Old-time Brittany

Christine lives at Gommenec'h. Yesterday morning, François drove me to a splendid little village, not far away from here, named St-Jacques. Alongside the church, in the middle of the village, there's a typically Breton stone calvary.

There's also an ancient holy well.

Following a local custom, François and I threw coins over our shoulders, into the well, while making wishes. Later, my son took me to a grocery shop, run by an old lady named Madeleine, in the nearby village of Le Faouët (not to be confused with a town of that name, elsewhere in Brittany).

We had a beer there, in a setting that looks as if it has emerged from the 19th century.

It's the kind of universal village store in which you can buy bread, fruit and vegetables, newspapers, cigarettes, etc.

In fact, it reminds me of country stores that still existed in Australia when I was a kid… with, of course, one big difference. In my native land, it would have been out of the question to sit down at a table and drink a beer.

Rapid trip to Brittany

The weather at Gamone has been damp over the last week, preventing me from carrying on work in my future rose garden. So, I decided to leave my dog Sophia in the excellent boarding kennels at Alixan, just alongside the Valence TGV (high-speed train) station, and to spend a few days in Brittany. Truly, crossing France in a TGV is a luxurious experience, which is not only rapid but relatively inexpensive (compared to a car trip).

Yesterday afternoon, as soon as Christine picked me up at Guingamp, we visited our son's recently-acquired property at Plouha, where he is busy restoring the house. The view of the calm English Channel from this field of cauliflowers in front of his house is truly breathtaking.

François happens to have settled in what can be described as a genealogical setting. His mother's Breton ancestors have lived for centuries in the nearby farming country, while his father's Skyvington ancestors came from Dorset, on the northern edge of the waters you see in the above photo.

Aging ghost from a ghost town

This year, my home town is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its proclamation as a so-called city... which no longer exists in reality, because the former municipality has been dissolved into a geographically broader entity that might be described as a regional administration. In a foreword to the following commemorative book, for example, the senior elected individual refers to himself, not as the mayor of Grafton, but as the mayor of the Clarence Valley Council.

Today's my birthday. I was born in Grafton (New South Wales, Australia) exactly 69 years ago. Now, if you want to know what Grafton was like when I grew up there (up until I reached the age of 16, when I left for university studies in Sydney), well you should simply go there today. Little seems to have changed. Nothing whatsoever appears to have evolved in a positive sense. It's a place devoid of visible development, of civic progress. A place where almost nothing of significance ever happens (apart from their antiquated colloquium on science and religion). The "city" makes a brave effort to take itself seriously (for example, the authorities commissioned the above book, written by an outsider), but the major economic actors moved out of town long ago, just as most of the dairy farmers on the banks of the Clarence abandoned their time-honored activities. Today, the global scene in Grafton is one of genteel decadence. When I last visited my birthplace, in 2006, I had the impression that I was wandering around in a ghost town whose ghosts are kindly requested to stay away from the few remaining pubs that still attract customers, and to keep off the streets after dark. I'm told that it remains nevertheless a nice town for people who like a quiet existence.

As the sole resident of Gamone, and happy to remain so, I guess I should appreciate that viewpoint. But I'm sure I would be terribly frustrated if I were obliged to reside in Grafton. I'm much better off here in my adoptive home in France.

French presidents are funny fellows

Instead of "funny", I was about to write "horny". Thinking of male political candidates eager to win (girl)friends and influence people, Confucious might have said: Every election is an erection. But it would be a mistake to highlight the purely sexual aspects of what I have to say. In French presidential funniness, horniness is no doubt a significant element, but it's not the sole driving force.

You can never predict what a French president (or ex-president) might do next. Look at Nicholas Sarkozy, for example. Who would have imagined that, shortly after his election, when his legally-wedded first lady walked out on him, he would promptly get himself linked, for the better or for the worse, with a young Italian pop singer? Today, he's involved in a different kettle of fish: the Clearstream affair.

Using all his presidential might, the French president is currently pursuing, in the law courts, a former prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. In a nutshell, Sarkozy claims that somebody tried to frame him, with electoral ambitions in mind, in the context of a Swiss-based banking scandal. So, there'll be lots of legal fun and games in France (for TV audiences) over the next month.

