You remember those two lovely fresh goats cheeses I put in my cheese cage yesterday? Well when I got up this morning two-thirds of one had gone !
The burglar had gained access via the side panel of the cheese cage, and hauled one of the cheeses to the edge.
I had my suspicions as to who was responsible for this evil deed, when I saw Fifi with a white blob on her nose. But I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo.
Having said that, a good detective doesn’t jump to conclusions, a good detective waits until the criminal returns to the scene of the crime.
I wonder who that is?
The cheese cage manufacturer is refusing to take any responsibility for this break-in, saying keeping Fifis out was not in the specification.
Ah well, there goes my fromage fort.
The campsite is not yet officially opened for the 2011 season and yet there has been a very brave attempt to smash the record for the longest number of tent nights in one stay! Janine and Mijntje have managed to clock up 31 tent nights by using all of their strategic planning skills. Their record breaking attempt was slightly thwarted by one of their party who dived into a gite at the last minute thus losing them an extra 4 nights and their careless removal of one tent for the last night, lost them another. The way they managed this feat will not be revealed in this blog so that other campers cannot ride on the back of their ingenuity, but it must be said that bribing the judges with corenwijn and peanut butter was a masterstroke of genius. It was however, with great regret that we had to inform Janine and Mijntje that they had slightly misunderstood the rules associated with category 1 of the camping championship, these tent nights need to be consecutive. So the record of 25 consecutive nights set by Marilou and Niek and held by them for 4 years, still stands.
Chalon-sur-Sâone 2006
Chalon-sur-Sâone 2011
Cormatin 2007
A week in Taizé starts on a Sunday with the huge morning service (Catholic eucharistic with a Taizé twist) and the week ends with the same service the following week. But the last real day of the week is the Saturday and that is the day that prepares people to go home. The final Bible explanation and the final discussion groups are in the morning and the last evening service starts at eight thirty. This service often goes on until very late in the night – as long as there is even just one singer left, some monks will always stay behind to accompany them.
the candle of their neighbour thus passing the light on until everyone in the whole church is holding a flickering candle. Whilst as I said, this ceremony has its origins in Easter (the risen Christ as the light of the world) I believe that the act of passing the light on to your neighbour is more about passing the message on, passing the light, that your week has given you, on to your home community when you return to “reality”. For many it is a very moving and emotional end to a week’s stay in Taizé.
I did once discuss the safety aspects with one of the brothers and he said that in all the years they have been doing this, there has never been an incident, yet another testimony to the sense of responsibility of the young people that attend.
Being an eloquent man our wonderful president replied with “Casse-toi alors, pauvre con !” not too far from “F.off you bastard” – very presidential and all caught on video. This phrase has since followed him around and was used on a banner last week by a French teacher in Cairo during the demonstrations in Tarhir Square. The teacher claimed that this was the message that Sarkozy should be sending to Mubarak – maybe he did send it, as we all know Mubarak did step down.
In theory tourists who come to this area have to pay tourist tax when they stay in registered accommodation. So anyone sleeping on our campsite or renting one of our gîtes has to pay roughly 20 cents per person per night over and above the price we charge. However, the rules around this figure and the way to calculate it, are not as straightforward as one would imagine – this is France after all, why make something simple when you can complicate it? For instance if there are lots of children from the same family, the price per adult goes down according to a non-linear sliding scale, children do not have to pay the tax, it is charged only in the months of May to September, if you are accompanying a youth group you don’t have to pay anything at all and according to the type of accommodation you stay in, the price varies as well.. All in all, if we charged this tax on to our visitors it would be a mathematical nightmare for us every time someone came to pay. So Cees does all the wizardry in the background and we pay the tax out of our profits, not bothering our guests about it and significantly reducing the hassle factor for us.
(the local cluster of communes) and from the beginning, the president promised that the income would only be spent on things to improve the tourist experience in our area. He has really been true to his word. This money has been spent on maintaining the Voie Verte, the cycle path that spans South Burgundy giving easy access to many attractive towns and villages around here, it has been used to put up the signs which mark out the Balades Vertes, local walking routes that get you to some interesting sites in this area and this coming year it is being used to build a climbing “wall” in an old quarry almost at the end of our road.
We have cycled up and down much of the Voie Verte and we have done the local Balades Vertes, so now it is the turn of the climbing wall. To be honest, I didn’t even know there was an old quarry at the end of our road, it is overgrown and hidden by the dense trees and bushes, but the other day we went out to investigate and we were stunned to see quite how high it was in parts. This area is going to be converted into between 12 and 15 “climbs” with a separate area for children which is described as “acrobatic and fun” with a small climb for them too. We can only imagine what it will look like when it is finished but to give an idea Cees took a photo of me in the quarry. For those of you who know how well I do heights, there will be no doubt in your mind as to whether this photo has been “photoshopped” or not. In any case we are looking forward to the creation of yet another attraction for our guests and I will come back with a photo of the real thing as soon as it emerges from the undergrowth.
Burgundy has traditionally been a big baby production unit, it was one way that money was brought into the region at the turn of the last century (18th – 19th that is) not by selling the babies, who were actually just a by-product of the real industry, but by exporting their mothers’ milk. The Morvan was famous for its wet nurses, they were used by the rich and famous all over Europe. The Jersey cow of the human world, their milk was said to be rich and nutritious, it is a pity their own babies didn’t get much of it. The women would have a baby, leave their baby with an old female relative and go and live with their new family for about 18 months, then they would return to their impoverished life in the Morvan for just enough time to produce another baby, then off again back to civilisation.
It is official! I am the new treasurer. I am not sure that the exiting treasurer who has done the job for about 10 – 15 years will be too pleased to see that she is my deputy, but hey all’s fair in love and journalism or maybe it is a case of don’t believe everything you read in the paper.
Our acceptance into the “Guitares en Cormatinois” group was finally sealed with us making the “mâchon” (an after meeting small meal) back in October and the samosas, chicory salad, selection of Dutch cheeses from 
This honour involved him in hours of tent-putting-up over the space of about two weeks and seemingly endless tent-taking-down over about another week or so. But through that he has made friends in high places, none other than the Secretary and Treasurer of the “Guitares en Cormatinois” who very thoughtfully nominated Cees for a place on to the “Communication” committee and he is now charged with making all the publicity for the festival. I was a little quicker to see what was going on and I managed to just smile and duck at the right moment!
Just before we left, a chicken and her chicks had arrived in the stall along with a dog, but as predicted Jesus was not there yet. We zipped up the hill yesterday to check out what had been going on and he had arrived and, all wrapped in swaddling clothes, there he lay in the manger. Some more angels had also made it and were hanging from the rafters. The shepherds had not got to the Nativity Scene yet and the wise men are also on their way, so there is still more to look forward to.
many as although the village is a very religious one – at least 5 churches and almost everyone goes to one of them – most of them are staunch Calvinists and Taizé’s open and ecumenical approach to Christianity might be a step too far for them. I always used to think that they were a bit like the Amish with their black clothes and black hats on Sundays, blanking anyone not dressed like them. They don’t have television and they refuse to have their children vaccinated, they follow Calvin’s words literally when he said that God has predestined their fate and have sadly been touched by the polio outbreaks in 1956, 1978 and 1992.
Reading the paper the other day I was saddened to see that the Turkey Faire in Marcigny (a town in the Brionnais) would not to take place this year. For the first time in 30 years there was to be no Turkey or Gastronomic Faire in the town. The town has lived off the turkey business for generations, there is even a turkey monument at the entrance to the town and the Turkey Faire was big business. Traditionally about 50 or so farmers have sold their birds live to the public. Over the years this developed further to include many other local producers and so the Gastronomic Faire was founded.
It has been noted that local butchers have stopped buying live birds as well and are now buying their turkeys from abattoirs who are supplied by mass production units, the free-range farm-grown turkey is in decline and the Turkey Capital of France is about to lose its crown. Maybe if they gave the turkeys an AOC that would increase their popularity as has been the case in the Bresse with their chickens. In any case, something dramatic has to be done or a local “industry” will be lost for future generations.
We popped up on Sunday morning and we saw that an angel had arrived and the shepherds had turned and were walking towards Bethlehem. There was even a real donkey in a pen outside the church which everyone enjoyed petting, but I think he was just there for the day
Last Saturday when we were at the market in Cluny, Cees commented that he would like one of those Peruvian hat things that seem to be all the rage this year to keep his ears warm in the freezing weather. So I bought some wool and when we were snowed in at the beginning of the week, I set about making one. Not happy with my first creation (too fitted, no silly pointy bit at the back, where are the tassels?) I found a 
In the Netherlands Nativity Scenes are strictly for Catholics only and I lived in staunch Protestant country, so I saw none there either. My friend Deacon Dale reliably informs me that his church only has one cow in the stall at the moment and that the rest of the crowd will arrive during the midnight mass on Christmas Eve. As I never went to midnight mass in the UK, that also does not help in jogging my memory. My only option is to check out as many Nativity Scenes as possible in the coming weeks.
We were staying in an apartment in Montmartre near the Sacre Coeur. In the Nativity Scene there everyone was there except Jesus, I think that even the wise men had made it which is a little illogical. They were all gathered around an empty manger lined with straw. We couldn’t take a photo because there was a big bouncer stopping people and when one Italian actually had the audacity to take a photo of the scene, she was pulled to one side forced to show all the photos she had taken and made to delete them on the spot ! So I can’t be 100% sure about the wise men. On to the Cathedral Basilica St Denis just north of Paris and this time everyone except the wise men and Jesus was there, which is more what I would have expected.
The manger in the centre was lined with straw and then with white fur – yes these Parisians know how to look after their babies !
The stable fits neatly under the roof but when I saw it, I was rather disappointed to see the stable empty. Quite unusual for a Nativity Scene – no nativity…. I stood looking for a few minutes and then I spotted them, Joseph with staff in hand leading a donkey with a very pregnant Mary on top. Logical really, Jesus isn’t due for a few weeks yet. I have never found it odd that the baby Jesus was in the stable for the whole of advent, but obviously the builders of this Nativity Scene had found it odd and had put some thought into their rendition of a Nativity Scene.
The liturgy also underlines this time of waiting.. ” and this novel approach to what is usually seen as just a bit of extra festive “tinsel”, makes us think about the whole story and about the waiting. The quotation from Luke 2 on the wall reads “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to his own town to register.” Reading that and seeing Mary on her donkey did get me thinking.
But we are talking about desert here and we are talking about an old man who is leading a donkey with his heavily pregnant wife on it. We should also not forget that to get to Bethlehem, they would have had to travel across Samaria which was hostile bandit country in those days. Some people even suggest that they would not have taken the shortest route but a longer safer route via modern day Jordan. So whilst the bible gives no figures (as far as I can see) it would have been a very long journey more than a couple of weeks, which might explain why they arrived so late in Bethlehem and missed out on all the available rooms.
