November: Day of the Dead

On the first day of November, my true love said to me, 'Fare thee well and see you in a week or so.' I dropped her off at Brive station to catch the 07:52 from Cahors to Paris Austerlitz. Her accountant and partner were travelling to the capital with their grandson on the same train, but The Dame's seat was right at the other end of the train. Quite liderally the last seat. Any further back, and if the train had one, she could stand on the observation platform like Tom Courtenay's Trotsky in Dr. Zhivago, and watch the rails recede.

I left her with my MP3 player, The Poisonwood Bible and a packed breakfast for the 4½-hour trip to Paris and thence to London, where she would be celebrating Our Kid's 29^th birthday before heading north to stay uncomfortably once more with her frail and ailing mother. Daphne and I headed for the clinic, where I cut back the plant that's making it hard to open and close the back gates, and then – and only then – did I break my fast in the makeshift kitchen.

I remembered my working wife's cheques in my bag and my promise to pay them in at the central post office. We went there next, my trusty dog and I. The post office, however, was shut. My first thought was another day of national strikes. After all, this was France. But how silly of me! The trains would have been the first to grind to a halt. So perhaps a late opening because of staff training. But there was no notice on the door to that effect. Hmmm. Everything seemed very quiet, come to think of it. Very little traffic and a surfeit of parking slots. This town was coming like a ghost town.

And then I had an aha moment. It was the 1^st November. Toussaint. All Saints Day. The Day of the Dead. Of course! The post office and the shops would be shut for the day, so that everyone can go and place chrysanthemums on the graves of their forebears. Sitting there in my car under a dark grey lowering sky, with barely a soul abroad and after all the recent engaging sound and fury of the rugby world cup, it seemed like a veritable day of the dead.

Even after 28 years in France, I still can't remember this public holiday – which only goes to show... something. Maybe how difficult it is to acquire and truly embed a foreign culture. I have no problem remembering the UK's public holidays, and yet it's decades since I've celebrated or enjoyed them. French ones still sneak up on me and catch me unawares. Strange. If ever I were asked a variation on the Enoch Powell question for immigrants about the national cricket team they supported, I would be found out as someone who couldn't remember to buy a pot of chrysanthemums for November 1^st. But sir, what would I do with it? Well, don't you have a dog's grave in your back garden? Um, oui, as it happens...

I've certainly never really understood the significance of the lacklustre flowers associated with this day. I remember reading D.H. Lawrence's short story, 'The Odour of Chrysanthemums', as part of 20^th Century Short Stories, one of our O-level curriculum books. It was a story about the death of some male member of the household in a Nottinghamshire mining community. The father, perhaps. The odour of the fading flowers, I remember, pervaded the tiny back-to-back house. It was a touching tale, but I can't recall the details. At that age, I was far more interested in Lady Chatterley's Lover.

This rather drab flower, it seems to me, is the perfect accoutrement for the enforced solemnity of the custom here. Death is certainly a solemn business in the West. With little joy in it, small wonder that we all fear it. Certainly it's nothing like the Day of the Dead celebrations in, say, Mexico.

Many, many years ago, I went to a wonderful exhibition in London at the Royal Academy (I believe). It was full of the associated festive artefacts: the painted and decorated papier-mâché skulls and skeletons, the little baskets, animals and other figures made of sugar, the paper skeleton puppets, the brightly coloured Tree of Life candelabra made of pottery, photographs of the superabundant decorative altars and the feasts laid out on tables for the visiting souls of the dead. It was revelatory. Death could be fun! The excuse for a genuine celebration. A million miles from the cursory regimented visits to the orderly little walled graveyards around here and all over France.

It's been raining here for about a week already and the forecast for the next week or so offers little more than rain, rain and more rain. It seems a fairly appropriate backdrop for the Day of the Dead, European style. So... what to do? I couldn't pay my planned visit to Noz, my favourite shop in Brive. It's full of bankrupt stock, customs seizures and stuff that might otherwise be classified as off-the-back-of-a-lorry. You never know what you might find. I bought two rather nice pairs of shorts there over the summer and I've done rather well in recent months for coconut milk.

