French Fried: one man's move to France with too many animals and an identity thief

by Chris Dolley

  We hadn’t noticed it the first night. Not that we were in much condition to notice anything that night. We found the door, we found the bed. What else was there?

  But as the temperature plummeted on the second night we quickly pencilled in the word ’Logs’ at the top of our list for things to buy the next day.

  We decided Claudine was the best person to ask about logs. She had to know the name of the local supplier. After much discussion, some of which I actually understood, we left Claudine’s with a name and directions. Two sets of directions, it later transpired.

  I’d walked away from Claudine’s basking in our improving ability to converse in French.

  “Do you realise we actually understood a whole sentence of Claudine’s directions,” I’d boasted.

  “Up until the right turn,” Shelagh replied. “I didn’t quite catch the last bit.”

  “What right turn?”

  I stopped. There hadn’t been a right turn. “Tout droit means straight ahead not turn right.”

  “She never said tout droit.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  We walked up the hill, the sound of our footsteps drowned out by a series of ‘dids’ and ‘didn’ts.’

  But we did agree on the name she’d given us – George – he was our man. He had plenty of logs and he lived at the second house on the left, straight on at the crossroads at the top of the hill. Or possibly the farm by the cross after the right turn. Or...

  “Why didn’t you say something if you didn’t understand what Claudine was saying?” I remonstrated.

  “Because I thought you understood what she was saying.”

  “And I thought you understood. You were nodding.”

  “I always nod, it’s the only way to make them stop.”

  Which was true. A well-timed nod and a ‘oui’ was often the only way to extricate yourself from the conversational equivalent of Groundhog Day.

  We continued our walk up the hill, resolving to try my route first.

  Now, locating houses in the depths of rural France is not easy – no road names, no numbers. And some houses, like George’s, didn’t even have names. How any mail ever gets delivered in the campagne is a constant source of wonder. And a tribute to the rural postman, whose job it was to know everyone’s name and where they were hiding.

  If ever there was a cue for a passing postman, this was it. I scanned the horizon. No postmen … just fields and trees and a rising chain of mountains.

  We walked straight on at the crossroads, past the ruin on the corner and the five goats cudding on the porch. Which introduced another problem. Were ruins counted as houses? Were we looking for the second inhabited building on the left or the second clump of stones?

  Yet another problem for people like ourselves untrained in the postal arts – the ubiquitous ruin. A century and more of rural depopulation had left the countryside strewn with abandoned properties. And you couldn’t always tell which were which. We’d strolled into farmyards before, convinced they were derelict, only to be greeted by an elderly couple and their entire extended family.

  We passed another ruin, its sun-drenched stone walls gleaming golden in the morning sun, and marvelled. An abandoned building in a town is an eyesore – smeared in graffiti and stuffed full of detritus. But out here they weathered into rocky outcrops – the perfect prop for cascading vegetation and the local wildlife – and they looked so natural. The dry stone construction helped – even the inhabited buildings hardly had any mortar between the stone – giving the ruins a natural cairn-like feel as though they’d been part of the landscape for millennia.

  We trudged on, over a rise, watching the Pyrenees slowly fill the sky from east to west. We could see the foothills now in the near distance, rounded green mounds of forest undulating before the sharp grey peaks of the mountains proper. We could see for miles. We could see everything … except George’s house.

  Or was that it? Over to the left there was a collection of buildings – or upmarket ruins – nestling at the bottom of a long farm track.

  As we approached, we were heartened to see a long stack of logs at the side of the track. French log stacks are often the neatest part of a French farm. I never cease to be amazed by their perfection. All the logs appear uniform and straight, usually two metres long and stacked in alternating layers lengthways and crosswise. Often these stacks stretch for thirty of forty yards, forming a six-foot high wall of wood.

  Where do they find all these straight-branched trees? In England, most of our logs had been gnarled and L-shaped.

  I was still pondering the arcane secrets of French tree sculpting, when we rounded the last log and found ourselves in a small U-shaped courtyard. Usually, when you walk up to a property, you have a pretty good idea where the house is. Not with this property. Three buildings stared back at us, three battered stone buildings with red canal-tiled roofs. All had a single door and a few irregular windows. Some of the windows had shutters, some had cracked or broken panes of glass. None of the buildings looked inhabited but they didn’t look like outbuildings either. And there was a mail box in the yard.

  I looked at Shelagh. She looked at me. Do we knock on all three doors? Could the doors stand up to a knock?

  I surveyed the three candidates again. And noticed only one of the buildings had a chimney. Miss Marple would have been proud.

  I walked over to the door and knocked. And waited. A cat appeared from nowhere and started rubbing against my legs. At least someone was home.

  And then the door opened and out came the tallest pair of trousers I’d ever seen – they ended just below the owner’s armpit. And housed a very gaunt old man who peered at us from beneath his beret.

  “George?” I asked.

  “George?” he replied, cupping a hand behind his ear.

  “George?” I continued, louder this time.

  “George?” he shouted.

  This had all the hallmarks of a very long conversation.

  “Claudine,” I said, thinking I’d try another tack and pointed back towards Tuco.

