French Deal

Didn’t sleep at all last night once I had come round from the unconscious dozing induced by the wine. So at dawn, worried, I started out for Oraas. And in the quiet of the Saturday morning, the mist in the valley, the frogs from the river and the cows carrying on with their munching in the same way they do every day, I regained my new home in my heart. It looks quite good really. There’s a lot of decorating work to do indoors and the garden is non-existent now, but the windows and shutters and renovated oak beams look great.

I wandered around, picking the odd rose and placing it in one of the many empty Ricard bottles when, blow me down, there’s that old bloke again in my corridor. We got chatting as we sort of had to, and it turns out that he is the essence of Oraas.

Among the village population of about 60, he is the grandfather of the tribe that makes up around 32 of the village inhabitants. How’s that for the Waltons. He informed me that he was 80 that day – so I threw myself on him, planting bises on each cheek. If he knows that many people, I’d better be his best friend fast. I can’t wait for him to sit at my table drinking coffee (and Ricard probably) talking about the olden days, apparently he knew Madame Deboue who lived in my house really well, they went to school together. Judging by all the school desks, blackboards and metal school kitchen cookery stuff, it looks as if the school existed in one of the barns. But I’m told the stuff there belongs to the mayor and he swears he will move it one day. How come people don’t nick that and only take that antique wood farm stuff which I wanted for my on-site museum. There are some very fetching holy statues among that school stuff that would look gems on my new patio, especially sat alongside my fibreglass cows. Still I thought I would save the history chats with him for those long days in Oraas when nothing much happens.

Patrick, my accompanying cyclist, discovered a website on Oraas. The history page is two paragraphs – salt was first found here, but Salies de Bearn nearby marketed it and look at them now. The local chateau was owned by a director of the Comedie Francaise for decades and he came down at weekends with actors from Paris and put on Sunday afternoon performances in the chateau grounds for the local yokels. He loved the quiet of Oraas, the website says, and he was going to build a bridge across the river to save everyone having to do a 7 km detour to get to the other side of the Oloron, but he died suddenly and the bridge was built at Escos/Puyoo and look at them now - railway, Carrefour and everything. The web page goes on, and it appears that Oraas’s claim to fame is to basically miss out. There’s no commerce, no shops, no artisans but there is a boulangere that comes round once a day in her van and a butcher and fishmonger that each come round once a week in their vans, so we won’t starve. Even the mayor doesn’t live in Oraas but in the next village because the town he represents is so dull. But it’s going to be my home and judging by the friendliness and quirkiness of the octogenarian, there’s a place for me there.

posted by French Deal @ 11:03 am