Never mind. Tomorrow was another day. There was only one thing for it: go to Nazareth. Earlier than scheduled. There to meet my friend David, the Nazarene, with a view to walking our dogs and chatting about the expatriate experience. Perhaps the rain would hold off. Had we not been side-tracked by a slice each of stollen from Lidl, we might have made it. Under umbrellas and a canopy of trees, we followed a track through the woods to a rock face that overlooks the rolling countryside between the outer edge of Brive and distant Turenne on its fortified mound. On rare moments, you might catch sight of our little local train heading for or emerging from the tunnel. Even in the rain, the view stirs the soul. My own was unneasily stirred when I realised that Daphne wasn't with me. With no response to my calls, I worried that she might have plunged over the edge in a moment of misguided enthusiasm. But she reappeared, before running off again with David's dog, Timmy.

I had to get back. I had my own Day of the Dead feast to prepare. Some curries for a musical evening with Dan and Steve. Well you know, when the girl's away... It wasn't meant to be on the first evening of solitude, but the film Summer of Soul waits for no man. The 'Black Woodstock' was even better than I had anticipated. We ate well, too, though I say it myself. If any dead souls came visiting, I wasn't aware of them. My ascetic mother had a very modest appetite, anyway, unlike my father who would have seriously compromised the quantity of food on offer. There was plenty for the three of us, with enough for my lunch the following day. Perhaps when you die, you develop an aversion to spicy food. Maybe even chrysanthemums.

 

October: 36 Hours in Bordeaux

On our way to Tulle to meet up with our friend Steve in a little record shop called The Rev, Dan and I were chatting in the car about guilt and penance. Neither of us, it seems, is ever entirely at rest. We're always thinking about what we should be doing. And, if ever we allow ourselves to do anything creative or, God forbid, frivolous, we find ways of doing penance for our sins. Given that I was sacrificing an entire afternoon to frivolity, I performed two long-standing tasks that morning: cleaning the wires in the kitchen to which the six LED spotlights are clipped, and de-greasing the hood above the cooker.

Both tasks I performed with single-minded gusto, so I could show off my handiwork and claim 'what a good boy am I!' My dear affirmative wife duly gave me an affirmation. I'm not sure what Dan did that morning, but Thou are't absolved, my sons. Say seventeen hail Marys and proceed to thy record shop with clear conscience.

We had a lovely time for a good hour or more, and all three of us spent rather more than we had bargained for. But Philippe is a lovely fellow and running a second-hand record shop like The Rev is an act of passion rather than personal gain. He plays bass in Steve's band and his good taste and knowledge of music are exceptional. We chatted together in stilted Franglais. When he showed me things such as how his pricing policy worked, he tended to explain in English while I replied in French. After a while, I found my quite reasonable French resorting to the kind of tongue-tied unreasonable French it used to be back in the early years.

The following morning, I found the ideal absolution for my sins in cleaning the windows of our living area: unlike the vacuum cleaner, very little noise, so I could listen to my new records, not too tiring and fairly necessary. I was able to show them off to the Good Wife on her return from a hard day at the coal face in Brive and assert 'what a good boy am I!' What's more, clean windows, to translate the French literally (as our daughter once did when she was very little), 'see themselves'. The evidence of diligence is incontrovertible. As penance goes, I can recommend it.

There are only one or two days a year that don't require some kind of atonement. One of those, of course, is my birthday. This year, The Dame and I celebrated it in Bordeaux, that elegant, vibrant and notoriously bourgeois city that has become my French favourite. We took the train, early. It was cold and my wife in jeans fretted about my shorts. I reassured her by pointing to the hairs on my leggy-leg-legs. I confided that shorts are a kind of point of honour. If I can keep going till the end of October, it asserts that there's more to me than meets the eye. Hardier, tougher even than my nine-and-a-half-stones suggest. Don't mess with me. She laughed, uncomprehending.

On the outward journey, we changed at Périgueux. There was time to break our fasts in the station café, where we watched in admiration our hostess, a diminutive creature reminiscent of Edith Piaf, bouncing around in her over-sized trainers, multi-tasking for all she was worth. Which was more than her weight in gold, we surmised.

Once on one of Bordeaux's super-efficient trams, heading smoothly along beside the Garonne, we were both offered seats by polite young men. We both refused politely, but I felt like pointing out that you don't offer your seat to a man in shorts, feigning eternal youth on his 69^th birthday. They'll learn.