Concerning Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, I can't figure out yet whether the funniness is basically primitive horniness, or whether there might have been (past tense) something far worse at stake, such as a fuzzy desire to be accepted as a vigorous potential pretender to the British throne. For me personally, if were called upon to choose between Prince Charles (accompanied by Camilla) and Giscard (accompanied by Anne-Aymone), I would hesitate for a long moment. All these people have the stuff of monarchy... but there's an obvious passport obstacle in the case of Giscard. Maybe he was trying to solve this problem by means of a union with Lady Diana. I haven't had time to examine all the details of the situation, but I would imagine that the following scenario could have been enacted at that epoch:

Phase 1: Giscard, having seduced Diana, obtains a divorce from Anne-Aymone. The president can therefore marry his English princess, and they have a splendid son, say Nicholas Dominique d'Estaing. Automatically, at the desire of Diana, Giscard and their baby are naturalized as British citizens.

Phase 2: The English-speaking people of the planet (even in faraway outposts of the ancient empire such as my native land) are so overcome by the sheer beauty of this new entente cordiale between England and France that they launch a plebiscite aimed at replacing Charles by this glorious dauphin named Nicholas Dominique d'Estaing.

Phase 3: In fuzzy circumstances coordinated by the efforts of the European community in Brussels, with a little help from George Bush (who never really understood the possible consequences of what he was doing), Elizabeth accepts the idea that the next king of England should be Nicholas I.

Ah, if only events had happened like that! The world at large would have had fabulous reality resources for TV, and idiots like me would have been able to talk at length about these celebrities on the Internet.

Apple hit me on the head

Seeing that blog title, Corina is going to think: "Poor William was down on his knees adjusting computer cables when his MacBook rolled off the table and bounced on his skull." And she might add: "Let's hope his machine didn't get damaged." Well no, it was a quite different happening. Over the last day or so, I've been thrilled to find myself gravitating genealogically, like a wandering star, towards Isaac Newton. Scientifically-minded observers might call it a hypothetical Newtonian relationship. I can hear other readers saying: "A fortnight ago, he gave us his links to William the Conqueror. Today, it's Newton. He's out of his mind. At this rate, tomorrow, he'll be talking to us about his relatives in Nazareth." Apples have indeed caused tremendous upsets in human history, ever since Adam and Eve. And I don't deny for a moment that more recent impacts with these fruit of knowledge might have damaged my brain...

Here are the basic space-time elements of the global situation:

It's impossible to be much more precise than that, since it's hard to associate these individuals with exact dates and places. Notice the existence of Newton's maternal uncle, the Reverend William Ayscough (pronounced askew), who detected the genius of his 12-year-old nephew and arranged to send him to Trinity College (where William himself had been educated).

Now, here's an equally vague fragment of my own family tree:

In both cases, the Ayscoughs are located in Lincolnshire, and the time frames are equivalent. It's funny to see that my ancestors Thomas Latton and Mary Ayscough were married in London (at the Church of St Benet Paul's Wharf) just a month after the marriage of Newton's parents. Besides, my ancestor John Latton (at one time deputy lieutenant of the county of Surrey), son of Mary Ayscough, was born in the same year as Isaac Newton, son of Hannah Ayscough.

I'm tempted to imagine that the two individuals named William Ayscough in the above charts might in fact be identical, in which case my ancestor Mary Ayscough would have been a first cousin of Isaac Newton. Devil's advocates will point out to me that Newton's uncle William was a clergyman, probably a Catholic priest. So, it's hard to admit the sinful speculation of Father Ayscough as the father of Mary. I disagree. Ever since the apple of Eden, anything's possible.

Cheap website

These days, if leaders of political movements want to influence people, their Internet presence must be impeccable. Here's the web page of Ségolène Royal, which hit the world yesterday:

The thick black frame around the video is not particularly aesthetic, and the presentation of a dozen buttons is boring. Furthermore, this allegedly professional website is based visually upon a free Microsoft background image:

It's the sort of basic website that could have been assembled by an average schoolkid. A single adjective springs into the minds of connoisseurs: cheap. Is Ségolène Royal no longer in contact with talented photographers, web designers and media experts? Today, would-be leaders can no longer get away with cheap stuff like this. There are simply too many brights kids around. And they're going to vote for tomorrow's leaders.