  “Claudine?” he echoed, craning a neck outside the door and following my finger toward the horizon.

  “Claudine,” I confirmed.

  “Claudine?” He repeated, turning to Shelagh, who was already backing away and glancing longingly towards the track.

  I knew we should have stopped off on the way up and composed a script. I was stuck on the cast list and failing badly.

  “Avez-vous bois de chauffage?” asked Shelagh in a moment of inspiration. I was about to return to another chorus of ‘George?’

  “Bois de chauffage?” he repeated, making me consider the possibility that somewhere in those giant trousers lurked a giant parrot.

  “Oui, bois de chauffage,” said Shelagh, nodding. Had she caught it too? Was there some kind of parrot flu going around.

  I stabbed a finger at the huge stack of logs along his drive. “Avez-vous bois de chauffage à vendre?” Surely, he had to understand now.

  “Non.”

  The parrot flu fever had broken. He didn’t have any logs for sale. Was he even George?

  I tried to ask and explain that Claudine had sent us but I could feel a giant elk impersonation coming on. We said goodbye and left. And as for going back to the crossroads to try the other direction – no – I wasn’t going anywhere near another George until I had a script in one hand and a large dictionary in the other. If not a can of parrot repellent.

  oOo

  Back home, we had just about given up on the idea of obtaining logs locally when a car pulled up – a battered Citroen 2CV with an equally battered occupant. A stocky man in his early forties climbed out, his face tanned and weather-beaten but with lines that suggested a face that knew how to smile. And huge hands that suggested a life of hard manual labour.

  We exchanged a few words which neither of us understood and shook hands. Then we smiled, attempted a few more sentences and decided to fall
back on the hand shaking.

  He didn’t use as many ’r’s as Claudine or repeat everything we said like ’He who might have been George.’ He even spoke slowly but...

  We still couldn’t understand a word he said. The cigarette fixed between his lips didn’t help. He sounded like a Gallic version of Marlon Brando, with smiles and a wheezy laugh punctuating the mumbled dialogue.

  But had I heard the word bois?

  I seized upon it. “Bois de chauffage?”

  “Oui,” he nodded. And added several other words which trailed off in a haze of cigarette smoke.

  After several abortive attempts to re-direct the conversation back to logs, I resorted to sign language – giant elk or no giant elk, I was desperate. I hoped I conveyed the fact that we needed logs for our fire. I may have ordered a dozen wildebeest.

  As he drove away, I wondered if we’d ever see him again. I think he said something about returning but whether it was today, tomorrow or sometime next week, I hadn’t a clue. I hoped it wouldn’t be long, the thought of another fireless night was not a pleasant one.

  An hour later he returned. This time, he had company. It looked like he’d brought his father. We exchanged bonjours and shook hands and then I launched into my prepared script.

  I’d spent the last hour reading through all the adverts for firewood in the local paper and translating them with the help of our dictionary. I’d learnt that logs were ordered not by the ton but by the stère – a cubic metre. I’d also noted down a number of likely woods and the going rate. It seemed that most of the wood for sale locally was oak, chestnut or acacia. I had them all jotted down and my ears trained to listen out for them.

  I opened with a request for a stère of logs. The father replied with a yes. This was a good start. I then asked the price – 250 francs. What type of wood was it? Oak. Could they deliver it? Yes.

  This was brilliant. This was what it was supposed to be like. I was having a conversation in French!

  It was then that the ’father’ turned to his ’son’ and said, “I don’t know what the bloody hell I’m doing here. He speaks French.”

  “You’re English?” I said, amazed.

  “Welsh,” came the reply with a speed that conveyed the almost certain probability that I’d just delivered a terrible insult.

  oOo

  But I was impressed. Not only had our log man called round to see if we needed anything but he’d returned within the hour with an interpreter. And he could supply fence posts as well.

  This was a man we could do business with.

  We ordered three stère of logs and fifty fence posts. Which would be delivered the next day. In the meantime, we had to keep warm. We were not going to spend another night wrapped in blankets.

  So we scavenged the outbuildings for wood. We combed copses and dragged the underbrush, staggering back to the house with long branches of rotting wood over our shoulders. If it looked flammable we took it. Nothing was going to stop us from having a fire.

  A few hours later we all gathered around the lounge fireplace, Gypsy and the two cats vying for the position nearest the fire.

  The kindling caught, the flames rose. And then ... out came the smoke and there went the animals. Three worried faces stared back at us from the safety of the hallway.

  We quickly closed the fire doors. Our fire was supposed to have two glass doors but one had been broken and replaced with what looked like two scraps of aluminium welded together. It wouldn’t win any prizes for style but at least it kept the smoke in.

  We returned to our settees and waited for the heat to hit us.

  And waited.

  Nothing.

  So we opened the fire doors to load more wood and a wall of smoke shot out and enveloped the mantelpiece.

  Arrggh! We rushed to the windows, flung them open to clear the air, and then tried again.

  Same result.

  Perhaps if we kept the windows ajar? Sometimes it helps the fire to draw.

  It helped the smoke.

  This was ridiculous. We couldn’t get at the fire without filling the room with smoke.

