small steps

Although my adopted country has, and practices, certain things that I feel disturbed/disgusted by: fois gras, Marine Le Pen, ultra-bureaucracy (well, it was invented here) bof, etc, there are many wonderful things: cheese, bonjour Madame, empty countryside and a certain bloody-minded - 'right let's do this attitude' which occurs sometimes, for example when our local small train route is threatened each year - "Quoi? Mais NON! You weel not take our tiny train away from us - eet is our right to ave zis!"
I was a bit mystified when the smoking ban in bars/cafés came into force. I'd imagined mass rioting: "Mais NON! c'est pas possible - we 'av zer right to fill our lungs wiz ow you say tarmacadam."
But no, the ban seems to have stuck and with no apparent fuss. Perhaps most people realised it was actually a more pleasant experience to enjoy one's fois gras with an accompaniment of fresh air, not a fuggy cloud . . .
Anyway - small steps: hurrah for La France! It has been decreed - no more plastic plates, cutlery and cups! Moving slowly towards reducing some of the terrifying amount of discarded apres-nosh garbage, although apparently this won't come into effect until 2020 by which time a landfill area of about the size of Bordeaux will no doubt be occupied by the stuff - still it is a start.
Here's a pic I took of a few bits of packaging gracing our home, two of which are usual to the eye, and depressing, and two of which I was impressed and intrigued by.

                              

Tomatos in a plastic . . . thing. Why? Why not in cardboard with a cellophane covering? Cost I suppose, and tomato protection to a certain extent. But if there was a ban on plastic packaging there would have to be an alternative. Why did we buy them then? Hm, good question - think it was because all the 'en vrac' (loose) ones from Holland looked scarily genetically engineered. Will try harder!

Organic chilies (or they were until we ate them) in a poly tray with cling film . . . organic! Surely they really could be in a small waxed cardboard tray? cheese-box balsa wood stuff? a cellophane packet?

Then, these two:

Very unusually, a pot of cream cheese in a waxed cardboard pot - not even a plastic lid!! Amazing!

And, a TIN of body/face cream- I love this stuff; mainly composed of almonds and probably a load of water, it costs about two euros, does the job, and the pot will rot down, or you can keep screws or something in it afterwards - well you could in the plastic version, but there's something very satisfying about small metal pots with screw lids . . . don't you think? No? (Yes, I need to eat something -writing this dangerously beyond lunchtime).

The company - Le petit Marseillais probably have a factory the size of Luxembourg, and unfortunately all of their other products seem to be encased in plastic - how did this one escape into tin/aluminium or whatever it is? Why can't they produce more stuff, or perhaps less stuff (we all have FAR too much choice!) in the tin-type material. Actually . . . I'll ask them, when I've had lunch - Oh, it's Sunday. Tomorrow then.

Christmas will be gold, crinkly and knobbly

As decreed by Ferrero SpA: massive corp that is apparently responsible for churning out the most boring (according to our households' tastebuds) chocolate . . . the Ferrero Rocher (rock in french). They own Nutella, so, not surprisingly each 'spherical chocolate sweet' - (wikipedia) contains a good dollop of the brown stuff along with an unsuspecting entombed hazelnut making up a total calorific value of 73 calories.
Actually, I've just noticed SpA is also the name of France's chain of dogs' homes . . . wonder what else is in them.
The reason I'm rambling about this is the result of my annual shock on seeing the ever-increasing chocolate displays in the local supermarkets as Christmas approaches with all the red/gold/fois gras/gallons of fizz/last desperate purchasing mania that we have somehow created.
On my last trip to Leclerc recently, I listened to some poor woman as I stood waiting for the promised offcut-dogmeat to be wheeled in. Her job was to trap people into buying more chocolate than they might have envisaged buying.
"Mesdames, c'est moi le chocolat, " - "Madames, it is me the chocolate!" (odd phrase) she called with the nagging repetition of a small child at a sweets-infested checkout.
I looked at her smallish black-clad form standing between two towering displays of Ferrero Rocher and suddenly felt very worried. It was like being in Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' where it has become eternally Christmas and everyone is giving and receiving the same present - F. R in this case.
Mark has come home each day this week from the Conservatoire holding various presents from pupil's parents. Nearly all of them feel like a plastic round-edged box that give out a certain muffled rattle - that of spherical chocolates containing a hazelnut.

Bucolic car boot sale

Or as we say here: Vide Grenier - emptying one's attic.
Compared to the boot sales I remember from the UK days, most V.Gs are set in small villages, usually on sunny days, where you can wander, perusing the usual glut of hastily bought and subsequently dumped Get Fit equipment, clothes, shoes, fois gras funnels, records, video cassettes that nobody wants, terrible paintings, plants, kittens, jam, fondu sets, etc, etc.
The last V.G I went to before departing back to the UK for a few days (where I didn't go to a car boot sale - not for the want of trying) was in the grounds of a local church edifice: the Basilique Notre Dame de Marceille    
I paused before walking across the grass, stunned at the tranquility of the sight before me; each stall of utter crap transformed momentarily in the morning sun to a lost scene of pastoral beauty as happy peasants traded their goods for a few rustic coins, and the purchasers wandered contentedly back to their donkeys, (large 4x4s).

Only a month to go . . .

Mmm. Surely Leclerc should have jumped on this one. End of the world in just a month! Never mind all the Christmas twaddle, what about a comprehensive range of DIY bunkers? - teak, corrugated steel, or cardboard economy range, and how about some nice survival kits: fois gras, chardonnay, and a couple of Laguiole steak knives to carve up your freshly trapped and roasted wild boar.

Bugarach.
According to an article I read this morning in the Guardian, many, or several, or perhaps one or two overexcited people think that THIS is the only place that will be saved when the time comes. I was surprised as I thought there were several noted places in the world to be constructing one's air raid shelter when the planet 'does the big firework', to quote Douglas Adams.
It's true; it is an alluring place. An odd shape as if scooped up, pulled out from the earth by giant hands and then patted on the top, flattening it off. Perfect for an alien landing strip.
When I drove back from Toulouse yesterday, I stopped to look at the mountain from a particularly good vantage point. It was capped with a long dragon-shaped cloud, the rest of the sky a luminescent opal green-blue; a strange shape so different from all the surrounding hills and distant mountains. I could see why it was and is the stuff of legends. The upside down mountain - apparently part of the lower layers of rock are younger than those of the top . . .
So the people of Bugarach possibly wait in fear; not from the coming of the end, but being swamped with thousands of people with one-way tickets from America, chanting maniacs, and horrible market stalls selling end of the world souvenirs? Who knows? Mark and I have decided to go and walk up the mountain again this weekend before it's too late - maybe collect some mystic sheep poo and sell it on eBay . . .

Following: a rather good quote from an inhabitant of Bugarach re the worry that hundreds of people may descend on the village in order to end it all.

"Why come to the only place on earth that will be spared the apocalypse if you want to commit suicide? Wouldn't that be a bit like trying to drown yourself wearing a lifejacket?"