The little scorpion

On my way back from the guitar shop yesterday, I found a scorpion. Having brought it home and Googled it, I think it was a male Euscorpius flavicaudis – apparently there are only three species that I’m likely to find here, and this one best fitted that description. Rather disappointingly, Euscorpius flavicaudis isn’t at all harmful, but he did look ever so mean with tail up and pincers spread wide.

I have to come clean and admit that when I caught him, he was rolling around in a plastic cup, sealed in with clingfilm and aluminium foil. Presumably somebody had trapped him in order to chuck him out, and he’d blown away in the wind. This morning we took him for a drive (during which he was named ‘Francis’ by the kids) and released him on a sunny rock. He seemed happy.

Then we went for a walk – a wonderful walk along a ridge, through dappled woodland with insects making the most of the sun. The walk took a couple of hours – 4½km being the furthest that C and T have ever done in one stretch. They should sleep well tonight.

Moi, j’aime skier

From Becky: I’ve been surfing around trying to find French cartoons for the kids to watch, and we found this great little animation. It’s sung to the tune of YMCA and goes ‘Mwaah, j’emm ski-ay‘. Great, that is, until it’s been round and round your head for an entire afternoon.

We blew our combined pocket money on a night and two days at Saint-Jean Montclar, a little family ski resort in beautiful mountains 90 minutes’ drive away. Jasper had most of a day skiing while I took the kids sledging, to the playground and for a nap in the hotel. Then I had a private lesson with Thierry, who was just as tanned and suave as ski instructors are meant to be, and is planning on learning English now that he’s got his qualifications to teach skiing, speed-boat-driving, car-driving, heaving-goods-vehicle-driving, paragliding and mountain climbing. There’s plenty of time to chat while the rope is towing you up the nursery slope, you understand. In between, I learnt to ski downhill, turn each way (look ahead, turn your shoulders, right ski in front of left, snow-plough, off you go ) , move along on the flat, jump (about 0.5 cm off the ground), touch my toes while skiing and stop.  Fantastique! Thierry said I was ‘forte’ and I re-joined Jasper and the kids buzzing with pride and excitement. The kids, in turn, were buzzing with the excitement of a sheep nibbling Luca’s hand at the children’s farm. The next day, practising on the green slopes, I found that things weren’t quite so easy with a proper incline, icy snow and no Thierry to remind me to turn my shoulders at the right moment. At lunchtime Jasper persuaded me to try the blue slope. I got half-way down, mainly backwards on my bum, and crawled across to the green slope to finish off. I’ve decided I’d love to have a proper go at skiing one day and I think I’ll do fine, as long as I don’t expect to be as fearless (ahem, foolhardy) as Jasper.

We got back on Thursday evening and I took the kids to the family centre on Friday morning. They love it there, and they’re getting quite good at understanding what’s going on when we speak French the whole time. They both flatly refuse to answer people there in French, though.

“Ça va, Cara?”

“No.”

On the way back, I asked why they are so rude there. “When people at the Ludothèque say ‘ça va?’, what could you say to be polite?”

“Yes”, Cara suggested.

“Or how about, ‘Oui, ça va, merci’?” I prompted.

“And then they’d laugh at us.”

When she refused to answer Lynne’s ”Bonjour Cara” at swimming on Saturday, I told Lynne about the previous day’s conversation.

“Ah, yes,” said Lynne (in French of course), “a friend of mine had the same experience. She’s English and her little boy was bi-lingual, but he suddenly started refusing to talk English in public. People were laughing delightedly, and he thought they were making fun of him”.

Spring

 

Evidence that spring is upon us:

• Dew on the grass in the mornings
• Almond trees in blossom and crocusses flowering
• High daytime temperatures (regularly over 15ºc)
• The caterpillars are on the move (see previous post)
• Bees and hoverflies buzzing about, plus the occasional butterfly
• Lizards basking on the walls (presumably living off the recently awakened insect life)
• The lingerie shop windows are now full of skimpy summer undies, rather than dressing gowns and pyjamas

Caterpillar exodus

Our friend Rich, who is also our ‘agent’ looking after our house in Oxford, fell off his bike the other week. He doesn’t remember what happened, but however it happened, he discovered the next day that he had a broken shoulder, and was duly signed off work for several weeks. Being unable to work, but still able to travel, he hopped on what he calls a ‘Sleazyjet’ and is now enjoying our hospitality in Manosque. This is great because, as well as catching up with him, it gives us the excuse to eat and drink really well

Yesterday, Rich and I went for a walk out on the hills. The views were spectacular, as ever, with snow capped peaks under a leaden sky, and wispy clouds dusting the tops of the closer hills with dewey moisture. We’ve been using up some of the region’s annual quota of 65 sunless days recently, so it was cold and rainy as we returned.

I’ve been fascinated by the silky nests in the pines all around here for several months now (see January’s gallery). We first saw them when we arrived, back in November or  December. At first I thought they were spider nests, but soon found out that they were full of caterpillars. Pointing them out to Rich I noticed that they are empty, with big holes at the bottom. The caterpillars are on the move, and on the stony path up the hill we were walking on, we found them. They’d formed great long lines, nose to tail a bit like elephants walking in the bush. I don’t know where they were going to, but I reckon that they link together so as to look like a much bigger and possibly dangerous animal and therefore not worth eating.