After lunch in Cluny (Café du Centre for a change) we came home and Cees went off to his painting classes in Cormatin. I have taken to going for a walk on Saturday afternoons while he is out and today I decided to go up the hill to Taizé and I was treated to a lovely view of La Tuilerie with a light sprinkling of snow. I walked into the shop in Taizé to look at the pottery, browse through the books and cards and warm up a bit before the walk home though the woods. It is lovely circuit, mostly on footpaths, hardly walking on any roads at all and I even bumped into Frère Alois in the woods obviously doing the same walk but in the other direction.
I emptied the water from the campsite a few weeks ago and now with the temperature at –4 degrees last night and no sign of warmer weather in the next week, it is better to be safe than sorry. I even switched the TV on for a few minutes before Cees came back, very unlike me, but after the disaster with the transfer to digital TV, I keep feeling that I need to check that everything is still working. It is so nice to be able to watch the quiz again in the evenings and our favourite documentary “Les Racines et Les Ailes”. Fortunately we have discovered that we can get reception through the single glazed windows in the kitchen, so we don’t have to have the living room (double glazed) windows open to get a signal (a bit chilly to say the least) and even though it looks a bit weird to have the huge new aerial in the kitchen, it isn’t really in the way now that Cees has built a very smart new wooden structure to support it! We will have to come up with a more permanent solution at some stage, but that can wait.
The entrée was snails (caught and processed by Monique herself) and for the non-snail eaters (eg me as I don’t dare to eat them because of my shell fish allergy) there was a wild boar pâté made by Monique of course and the boar had been shot in the local woods by Jean-François himself. The main course was chicken in a light creamy morel sauce served with rice portioned into ramekins and presented as a little perfectly formed cylinder on the plate. The chicken certainly came from a shop, but whether the morels came from the forest opposite us, is a little bit of a mystery, I must admit we got rather lost in the discussion about the origins of the morels. Whilst their origin may be in doubt, their excellent taste was not. This was followed by the last of the “fresh” goats’ cheese of the season from the lady in La Bergerie and the meal was capped off with homemade lemon sorbet on top of warmed pineapple cubes lightly flavoured with cinnamon placed beautifully next to a small glass of mousse au chocolat and some almond wafer biscuits. Each course was served with the appropriate wine which prompted discussions of flavours and vintages. All I can say is – wow what a meal!
Every single transmitter in the area was switched over at the same time which is leaving the poor (or soon to be stinkingly rich) aerial installers with more problems than they can possibly deal with. On Saturday morning one chap said: “Why couldn’t they have switched the transmitters off one by one? Then I could have at least made an attempt to keep up with requests for help!” In our tiny village of Chazelle everyone has a problem of one sort or another except one person – the Mayor – he has perfect reception, which is where the conspiracy theory of another friend of ours comes in. No names will be mentioned, but a friend of ours has a thing about Mayors and other persons in positions of authority and it does seem that she might have a point, why out of all the 30 odd houses in our village is he the only one who has perfect reception? Does he have so much power in the locality that those guys at Mont Saint Vincent have redirected our signal to his house? Well no not really, it seems that he is the only one who had the foresight to see the chaos that was on its way and he had a satellite dish fitted a couple of months ago. So should I call that conspiracy theory or strategic planning?
It was decided, for reasons unknown, that Mont Saint Vincent would be one of the only transmitters in our region not to send out analogue and digital TV simultaneously over the last few months so that we could all tune in and check out our equipment, no Mont Saint Vincent was shut down for analogue last night and no one has been able to tell us whether it would actually send out digital in our direction. So no chance to test out our equipment before TNT Day. My years in industry have taught me that expecting something to work first time is an idiot’s approach to technology so we have been counting down to TNT Day for the last 18 months, trying to get more information on how to test the equipment we bought all that time ago, but up until this morning we could do nothing and we just had to wait and see if our equipment was sufficient to receive digital signals, if digital signals would be sent this way.
We will watch Question Pour Un Champion this evening, hopefully the junior school teacher will win the cagnotte this evening, will this be the last time we will watch? At midnight all the television transmitters in Burgundy will be shut down and go silent for the first time since 29th March 1945 when television transmissions were reinstated after the Germans left France. Is the end of life as we know it?
It is TNT Day in Burgundy on Tuesday 16th November..
November 11th, Armistice Day (the end of World War One), is the last and the most well attended of all the wreath layings in Cormatin’s complicated wreath laying year. As all my blog followers will have noted we attend all five with enthusiasm. Each one is different in character, not only because of the different group of people each one attracts, but because of the inevitable confusion surrounding the organisation.
Still a bit puzzled about the change of venue when all was revealed. Whilst the Mayor reads out the official government speech at the memorial in Cormatin, Monsieur P always gives a speech at the Bois Dernier memorial. We had the usual thank yous, particularly to the children who came and the school teacher who was there for the first time – it is important that they grow up understanding the meaning behind these days of remembrance and that they realise the sacrifices made for their current way of life. The real reason for the visit to the Bois Dernier memorial was then revealed. We were there to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of de Gaulle, who died on 9th November 1970. He was the leader of the Free French Forces from London during the war and he was the inspiration to the French people and the resistance movement during the German occupation.
Anyway, Cees has become a big fan of the “plat du jour” for our Tuesday lunches. The plat du jour changes every day and in the year he has been having it at our favourite restaurant (La Petite Auberge) he has only had a repeat dish on two occasions, quite an impressive feat. Due to holiday closures, we had lunch this Tuesday at Café du Centre and Cees’ plat du jour was rabbit in mustard sauce a real speciality around here. Rabbit is also very popular in The Netherlads, many people eat it for Christmas. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the family cat should be kept indoors around that time of year as these creatures have been known to go missing and sold on as rabbits. Seeing the little bones on his plate, Cees commented that now he understood why people could have been fooled into buying a cat. Anyway after shuddering at the thought of Fifi ending up in the pot, Cees went on to enjoy his Lapin à la Moutarde.
As she has never gone missing before, I went out to search the property in case she was trapped in a drain somewhere, I then searched all the ditches within walking distance of here to see if she had been hit by a car and crawled to the edge of the road, but no Fifi. When Thursday morning dawned and still no Fifi and she hadn’t been back to eat anything during the night, we were convinced that she had in fact been killed by a fox or even shot by a hunter and I thought back to Tuesday’s lunch and began to think she may have been taken. Thursday afternoon I switched the light off in her little house and faced up to the prospect of packing up her bed and blocking up the door but decided to leave it one day more, miracles could happen. As I pottered around after dinner putting out the rubbish, almost exactly 48 hours after the last sighting of Fifi, I didn’t look down as I opened the front door and who shot in like a rocket straight up the stairs to the bedroom, but our little cat. Fifi was home, fit and well and not a mark on her. Welcome home Fifi and please don’t do that again!
This week we received the sad news that a friend had passed away. Chris Gulker was a blogger before the word existed and he blogged almost every day since setting up his personal website in 1995. To quote a tribute to him from 
A second newly-made friend has left us this week as well, although in happier circumstances. Babette who has run the Cormatin newsagent and tobacconist for the last eleven years, one of the first people around here to be able to pronounce, remember and reproduce Cees’ name and a fellow 
The French love a good strike and demonstration and what better cause but the increase of retirement age by two years. Shocking you may say and ordinarily I would agree but what is more shocking is that the state retirement age in France is only 60 and even younger if you are in a hard or stressful profession like a train driver! So sorry to the citizens of my new homeland, but I have no sympathy for this strike especially when it means we are having difficulty getting petrol due to the blockading of all the country’s oil refineries. So our essential trip to Mâcon to get supplies for Cees’ new painting classes and of course a nice lunch at Palais d’Asie was put in danger today by me not wanting to waste a drop of that precious liquid.
The journey takes you along the tourist route to Mâcon, not via the dual carriageway we always take in the car, through the rolling hills of the Mâconnais with magnificent views of the chateau at Berzé-le-Châtel and into Berzé-la-Ville where the chapel des moines is to be found. Superb views of Roche Solutré and into the vineyards of the Pouilly-Fuissé which produce one of the best white wines around here with a price tag to match! And we were even in Mâcon in time to do all our shopping before the shops shut for lunch then of course our favourite Chinese restaurant.
and have joined all sorts of societies and volunteer groups, some less successful than others (“No sorry you can’t do any voluntary work for us until you have been a member of our organisation for a whole year” – I kid you not) but now suddenly the locals have cottoned on to the fact that they have willing volunteers who are not doing it for fame and fortune and we have been inundated with requests to help, dinners to say thank you for helping and “by the way you can make the dinner for the next meeting”. So that and a visit of Cees’ daughter and partner have kept me away from usual creative outlet.
We marked out the local Cormatin Randonée (organised walk) last weekend (Saturday) and the weather was superb and had been for days, sadly the day itself (Sunday) was cold and miserable, the sun just did not want to shine so we froze as we stood waiting for walkers to come by and get their coffee and piece of cake. I just love this picture of Cees and a fellow marker putting their tags on the tarmac – bottoms up! – so I couldn’t rsist posting it.
since they fell when Cees was in hospital nearly two years ago! Of course I had to keep up, by helping (a bit) and then I got the urge to finish off the path I have been making around my birthday statue. Aches in places I had long forgotten I had muscles! All that and visits to Cluny, the shop in Taizé to look at their lovely pottery, walks following the Ballades Vertes, cycle rides on the Voie Verte and into the surrounding countryside to visit local potters, silk painters and sculptors – a busy week for them.
culminating with a Catholic Eucharist at four thirty. Four thirty must be the time they allocate to visiting groups as it was mid one Thursday afternoon last summer when the Archbishop of Canterbury was visiting that the Anglicans were allowed to hold their Eucharist.
As you can see from the photo, there I am in a supermarket (Petit Casino in Reims – believe me) and yes there is the mustard!! All those Dutch aficionados will understand of course, but for the rest I will explain. It is complicated so bear with me. When a Dutch person says “he knows where Abraham gets the mustard from” it means that that has reached “a certain age”.
However, if that had been the case, you would miss out on a specification of the “certain age” factor which comes from a misconstruction of a verse in the Bible (John 8 v 57) where Jesus is mocked by the Jews commenting on his young age and therefore his lack of knowledge and wisdom by saying “You are not even fifty years old – and you have seen Abraham?”.
We had a lovely couple of days in Reims, a small city worth a visit. We had some great food and great wine. Our trip was not of course without event, on the way our car managed to break down on the motorway just outside Troyes and we had to towed off to a local garage. While we waited to be towed, we had plenty of time to look around and enjoy the views and the sunshine and look at the local crops. We were stopped almost next to a field full of yellow flowers, what were they? Was it a coincidence that it was almost my birthday? I’m not sure but one thing I do know for certain is that it was a field of mustard….
When Frère Roger first came to Taizé he worshipped alone in a room that he had dedicated for that purpose. When there were other Christians present they would join him in prayer, but as many of the people he was helping were in fact Jewish, he felt that it was totally inappropriate to make the prayer times communal. When he returned with some friends (later the first brothers) after the war with the purpose of setting up a community, they worshipped together in the original room but as the numbers of brothers and Christian visitors increased so did their need for a larger space. What is more logical than to use the small Romanesque church in Taizé, a holy place that had not been used for services for many years. But the Catholic church had other ideas about that. Despite not actually owning the building (all churches were seized during the Revolution and are now state owned) the Catholic church objected to having Protestants worshiping in their, albeit unused, church. An initial local agreement was swiftly rescinded and the request to use the church then went up through the bishop of Autun all the way to Paris where it ended up with Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who was at that time the papal nuncio. He was a forward thinking man, he had also helped many Jews and other refugees during the war and maybe it was that common ground that helped convince him or maybe not, but he was the man who gave permission in 1948 for the brothers to have permanent non-rescindable use of the church for their daily prayers.
