Trade without money

The subject of quite a lot of my novel, and following one. 

We're all so used to supermarkets, calling the plumber to sort something, buying a gadget online, taking the car to the garage for some scarily expensive investigation, etc, a million-fold, but how absolutely wonderful it feels when you get to actually trade something without money changing hands - and with people you really like and appreciate.

Two friends of ours came over yesterday with their chainsaw and we all attacked two, sadly, very dead silver birch trees. Within two hours the trees were felled, sawn up, smaller branches and twigs sorted for kindling, and stocked in our woodshed and their car boot. We then sat down in front of the wood stove - fuelled by our last meeting of tree felling - and enjoyed lunch and much chat. No money exchanged; they provided the chainsaw and petrol, and we made lunch, and we all had a couple of hours of exercise/vitamin D in the winter sun. Lovely.  

Newly topped up woodshed, and Louise wielding a somewhat less worrying saw.

 

Oh...My...God

We listen/sort of watch stuff on Youtube while doing exercise in the morning - yes, every morning! beats the gym, costs nothing and keeps all the joints more or less functioning. Arg, getting old-er.

Anyway, yesterday, I opened up the also old laptop and demanded we be shown the Youtube choice selected for my profile. It refused as I had to re-sign in and couldn't be bothered to go and find the phone, so rather than my usual selection of climate concerned stuff, permaculture, Climate Town, Adam Something (both excellent channels!) Steven Garnett, John Oliver, documentaries on Chatbots, food production, North Korea, etc, Masterchef USA and A different Bias, and all the other channels that mysteriously appear, there was a page of rectangles containing films about mega yachts, what Taylor Swift happened to be thinking about yesterday, Smooth Summer Jazz, football, worst dating fails, scary Japanese TV shows involving eating random objects, and . . . Shopping Hauls.

I was aware of these and had gawped haplessly at a few in the past. A shopping haul for us consists of going in Noz - bizarre French shop I highlighted a few posts back - and purchasing a few daft products such as never-should-have-been developed croissants filled with pink custard or failed-to-sell chocolate hyenas. We rarely spend more than ten euros and it satisfies the lingering browsing urge from years ago when we occasionally used to go shopping for pleasure. 

I scrolled through a few steroid-fulled, pink-fonted hauls. Hauls to fill a car. Hauls to empty a bank account. Hauls to keep consumerism more than alive and kicking. I watched one in its entirety as it was oddly impossible not to, which would explain why she - glamorous, slinky-haired, size 4 - woman I can't recall the name of has many, many thousands of followers, most of which, according to the comments, appeared to be mentally fragile adolescents whose new found goal, thanks in part to her, was to become very, very rich. One of the most striking things about the video was the perpetual and exhausting excitement and associated language. Oh. My. God. These are just SO pretty. These are just So cute. These are just SO gorgeous. This is just So pretty. This is just SO cute . .  and so on.

     

I'd like to do a film parody of us going round a vide grenier (car boot sale) with the same enthusiasm but . . . well, other things to do like garden taming. Here's a written version. 

Mark: OMG, d'you see that cute little LP of Japanese C18 court music. It's SO . . . flat!  SO shiny.

Me: Cool! but look at THIS! a real galvanised chicken water feeder - SO grey! SO metaly. SO adorable, SO . . . farmy.

Mark: Get it! And, did you see! Look! OMG. He's got reconditioned secateurs! 

Me: No way! What colour? Red! Oh, SO cute! They'd go with the chainsaw . . . and that new spade - except it's green. 

Mark: OMG! No!

Me: What?

Mark. That guy there.

Me: The one with the Elvis is alive! I saw him eating chips in Cleethorpes T-shirt?

Mark: No - him! He's got a pink Art Deco tea set that would look so like amazing in our salon.

Me: OMG! It's SO cute! And . . . no way . . . LOOK! he's got a first edition of Capitalism Will Eat Itself by Barbara Cartland - you know the Mills and Boon apocalyptic sub-series.

Mark: And it's got the gold cover . . . You ask him. I'm scared. It'll be far too expensive . . . Oh no. Wait.

Me: What? WHAT?

Mark: That - there!

Me: The 1970s food processor?

Mark: No - that! Is it . . . No, it can't be . . . It's SO COOL!!!! Fender Rhodes keyboard . . . with . . . original . . .  (musician faints).

Me: Thanks. If you could just put him over there - under that tree . . . Hey! Excuse me! We're having those secateurs No . . . we have to. Look - (gets out phone). See - the chainsaw? same perfect red.

Other person: OMG. That is SO gorgeous. To die for! Jean-Paul - JEAN PAUL! viens voir . . . look at that chainsaw -did you ever see one SO red!

Other person's husband: OMD (oh, mon dieu). C'est pas possible . . . tellement joli! take the secateurs - you must. Your shed would never be complete without them . . . sacre bleu, il me faut un café.

This was actually the recent vide grenier haul: rather CUTE and v old lamp. Ancient Japanese drinks coasters, two bird shaped cake presses from the 30s I think, coffee pot and jug for the gîte, a I-went-to-Paris ashtray from the 20s, a lovely Italian vase and a dark pink floral bomber jacket. All for the price of a couple of scented candles or a mid range eyeliner.

  

Champignon. Champing-yes!

Autumn is textbook this year - all misty mornings, sun drenched afternoons after a light rain at night, just a touch of frost. Les champingnons have been poking their mysterious little hats up everywhere, even in our usually bone-dry garden.
The usual seasonal question arose as regular as the other question, which will never be addressed properly: 'shall we buy a chain saw'. We look at them in Bricolage, and then at Mark's money-earning musician hands and go off to look at wild bird food or paint.
Oh yes, the seasonal question - from our son: "Can we go and collect mushrooms and cook them?"
I agree and hope he will then forget the idea. Not that I don't want to wander in mossy glens, appreciating nature in all its yellow and orange splendour. I just have a fear of being shot, (by an over-enthusiastic hunter) this does unfortunately happen each year to the odd mushroom gathering person . . . that and the possibility of eating something that might finish you off.
I've only actually eaten mushrooms once that I picked - small, brown weedy-looking things that me and some student friends happened upon, (actually, was a major search party), resulting in a jolly little event where our hideous, freezing student dive became a wonderment of glittering coloured lights, warmth, love and celestial twaddle.
Back to the present . . . Ezra and I went up to a local forest and walked around for quite a long time getting very wet feet. We found the usual bizarre collection of things you definitely would not put anywhere near a cooker: odd gangly white mushrooms with deadly-looking hats, big flat white specimens, harmless looking as a slice of 'Mother's Pride', but with an eeriness about them: 'eat me, go on. I'm just like a Champignon de Paris, but so much bigger.' Why hadn't even the Sanglier (wild boar) touched any of these?
We stopped in the tiny hamlet of 'Lapayre' hoping Monsieur Oui-Oui-Oui might be around. He appeared holding a massive armload of ivy stems which he was about to feed to the sheep - rather like a cleanse apparently. We showed him our basket of weird mushrooms and he tutted: 'non, non, non' and waved an arm in the direction of some pine trees. 'La, vous pouvez trouvez les 'Grisettes': Ils sont bien, tout a fait mangeable, oui oui oui.' We followed his advice, collected quite a lot of grey moleskin-coloured mushrooms and then went back to the big smoke.
Being still a little apprehensive we showed them to a pharmacy woman. She got her book out and agreed they were what they had been deemed to be, and that we would indeed, not die.
So I cooked them with a bit of garlic and olive oil, said goodbye to the dogs and we ate them (not the dogs).
Not so much as a fart or rumbly tum. Mr Oui-Oui-Oui, I should never have doubted you.