12. Heavy date!

In mid-October we went to Biarritz for another lunch at Bar Jean, the place by the market in Biarritz we like very much, but when we got there, it was closed. Think it only opens between Thursday and Sunday now. So, we found another promising looking place ("Le Bistrot des Halles") also very close to the market that we’d been to once before and we dived in there as it was raining quite heavily. Luckily, it was still only just past twelve and we had our pick of where to sit but within minutes, the place filled up. There was a table of raucous "Angliche" women who were clearly on a mission to drain at least one European red wine lake.. and, judging by the noise, I reckon they were going to finish in the medals!

Here's the Buena Vista Social Club singing "Chan chan":

While the £8.50 fixed price menu of 3 courses was astonishingly good value (confit of duck) we decided to go 'off piste' and try the à la carte.. Madame had a collation of seafood to start with – mussels, thinly sliced raw fish, squid and some shellfish while I had a terrine of foie gras with some crusty country bread. This was just about the best I’ve ever had.. absolutely superb. Then for her main course Madame had monkfish with squid cooked in squid ink – she was given a huge piece of fish - while I had a similarly generous thick slice of tuna..

A revelation occurred one early morning as I was taking the dog out for his constitutional. I was just pushing up the steep lane when I had one of those epiphany moments (they don't happen often!). I suddenly realised that I was no longer answerable to anyone – I didn’t have to worry about finishing a report on time within the costs set by the customer, or worrying where the next piece of work was going to come from.. and that, after a lifetime of sometimes crippling mortgage payments, we were now mortgage-free. It was quite a moment.. I said to myself out loud, “I’m free, I've made it, I've retired..”

A fragment of a visit to St Jean de Luz in mid-October - wandering down through the town which looked beautiful in the strong sunlight – people sitting outside in cafes and no endless throngs of people on the pavements as there are in July & August. And not a cloud in the sky. After looking at the shops, we found our way to the front and we walked along there for a while before we stopped to have a coffee. There were people on the beach and even a few people swimming.. We sat back in our seats and felt the warmth of the sun beating down.. I think St Jean is really the place where we’d like to end up. It’s compact, level and there are all the shops you’d need plus the beach is just yards away. So after dinner, you could put a jacket on and go for a stroll along the front and watch the sun go down. We might look for a small flat there one day.. Think St Jean is the most expensive place of all though down here – but as always, there’s a reason. There's everything you need within a small radius there.

St Jean de Luz

We had one slightly surreal occurrence when we came home to the gîte one day - Madame D was outside her back door – in a touching tableau (!) – holding an entire dead chicken (complete with head, neck, legs, wings) by the feet over a portable gas ring burning off all the remains of feathers.. The chicken’s head was sitting in the flames while she had a conversation with us.. It seemed slightly shocking to me at first but then I realised that this is the unvarnished reality of country living. Just up the lane on the farm there’s a dung heap – and I haven’t seen one of those for a long time - that her chickens are always picking around. The cock is always standing on top of it. It must’ve been one of these that got the chop..!

Think this calls for a vat of wine..

11. Basque dentists

Villefranque

The other day I had to go to the dentist in the village (right - with the Pyrenees showing in the background). It was unexpectedly modern and probably more advanced than any other dental surgery I’ve ever been in – including once when I had to go to a dentist while on business in Baltimore in the US.

Now American dentists have the reputation of being the world’s best but from my experience this one guy in a tiny Basque village would run them pretty close. I must say I was slightly nervous going in as I didn’t know what to expect but he was a very funny & talkative character.. He spoke good English too – in fact, his daughter had just left to go to Cambridge for 3 months to improve her English.

We started talking about rowing too and he told me that his wife is a 3 time World Champion and that she coached at the local club that I’d seen. He said they have a veterans’ section too. He said I should go down there and ask for her.

So in what way was the dentist so modern I hear you ask..? Well, when I sat back in the chair and looked up, there was a computer display screen. And as he asked me my details, they came up on the screen as he typed them in so I could check he’d got everything right. He said that he needed to x-ray the one that was giving me a twinge.. I thought, “Hello, ker-ching!”