In the warren of side streets behind the remarkable Grosse Cloche – a huge 18^th century bell above a former dungeon for juveniles (best place for 'em) – we found the simple restaurant my wife had earmarked for lunch, and we sat down in the shadowy ruelle (alleyway) to the plat du jour: grilled octopus tentacles on a bed of steamed butternut squash and yellow peppers. It didn't do much for our 'fish-eating vegetarian' credentials, particular after watching the moving documentary, My Octopus Teacher, but it was nevertheless fabulous.

After lunch, I got my birthday wish of a very leisurely browse through the racks of Diabolo Menthe, a record shop I'd noted in an article on Bordeaux's record shops in a magazine I'd contributed to in an earlier life, Long Live Vinyl. It didn't disappoint – in contrast to Deep End Records just around the corner. Whereas the former was reasonably priced and hosted by a young man with charm and a winning smile, the latter was superintended by an arrogant mother-chuffer who wouldn't have given you the time of day, let alone the price of some of his unmarked records.

We had a four o'clock appointment at our B&B near the elegant Jardins Publics. As our young host took us up the circular stone stairs to our bedroom on the second floor, he explained that the previous owners had used a staircase on the other side of the thick stone wall and that this one had been revealed during the renovation of their magnificent town house. Perhaps I misunderstood him, but It all sounded unlikely and vaguely sinister, like something out of a Korean horror movie. But hey, our bedroom was grand and tastefully done, with an old door, for example, stripped and mounted as a headboard. The bed was so big that when I awoke briefly in the night, I couldn't find my sleeping beauty. This was a B&B masquerading as a boutique hotel. I didn't ask how much our night cost. It came in any case with a sumptuous breakfast, and breakfast is the most civilised meal of the day.

We ate extremely well in Bordeaux: that evening in a Lebanese establishment, and a late lunch the next day in a tiny establishment near the Musée de Beaux Arts run by an English wine trader from Hertfordshire and cooked by his Italian colleague. Perched on my stool, I watched him at work in his tiny kitchen, where he created a starter and a principal dish of quite stunning simplicity.

Our second morning in the city was consecrated to a visit to Lunettes Pour Tous, a kind of French Specsavers, where you choose your frames and leave with proper serviceable glasses a mere half hour or so later. It's the kind of thing that ageing couples with failing vision do for entertainment. And all for rather less than the price of a single night in a boutique B&B. My glasses took a little longer because I opted for my first test in about six years. The young optician with tattooed sleeves reassured me that everything was just fine, but I left with lenses so significantly stronger than my Specsavers models that I feel woozy every time I wear them.

Alas, though, we found that the Museum of Decorative Arts was closed – for five years! What a surprise... Five goddamn years. We came for the culture, you understand, not just to eat and shop. Five years! My brain hurts a lot... So we opted for a trip across the river on one of the municipal bateaux included with your 24-hour tram pass. The quais were dominated by two monstrous cruise ships tied up quayside for a couple of days' mass sightseeing. Walking alongside, they seemed about as big as Newcastle's Byker Wall estate. Were I a younger man, I would slip on a balaclava and attach to the sides under cover of darkness enough Semtex to blow them both to kingdom come.

Alas, once again! There was not enough room on the (somewhat smaller) bateau for us. Since the next one wouldn't arrive till almost four, and since neither of us fancied further queuing in the preternatural heat of this October, we aborted our riverside adventure and returned to the city centre for an ice cream before taking one last tram to the Gare St. Jean. A surfeit of armed gendarmes milled about and we figured that they weren't there for our sake. The rugby world cup perhaps.

The early evening return journey by train was direct. We sat opposite a young couple in a very crowded carriage. Fortunately, they dismounted at Perigueux, so we didn't have to try to ignore their kissing and canoodling the entire way to Brive – where we retrieved our car, then fetched our dog from her godparents' place, and slept soundly.

We had a lovely time, thank you for asking. Next morning I did a big shop: at Giselle's veggie-barn, then at Martel market and finally at Intermarché. Back home, once relieved of the groceries, I cleaned the fridge. It was a job waiting to happen.

