The 8th Reason I came to France

If the two of you who read my blog have been paying attention, you will know that I am counting down the reasons I came to France.

Reason number eight (8), is because of the Peace and Quiet, and the generally Civilized Behavior. Well, quoting the great Rolling Stones, "that is all over now".

You will remember that we, live in a street that is like a retirement community. Every other house seems to be occupied by (although time and illness have made it less and less so) a little old lady living alone. The loneliness that permeates the street like a fog in and of itself would be tragic enough but it is compounded by the fact that these ladies are, by definition, old, and hence give the street that feeling!

This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing: it keeps the "Saturday Night Fever" noise down to graveyard levels, which is something I like.

But, Nature is cruel and as in any other species, age, illness, and weather take their toll. In the last two or three years, we have lost four of our deal ladies: our next door neighbor, and three just across the road from us.

To compound the sadness of this decimation, their homes have been inherited by--ugh, you guessed it--out-of-towners! Sons and daughters, foreign to our fair city, uncaring of our customs, and most appallingly, indifferent to my need for Peace and Quiet!

Lest you think me a "grouchy old man" (I am admittedly a grouchy middle-aged man, not yet qualifying as old), I will justify my grievances with ample examples of the uncivilized behavior the inheritors have demonstrated:

Firstly, are our next door neighbors: the mother of the person who inherited the house next door was a lovely woman. She liked to invite us over for an aperitif, talk about books and the ballet, and discuss the latest painting exhibition we had attended in Paris. She was as quiet as a mouse wearing slippers as she went about her daily chores: never a fuss, never a bother. Alas, one day, as we returned from vacation, we found a policeman at her doorstep. He informed us she had passed away during the night, in her sleep, as quietly as she had lived.

Then (sigh), the inheritors got it into their head, since they live in Paris, to rent out the place to other Parisians, all of which are eager to come and crowd our beaches in the summer. Also, unfortunately, we live near a golf course, one of the oldest in France, so when the house is not let out in summer it is let out during autumn, spring, and even winter to avid golfers who will play a round even in the middle of a rain storm. Of course, all of the above love to carry on at night, either telling surfing stories or lying about how great a golf round they had. All this amply "arrosé" as they say here, with beer and/or liquor.

And so it goes now. In summer we have had a succession of eclectic tenants: surfers who play guitars (badly tuned and badly played) all night and barbecued questionable meat (they said it was rabbit, I say it was cat) in the front garden so the smoke could come into our open windows; in winter it is wealthy golfers who own gigantic SUVs that crowded the street and who drink and laugh all night. As an extra added attraction, in summer we get ladies who go off every day to the near-by beach dragging behind huge beach bags on wheels that sound as if a Sherman tank were passing by. Just to make sure we hear they going by, they yell at the gaggle of kids that run ahead of them shouting and arguing.

The next change in our street came via the death of a lady who lived directly in front of us. Her inheritors promptly sold the house to a sour faced fellow who decided to remodel the place and rent it out. As a token of his neighborly charm, he proceeded to rip out the front garden of the house and replace it with a slab of concrete. The remodeling was left to workmen who in the course of redoing the walls, replacing the windows and so forth, greeted us each morning with a cloud of dust and paint particles.

We had a couple of weeks of peace and quiet...until the next lady died. Her sons decided they were going to remodel the house (which is just two houses over from the lady described above), and they have been at it for months. I mean, this is a BIG remodeling job with workers there all day, using heavy equipment, and the street full of lorries, and huge dump trucks. The noise and dust is unbearable.

I amuse myself by fighting with the foreman, a sneaky fellow who refuses to be responsible for anything that happens. (I had a running argument with him about the scratches that some truck made to our car. The workers were very amused that I called him an irresponsible jackass and used all of the insulting words in French that I know to tell him off.)

The problem is that everyone in the country loves the south of France. That is not a surprise since we have lovely beaches, great weather, and beautiful country side. Not to mention the closeness of Spain!

I remember that when I came to France to look for a place to live, I stayed in Brittany, in western France, with a friend and his wife. Their house was nowhere near the popular seaside places or historical towns, such as Quimper. It was in Upper Brittany, where the woods are thick and stories of witches, goblins, and elves abound. Not the Romans, or the Germans, or anyone else has been able to dominate these descendants of Celts. And, modern life has not done much better either! Hence, the countryside is (sparsely) populated by hard working farmers and artist. These folks keep much to themselves. So, at night the quiet and the dark are impressive. If you like peace and quiet, that is the place to be.

(Sigh!) But, since we do not live in Brittany, we will have to grin and bear it until the work is done on all the houses, and some sort of peace returns to our street, that is, until the summer crowd arrives. But, this year we will get ours back: we plan to rent the house out to the Parisians, and leave town. We plan to enjoy a better sort of noise, or I should say sounds: Jazz in Marciac!