Allowing Protestants to use the church was one thing, but allowing Catholics to join them was another. Despite securing an audience with Pope Pius XII, Frère Roger did not manage to get agreement for ecumenical worship out of him. A big step for a pope to take of course. Ten years passed and the pope died and a new one, Pope John XXIII, was elected. This new pope turned out to be none other than the Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who had granted permission to use the church in Taizé and despite being old in years, he was still very young and forward thinking in his ways and it was he who supported the community of Taizé and led the way forward for allowing Catholics to take part in ecumenical worship. Maybe it was their common experiences during the war that drew these two men together, who knows, but whatever it was, he paved the way for the close links between the Vatican and the brotherhood that still exist today and it led to real reconciliation between differing Christian groups.
One of the walls of the ancient abbey church was lit up with the words “Towns like dreams are made up of desires and fears, even if their way of presentation is secret, their rules are absurd and their perspectives are faulty; and everything hides something else.” Very thought provoking and intended to set the scene for the actors to appear and walk around the predetermined route through the streets, gardens and alleyways of Cluny to one of the spots where their little piece of theatre was to be played out, with us amongst the thousands following them eager to discover what secrets were to be revealed.
I got my foot trapped between a branch and a step as we stumbled through someone’s garden (now destroyed by the thousands of feet that traipsed over it in the last couple of days), skirts dangerously brushing against the candles lighting the way and all this without a health and Safety officer in sight to put a stop to the fun! In order to dodge a carelessly steered child’s pushchair, Cees climbed over a pile of ivy on the ground, rather than walking round it like the rest of the crowd and narrowly missed the face of a young lady lying there. I think she can claim the award for the most dangerous job of the weekend!
Sunday saw the culmination of the weekend’s activities and the huge closing picnic. As last year (
Lyon, home of Interpol, is where I had to go last week to be fingerprinted. What terrible crime had I committed, that I should be subjected to such treatment? Well it is simple, my passport had expired and I needed a new one. It may be shocking to the Brits, but the Dutch (in accordance with new European legislation so they say) insist on a set of fingerprints to get a new passport. No more “shove the old one in an envelope and a couple of weeks later you get a new one”, no you have to go in person and have your prints taken. I had visions of leaving the Consulate with black fingertips, but it is all much more modern than that, a simple scan was all that was required.
Our theme for the day was paintings and our first port of call was the Musée urbain Tony Garnier, reputedly the largest open-air art gallery in the world, dedicated to one of Lyon’s leading architects. The museum is in fact 24 huge paintings drawn on blocks of flats he designed and built in the 1920s and they cover his work in Lyon. The last few paintings are the more interesting in my opinion as they depict various artists views of an ideal city. The one I am showing here is the ideal Mexican city.
Another huge painting (twice the size of anything in the Musée urbain Tony Garnier) was entitled La Fresque de Lyonais in the Croix Russe area, it covered the back side of a building seven stories high and seven windows or balconies wide. At each window or on each balcony is a famous Lyonais including St Exupery with Le Petit Prince, the Lumieres brothers (among the earliest film makers in history), André-Marie Ampère of electricity fame and more recent people like Abbé Pierre the founder of Emmaus and Bernard Pivot a journalist and TV interviewer. The photo I have chosen shows some real and painted by-passers in front of the imaginary shop fronts and building entrance. 
The rest of our day was taken up with visiting the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, worth it for the trip in the funicular railway and the view of the city, but the Basilique itself is a bit over the top. Just round the corner was another gem, the Roman theatres. We’ve seen many in our travels around the UK, France, Spain and Italy, but this was truly exceptional. Then into the old town with the St Jean Cathedral (and ex-Taizé organ) and the traboules, a real must for anyone visiting Lyon is to zigzag through the old town using these secret covered walkways through the buildings leading to some very pretty hidden courtyards. In fact we just generally enjoyed our day in the sun soaking up the atmosphere of a very special city.
In Category 2 there has been some movement, with last years’ winners sadly not being able to come in 2010 due to family circumstances, it has allowed other campers to get within grasp of the title, however the impressive score of 56 tent nights for Johan, Janine and family still proves to be unbeatable. Hans and Joke have made inroads into their deficit, however, they remain second even though they have now clocked up an admirable 48 tent nights, not far to go! Third place stays with Marijke and Dick who also managed to improve on last years’ total and are now up to 39 tent nights. The most impressive change of position came from Janine and Mijntje who have shot up from 8th position to joint 5th, partly helped by bringing their parents with them this time (maybe that is a tip to others to help improve their rating).
Congratulations to all the winners, you can bask in your glory for another year, but don’t be complacent you never know who or what 2011 will bring.
The Tourist Information Office has laid out a trail around town, with the intention of filling this gap. You buy the map and information from their office for one Euro and you follow the route assisted by brass plaques on the ground.
In fact you could just use the route laid out by the Tourist Information Office and concentrate on the new boards and you will have a very good overview of the town.
Roger stayed helping Jews and Resistance fighters until the Nazis collapsed the Vichy government and occupied the whole of France. Roger then became a target himself and he was advised to leave. He returned after the war with some friends to set up a community dedicated to help those who had suffered during the war, particularly the young people. His sister joined him, to run the children’s house. Roger was a deeply religious young man as were his friends and their vision was to create an monastic order outside of any church. This order was founded officially on Easter day 1949.
The service was held in the open in a meadow on the edge of Taizé with the buildings belonging to the community and the Romanesque church hung with icons. An area similar to the “garden” inside the community’s church was created for the monks to be together and the service began at a quarter to 8 by singing “The Lord is my Shepherd” in Filipino, courtesy of the Jesuit Music Ministry there. The service followed the usual lines of songs and silence but with Frère Alois also addressing the congregation of about 5,000 and telling them of Frère Roger, his life, his work and the influence he had had on the Christian movement throughout the world.
“Come round at 7 o’clock for a quick apéro and we’ll go out when no one is around.” “Pardon me, I thought this was legal?” “Well maybe it is, but the farmers don’t like it!” Thus went our introduction to this fine tradition.
The same with the vines, seemingly tonnes of grapes are left to go to waste in the vineyards where they use mechanical pickers and Sunday afternoons in September will see hundreds of French in the vineyards collecting these left-over grapes. Seemingly nothing goes to waste, if it’s free and vaguely edible, the locals are out there collecting it.
The abbey needed blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, wine merchants, butchers, bakers etc etc and so outside the walls of the abbey a town was formed to provide these facilities. The original town is Romanesque in style with some Gothic alterations and some later “disastrous” Renaissance rebuilding. The houses were constructed with the workshop or the shop on the ground floor and the accommodation on the first and second floors. If you look at the buildings in the town you can see how many have a large arched opening on to the street and a small door next to it which originally led to the first floor.
Back in May we followed the walk “secrets d’escaliers” led by Corinne Loron which took us into some magnificant buildings to see their staircases. All of these buildins are someone’s home and so not normally open to the public. In July we followed “secrets de murs” with Jean-Luc Maréchal which led us around the town looking at the architectural features of the walls, including of course the claires-voies. The guides are very enthusiastic and knowledgable about Cluny’s “hidden” architectural treasures and Jean-Luc Maréchal got so carried away about the visit to his house on the first walk we did, he dressed the part.
Last week, along with the trauma of having to collect Fifi the cat from the vet’s in Cluny, I found out that the sink discharge in one of gites has been leaking for some time, mess everywhere and only a few hours to repair the damage, clean up and dry the walls (yes the water had really been going everywhere!) So the afternoon was spent with my head under the sink with hairdryer in hand pumping hot air on to the wall, all that with 30 degrees outside. This week, it turns out that the sink in our own kitchen has been leaking down into the bathroom below, mess everywhere, call out the plumber – I didn’t dare do it myself, I didn’t know what I would find when I opened up the joint. Monsieur Kotas our trusty plumber was called and he agreed to come out on a Saturday afternoon, what a star. Job done, we now have water again in the house and not pouring down the gite bathroom wall.
We had earned an evening enjoying ourselves and that was just what we did. We went to the last concert in the 
The public have to pay to get in and this money goes into the coffers of the Amicale a village organisation that raises funds for the old people’s annual meal and the Christmas party for the kids. This is the biggest event the Amicale organises during the year and all hands are called on to the deck to help. The work starts on the 12th collecting the tents from other villages, the tents are all built on the 13th, taken down on the 14th, then returned to their rightful owners or reconstructed at the Chateau on the 15th ready for the Rendez-Vous de Cormatin, a theatre festival which starts at the end of July.
I left her there in the morning and phoned a couple of hours later to be told she had a smashed pelvis and a broken neck that needed to be operated on, perhaps it would be best if we went in to discuss it. When Cees came back from his tent building at the Chateau, we went off to Cluny to see the vet. We both thought it was going to be a discussion along the lines of maybe we should put her out of her misery and it was not a conversation I was looking forward to. The “neck” that was broken turned out to be the “neck” of the femur, bad enough, but not life threatening and the “chat” was just to reassure us that all would be well and we could take her home on Saturday morning, no more feeding the kittens though, so it is a good job that they have been weaned and don’t really need her milk anymore.
Almost all of these visitors have mentioned the Silence Garden and the natural spring of St. Etienne and all have talked about how special it was.
Dotted here and there on the grass and on the bridges were people sitting enjoying the silence, sleeping or reading. Just walking through the garden you get a real feeling of peace, people in groups talk at a whisper, but most people make no sound at all. This is in sharp contrast to the Frisbee games and general noise of the youngsters on top of the hill. I was dreading the hike back up the steep hill (244 steps I have been told), but actually it was not as daunting as I had feared and it certainly is a way to improve your fitness!
There is an amazing variety of snails throughout the planet in terms of size, shape and colour but only one is the hero of the day. In Roman times “escargot” was considered to be a food for the elite (widely documented by Pliny the Elder I will have you know) and this Roman snail was the Helix Pomatia, now more commonly known as the Burgundy snail.
It must be said though that our local sources are adamant that there is not a shortage of snails in either Burgundy or France, but there is however, a shortage of people who can be bothered to get up at 5 o’clock on a damp summer’s morning, who have the knowledge of which snails to choose and where to find them and who are therefore out there collecting their own. Most snail collectors round here will collect and preserve hundreds in a summer and these home preserved snails still make up one quarter of all the snails eaten in France.
Since living here I have however, learned a lot more about wine in this area – where to buy good wine, interesting wine, cheap wine, expensive wine and we send the guests in our gites or from the campsite off to the appropriate wine cave depending on what they are looking for. We know where to go for a good tasting with knowledgeable staff and where to go for a wide range of wines and generally that knowledge is appreciated by our guests.