I wouldn’t eat them anyway. They give me the heebie-jeebies.

Are we integrated?

From Becky: Prepare for a lengthy one. Jasper is in Scotland for the weekend, as his grandmother Trudy has sadly been diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He asked me to do a blog entry while he’s away, and I snapped something about him obviously not having a clue how all-consuming it is having the kids on my own. But not having Jasper to talk at gives me an urge to write things down. I want to write about the road works in our street, about the historical re-enactment we saw last Tuesday, about getting (or not getting) paid work, about driving back from Marseille airport at 6 am, about our thoughts of home now that we’re over half way through our time here…  I’ll touch on some of these, and some I’ll do another day. In the 20 minutes that I’ve allotted myself before an early bedtime I’ll stick to a subject that’s been preoccupying me a lot since New Year: are we integrating into the community here?

People at the wedding two weeks ago asked, “Is it everything you hoped for?”. The answer is that the time together as a family is better than I could have hoped for, many of the experiences are everything I’d hoped for, but integration into the local community (friends, work, understanding of the culture) is harder than I’d hoped.

Sometimes things really click and we seem to have moved on a step. Today, for example, our elderly neighbour Mme Roman came for tea with yet more knitted slippers for Cara and Theo (she’d already given Luca two pairs). I chatted away without difficulty and the children had a lovely time with her. She asked them to call her Mémé Roman (Granny Roman). She didn’t even seem to mind that, in the chaos of Cara and Theo ‘helping’, I’d forgotten to put the butter in the cake, so that it tasted like one of the dryer vegan concoctions you get from health-food shops.

Jasper often comes back from a morning at the family centre feeling pleased with the conversations he’s had, and there are children there that Cara and Theo might call friends (never mind that two of them happen to have English mothers).

Last week we went to the celebration of 800 years since Manosque was granted its medieval privilèges (sorry, I don’t understand it well enough to translate), and we bumped into two families we knew.

 

We’ve had one set of neighbours round for a drink, and showered in their flat when the boiler wasn’t working. I’m able to moan eloquently with a range of neighbours about the trials and tribulations of the new parking scheme. And I think we’re beginning to understand the way the town works: hustle and bustle and cheerful banter at the Saturday market; everyone interested in everyone else’s comings and goings but a bit reserved when they first meet you, especially in winter; shutters closed at 8pm latest, and only ‘mauvaise clientèle’ in the bars after 9pm; people genuinely anxious to help if you might be in trouble. They say we should come back in summer to experience a different pace of life.

On the down side, we’ve come to the conclusion that six months isn’t going to be long enough to make real friends, to understand all the cultural references, to transform language abilities. Even when we do get to know people and overcome the language barrier, it feels as if we’re not going to be around long enough for everyone to invest effort in a friendship. I’m sure it would have helped to be working here, but we’ve tried and there just isn’t much work around (more on this soon).  If we didn’t go to children’s activities, invite neighbours round and banter in shops, we could easily spend the whole time as a family unit and make no more impact on the local community than tourists. But then we’re loving the time spent as a family and all gaining a huge amount from it, so we should probably just continue to enjoy it, and feel good about the contacts we have made. We’re certainly not going to be short of company over the next two months – we’ve got enough of our British family and friends coming to visit to set up our own night club

Talking of visitors, our friend Rich has just rung to say he’s in Aix and will arrive here tomorrow on the 2.45 pm train, so I’ll be off to tidy the kitchen…

Gallery: January

Click the thumbnails for explanation of each picture below. (Clicking the picture again shows it slightly larger.)

  

  

  

  

Out on the piste

Yesterday we got up at 6am and drove for a couple of hours to Orcières-Merlette. It is much the same as any other ski resort; fantastic scenery with wonderful views spoilt only by high rise hotels, chalets and winter sports shops. The only difference was that nobody here spoke any English.

This was to be my day of skiing that Becky had given me as a birthday present back in December. By the time I’d hired my skis, boots and poles, and bought my ski pass, it was about 10am. The snow was patchy when viewed from the lifts, but really good on the pistes. I decided to warm up on a blue route, so, slowly and inelegantly at first, I slid down my first piste of the season, grinning from ear to ear.

Meanwhile, Becky and the kids had found a kiddy area and were contentedly sledging, so, having said ‘Hi’, I went back up a different lift to try another blue route, starting much higher in the mountains. Having got to the top, I was confronted by a sign: ‘This slope isn’t for beginners. Return to the ski station is only by red and black routes’. And then, in small letters: ‘Thank you for your understanding’.

So, with no alternative, I did some red routes. I’d forgotten that they can actually be easier than blue; there are no kids in the way to trip you up and fewer people means less churned up snow to catch the blades of the skis and send you flying. Charging down narrow mogully strips of snow at breakneck speed is okay if there’s nobody in front of you and your self-preservation instincts have been left in the bar

At one point I was laughing to myself at how badly signed the routes were. There was nobody around and I pretty soon realised why. I’d managed to find my way onto a closed slope, and in my infinite wisdom decided that the best way back onto a marked route was to go off-piste. This is the point in the story where Becky winces – the snow was soft, but really patchy, with sharp rocks and chasmous precipices everywhere. Laughing maniacally by now, I found my way back to a lift and managed to stay alive.

In the afternoon, after a second pint, I promised to stick to the well-marked fast slopes. By the end I really felt like I was back on form. A fantastic day. I want more!