  And the grate was far too small. We couldn’t stack the fire, throw in a match and then close the doors for the night. There was barely enough room for a ten minute blaze.

  But, strangely enough, it did keep us warm that night – in a lateral fashion. The continual getting up, opening windows, closing windows, fanning the air with the door and fighting Gypsy off as she fastened her teeth around our ankles kept us remarkably active.

  Perhaps that was how this fire worked – by providing aerobic exercise for the owners. And I could see exactly what had happened to the missing glass door. I felt like kicking the other one in myself.

  oOo

  The next day we decided to take a longer look at the fire. After all, we’d had years of experience with log burning stoves and coal fires. Surely saving this fire could not be beyond us?

  It was what the French call an insert, a metal firebox inserted into an existing chimney. As 90% of all heat from an open fire disappears up the chimney, the idea of the insert is to trap some of that heat and channel it back into the room. Most inserts have a heat exchanging mechanism above the firebox to strip the heat and feed it back into the living accommodation.

  All very logical.

  Except that this one seemed to have a smoke exchanger – it took clean air from the lounge and exchanged it for smoke and toxic fumes.

  And I couldn’t see how the air was supposed to feed the fire. Most log-burners I’d seen had an adjustable vent at the front designed to feed air into the seat of the fire. It was placed just above the ash layer. After a few days the ash layer would build up and start to block the holes and you’d know it was time to clean out the fire. Nice and simple.

  But this insert had no vents. With the fire doors shut the only way I could see air entering was from beneath – through the ash layer. Which didn’t make sense. Wood ash was very fine – not the best medium to percolate air through.

  And why was the grate so small? It was a sizeable firebox but only the back half was used. The front half was a hinged metal lid which tipped up to reveal a box underneath – presumably an ash box for cleaning. But why have an ash box twice the size of the grate?

  And how were you supposed to empty the ash box? Through the hinged lid at the front of the fire? One scoop at a time?

  We checked the ornamental fire surround again and found one of the bricks was loose. Removing it provided a channel for the ash box to slide out. And with the brick and the ash box removed, air could reach underneath the fire. Was this the beginning of a discovery?

  Not quite. Air still had to percolate up through a layer of ash – and what was the point of having an ash box if the fire only worked when it wasn’t in place?

  Unless the airflow was regulated by the ash box? Like an organ stop?

  It still did not entirely ring true but we tried it. We lit fires with every combination of ash box in, ash box out, ash box halfway in; ash box out, brick in. You name it, we watched smoke billow over it.

  Perhaps it was the chimney? It had probably been years since it had been cleaned and what better reason for a smoking fire than a dirty chimney?

  This sounded like a sensible course of action.

  If we could find somewhere to stick a brush.

  We searched the roof of the insert. For some reason instead of having one large flue, it had six small ones, none of them large enough to take a brush. And there was no access hatch in the chimneybreast or in any of the rooms upstairs. We looked, tracing the path of the chimney to the roof. The only access had to be from the top, via the chimneypot.

  Sometimes you can tell when fate has decided that certain tasks are beyond your reach by the number and level of obstacles that are thrown in your path. Some people take heed and give up. Others ignore the omens and press on.

  They are called madmen.

  And Shelagh was married to one.

  “You’re
not going on the roof?”

  I didn’t like the emphasis on the word ‘you’re’.

  “Why not? We’ve got the brushes.”

  “But you?”

  There it was again. If anything stronger.

  But you don’t live with someone for twenty years without knowing how to win the occasional argument.

  “Do you want to go on the roof?” I asked, knowing that Shelagh wouldn’t set foot on a ladder unless there were at least six men to hold it steady and an ambulance crew on stand-by.

  “No-o.”

  “Do you want to spend another day trying to find a ‘George’ who does?”

  Checkmate. But was our ladder long enough to reach the roof?

  It wasn’t. Not by a storey.

  We stood in the courtyard and surveyed the roofline. Was there another way? Perhaps via the outbuildings?

  I could see what looked like a footstool balanced on the ridge of the outbuilding roof where it met the wall of the house. At that point, it was only about three or four feet to the main roof’s gutter. If I placed the ladder up against the gable wall of the far outbuilding, I could walk along the L shaped ridge and use the footstool to climb onto the main roof.

  Shelagh looked at the roof and then at me. It was not the prelude to a vote of confidence.

  I tried to explain to her that this was the Sud, where roofs were dry and low-pitched and covered in householders. I’d read about it, I’d seen the pictures. It was one of the joys of owning an old canal-tiled roof where only gravity held the tiles in place – the need to spend the odd afternoon sitting on the roof, reshuffling tiles and replacing missing or broken ones. It was a way of life. And if an eighty year-old paysan could do it – why couldn’t I?

  I think Shelagh was on the verge of providing me with a detailed list, when I quickly changed the subject back to ladders. And as neither five extra men nor an ambulance were in obvious sight, the subject of my fitness for the task was quickly dropped.

  So I propped the ladder up against the gable wall, Shelagh handed me the rods and brush, and up I went. At the top, I paused to test the ridge tiles with a few trial prods. Everything seemed in order. The ridge tiles were stable and I could feel no give as I tentatively edged myself off the ladder and crawled onto the roof.