We asked for a tasting and he set to, collecting bottles for us to savour. The wines were sublime and the chat and local gossip were also very interesting. We had a lesson on making Marc de Bourgogne (the local fire water), he explained how he paid the taxes on his vineyard by giving alcohol to the government – I thought Sarkozy was a teetotaller! He gave us the names and locations of all the expats he knew in the area – he knows of a lot more than us and we chatted about mutual friends. He even let us taste his “homemade” Fine which was delicious, but as he only had enough for his own consumption, we will have to wait until he bottles up the next lot before we can buy any.
The highlight of the wreath laying is the playing of the Marseillaise which always used to be done using a crackly cassette player mounted on the boot of Monsieur P’s car which sounded like the marvellous rendition from Casablanca. But last November a brand new CD player appeared. The Armistice Day ceremony passed off with a perfectly clear well played version and it left us with a very nostalgic feeling of days gone by and the crackly old rendition of the national anthem.
At the Bois Dernier we assumed that things were now in order, the CD machine worked and now Monsieur P knew how to work it. First hitch – at these events Monsieur P likes to play some patriotic songs, but of course when he presented his cassette to the CD player it did not fit. Not to be defeated, he sprinted back to his car opened the doors wide, blocking the road and put the cassette in the in-car player and wound the volume up. All in vain, we really couldn’t hear a thing. So on to the Marseillaise. By now even I could repeat the famous sentence “click up to number 7 then press play”, to no avail, the technology had finally beaten Monsieur P and before poor Monsieur N had a chance to rebalance his flag and get his glasses out, the CD player had been put down and with the French equivalent of “bugger this for game of soldiers” Monsieur P had started singing. It became quite evident that not everyone present knew the words, I think we managed about half of them, the Mayor – none, I’m sure Monsieur P changed key halfway through, but it was a valiant effort, even the Mayor had tears in his eyes by the end and before we went off the Les Blés d’Or for our drinks and nibbles and his final words “I think we need a different flag carrier next time”.
Again we needed to ask a resident for clarification, yes the zone that looked like a cordoned-off crime scene was in fact the Jardin du Fouettin, possibly a wild flower meadow?
The Jardin des Simples is right by where the entrance to the Abbey used to be and is a small well laid-out garden for herbs and medicinal plants with a few trained apple and pear trees. This garden has been growing for a few months now and is looking very good, well worth a little detour to see it. Finally on to the Rosarie.
Anyway, next year this new feature will add a very special splash of colour to the edge of Cluny.
In the Church of Reconciliation at Taizé there is a large pipe organ. I blogged about it last summer when it was installed, but I have come to learn so much more about it and its predecessors and yet now I seem to know so much less! By finding old photographs, I have seen that the organ in Taizé has changed a number of times over the years and it does beg the question why?
Interestingly, I have found information about what is possibly the second organ in Taizé. This organ was built specifically for the church in 1974 by Jürgen Ahrend a German organ builder, however, that had a very short life in the church because it was dismantled and put into storage in the Bressse in 1979. Via a monastery in Switzerland this organ eventually ended up in Lyon Cathedral in 1996, where it still is today. I suspect it was rather too loud for Taizé if it can be used in a cathedral!
However, a friend of mine did find this photo in her collection, rather out of focus, but clearly an organ. Apparently this organ became “unreliable” due to the hot air heating system in the church and so it was removed when the church was refurbished in the winter of 2008/2009.
Also interestingly the organist sits sideways on to the church so that he does not have his back to the congregation. This must make it easier for the organist to still feel part of the community of singing.
“Portes ouvertes” are quite frequent events around here. The words literally mean “open doors” and most businesses choose one weekend a year to open their doors to the public, let the public sample their produce and generally have a good snoop around. It is a nice way to see a business, but usually you can sample their produce any other time so what is the big deal? The Vignerons de Buxy (the place we buy most of our wine) had an open day last weekend. Having worked in the food industry for many years, the thought of seeing lots of stainless steel vessels, pumps and pipework was not something I really needed to do, particularly in a crowd, but Cees persuaded me to go.
As we entered the basement, we were given a piece of paper, which had various questions on it, a bit like a treasure hunt and off we went to find the first answer. The first part of the tour was in the very dark cellars with all the oak caskets, they were massive, I had no idea they would be so big. Then on to the stainless steel tank room. Again all much bigger than I had expected and then on to the grape handling areas, where grapes are crushed, separated, tested and mixed to give the right juice and also where the first fermentation took place. What really made it interesting were the signs that had been put up all over the place explaining what happened when in the process..jpg)
When we had answered all the questions on the treasure hunt form, we posted it in the box at the exit, there was one magnum an hour to be won, but no on has been round with our magnum yet!
For all our Fifi fans out there, we have BIG news. Fifi has been getting rather tubby these last few weeks, but there again she has been tucking into a lot of mice and moles. I had my suspicions that she might have had a secret romantic liaison, but Cees was not convinced at all (typical father). Anyway the last few days she has been very clingy towards us and on Wednesday she did not move more than a few feet away from our front door. I was fairly confident that she was going to produce a couple of Fifiettes and sure enough as the evening wore on, it looked like she had gone into labour. She was insisting on staying our front door mat, not an ideal place to birth her litter, but Mum should know best. At about 7 o’clock after a failed attempt to climb into a removal box full of kindling, she finally moved off to her cubby-hole and into her own bed. One by one she produced her offspring. When we left her at just after 12 o’clock there were three and by Thursday morning there were four squeaking mouse-sized animals to be seen.
She has let us pick them up and stroke them – so much for my worries about not being able to get near the litter. At the moment all is calm around La Tuilerie, Fifi is looking after the little ones in her own house, but who knows what chaos they will cause when they are capable enough and brave enough to walk out and about on their own.
This Ascension Day we went to one of our favourite concerts of the year. There is a Dutch madrigal choir that comes to Chapaize every year where they give a free concert. The standard of the concert is very high indeed and it is difficult to imagine that these are all amateurs. One couple in the group have a holiday home in Chapaize and the concert is given each year to raise money for the renovation of the two churches in the commune of Chapaize, the Chapaize church itself and the church in the hamlet of Lancharre. Whilst the concert is free, you are encouraged to donate money as you leave the church and people donate generously, I didn’t see a single coin go into the collection baskets held by the choir members’ children.
Burgundy is blessed with an enormous number of Romanesque churches. Cluny was the centre of the Christian world for a while and this is one of the main causes. But there were other powerful forces in the area one of which was Brancion and they too built Romanesque churches to ward off the local influence of the Abbey in Cluny. That coupled with the enormous wealth of the area at that time and you end up with a lot of buildings. Chapaize and Lancharre are just two of the churches that fell under Brancion. Now, 1000 years later, Cluny has only part of its abbey left and Brancion doesn’t even have a town hall any more, it is attached one of the villages down the road – how the mighty have fallen! Having said that we still have the beautiful remains of their power struggle.
It was 15th May yesterday and we went to Cluny market to get some tomato, courgette and cucumber plants. Every other stall was selling plants, because NOW is the time to plant. The last of the Ice Saints has had their day and so today I will be in the garden putting my precious plants in the ground.
So it appears that the saints have got it wrong. A little more searching and the mystery is solved. The Ice Saints had it right all along, it is all down to the fiddling of dates by the Catholic church again. Pope Gregory VIII rearranged the calendar in 1582. Cold Sophie was 15th May in the Julian calendar, that date stayed with her, but her day was effectively moved in time. If we were to put Sophie back to her real day (not date) she would have her day on 22nd May, which means that the Saints de Glace are in fact 19th – 22nd May in today’s calendar system, corresponding exactly with the meteorological phenomenon of the temperature dip and my Mum’s favourite “clout” warning. 
There was a great sigh of relieve in Town and it has somehow rejuvenated the town’s horse connections. After a lull when the imminient closure was announced, works have restarted on at the Equivallée (the show jumping facility) and have been going on all winter with a fascinating array of different layers being added to the all-weather rings and now there are two fully up and running all-weather rings, the grass ring, which has had some of the pressure taken off it, is in excellent condition and there are two practise rings as well.. 
Last weekend’s event was an auction of thoroughbreds. The auction started at 10.00 according the posters but, as veterans of Cluny events, we decided to arrive about an hour after the published starting time in the hope that things had got going. We were entertained to a number of demonstrations in one of the all-weather rings amongst which there was a cowboy like chap breaking in a young foal. We also saw the officials from the Haras parading round the Haras itself, then into the Equivalée and there were loads of stalls selling all sorts of horsey things including some ghastly 70’s looking horse paintings on velvet. But sadly no auction.
The other day I found a picture which shocked me to the core, I dragged Cees over to look at the picture and we finally agreed that some of what Mme R had told us was in fact true. As you can see in the photo, when the bells in Taizé were originally installed, they were indeed installed over water. What’s more, they were in a completely different tower construction, much more open and no more than 1 m from the ground with a small pond underneath. Also this old tower was in the middle of a large open space in-between the living accommodation of the monks and the new church. Those bells must have been deafening for many villages around. No wonder there were complaints! 
But last week’s guests always keep us on our toes when they are here. I am exhausted after a week with Henk. He can’t sit still for one minute and he is always looking for things to do. He spotted a pile of logs that were too large for our wood burning stove and which we have miserably failed to split into smaller logs and he found a large axe, and with a quick “do you want these spilt?”, he was away. Just one skilful whack with the axe and these stubborn pieces of oak gave way, leaving us to run around and stack our new ready to burn logs.
I think he was rather disappointed that I had managed to keep it going as he had little digging to do, but he was kept happy by setting up a new bed for me, making the garden complete, well at least until next time he comes.
Then one day in December last year there was a little notice popped into our letterbox announcing a pre-meeting to prepare for this event in Cormatin for the conscrits of year zero. This intrigued us. So we started asking questions and it appeared that it had nothing to do with conscription, it was just a party for everyone who was born in a year ending on the same number as the current year. So in 2010 it was the zeros and guess what, my birth year ends on a zero (yes I’m thirty again this year!).
A car in front of us played suitably jolly music to walk to and a car at the back carried a couple of 80 and 90 year-olds who felt they couldn’t make the walk up and down the main street. The traffic was stopped by guys in fluorescent jackets as we did the traditional wave-walk up the street. Each line of people zigzaged across the road right to left, then left to right, creating a “wave of amity” as we flowed up towards the road to Chapaize where we stopped for breath and to let the traffic through. We then turned round and walked back up to the church and the war memorial where a wreath was laid, then on up to Salle St Roch for kir and nibbles, all the time making sure your hat and rosette stayed in place.
I’d warned them of my fish allergy earlier in the week and they coped extremely well, getting me a very similar looking dish at the same time as the other 70 odd guests were fed, very unlike many restaurants who make you feel two inches high for daring to be allergic to anything and making sure everyone notices you have something different. In-between courses there was dancing and then the cabaret act arrived to entertain us. The cheese course (which come before dessert in France) arrived at 6 o’clock and as we had gîte guests arriving, we had to skip dessert and coffee. So who knows what time the coffee arrived! One person we bumped into today said she had left “early” at 3.30 in the morning, maybe the youngsters managed dawn and their onion soup, I don’t know!