 

September: Night Train to Paris

At 4.35 in the morning, it was still dark. I got there five minutes early to pick up the Good Wife from our local train station. There was no one around, just an anxious husband in a car and an intrigued dog in the back seat. What on earth was I doing waking her from her sleep and transporting her down the Côte Matthieu at such an hour?

There was no need for anxiety. At 4.42 precisely, the night train from Paris rolled into view. First stop Saint Denis près Martel, as SNCF refer to it, even though locals and La Poste know it as 'lès Martel', an antiquated form of ‘near Martel’. Only one passenger emerged: Debs stepped down from the train like Anna Karenina arriving at St. Petersburg, or wherever it was, minus the exhalation of engine steam. She was remarkably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after a night in a couchette shared with five other travellers. Cue great excitement from husband and dog. She’d been away for over a week, another last-minute trip to ever-damp Cumbria, this one precipitated by her mother’s lack of carers. One was on holiday and the other, Sarah the Carer, in hospital. So there she was, and suddenly it must have all made sense to our bewildered dog.

What a service, you might say. And you probably aren’t referring to that of the anxious husband, who set his alarm for 4.15 to throw on his clothes, rouse the dog and drive down to the station, there to embrace his wife, carry her case to the car and drive her back home. If you mean that of SNCF, well… yes and no. Yes, on this occasion – even though Debs had booked an all-female couchette, not due to trepidation but simply because it was on offer, only to find that three of the five other travellers were men. She didn’t sleep much, but it all seemed quite civilised, she told me. Everyone was very quiet and respectful, one of the benefits of living in a country like France, where children are taught a form of social responsibility in school. No drunks, no midnight-snackers, no one listening to, looking at or talking loudly  into their phones. 'R-E-S-P-E-C-T! (sock it to me, sock it to me...)'

However, ten days previously things did not go quite so swimmingly. We had very good friends from London staying with us on their first visit to these parts. Debs had taken the week off to enjoy their company and experience a full house, which – she suggested – is just what this house was created for. But then came the last-minute S.O.S. So she booked to leave on the Thursday night to spend Friday in London with our daughter before heading to Penrith by London North East Railways on Saturday, giving her a full week with her increasingly frail and confused mother. She would catch the night train to Paris around one in the morning from the local station, with a sole scheduled stop at Orléans, then onto Eurostar early the next morning. Certainly not bonne marché, but slightly cheaper than Ryan Air's August prices, which were off the Richter scale.

That week, the middle week of August, our estival luck had run out. Everyone around here agreed that we’d had the best summer for years, but that week the thermometer went up to ‘sizzling hot’ and stayed around the mid 30s. What with the inhuman temperature and the plague of voracious mosquitoes, it wasn’t the best advert for the Lot/Corrèze borderlands. Still, our friends appeared to have a gay old time and promised to come again.

Thursday would thus be the Good Wife’s last full day with guests. Alas, it didn’t start well. Checking her phone on the back balcony before breakfast, I heard the dread words ‘Oh no!’ ‘with a dead sound’ on the final syllable. What!? ‘They’ve cancelled my train.’ No, no and thrice no. If there’s anything worse than the French railways' incessant cancelled trains, it’s the process of trying to find an alternative. The prospect would colour fifty unsettling shades of grey a final day that was intended to be relaxing and enjoyable.

So it proved. Her first trip down to the station, in the morning, proved abortive. I took her down in the heat of the afternoon and she actually got to see someone. A human being, not a chat-bot. Not that this particular human being was much more helpful. He told her that apparently it was only the initial part of her journey from Rodez that was affected by the supposed ‘lack of materials’ (meaning what, exactly?). Theoretically, a coach would pick her up from the station and take her to Brive, there to connect with a waiting night train to Paris. As to what time it would pick her up, he suggested she get to the station for about 12.20a.m., but in his humble opinion it wouldn’t turn up till nearer one o’clock. So why, we were left to wonder, wasn’t this helpful information published on SNCF’s handy little app, SNCF Connect?