BREAKING NEWS: The website's getting worse. Yesterday, we saw a typical specimen of amateur web creativity at a junior college level. Today, we're informed by a big banner that the creation of Ségolène's website will be a "participative" affair, with various Socialist Party committees throughout France taking turns in contributing various backgrounds. This morning, to start the ball rolling, they've moved down to an infants' school level.

[Click the image to see what happens.
Maybe the website has been hacked, and this is a hoax.]

If this process continues, Ségolène will soon be demonstrating that even a year-old baby can participate in the creation of a website. Maybe, for background: a dirty diaper.

Request for help from a US resident

In the context of my family-history project entitled They Sought the Last of Lands, I would like to obtain copies of two rare books:

-- Life of John Pickering by Mary Orme Pickering [digitized from 1887 volume]

-- Dialoge or Confabulation between Two Travellers, etc... written circa 1580 by William Spelman, edited by John Edward Latton Pickering [digitized from 1896 volume]

The above-mentioned Pickerings are paternal ancestors of mine. Both documents are available from Barnes and Noble in the form of free eBooks, but you have to be a US resident to obtain them. Maybe a kind US reader of my blog would be prepared to obtain these eBooks and email them to me. I would be truly grateful for this help.

Deplorable habit

French youth are shocked to discover retrospectively that the former president Jacques Chirac once had a deplorable habit.

Even at public meetings, when he should have been paying attention to what was being said, he was constantly taking or making calls on his iPhone. Observers affirm that Chirac was such a heavy phoner that, at times, smoke could be seen coming out of his iPhone. It can be said today that Chirac's phoning habit was therefore dangerous, because everybody knows that iPhones tend to explode from time to time.

[Click the image to see the original photo.]

Income tax

September 14: the eve of the final date for a payment of income tax. Even my magnificent dog (adjectives fail me when I evoke Sophia) sensed that there was urgency in the air. In fact, Sophia senses everything in my existence. So, I invited her to jump into the car and accompany me down to the post office at Pont-en-Royans. Taxes are less painful when you pay them with your dog.

On the way back, we were halted by my neighbor Madeleine, who had been waiting in the middle of the road to give me a plate of figs:

She suggested I might make jam. I replied that her figs would surely be devoured within a few days, before my thinking about jam. In her usual unpredictable, totally random but lovely style, Madeleine (by the roadside, alongside my automobile, with Sophia awaiting impatiently our return to Gamone, a hundred meters up the road) started to tell me the history of the silver plate upon which her gift of figs was placed. I'll spare you the complex details about something overflowing, long ago, and eroding the silver plate. But I know already that, because of this fuzzy tale, the figs will taste all that much more delicious.

Nudes

For as long as I've known Christine, I've associated this famous photo, entitled Provençal nude, taken by Willy Ronis in 1949, with my ex-wife and her family context.

There are two reasons for this association. First, I believe this image has always been a favorite of Christine's father: a keen photographer who married a Provençal girl. Second, above all, this scene of a girl washing herself in a delightfully old-fashioned rural setting evokes the context of the family's ancient manor house in Brittany.

Willy Ronis has just died at the age of 99. I don't usually publish nude photos of myself... but I'll make an exception, in honor of Willy.

Christine took this photo long ago at Le Ruflet. Clearly, I'm sure you'll agree with me that the inspiration of my wife was not solely me.

I love butterflies

When I happened to complain recently about grubs that are eating my rose leaves, Christine reacted on the phone as if I might be a psychopath who's declaring war on innocent butterflies. A wise employee in a horticultural shop also concluded rhetorically: "You're not talking about massive destruction of your rose bushes. You're merely losing a few leaves from time to time. Why worry?"

Consequently, in a flash of light, like what happened to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, I decided to change my evil ways. Now, when I come upon a lost grub, I lead it back to a nice supply of rose leaves.