Burgundy hibernates in the winter. Even though you can still have tee-shirt weather into mid-November, Burgundy effectively grinds to a halt towards the end of October. The museums, the Château in Cormatin, the caves in Azé and Blanot and other attractions all shut down, the bicycle renter closes his doors and the tourists stay away. That is why our gites are not open after the end of October, very few visitors come and so we drain down the water and tuck up the little houses putting them to bed for the winter.
But on Easter Monday Burgundy is really shaken alive. It is the first Louhans small animal market of the year. The whole area becomes one great big party. The normally sleepy little town is turned into an enormous market place for the whole day and the fair arrives as well. Literally hundreds of thousands of people flock to enjoy this unique day of the year, which always seems to be blessed with beautiful weather. Don’t even think about trying to get a place in a restaurant for lunch, everywhere is booked up, even the kebab shop has a queue that goes half way down the main road. Just buy something off the market and set up your own little picnic. As you arrive and walk into the town centre, you will be met by hundreds of people coming the other way, carrying twittering cardboard boxes tied up with string in which they are carrying their point-of-lay chickens, taking them home to the newly prepared hen-house. The cycle of life has started again. Chickens are bought at this time of year to give eggs, then they are killed in the Autumn to provide meat, when they start their moult and stop laying. The cycle is then complete.
Everything is opening up, Burgundy is bursting with life again, the roads seem to be full of foreign number plates, a sight rarely seen in winter. We are looking forward to a fresh season, meeting new people and welcoming back old friends, sharing stories of the past year and swapping news. The gites are painted up and ready to roll, all the winter maintenance has been done and now life speeds up to a leisurely amble as we stretch our legs and shake off the winter cobwebs.
As readers of this blog will have noticed, the church at Taizé fascinates me. The last time I wrote about it, I wrote how the church expands and contracts with the seasons to accommodate more or fewer people (
After the war, a German Christian movement was set up, by volunteers, to help countries who had suffered under the Nazis. It consisted of a group of architects who’s intention was to build symbols of reconciliation in places where the war had caused great pain. This group was called Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste, or Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP) and it still exists to day. It was in the early 60s that ARSP decided to work with the Taizé community to build the Church of Reconciliation. The monks designed the church and with the assistance of ARSP architects, its volunteer youth workers and other Taizé volunteers, the church rose out of the ground.
The floor area of the Romanesaue church was roughly 90 mˆ2, capable of housing 90 – 100 worshipers and the new Church of Reconciliation was about 1,020 mˆ2, well over ten times the size. It was a huge leap of faith to believe that this new church could ever be filled. But by the early 70s it was obvious that the community had in fact underestimated the size of church needed and in the height of those summers it had to erect circus style tents by the front entrance to increase capacity. 
The tents were one option, but in the early 90s a more permanent structure was conceived and planning permission was then given to increase the size of the new church. The church has been added to over the years with extra length and extra wings so that the church is now not far short of 4,600 mˆ2. It has to be said though that even now in the height of summer the Saturday evening and Sunday morning services attract more people than the church can hold and many of the faithful have to follow the services from outside.
The roads are made unsafe over the two to three weekends spanning the flowering period as loony daff hunters zoom around zigzagging across the countryside heading off to find the best spot to pick as many daffodils as they can carry, preferably not too far from a parking spot and of course as close as possible to a wine selling stall to refortify themselves after their hard labour of plucking these delicate blooms. Even on weekdays, the really canny pickers go out choosing a day that they think is the most likely to yield a good harvest. So the wine stalls are manned almost 24 hours a day to maximise sales during the picking weeks.
So huge lawnmower like machines drive over the fields when all the bulbs have come into flower and the flowers are cut off, leaving only the leaves standing. This allows the bulb itself to strengthen and develop into a saleable product. The flowers are then dumped at the end of the rows as a splash of colour. So maybe what the locals around here are doing, is in fact beneficial to this wild species and not what I would call it – stealing from nature – I don’t know. In any case I couldn’t bring myself to pick even one little flower, it just didn’t seem right. 
It is the middle of March and as is usual around here, the season has changed from the depths of winter to nearly summer. Some people call it spring, but spring is really an unknown season here in Burgundy, the weather changes like a light switching on and off. Tuesday night was minus 4 degrees and Thursday it was 18 degrees in the shade. That is not to say we won’t get any more frosts, the old saying “ne’er cast a clout till May be out” is just as true here as it is in the UK, but it looks like the summer is arriving. The birds are going crazy, all the trees have sprung new green life, the herbaceous plants are shooting out of the ground and Cees has got our bikes out of the shed.
I thought my cycling days were over when I left the Netherlands to come and live here (I only do flat) but the Voie Verte which runs very close to our house, is an old railway line that has been converted into a cycling path. It is safe and almost flat. The path travels from near Chalon-sur-Saône to Mâcon in almost one smooth ride. A bit of a warning about Cluny to Mâcon though, whilst there is the interesting Tunnel du Bois Clair, the path is very steep in places, far more than I can do. Having said that, we have had campers or people in the gites here that have even managed to do it on a normal bike however, a mountain bike and strong legs would be more appropriate. 
There are a number of boucles off the Voie Verte, they are graded signposted tours that give you access to the many interesting villages around here. The grading goes from one spot which is easy up to four spots which is very difficult (the trip to the tunnel for instance). So we chose an easy boucle for our first outing. This particular one goes up through the forest to Lys with its assortment of artisans (pottery, blacksmith, tapestry maker) and of course the adorable little church with relatively well-preserved wall frescos and then on to Chapaize with a church tower that can be seen for miles around but when viewed from the village itself definitely seems out of proportion and finally, all the way downhill, back into Cormatin. About 15km in all and it took us less than one and half hours after stopping to see the churches and having a beer in Cormatin to fortify us for the final leg back home.
OK I wouldn’t mind getting lots of chocolates and my Mum’s petite figure could survive many extra boxes, but like it or not Mum got another crocheted gift this year. A few weeks ago I found a pattern for a miniature potted plant on the internet, on the 
I left home with plenty of time to spare, but at this time of year that isn’t really necessary as parking is easy and near the church. In the summer I don’t bother with the Taizé car park, it is always full to overload and then there is the nightmare of getting out of Taizé itself after the service with all the busses and people milling around. I usually park in Ameugny and walk from there, this means I don’t have to drive in Taizé at all. Many of the people staying in our gites, walk or cycle up the hill, but I know I would end up marching for fear of being late, even though I know it doesn’t take that long to get there and I would be all hot and flustered when I went in. So it is the car for me – well that’s my excuse anyway, the other theory is that I’m just lazy, but I don’t hold with that one!
On his second attempt he checked out what other stool users were doing and did the same, with significantly more success. I have never tried the stools, to me they look uncomfortable, but people I have spoken to who use them are very happy with them. One of our campers used to set off up the hill every morning with her stool strapped to the back of her bike, the parcel shelf being just the right length and width for it to fit on nicely. My main reason for not trying the stools is that during the service you have to turn round and stand up and down a couple of times. The aforementioned elderly gentleman, had enormous problems with this manoeuvring and in the end gave up on the stool altogether. Sitting on the floor became preferable to wobbling off with every turn.
We have had several guests staying here, who have come specifically for bird watching. One chap let me look through his telescope at a red-backed shrike perched on a post in the field at the back of our house. I am reliably informed that we have an amazing range of birds that can be seen here, in the garden, in the fields and in the forest.
One of my favourites is the Hoopoe who hovers in mid-air in front of our kitchen window before darting off to land on the roof of the séchoire. He never fails to amaze city dwellers who come here, with the strange fan-shaped plumage on his head rather resembling a mohican. And I will never forget the crowd of long tail tits that invaded our cherry tree one late summer afternoon, zooming around and wobbling their tails.
It is official, Burgundy has had its best harvest in 10 years. The weather last summer was fantastic, no hail or frost in the growing season and so far fewer damaged grapes leading to more grapes being suitable to be turned into wine. In fact Burgundy has produced 1,584 million hectolitres (potentially 211,200 million bottles) of wine this year. This is the largest harvest since 1999. However, what are those remarks about quality not quantity? Amazingly because of the many hours of sun last summer and rain at just the right times, the grapes were also of a very high sugar content, leading to the possibility of one of the best vintages in living memory. So not only quantity but quality too. The farmers must be rejoicing. 
So, as I said, the farmers must be rejoicing, sadly no. The economic crisis and the drop in both the Dollar and Pound against the Euro have already dealt a blow to the French wine market and now just when the Burgundian winemakers can cash in after a number of poor years, even the connoisseurs have run out of money. 
I am very impressed with the organisation that goes into feeding so many people at once – up to 6,000 at peak times. The menus and buying in of the food are managed by the Taizé permanents (lay people who live within the community for a long period of time) and the preparation work and serving is done by the youngsters who have chosen that as their work duty for the week. The kitchens are semi-open air in the summer and as you walk through the community you can see the kids stirring huge cauldrons full of the next meal. The meals are distributed at various locations around the community and you queue up at your allotted spot at meal times.
Bingo is BIG in this area. The January Bingo in Cormatin (held on the last Sunday of the month) attracts people not only from the town itself but from places as far away as Charolles (60km). Having said that the local villages of Ameugny, St Gengoux-le-Nationale and Cluny provide the bulk of the players.
Playing bingo is not exactly our cup of tea, so we volunteered to man the bar on the Sunday itself. We had wine, beer, soft drinks and “bugnes” (small deep-fried doughnutty kind of things) to sell. Most of what had been bought in was sold, with the bulk being sold in the 10 minute half-time break. It was rather frantic trying to not only add up the orders, but to relay the price to the waiting customers in understandable French. The rest of the time was dedicated to silent contemplation of the bingo cards with the underlying tension and excitement mounting as the prizes increased in value. The top prize of a Wii was won by a chap from Taizé and I couldn’t help wondering if he was one of the monks! 
Little Fifi, the kitten that arrived in the summer, is amazingly still here! Even though we have been away on holiday twice for about two weeks, she has attached herself to the house and to us and has decided to stay. While we were away different sets of people arrived every couple of days to top-up her food and water and to give her a little cuddle. To our relief on both occasions when we returned, there she was sitting in the middle of the courtyard squeaking away (she still hasn’t quite cracked a meow yet).
One of Chazelle’s residents is a retired Pâtissier (confectioner) and he of course supplies all the amazing desserts for village parties. He had made the Galettes des Rois for the occasion, beautiful puff pastry pies filled with confectioners custard, very lightly flavoured with almond, nothing like the supermarket cakes which have a heavily flavoured filling that is dense enough to sink a battle ship. But the real excitement about the cake is that there is a “fève” hidden inside it. Fève is just the French word for a broad bean and traditionally a broad bean was put in the cake, but nowadays the fève is a plastic, metal or in our case a porcelain figure roughly the size a of a broad bean.
too late to put it back on the plate, what should I do? I carefully ate around the fève and delicately put the little figure into my napkin waiting to see if anyone had noticed. No one. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted one of neighbours surreptitiously putting a figurine on to the serving plate, so whilst no one was watching, mine went that way too. 