He did a quick x-ray and about 2 seconds later, there was the x-ray of my tooth up on the screen. He also had a panoramic picture of a generic mouthful of teeth which he modified as he went along so that they ended up reflecting the actual condition mine were in. As he x-rayed each tooth, he tagged the ones he’d done on the screen so that if he wanted to have another look, all he had to do was to click it on his computer.. He didn’t have an assistant either – he did everything himself.

Now in England, they have assistants but they have to be paid for. And guess who pays for them..? No prizes. The last time I went to the dentists in the UK, I was charged £64 just for the dentist to give my teeth a good clean. I was in there for all of about 15-20 minutes. Here, I had about 5 x-rays and he checked all my teeth including fixing the problem I had with one at the back, and then he gave them all a clean. Madame was in with me and she gave me a wink as if to say, this will be a big bill. When it came, he charged me only £52.. Now, what’s good here is that we paid that on the spot and then we send off the bill to our Mutuelle (our health insurance company) and we get paid back in full. In England the NHS has lost the plot – you pay for your dentist. In theory, the NHS should provide dentistry but try and find one who’ll take you on as a NHS patient; plus if you’re under 60, you pay for your prescriptions and you pay for your eye tests and your specs; etc etc.

Rant over.. (“… now breathe deeply … and relax..”)

10. Signs of Autumn

So, looking back, we did amazingly well (and were extremely lucky) to have found a house so quickly. Bearing in mind we arrived on 1st September, we managed to sign the Compromis de Vente to buy the house just ten days later.

We’re well on the way to sorting out the new kitchen & bathroom, we’ve got the social security sorted out for our health care, we’ve got the car all done and dusted now with French registration, insurance and a new number plate.

There’s a rowing club in Bayonne that we pass every day on the way into town – when the dust has finally settled I’ll probably join as I understand they have a veterans section (hard to believe I qualify for that but there we are!). The Adour is very wide at this point and there’s very little traffic on it. I’ve seen an VIII out on the water as well as a few sculling boats.

André, our friendly Basque bank manager has threatened to take me to watch Bayonne rugby club and then go for a few beers afterwards..! There’s a lot going on around here – it seems to be a very active area for all sorts of things. There’s a big jazz festival here in Bayonne every summer which used to attract big names like Ray Charles (didn’t he die just recently or am I imagining that?), and cinemas that show films in English, guided tours around the towns, rambling trips in the countryside and everywhere there are cycle paths (so we can finally get the bikes out).

Blondes Aquitaines

One Saturday evening, we were invited down for drinks with Mr and Mme D.. It was still warm and we sat outside. Ominously (!), there was a bottle of pastis, a bottle of home-made pineau and a bottle of malt whisky on the table (no contest). He speaks French with an accent so strong you could lean on it..! At one point he was talking about his love for his land, his farm and his animals and his eyes clouded with tears.. In their parlour, there is a unit along one wall and the top is covered with trophies and cups from his successes at breeding champion Blondes Aquitaines - the breed of cattle local to this area. The Basques have a visceral attachment to their 'Pays'. Madame D served us some home-made paté and Madame was directed towards the pineau while I had three industrial strength whiskies… we had a good laugh with them. M’sieur D was feeding Chibby paté by the end of the evening.. I’m told that I snored heavily that night!

Most Sundays we go back to 'our' village to have lunch at Bernadette & Philippe's restaurant. They’re so kind to us there.. As soon as we sit down, they offer us an apéritif.. don’t think that would happen too often in the UK. Or anywhere else for that matter.. They really spoil us.

Back to re-decorating - curiously, paint is very expensive here. If we’d known, we could have brought some over in the van with us but then we didn’t think we’d find a house as quickly as we did. We’re both still surprised at what we managed to achieve in the first month.

I took the dog up the lane one evening at the beginning of October just as the light was fading – aka l'heure bleue.. The sky was cloudless apart from some high contrails that were orange in the setting sun. There was not a breath of wind and it was absolutely still. Sound carried for miles in a way you seldom if ever experience it in England. I could hear a dog barking from waay off in the distance.. The lane is lined with oaks, a couple of tall Scots pines and a sprinkling of palm trees.. The leaves on the oaks were just starting to take on the suggestion of a yellow tinge. Every now and again, there was the sound of an acorn hitting the road as it fell down from on high. You got the feeling that autumn was just starting to make its presence felt – although on Sunday, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, all the trees were still fully green. According to M’sieur D, there are wild boar around here as well as foxes, deer, pheasant and rabbits. On Sundays you can hear the guns as they go a-hunting.