The Dalai Lama would love the new me like he loves grubs.

Great fig tree, but low yield

This little Mediterranean fig tree, given to me by Natacha and Alain, is coming along really well. What I mean to say is that it looks beautiful, and it surely has a promising future at Gamone.

The fruit is delicious. But, for the moment, the yield is somewhat low. Like one fig a year. Here's a photo of this year's production:

That reminds me of my former French sheep station, which my aunt Nancy once described with pride to her golfing friends at Pymble.

Ladies: "How many head of sheep does your nephew run?"

Nancy: "Five."

The important thing is to believe in expansion, and to have confidence in the future.

Life after M

You'll have to forgive me. My August 2009 was a harsh month, which I'm not likely to forget in the near future. To maintain minimal Internet contacts with the outside world, I was obliged to set foot almost daily, for weeks on end, in places of Purgatory (a little less nasty than Hell) that are intent upon reducing the peoples of the Earth to gut-level subservience: a slow and nasty kind of alimentary intoxication, not unlike subtle poisoning carried out in the context of the Accursed Kings of France, or in Agatha Christie novels.

Attention: I'm not suggesting for a moment that any fast-food outlet is deliberately trying to execute any kind of malicious poisoning plan. It's not at all deliberate. It just happens to be falling out that way. The saddest and most dramatic experience of all, when you're dining in this kind of place, is to lift your eyes (from your hamburger or from your computer screen) and take a quick look at your neighbors. There's a distinctly fast-food customer profile, a customer outline, a customer model, a customer contour... And it's not nice. It's a big, bulky, flabby, two-handed hamburger-guzzling shape, constantly asking for more fast fuel, like a diesel engine that starts to splutter as soon as the fuel gauge runs low. It's hard to nurture an admiration for one's humankind when you observe them devouring rubbish in a fast-food place.

But stop! I can't be totally sure that my Antipodes blog would emerge unscathed if such and such a corporation were to attack me for being verbally unkind to them. (What fabulous publicity!) My title proclaims: There is life after M. I'm here today as a survivor, to spread the Good News about our earthly sustenance.

Sunday pests

The local Catholic priest has never tried to convert me to his religion. That's understandable, because there's no longer any such individual in the neighborhood. A visiting priest does the rounds of the dozens of churches in the district for masses and marriages... particularly since the latter give rise generally, at the end of the betrothal, to a generous donation in crisp brightly-hued banknotes. This morning, for example, it was the big Sunday for Choranche, and my neighbor Madeleine was thrilled to inform me on the phone that there were at least two dozen aging individuals in the congregation. Just try to imagine that pious flock emerging from the doorway of the village church, seen in this old postcard (expertly tinted by a minute of Photoshop):

Burials, on the other hand, are taken care of by a compassionate middle-aged lady who lives at Pont-en-Royans. That solution might be thought of as a regression by old-timers who remember priests in black soutanes and altar boys in white laced cassocks. But it can be said that nobody buried under the auspices of this kind lady has ever complained of their treatment.

Meanwhile, this morning at Gamone, I received a visit by three young women on foot, members of the Jehovah's Witness organization. Now, if there's anything that drives me momentarily but furiously mad on a sunny Sunday morning, when I'm calmly devoting my time and energy to a subtle blend of gardening and computer-based work, it's a visit from Jehovah's Witnesses. I see them as pests, to be chased away. To be honest, it hasn't happened for ages... and I don't think it will happen again for quite some time. Let's say that I have a method for dealing with such individuals, in a totally spontaneous but well-oiled manner. The underlying rule is to dominate totally the discussion (in fact, a monologue), bringing up various well-chosen topics, and consistently refusing to allow them to get a word in. I do this reasonably well in the sense that I have a fair amount of experience in lecturing and industrial training courses in computing, where you don't really expect listeners to intervene verbally. Little by little, I allow them to start a sentence or two, which I exploit immediately in a harsh demonstration of their stupidity, ignorance, etc. This "dialogue" is conducted politely, almost respectfully, but I am constantly waiting for one of my listeners to pronounce a few words that might be construed as an attack on science. Then I pounce. This morning, one of the poor women started to say: "But, after all, Darwin's ideas are merely a theory, which can be contradicted..." That was largely sufficient for me to explode in an almost dignified style. I told the women to piss off immediately, and to never come back to Gamone to waste my time.