At this time of year when you are snowed in, like we have been for the last week, I use the time to try out new recipes and in particular to try and perfect local dishes. The French are big on cheese in all regions but we in Burgundy sadly only have two AOC cheeses, so it is a bit strange that one of the most popular local delicacies is in fact a cheese choux pastry recipe called Gougère. 
Le Tour is a national institution if ever there was one. The whole country gets excited as it winds its way through the highways and byways of this great country. The original Tour was done by a group of sixty young men in 1903 who set off on their bikes from Montgeron (just outside Paris) for a six stage 2428 km race round France, but only 21 arrived back in Paris 19 days later. They had no back-up teams, no following trailers, no spare bikes, you feel hungry, you stop and eat the sandwiches which you have prepared yourself that morning, you get a puncture you sit down at the side of the road and fix it, now that is real racing!
Le Tour starts in a different place each year, but for many years has ended in the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The journey is not a continuous one around the roads of France anymore, Le Tour hops and jumps from place to place, sometimes the riders are bussed and sometimes flown between the finish of one day and the start of the next, thus allowing a number of different routes to be chosen each year. But everywhere they go there is a BIG party. Le Tour transforms the French roads and villages it passes through for a brief but exciting moment in time.
To travel in a circle around France it is almost impossible not to travel through Burgundy. In 2006, Le Tour came to Mâcon and turned the city upside down as the riders raced up and down the main boulevard in a very exciting finish to the 18th stage. In 2007 Le Tour came even closer to us by passing through Cormatin itself in the 6th stage and in 2010 Le Tour will be just down the road starting the 7th stage on July 10th in Tournus. We have some trusty campers who come every year to stay with us when Le Tour is nearby and who knows maybe we will see all of you guys and gals again and possibly some new faithful followers next summer!
Taizé is deserted by the monks at then end of each year. Only the monks too old or infirm to travel and a skeleton staff of so called “permanents” (young volunteers who live all year round in Taizé) and one or two other monks remain. The week spanning the new year is the one week in the year that no one can stay in the Communauté. The services still go on, but are usually held in the tiny Romanesque church in the village itself, much as all the winter services used to be up until about 15 years ago. All of the rest of the monks will have gone off to the annual European Taizé meeting. This is all part of the “pilgrimage of trust on earth” initiated by Frère Roger over 30 years ago.
“Many people spread across the earth are taking part in the “pilgrimage of trust” in their daily lives. … Sometimes we have to go towards new horizons, far away or nearby, to discover the hope of the Gospel over and over again. Our world, where so much suffering wreaks havoc, needs women and men who radiate God’s peace by their lives. So let us make courageous decisions to go forward on the road of love and trust.”
Ten permanents and a handful of brothers of the Taizé Community and sisters of St. Andrew also arrived. They have been working with the local representatives to get this event off the ground. The shear logistics of accommodating, transporting and feeding such a large crowd is mind-blowing. One should not underestimate the amount of people involved. Mâcon, the capital of our département Saône-et-Loire, has just over 30,000 inhabitants, so this event will have housed, transported, fed and ministered to a crowd almost the size of the population of Mâcon. Quite incomprehensible.
Christmas again, I can tell that because it has snowed leaving the countryside white all around, but more importantly, the Decorations are out. I use the capital letter deliberately to show my respect for this wondrousness of this festive tradition. The Chazelle Decorations are to be admired and bewondered for their truly magnificent decorativity. The tree stands proudly next to the council notice board in the middle of the village and next to the tree is a wooden box about 6 foot high resembling an upright coffin. Inside this box is a Father Christmas half sitting, half standing next to a little nativity scene – rather mixed messages there but who cares, we need to cover all angles. So that is Chazelle Decorated for another year.
Cormatin on the other hand has beautifully hand-made wooden models each year. Monsieur G makes these models himself and they are of amazing quality. Each year the collection grows and I must say I look forward to seeing the new models each year. Last year he came up with a model of the Château which lights up at night and is a very good copy indeed. 
This year’s new addition is a nativity scene, complete with Mary, Joseph and the baby of course, but also the three wise men and the shepherds, not to mention the animals, a cat, a cow, a donkey, a camel, two sheep and a ram and reindeer both with beautifully shaped horns/antlers. They are not full size, but not far off. 
Johnny Hallyday is a national icon, in a country where religion and state are strictly separated, he is a god for the masses. He first started making pop/rock records in 1959 and is still on tour today (albeit on his 3rd final tour). His face appears on the posters of the gossip magazines every week, quite a feat for just one individual. The ins and outs of his many marriages, his latest child, his latest divorce and any other titbit is chewed over and regurgitated. However, one has to have some respect for someone with a career spanning 4 decades and still making records that attract an audience of all ages, not just the aging baby boomers and the born-too-laters.
Friday evening, one week ago, and we were making paper roses in the village hall. Stacks of crêpe paper were put on the table along with little piles of wire and the lesson began. Fold and turn, fold and turn, go slowly to create a loose flower vaguely resembling a rose, too tight and you end up with a tulip! When the flower is done, you wind one of the little bits of wire around the base to secure, leaving a tail of wire for something or other. This is an annual occurrence and of course the old hands had brought their pliers, we just ended up with very painful fingers. 360 roses were created by the stalwarts of Cormatin that evening. It was however, a mystery to us what the roses were for, something about selling a real rose and getting a paper rose or visa-versa in any case I wouldn’t be too happy to spend 1 Euro on one of the paper roses we had just made…
We buzzed off homewards at 10.00, still none the wiser about the paper rose issue, instructed to return to help out after lunch. We popped in to get a newspaper so that we could sit down in the warmth at home, with our feet up, for a couple of hours. Whilst performing this usually simple transaction, we were confronted by the lady in the newsagent and told in no uncertain terms that we should buy some tickets off her for 5 Euros 50 each and go back to the Téléthon and collect two portions of “Petit Salé” – absolutely delicious she was having hers for lunch. Back to collect our food parcels and eventually we made it home.
I was even allowed a few minutes off from Mulled Wine duty to inspect the wonder myself. A giant Téléthon logo made out of florists’ oasis, was standing beside the stall selling roses. Every time a rose was sold, a paper one was placed in the logo as a measure of sales, with the aim to fill the whole logo by the end of the day. The little boy charged with the onerous duty of placing the paper roses had either misunderstood his task or got bored of standing around in the cold and he had filled the whole logo long before the roses had gone, ah well it made a nice photo.
Cluny and horses go together. Since Napoleon re-established The Haras Nationaux (National Studs) and built one of the establishments on the grounds of the abbey in Cluny, Cluny has been inextricably linked with horses. One of his reasons for building in Cluny was to prevent the re-building of the once powerful abbey, but in reality it transformed Cluny. Cluny was able to leave its faded-glory days behind and became an important horse town. 
Because of that, Cluny has a thriving Hippodrome where flat racing, harness trotting and steeple chasing take place in the many meetings per year and numerous private riding stables and private breeders have sprung up to meet the increasing demand from the public for horses for leisure purposes. The most recent addition has been the Équivallée – a show jumping venue next door to the Haras. The creation of this facility was meant to cement the future of horses in Cluny. The General Council of Saône-et-Loire committed a total of eight million Euros to finance the infrastructure of Équivallée in 2005 and in May 2009, the first phase was completed which included an all-weather ring and a safe and secure area for visiting horses to be stabled. So far just under 2.5 million Euros has been invested and the second phase, which involves building a large stable complex, is expected for 2010. The Équivallée is rapidly becoming one of the most popular show jumping venues in France because of its facilities and location.
Having said all that, prior to all this investment, in 2003, a new government policy was announced which had the objective of altering the fundamental structure of the Haras. Last spring, the merger between the Haras Nationaux and the École Nationale d’Équitation (the school set up to train the Cadre Noir [the elite of the French cavalry]) was announced and it will become effective on 1 January 2010. The merger will result in the creation of a single public institution for the horse industry and for horse riding in France. To be effective and efficient, this will mean closures around the country. There are currently 22 Haras Nationaux in France and one huge site of the École Nationale d’Équitation, which on its own is as big as, if not bigger than, 3 or 4 of the Haras sites put together. Something will have to give and the threat of closure of the Haras at Cluny is real and raises serious concerns for the area.
It seems no work of Man’s creative hand,
John William Burgon (1845)
; what a place. An earthquake many thousands of years ago tore the rocks apart to create a canyon (the Siq) which you walk through to access the ancient city of Petra. The city, carved out of the multi-coloured rock face, reveals itself when you emerge at the end of the long walk through the canyon.
This year there was a double celebration in Cormatin when the 60th anniversary of the erection of the Deportee’s memorial was also celebrated. To mark the occasion, the memorial has a new inscription and a large flagpole has been placed behind the memorial which will fly the French flag continuously. The inscription reads:
However, at the moment it’s not possible to ring the Chazelle bell. During Madame P’s funeral quite recently the solemn bell ringer was charged with ringing to bell to call the mourners to the mass, imagine his surprise when all of a sudden he was hit on the head by the bell rope that had detached itself from the bell and now had the aforementioned rope wrapped around his neck. In a church that can barely seat eighty people, this happened in full view of the whole congregation and set off giggles rather inappropriate to the occasion.
Now considering that Chazelle has only three streets connected in a triangle and consists of about twenty house and a church, this all seemed a bit far fetched, even people who forget to bring their instructions as to how to find us never spend more than about 10 minutes in Chazelle before someone gives them directions.
In Cluny there is a tower called the Tour de Fromage, the Cheese Tower. A fascinating name for a brick structure. You have to pay to climb up the tower and see the marvellous view over the town, so imagine our excitement when the local paper announced free entry on Sunday 3rd October. We discussed when to go to avoid the crowds and decided that about eleven o’clock would be the best time. So there we were in front of the doors of the Tourist Information Office which give access to the tower and to our dismay the doors were locked. How is this possible? A big notice on the doors explained all “We are sorry that due to circumstance not of our making, an error appeared in the Journal de Saône et Loire [the aforementioned local paper]. The free visit to the Cheese Tower was on Saturday 3rd October not Sunday 3rd October as published, we apologise for any inconvenience”. Having been in Cluny on Saturday and not visited the Cheese Tower because it was free the next day I was rather fromaged off to say the least.
Never mind, there is always the chance to try out a different restaurant in Cluny, a bit early, but if we walk to the Bio-restaurant near the station that some friends had recommended, we will work up an appetite and be there at lunch time. Not our day, that was closed too. Ah well back to Casse Croute as per usual for the best chips in town.
After admiring the view for a bit we started down the stairs which are very steep indeed. Not something to be done by two people who have a fear of heights and won’t go above three rungs on a ladder. When we finally got to the bottom after having to stop a number of times to let the less wimpish to overtake us. Both of us arrived at the bottom with trembling hands and wobbly legs. Off to the kebab shop to recover.
The monks in Taizé accept no money, no donations, no inheritance absolutely nothing, not one penny, they earn their own way in life. This attitude is very different to other religious orders who rely on donations, great benefactors, some have land and therefore income or they just expect their parishioners to pay for their services.