Sit back for a moment and relax with these beautiful images of La Rhune and the Pays Basque:

 

One evening, Mme D brought Madame a carrier bag full of fine green beans. We had some that same evening with a little steak.. mmm.. very tasty. The problem with all the many plans for the house we had running was that if I woke up in the wee small hours, it was impossible to get back to sleep. I woke up at 3am one morning and after that, I just lay there for what seemed hours, unable to get back to sleep for thinking about bathrooms, tiles, timescales, painting, who should do what first, kitchens, where things would go in the house when the removals lorry finally came here..

We used to wonder what Biarritz, Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Bayonne would be like in the off season.. Well so far, the only sign that things are slowing down is that it’s a little easier – but not that much - to find a parking space. We were worried that in moving to a tourist area that everything would be closed up for the off season. So far that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Bon continuation..!

9. The French and their cars

Talking about cars, there now follows a short rant about driving in France.

I always thought I was pretty slick at aggressive town driving if it was required – spotting gaps before they occur, and being at least one step ahead of the average dork. However, I hadn’t felt the need to exercise these particular skills for a long time. Think driving around in Malvern (home of the Daewoo Matiz with a comatose pensioner at the wheel!) may have had something to do with that.

However, nothing in my driving experience – including London’s West End, the Arc de Triomphe, Naples or Belgium (where they only introduced the driving test in the 1970s and then it was only for new drivers – it wasn’t retrospective) – equipped me for the mano-a-mano combat that is driving in Bayonne in rush hour. Or any other hour come to that.

First of all, no car that I know of has enough mirrors to enable you to follow what the average Basque is up to when he’s behind you. It’s as though they were all born with the instinctive knowledge of the blind spots of every car in production and how to get in them... And secondly, they only seem to have 2 speeds: fast and “What the hell was that..?”.

As I said earlier, our gîte was down a single track lane and when we would turn out onto the minor road that ran between our village and the next one I could guarantee that, no matter how many times I looked right and left, the moment I emerged onto the road, a small car (wearing a local 64 plate) would suddenly appear with smoking tyres around the nearest corner heading straight for me at the speed of heat.

Alternatively, if I did manage to emerge without causing a 64 car to swerve violently, it could be guaranteed that the top half of a small Renault or Peugeot or Citroen - aka “a sticker” – would be up close and personal in my rear view mirror in no more than 10 seconds. Curiously, people driving Japanese cars are never “stickers”. And it doesn’t matter how much I speed up, these “stickers” will remain welded to my rear bumper regardless.. especially, repeat especially, if the car has a GB plate! I know this could sound like rampant paranoia but Madame noticed this phenomenon too. So it must be true!

Exhibit 'A' - at Bayonne

Then we come to road signs.. In most other areas of Western Europe, the authorities position their road signs well before junctions in order to allow the motorist time to position himself on the road correctly. Not so in France. Here, road signs are invariably located behind a tree on junctions, or even better, on roundabouts.. Not only that, but they are often all coloured the same so that the local accordion repair shop (“New bellows fitted while you wait”) is accorded the same colour coding as the main road to Bordeaux. Plus they're in French and Basque. So a lot to read in a quick scan.. Here's an example from Brittany (left). What’s more, they stack them up in random fashion such when arriving at a junction at high speed – which is de rigueur here – you have approximately 0.72 seconds to scan the stack, find the one you are looking for and then, as you’ve already gone past it, try and remember if it was pointing left or right. The idea of one large sign with a graphical representation of the junction - and all the relevant directions on it - is not one that appears to sit easily with the French authorities.. I wonder where they got the idea from..?

And finally, in the interests of spicing up your driving experience, the French method for indicating “straight on” is not, as you might reasonably suppose, a sign pointing up at 12 o’clock, but, instead, theirs point either left or right and thus you are left with the eternal conundrum of which one do I take..? I would hazard a guess that more marriages fail in French cars than anywhere else.