Never mind. My wife is an eternal optimist. She wasn’t going to let a little uncertainty ruin her day. It would be all right on the night. I didn’t say anything. But when the time came, I took her down the winding road to the station with a heavy heart. We got to the deserted station car park around 12.15. We sat in the car, waiting in the dark, scanning the road that double-backs on itself on the other side of the bridge over the tracks for signs of headlights. As each very occasional car passed, our spirits prepared to soar – only to sink back again. We waited. One o’clock came and went, with the husband becoming increasingly anxious. Debs checked her phone again – to find official word all of a sudden that the train would leave Brive at around 2.05. We agreed that the best course of action would be to give up on the phantom coach and drive to Brive.

The streetlights are now turned off in Brive after midnight, lending the place the air of a ghost town. Cue the Specials. The station was locked and deserted apart from a possibly homeless guy sitting against a wall, who motioned for us to try the side gate. There we found two uniformed officials, one of whom appeared to be the driver of a parked coach. The night train was waiting at platform H. Cue determined subterranean walk to platform steps.

Not one but two uniformed female controllers greeted us. The taller of the two looked through her paperwork, but couldn’t find any mention of a Madame Sampson, Deborah. The other one checked her findings. No, it was true. So was this why the phantom coach never appeared? Debs remained calm and polite and showed them the evidence on her phone. She was indeed booked to travel on Friday 18^th August. But wait a minute, said the shorter guard. That meant tomorrow. Yes, agreed her taller colleague. At which point my wife’s composure cracked – until she suddenly realised that it was after midnight. It was tomorrow! Cue merriment and a concerted effort now to accommodate our sorely tested traveller. The taller controller led her onboard and unlocked a four-berth, first-class couchette. She hadn't booked first-class, my wife pointed out, but clearly this was by way of compensation for their remarkable all-round inefficiency.

I left her to it, finally reassured that she might reach her destination. My destination was bed, which I reached just before three bells. The rest of my weary wife's journey was trouble-free. She had a lovely day with our daughter, I'm happy to report. Next day, however, she received a message from LNER to tell her that her train to Penrith had been cancelled.

She found a later alternative with no tears involved. But is it any wonder that I'm becoming increasingly loathe to travel in my dotage? I used to moan about my parents for their lack of adventure, but now I understand. Far better to stay in my nest and enjoy its features with friends or family who are prepared to brave the slings and arrows of outrageous transport in order to get here. We now have a very comfortable bed in the spare room as an incentive.

 

August: Chronicpost

I am at war once more. A war in my head. Having destroyed the headquarters of SNCF, the French national railways, in a daring bazooka raid, I've now renewed hostilities against Chronicpost.

My ire was triggered this time by my sister's recent misadventure involving her suitcase when she and her family came to holiday in these parts. My nephew, his wife, three strapping boys and a lively nine-year-old arrived as an advance guard in their huge VW people-and-baggage carrier, so they had no issues with cases. Just a forgotten phone charger and three school books on departure, but that's par for the course.

My sister Jo and brother-in-law flew in to Toulouse airport on the Sunday, hiring a very modest VW saloon for the two-hour plus journey north to Martel. She phoned me from the airport with a cracked note of doom to announce that the bag she'd checked in hadn't appeared on the carousel. The idea of bringing a full suitcase for a four-day break seems absurd, but hey... Six years or so when they came to join us in Corsica for a late-summer holiday on that beautiful isle, the same thing happened. Lady Bracknell would have considered this second occurrence careless rather than an accident.

Jo got her bag the following day on Corsica, delivered by taxi to the house we were renting in a hillside village with a view of the distant sea. This time, however, as soon as we learnt the next day that the courier would (allegedly) be Chronicpost, my heart sunk. As you might surmise, I have altered the name of the organisation in question to inculpate the guilty, but you shouldn't have much trouble in figuring out the real name if, for example, you wear a chronometer or are familiar with the Greek word for 'time'. The company's strap line should be a cryptic 'Time waits for no one'.

Why do I hate them with such virulence? Let me count the ways. They're exorbitantly expensive – something that I could live with if I knew that they would deliver the goods. But that's far from guaranteed. They offer a tracking service that rarely works and even more rarely gives you any meaningful information about the location of your package. If you try to speak to someone on the phone, it's a costly, time-consuming, frustrating and usually fruitless business. For one thing, they tell regular and flagrant lies. Quite apart from the standard 'we'll deliver between x and y hours', they have been known to get as far as the top of our drive and leave a note in the box to the effect that they were unable to contact you, even though you were waiting just in case between x and y hours with phone at the ready.