The pottery is stunning in its simplicity which give it a style and beauty all of its own. You can buy a whole dinner service or you can buy the pieces which are “stand-alone”. Most notably the candle holders and the oil lamps. It all sound a bit twee and amateurish, but the quality and style of the pieces are a match to and are, one could argue, better than many of the other artisans in the area. Their aim is to “produce objects for daily use with prices everyone can afford” a goal they certainly achieve. Most of their pieces are “stoneware” with some objects cast using a porcelain paste, the lamps are made this way.
Frère Daniel started the pottery workshop in the early days of Taizé and together with Frère Lutz, the pottery production has flourished over the years. Most of the work is done in the winter months when there are few visitors and then the workshops become factory-like in their scale of production. In fact some of preparation and initial firing of the pottery is done in conjunction with neighbouring potters as the demand for the pottery becomes too great for the monks to keep up with. The shop in Taizé is bursting with pottery in the days leading up to Easter, but by October, it is looking distinctively empty.
Earlier this year Frère Lutz exhibited his pottery alongside the collages and aquarelles of Frère Stephen in Mâcon at the Galerie Mary-Ann. For more details of work in exhibitions check-out the Taizé website 
Each one of these events has its own committee and sturdy group of followers that are needed to organise the event and make it a success. We volunteered to help out with the randonnée and were taken up on that challenge this weekend. So at seven thirty Saturday morning, before the sun was up, we were at St Roch hall, the gathering place for the organisers. Fresh brioche arrived from the baker and small strong coffees were served to fortify us for our task. There were five different walks, 7, 13, 20 & 30 km and each walk had its own colour. To complete the walk you follow the arrows on the ground and as long as you stay alert, you end up back where you started. Some randonnées are marked out better than others, on some we have been horribly lost, but the Cormatin walk is always done well. We had a big responsibility on our shoulders as we were split up into teams, armed with cans of different coloured spray paint and we were driven to our respective starting points. We had ten kilometres to mark-up with yellow and orange paint. So on this damp morning, there we were, spraying the roads of the villages around Cormatin with arrows to show the right way to go and crosses to show where not to go, all done for the walkers who might or might not turn up on what was predicted to be a very wet Sunday.
For starters, the mayor’s wife had made a delicious salad of chicory leaves with walnuts, ham and cheese cut up into small blocks all covered in a delicious vinaigrette sauce (maybe I’ll be able to get the recipe for the vinaigrette if it is not a family secret). When I saw that Cees was tempted into taking a second helping, I whispered that this was just the starter and not to take too much, he whispered back that I shouldn’t be silly as this was all we were getting. That’s men for you! His eyes popped out of his head when a huge casserole full of venison was placed on the table. The deer had been shot the previous weekend by none other than the mayor himself and donated generously to the randonnée workers for this lunch. It turns out later that the mayor doesn’t eat game, so he was grateful for some enthusiastic consumers. This casserole, not much more complicated than venison cooked for hours in red wine with some herbs, onion and garlic, was absolutely amazing, served very simply with boiled potatoes. Lunch them continued with cheese and finally pears poached in red wine with brioche. All of this liberally washed down with the local brew. The meal started at twelve o’clock and us ladies were finishing the washing-up at three while the men were finishing their coffees. Food is not something to be rushed, it is to be discussed and above all, enjoyed in the company of others. It is a time to swap gossip, get the latest news and to hear stories and what stories! As the wine flowed the stories got better, the ones about the mayor shooting an eighty four kilo wild boar and the funeral with the missing body will have to wait for another blog..
We arrived at the refreshments post at the half-way point and were greeted with baguettes and ham or sausage, cheese and chocolate and of course wine. That boosted our resolve and off we headed for the second half of the walk. We finally staggered back to St Roch at about two o’clock wishing we had trained better. We were then invited to join the rest of the workers for supper at seven that evening. I must admit I felt a bit guilty about saying yes after the wonderful lunch the previous day and the fact that we hadn’t helped out at all on the Sunday, but why not. The evening was a much simpler affair than Saturday’s lunch, bits of pizza from Pizz’a Marco round the corner, quiche from one of the boulangeries in the high street and left-over bread, ham, cheese and wine from the walk’s refreshment posts. There was lots of chat about the day’s events, despite the dreadful predictions, the weather had been kind, cool and cloudy in the morning and cool but sunny in the afternoon, that brought the locals out and just under 500 had participated in the various walks, all in all not bad. We chatted about the organisation and it looks like we might be on the hit-list for doing more work for the village events. A great way to meet people and get involved, and also a great way to enjoy French food at its best, in the convivial company of our neighbours.
The locals are up in arms as you could imagine, graffiti (a thing you rarely see around here) has started to appear on the bridges over the road, the first road-side signs have been put up and emails are flying around between interested parties.
Our trusty campaigner ends his email with the comment “It is thus that the current debate has been preceded by a long battle, started in the XIIth century, to eliminate tolls on this road. This gives formidable historical legitimacy to those who try to preserve this asset against today’s feudal lords: the sharks of capitalism…” With rhetoric like that we are bound to win!
Every red-blooded male is out with his gun on a Sunday killing anything that moves. Having said that, la chasse is far more regulated these days than it used to be. By the early 80s there were virtually no wild animals (including little birds) left in the whole country, only cities still had sparrows, everywhere else everything had been blown to pieces by the millions of guns in the possession of the French population. Many accidents occurred killing both other hunters but also unsuspecting walkers out for an Sunday afternoon stroll.
and for pheasant and other game birds 20th September to 31st December, no hunting when there is snow and the local paper reminded hunters that racing pigeons are not wild animals and are protected by the law! However, the Chasse supplement of the local paper did not mention the dates for the most hunted animal in Burgundy. Fortunately during our picnic at Cluny’s Ouvrez les Portes a couple of weeks ago, we were given those dates as well. From the 1st of July until mid February you can hunt snails!
On the 20th of September (coincidently my birthday), we had to sort out a chasse of our own. It was a drizzly day but worse than that, the toilet in one of the gites had given up the ghost, the chasse (flushing mechanism) needed replacing and with guests arriving that evening, time was of the essence. After lots of water on the floor, lots of cursing and two tons of silicon we had a leak free chasse, just in time for the new guests.
In the world we live in today there is so much noise and distraction from without and within and he saw the use of “external” silence as the means to achieve “inner” silence and it is this inner silence that “makes possible our conversation with God.”
I have read many stories of Taizé experiences and the length of the silence seems to cause a lot of discussion. After my original estimate of five minutes, I was perfectly satisfied and never gave it any more thought. But I have been intrigued by others’ experiences and interestingly many believe that the silence is 10 minutes and I read one account where the writer stated that the silence was 20 minutes.
The name Cluny is synonymous with the spiritualism of the Middle Ages. The Cluny order exercised a considerable influence on the religious, intellectual, political and artistic lives in the whole of the western world at that time. Guillaume d’Aquitaine founded the Benedictine abbey in 910. The abbey’s growth in both size and power was very rapid. In the 12th century there were about 460 monks in the abbey and Cluny controlled 2500 other abbeys throughout the west.
Next year 2010 it is the 1100th anniversary of the foundation of this once great and influential abbey and this anniversary is being celebrated throughout Europe at various Clunisien sites. The start of the celebrations was “Ouvrez les portes” held last Sunday where the twelve ancient gates of Cluny were reconstructed. Each gate was given a different colour of the rainbow and these coloured segments were radiated out on a map of Europe symbolically showing Cluny as it was in ancient times as “La Lumière du Monde”. Each village or town in the area was allocated to a gate according to which coloured segment they fell under. We in Cormatin were assigned the Porte de la Chanaise, which was the white gate, the most important gate, the one that included all the colours of the spectrum. We all had to dress in white and bring a picnic to share with our neighbours based on the theme of white. The street leading into town from the gate was decorated in white and was filled with tables ready for the picnic. There were opening speeches, an aperitif with white snacks during which time we all had to sign a letter to be sent out to the countries in our segment (Belgium, The Netherlands and Norway) inviting them to the closing party next September. Then we all walked through the gate symbolising the opening up of the gates to the city and thus opening the 2010 celebrations. Then on to more important and less symbolic things. Picnic time had arrived and all the Cormatinois sat together at the tables we had brought and we shared vast amounts of white food and white wine. After this enormous picnic, cavaliers arrived at each gate to collect our letters and take them out into the world. Then everyone from all the gates formed a multi-coloured human chain around the city. A helicopter zoomed overhead registering the event for posterity. The day went on with more speeches, music and dancing in the Abbey park, but we were too tired after a long day and we cycled home along the Voie Verte. 
The five bells are hung in a very ugly (in my opinion) tower. We had heard that originally under the bells there was a small pond, this was intended to act as a “sound mirror” and reflect the sound increasing its potency, but complaints from the neighbours have meant that the pond was filled in and now wooden planks lie under the bell tower. Each bell is operated independently by an electro-motor connected to the top of the bells by a chain. The motor makes the chain oscillate back and forward, waggling the bell, if you like. Each motor operates at a different frequency, with the motors for the smaller bells moving quicker than that for the largest bell. When the bells are ringing, the “tune” created by the bells constantly changes because of this lack of synchronicity. We lay in wait for the bell monk and he never arrived, the bells just started and stopped most probably and quite boringly on a timer switch.
These are the vineyards that use machines to harvest. These machines are often co-owned and rotate around the fields at harvest time. Most will only take one pass at their vines which means that after harvesting is over there are plenty of grapes to be had free of charge from the vines. The machines only pick ripe bunches and so late developing bunches and bunches too deep in the foliage to be caught, remain on the vines for the birds and other (human) scavengers. If you want to make your own wine, you can certainly do that with free grapes if you have the time and patience to go searching.
This new flexibility in picking times means that the pickers will have more work as they can move between vineyards in the same area and also all vineyards will have enough pickers. It is not badly paid (up to about 200 Euros a day) but picking is really hard work, not for the faint-hearted and not for those with a dodgy back! Apart from the pay, a full-blown meal at lunch time is included and accommodation is often also part of the deal.
I went round in the car and Cees on the bike to be presented with a beautiful kitten that some friends had found in their village. She was one of the many stray cats that roam the village and beg at summer tables. Our friends asked the neighbour who was feeding her if she had any objection to the little thing being adopted, which she didn’t and so when our friends saw her again, they picked her up and put her in their cat cage awaiting collection.
The latest new step has been to find her a permanent place to sleep, we have decided on the “water room” ie the room where the hot water boiler is, as this is always warm even when it is way below zero outside. So Cees installed a cat flap in the door and we have had fun the last few days tempting her to go through the flap. As long as the flap is slightly open she will go through, but we haven’t managed to get her to open it herself yet. She is still in her cage at night (now in the water room) so she doesn’t need to use the flap just yet, but soon she’ll be completely free to roam day and night and before then she will have to have figured it out.
However, for me a church benefits from being put into “context”. Churches are places of worship and places of music and are best visited when one or other is taking place.
I’ve mentioned the “formal” concerts before in this blog and will undoubtedly mention them again when I go to another one, but there are other types of concerts here, the walk-in ones. Visiting a church when music is being played by a musician (as opposed to a tape recorder) adds so much to the atmosphere of the place.