And then there are the roundabouts.. The French came to roundabouts later than the rest of us having clung onto to their homicidal “priorité à droite” law in typiquement pig-headed fashion for years when common sense dictated that it should be ditched in favour of a safer alternative. However, within the last few years they have increasingly adopted the Anglo-Saxon roundabout but, as always, with caveats..

Now yer average Brit is a fairly law abiding soul and just about tolerates being regulated. In the UK, drivers on roundabouts tend to stick to the lane nearest to the centre, only gravitating to the outside lane when their exit approaches.

Not so in France. Their roundabouts are marked by lanes and sometimes they follow these lanes religiously - and sometimes they don’t. Usually though, they treat the roundabout as a free for all.. First of all, having grown up with the idea that they must give way to traffic from the right, they now find that if they want to join a roundabout, they must give way to traffic which is already on it, ie, traffic coming from the left. Here, the notion of giving way is perceived as a sign of weakness. I’m not even sure there’s a phrase in French for ‘give way’..

Arc de Triomphe traffic

But, to every rule there is an honourable exception and this one is called the "Arc de Triomphe Exception" (sounds like a Robert Ludlum thriller). The mere thought of driving around the Arc de Triomphe has had the power to turn the spines of generations of British drivers, even when sat in their favourite armchairs in Tunbridge Wells, to jelly. Many, en route to the south of France, have even been known detour via Berlin in order to avoid having to negotiate it. Here, the rule is that when on the world’s biggest accident black spot, you should always give way to traffic coming from the right, ie, joining traffic and disregard anything coming from the left.. Still with me..? I doubt it..

To be fair to the French, it must be remembered that the road layout in Paris was designed back in the era of the horse & carriage. Here's the view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Knowing what you know now - that drivers on this particular roundabout give way to those joining from their right - the clip below starts to make sense:

It’s no wonder that yer average Frenchman is now totally confused as you are. The upshot of all this is that they now regard roundabouts as a complete “bordel”* and so they feel they can overtake on them either on the left or on the right, they can pull out in front of you if you are on the roundabout and if they join a roundabout with the intention of exiting 270 degrees later, they will happily sit in the outer lane and drive across the exits leading up to the one they want thus causing havoc with the equanimity of the Anglo Saxon driver who was just about to emerge onto the roundabout. And of course no-one but no-one uses indicators. Complete anarchy reigns - which, of course, is exactly as they like it!

* Not to be used in polite company..

If you are stationary & waiting to join a roundabout, you may see someone on the roundabout in the outer lane coming towards you and suppose, not unreasonably, that he’s going to exit at the junction prior to the one you’re at. Big mistake. They will - and do - happily cruise around roundabouts in the outer lane seemingly unaware that they could be T-boned by other drivers trying to turn off the roundabout or motorists trying to enter it.. There is definitely a cultural difference at work here.

The rules seem to be:

1. Assume nothing.
2. Above all, never signal your intentions by road positioning or by indicating.
3. And never, n-e-v-e-r, e-v-e-r establish eye contact with another driver because if you do, he will take it that he can take your space on the grounds that you’ve seen him.
4. The converse of the three previous rules also applies.

The underlying principle is: When in Rome etc. Don't fight it - go with the flow.

Traffic lights… (how long have you got..?) In the UK, when the lights change from red to green, the amber comes on before the green if I’m not mistaken. Here, the lights change straight from red to green and if you not accelerating hard within one second, there will be a cacophony of horns behind you (aka the Naples syndrome). You know how it is – you’re sat there with the lights on red (thumb in bum etc) and you think “I’ll just check I’m in first” because there’s nothing worse than trying to accelerate away from a standing start in second or third.. And we’ve all done it. Haven’t we? Well, I have anyway..

You can guarantee that for that one second while you glance down at the gear lever that the lights will change and, what’s worse, it can be guaranteed that Madame will shout, “It’s green!” at you in a tone that indicates that you are a complete and utter Anglo-Saxon numpty. When the lights change, you half expect to hear “Trois.. Deux.. Un..” followed by a whistle blast along the lines of “International Jeux Sans Frontieres”.. Remember that programme..? All those be-blazered Euro mates - all sun tans, languages, teeth and whistles – and they were all called Serge or Gianfranco. Except for our man… It says a lot about us Brits that we picked the resolutely monoglot Yorkshireman Eddie Waring (starts at 8.06) to do the honours for Britain in Europe.