On this occasion, there was a tantalising preliminary call. Probably an error. The phone rang once, I answered, nothing. I phoned back immediately – to hear a recorded message that referred me to the company's cheery website, there to insert a tracking number. Unfortunately, there was none to enter. The lost baggage reference, it transpired, was unique to British Airways and Aviapartner – just another outsourced outfit whose remit seems to be to keep the customer in the dark while shunting responsibility from pillar to post.

After the abortive phone call, things looked up ostensibly on the Tuesday. We received an e-mail from the Aviapartner intermediaries to say that the bag would be delivered the following day, the last full day of the family's stay, between the hours of eight and one o'clock. What's more, the e-mail came from a named individual, who even provided a phone number. My ever-optimistic wife blithely announced that she had a good feeling that my sister would get her bag back. Jo, bless her innocent cotton socks, derived comfort from her words. So much so that she insisted on coming over here for 8 o'clock, partly because she doesn't trust anyone, even her older brother, to do the necessary, and partly because she clearly genuinely believed that someone would turn up with her case at such a farcical hour.

And so, after breakfast on the back balcony in full view of our view, we waited. Fruitlessly. At least I don't have to take time off work and can get on with other things. In theory. When eight became nine became ten o'clock and still no bag, Jo urged me to make some calls to find out what was happening. If there's anything guaranteed to drive me to bedlam, it's the business of calling organisations that direct you to select an option, then move you very slowly down a queue of similarly frustrated callers until you stumble upon someone who may or may not understand let alone take any interest in your query. It's a good job that modern telephones are cordless, otherwise I'd have wound the flex around my neck and pulled tight long ago.

Given that there was no point in phoning Chronicpost's hotline without a tracking number, I tried Aviapartner. The number given at the foot of the hopeful e-mail wasn't recognised on each of three attempts. So I phoned the premium number at Toulouse airport, waited five minutes and gave up. Then I tried the Paris number I tracked down for Aviapartner: to be held in a queue on each of three occasions only to be told by the automated voice that 'all of our operatives are busy with other customers at the moment, please renew your call ultérieurement.' I'll bet the bastards were busy with other customers!

My sister's frequent questions I couldn't answer about what was happening and why didn't help my growing angst and despondency. I wanted to tell her, 'Forget it, Jo. It's Chinatown' – but she wouldn't have got the reference. It would only have compounded her perplexity.

Meanwhile in Brive, my therapeutic wife had a cancellation and got involved in the action as the one o'clock deadline approached. Perhaps it's her sunny disposition and relentless optimism that enabled her to get through to Aviapartner and find someone helpful. She learnt a key bit of information: that Chronicpost wouldn't get paid until they delivered the suitcase. A crumb of comfort as the delivery deadline passed. My sister and I ate the lunch that I'd prepared while waiting in vain, and afterwards I managed to persuade her to accept the inevitable and go and enjoy her final afternoon here with her family. By now, she had come round to the idea that in future it would make more sense to travel lighter and carry her bag into the cabin.

I hung around here all afternoon just in case, glad at least not to have to make more fruitless calls nor answer more questions about the way things are. Finally, I could get down to planning how to send in the drones and blow the entire Chronicpost organisation to kingdom come. The trouble is, they spread themselves wide and far, with depots everywhere, to mask their nerve centre and prevent such attacks. Just as Jake Gittes learns that you can't take down an evil self-seeking businessman like Noah Cross, so you can never, ever derive revenge or customer satisfaction with a company like Chronicpost.

By the end of the day, my neck felt like I had whiplash. The whole sorry experience had turned me into a tense, nervous wreck. Fortunately, I made a great choice in marrying my wife. Half an hour's deep-muscle massage and a night's sleep on a pillow retrieved from the clinic filled with spelt husks (or something equally crispy), and I rose from the dead the next morning. With my neck restored to its customary ramrod-stiff state, it no longer felt that I was dying slowly but surely from a brain tumour.

My sister and family are back in England. She sent me a text on Saturday evening to say that she had been reunited with her suitcase. Perhaps British couriers work. Hopefully Chronicpost weren't paid – by any of the other organisations in the equation. It all adds up anyway to a digital dystopia. 'Forget it, Mark. It's Chinatown.'