It is a very pleasant way to spend an hour or just wander round the church while he is playing, if you want to stop and listen, bring a cushion, the seats are murderous.
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At this time of year the stole is green which it is for most of the year. All the clergy wear the same outfits except for their head gear. Orthodox priests wear their traditional hats, not dissimilar to a mitre and Catholic Cardinals wear their red calotte (small cap). This morning in Taizé there were two cardinals which for some reason I always find rather exciting even though I am not a catholic myself.
However, the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury has been announced, he is coming to Taizé from the 6th to the 9th of August. As the head of the Anglican church his visit is considered to be very prestigious to the Communauté. I have never heard him in a service so I will definitely be there on Sunday the 9th and hopefully he will conduct the service. As an Anglican, that will be for me a very special moment indeed.
We left that exciting story at the point that Poepie, our new lovely white cat with a black tail, had adopted us and had settled into life at La Tuilerie. She had discovered moles and was learning to stalk and catch them, not successful as yet, but she is only young. We have been feeding her, initially we rattled two cans together to attract her attention which worked very well but then we moved over to ringing a lovely Buddhist bell I bought at the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery (Bright Hill temple) in Singapore. 
As always with Cees being rather deaf, he said I was imagining things, but I was certain I heard something and so I kept looking. It was however another week or so before I saw a beautiful little kitten walking around on top of the lock-up. For several days I watched and I was convinced that there were more than one, but how many I didn’t know. The area is totally inaccessible for us, so we could just climb up and see what was going on. Gradually we realised that we had three kittens, being fed by their mother who went off every day returning to feed them. We went out and bought cat food and put that down for the mother, which she gobbled up every morning. However, we couldn’t get near any of the cats and so they grew up shy of people.
I was thrilled to bits, at last a cat (or four to be precise!), no responsibility regarding days away or holidays (we bought an automatic feeder for those occasions) and none in the house to upset my asthma as they were real outdoor cats. Sadly though Mummy cat left for good one day in July and took the kittens with her trotting behind in a little row (see the photo). Funnily enough after two weeks the kittens came back, three stayed until mid-August when one disappeared, another disappeared at the end of September and the third one last ate from the food on Christmas Eve. Since then no cats. They must have found somewhere warmer to live or somewhere where they got better food.
The other evening, we heard meowing again, just as some campers returned from a walk. They had been followed by a little cat. The cat is very friendly and immediately made herself at home in the shower block of the campsite. Where she comes from we don’t know, but she has adopted us. Since then we have been feeding her and playing with her, I hope she stays, I’ve missed having cats around.
A couple of months ago, the tourist information office approached us to see if we would like to host the so called “vin d’amité” and we were delighted to show off La Tuilerie to a group of walkers. The wine, water, squash and buns arrived in the morning and the walkers duly arrived, almost on time, at half past four. We split the group of twenty walkers into two groups and I gave a guided tour. We do a tour for people who stay in the gites or on the campsite very regularly, so that is not a problem. We have researched how Tuileries worked when ours was in its prime and we know a lot on the subject so we can field most questions with confidence. Before the walkers arrived I was brushing up on my vocabulary and I did my best to give a good story and in the end I was quite pleased with how it went.
If I made a mistake of tense or conjugation of a verb, I was gently corrected but I was a bit thrown by the correction of a word I used. The heart of the tuilerie is the oven and this was filled with the bricks and tiles covered by a layer of lime which partially acted as insulation but it also needed to be “cooked” itself to be used in mortar. The whole oven was heated up to one thousand degrees Celsius. On the second tour around the tuilerie, when I was describing the layer of lime (chaux) I was corrected by one of the walkers and he told that the word I should use was “chaume”. 
Fair enough, they are French, they speak the language better than me. So for the rest of the tour there was a layer of chaume on top of these very hot bricks. We later looked up the words, because both Cees and I were a bit baffled by this correction. We then discovered that chaume is a rather obscure word for straw! So we now have a bunch of French people wandering around telling their friends that a layer of straw was used to top the oven working at one thousand degrees. What was in the guy’s head when he corrected me? Ah well, we’ll know better next time!
Driving through Taizé is almost impossible at this time of year, outside of the church service or activity times, as the whole lot of them swarm over the road. That is not to mention the numerous bus loads of tourists who go to see what it Taizé is. They are greeted by eager, earnest youngsters in the welcome centre who are more than happy to explain what Taizé is all about. They come to look and be amazed at the numbers, they come for the beautiful pottery the monks sell to fund their life in Taizé and they come to attend a service.
The Church of Reconciliation was built with just this idea in mind. The “core” church, remains a church all year long and all day long. According to the number of people who have signed up to attend a week at Taizé, and according to the service (some are more popular than others) the church expands and contracts to make sure that it is always full. The church building is in fact a series of smaller rooms with vertical roller partitions.
During the day these rooms can be used for discussion groups and during the services the rooms disappear and they become part of the church.
celebrates in their own way, some with fireworks the night before, some with fairs or circuses and in Cormatin it is the “Brocante de qualité”.
Some were conscripted to return that afternoon but Cees and I were told to come back Monday at 15.00. Monday was another 2½ hours’ work putting up different marquees, then everyone went home (after the obligatory glass of wine of course) with fingers crossed that the predicted storm wouldn’t undo all our work.
The Mayor, his Deputy and the Garde Champêtre (in this instance read the village road sweeper who wears an impressive uniform for such events) had all disappeared, the flag had been in and out of the Town Hall and had also disappeared. The Garde Champêtre finally came running down the steps of the Town Hall brandishing the wreath shouting “Found it!!!”. It was another couple of minutes before the Mayor, the Deputy and the flag reappeared, they’d been desperately phoning for some new flowers. Apparently the florist has hidden the wreath to stop it being damaged by the predicted storm, pity no one at the Town Hall knew. 
Marseillaise played on Monsieur P.’s car-mounted cassette recorder. This time, rather unusually, Monsieur P. had put the wrong side of the cassette in the player, so we heard bursts of other patriotic songs until he ejected the cassette and manually wound the tape. He wound it the wrong way but never mind, we only missed half of the national anthem. 
At the end of a ceremony the Mayor invites everyone back to one or other of the local bars/cafés for the “Vin d’Honneur”. On this occasion it was La Terrasse for Kir and delicious quiche and savoury brioche made by Monique herself. Next ceremony 11th November, let’s wait and see what happens that time.
It appears from the bumph that the lead oboist is a woodwind teacher at the music school in Montceau-les-Mines and that the bulk of the players were students. The brass section looked too old to be students, which may explain the difference in quality of playing between them and the rest.
have led me nowhere, no one knows what Tiny Tears are any more, so in the end I had to make it up as I went along. I had great fun piecing together ideas and snippets of patterns to make Fiona her new dress. In the end I got so carried away, she got new matching pants as well. Now she looks just as smart as her sister who is still wearing the same dress, scarf and pants my Mum made for her in about 1970. Let’s see if these clothes will last that long!
asked us if we would do a long weekend. Great for us and just what they wanted! What I am also very impressed with is that they have been analysing the photos and spotted that the large double bed in L’Etable (the gite with the bedroom upstairs) can be converted into two singles (spot the legs!). So even better for them, two single beds and no need to put the son in a blow up bed on the floor. All they had to do was bring their own duvet and hey presto.
that I could actually do something. They look like a six year old had made them, but I was pleased to have completed at least one project. I then moved on to a cardigan that didn’t fit and then my first real success – a jumper. But these big things take along time, need a lot of wool (which isn’t cheap) and after all how many jumpers does a girl need?
After Easter in 2006 we went to Taizé to have a look around and we were amazed at the number of young people milling around. We didn’t go to a service as that seemed inappropriate, with all these kids around it seemed like a young person’s thing. I wanted to go to a service, but I didn’t know how it worked, so I didn’t dare go alone. In July some campers (Ans and Simon) arrived, she had been to Taizé for the first time that spring and wanted to camp nearby to take in a few services and tempt her husband to go too. He however wasn’t interested and she didn’t dare go alone. At last my chance to go to a service, so on a Friday evening Ans and I went up the hill to Taizé.
To my surprise I found that we have a walnut tree in our garden. Two years ago I saw green fruit on one of our trees, and such fruit I had never seen before in my life. When I found out they were walnuts that was it, I decided to make pickled walnuts. The first attempt was not a success. I had picked the walnuts too late and the hard nut was already forming. The resulting mess was not something to be proud of! This year I have picked, tested and done everything in time – I hope. Today was the end of three weeks of processing. Two weeks in brine and several days drying in the sun and today the bottling. The walnuts look like nothing on earth, but I am reliably formed they are delicious – although some accounts say that they are an acquired taste. I’ll edit this blog when I get to eat them in a couple of months’ time!
Sunday morning and it is randonnée time. Every week from mid-April to the end of June and all during September and October, there are organised walks in the area around here. I must say that “organised walks” kind of put me off from trying them, the very thought of having to walk with a bunch of other people didn’t thrill me to bits, but we tried one anyway and now we are hooked. There are basically two types of walk, the ones that are set out and which you walk at your own speed and those where you walk in a group. The groups walks are not our cup-of-tea. You have to walk at the speed of the slowest and you have to stop every time someone wants to pick flowers! The one time we did a group walk, it took us nearly 4 hours to do about 10 km, I was EXHAUSTED, never again.
The church of Reconciliation in Taizé had a monstrosity of an organ mounted on the wall on the left-hand side when looking to the altar end of the church. Tall pilgrims could hardly stand beneath it and I have seen one man hit his head. Frère Roger thought that the organ was too big, pompous and loud for the community. Taizé’s music is simple and requires little or no accompaniment, so the little organ, played by one of monks within the “garden”, that usually sounds like a guitar, suits the whole service. 
During the refurbishments of two years ago, this ghastly thing was thankfully removed which did wonders for the simple beauty of this end of the church. The orange curtains draped at the altar end church and the small stain glass windows are the only adornments in the church and they achieve the right effect. 
They have been watching the goings on in a little house on the Voie Verte very near here. The house in question has been in the throws of renovation ever since we came to live here. The last two weeks, under Eric’s watchful eye, there have been strange comings and goings at that house. Firstly a large upright fridge with a glass front arrived, then a huge chest freezer and then (most suspicious of all) a large box, that Eric was convinced was full of parasols, arrived yesterday. On Eric’s outing this morning, the truth was revealed, a gravelled patio with tables chairs and parasols and a sign saying that L’Annexe was open for business! Now all those thirsty cyclists that travel up and down the Voie Verte can stop and enjoy a hot or cold drink and a snack. 
They had been badly pruned over the years, most were half dead and all were held together with metal wires. She claimed that they produced enormous crops and that the jelly you could make from them was delicious. Not being a jam or jelly fan myself, I didn’t really get too excited by the prospect. Anyway, Mme Chachuat phoned in the spring of 2006 to see if I knew how to make jam or jelly. I knew she just wanted to see what we had done during the renovations on the house, so even though I have made tonnes of jam in the past, I said I did not know how to and she obligingly offered to come and teach me.
y, the two singers were from that region.