Anyway, back to driving in France.. When we went to get quotes for insuring the car, we decided that having an accident here was likely to be compulsory so we went for the ‘plenitude’ policy. This means we are insured against all the usual risks but some additional ones thought essential here such as the cost of a prosthetic limb, tsunamis, plagues of locusts, icebergs and the rest. You get the picture.

The other day, I was in the car park of the Biarritz Carrefour (a huge hypermarket) waiting while Madame did some shopping. A woman returned to her car which was parked just a few yards away. She started it up and just took off without looking. A chap driving along almost wrenched his steering wheel off taking violent, and I mean violent, avoiding action and it was the closest to an accident without there being one I’ve seen in a long long time. How he missed her I’ll never know. What’s more.. she didn’t stop – and I almost wrote here - “..to apologise...” but that is an alien Anglo-Saxon concept. I honestly don’t think that she’d seen the other car and thus didn’t realise just how close she’d been to having an accident.

Another “how was that not an accident?” moment occurred one Sunday morning. I was waiting in the car for Madame while she was in a cafe buying a newspaper. A car that was parked across the road suddenly and without any warning executed a U turn right in front of a car coming up behind. All I heard was a sudden screech of brakes and when the blue smoke had cleared, I saw that the culprit had driven off a short distance before stopping again – probably to consider his options. I imagine the chief of these would have been to change his laundry!

Finally, you daren’t leave a space (known naïvely as braking distance in the UK) between you and the car in front. A 64-plated car will just slide straight in there as one did to me to my complete amazement and, I have to say, my total admiration just the other day. Still don’t know how he did it. Or why. Think the GB plate (aka the twit magnet) caused his brain to temporarily overload. Still, something new to try!

I try not to let these things bother me – I say to myself, “Breathe deeply, relax and think happy thoughts”, but every now and again I still get an almost uncontrollable urge to reach for a pump-action..

But I wouldn’t like you to go away with the idea that driving in France is all bad. Far from it. For example, on their motorways, they have “Aires” or rest areas every 15 miles or so where you can pull off the motorway and have a snooze, rearrange one’s clothing or practice the Heimlich manoeuvre with a loved one - or indeed all of the above. Generally their roads seem to be better maintained than is the case in the UK. That’s certainly true for the rural roads. The verges are trimmed too so we haven’t seen weeds 3 feet high at the side of the road here.

The French also have the quaint idea that you should be able to eat the food served at service stations. The food available is of a uniformly high standard as is the coffee which must be at least half the price of a similar cup in the UK. Their service stations are the model that those in the UK should be based on. They treat their customers as adults and serve wine with their food. (although at the time of writing - Sept 2009 - this practice is about to stop.) Curiously, you don’t see shaven-headed tattooed French oiks lurching around their service stations as you might if wine and/or beer was available on the M1/M4/M5/M6.. Perish the thought.

The other day we paid £100 to register the car. That was a one-off payment and there’s no annual road tax and the Contrôle Technique (equivalent to our MoT) is only every 2 years.

One of the main differences is that, due to the proliferation of radar cameras, the French by and large just do not speed any more. Plus, and this is a real bonus, they don’t hog the fast lanes on motorways. When they’ve completed overtaking, they pull back into the middle lane or the nearside lane if it’s free. Plus it’s clear that they use their mirrors. If you have to resort to encouraging them to move over by means of a quick flash of the lights, then no pride is hurt and over they move. Driving on their motorways is much more relaxing than in the UK. It’s on the other, less regulated, roads where the fun starts…

There are bound to be differences between the two systems and because they do things differently here it doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily wrong anymore than the UK system is inherently better. It’s just that some things strike you as being wildly different when you first come over here. I’m sure that in time these differences will fade.

Otherwise, driving here is no problem..

Feel better for that rant..! Right.. lie back, relax and unwind with this song (below) while I'm off for a few laps around the nearest roundabout.. (with a 5 shot pump action!)

I'm talking about Cesaria Evora - she hailed from the Cape Verde islands and sadly she passed away in December 2011. Here she is with "Miss Perfumado":