way over the shoulders of Laurent who was carrying them out for the lady who won them.

Early night for us tonight I think!!

©Sharon Rees-Williams – wordpress.com/thislittlepieceof.land, 2018 

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