My farewell tactic is always the same, seemingly spontaneous, but in fact well-oiled, like the rest of my diatribe. Calling the three women back, I stammered out something along the following lines: "Excuse me for getting so upset. You must realize that I'm particularly fond of Charles Darwin. Criticism of his brilliant ideas upsets me immensely. I should force myself to remain calm, but it's stronger than me. You know how it is. In a rural setting like this, people tend to get upset by encounters with strangers like you, who drop in unexpectedly and start trying to tell us how to think. Besides, I must warn you that it would be unwise for you to visit local folk such as myself at any old time of the day or evening. You know, in the dark, all the local people have weapons, and one never knows how we might react if we were visited by individuals in the twilight, with the dogs barking, etc."

I don't mind being considered as a little crude and crazy. After all, I look upon Jehovah's Witnesses as immensely mindless creatures, on a cerebral par with medieval theologists. Readers will notice that, in what I've said, there's nothing that might be construed as an explicit threat, merely almost-friendly general advice, to avoid the possibility of nasty happenings. In parting, rapidly, the women wished me a happy Sunday. And I did the same. Needless to say, I've lost three would-be friends. But I believe I'm perfectly within my rights to discourage vigorously, in my own style, such visits from religious proselytizers.

A minute after our separation, as the women were retreating on foot down along Gamone Creek, with Sophia continuing to bark gruffly, spasmodically and dispassionately (in the way she barks when minor events are unfolding before her eyes), there was a totally-unplanned Magic Moment. A series of three loud gunshot bangs rang out across the valley from Châtelus. The three females looked back up over their shoulders, half expecting to see me with a gun in my hands. I waved a farewell. It was only this morning that Madeleine, after describing the mass at Choranche, and knowing that I don't read newspapers, added: "I forgot to warn you, William: the hunting season started yesterday." Yes, Madeleine, I saw three wild birds at Gamone.

Cadel's bike breakdown... like my Internet

This photo shows Cadel Evans in the recent Tour de France:

These days, he has been competing splendidly in the Vuelta, the road-cycling tour of Spain. In fact, he could seriously contemplate winning it, since he has been just seven seconds behind Alejandro Valverde. This afternoon, after a trivial mechanical breakdown, Cadel Evans had to wait by the roadside for an entire minute until the Silence-Lotto service vehicle finally dropped by. That's a hell of a lot of silence. Cadel's chances of winning the lottery have suddenly dropped considerably. To zero, you might say. That sad and silly incident no doubt puts an end to one of Australia's biggest hopes for a great cycling victory. And it probably terminates Cadel's top-level cycling career.

Exodus

It's hard to believe that anything new in the way of World War II documentaries could come to light. One has the impression that everything has been said and shown a thousand times over. But the series of six TV specials entitled Apocalypse, now being shown on the France 2 channel, brings something breathtakingly new to the screen, for two reasons. First, the authors have unearthed amazing previously-unseen footage in every corner of the globe. Second, they've suceeded in manually coloring it so that everything looks natural. On this second point, we often forget that black-and-white photos and films, although we're accustomed to them, remain hugely abstract, maintaining a constant distance between the reality of the viewer's everyday universe (in color) and the artificial formality of the monochrome images.

In this remarkable movie sequence, women are evacuating Strasbourg in September 1939, in the wake of Hitler's invasion of Poland. The evacuation wasn't a spontaneous reaction to enemy presence (since the Nazis were still far away), but rather an official order from the French government, to ensure the future safety of citizens.

A determined middle-aged lady is doing work that is normally performed by a horse. She's well shod in sturdy shoes and thick stockings, but her flimsy mauve blouse and narrow black skirt are not exactly working clothes. Besides, the backwards angle of her arms is hardly ideal for dragging a heavy load. One wonders why this unfortunate woman is performing a horse's job. The explanation, no doubt, is that the massive scale of this evacuation (some 600,000 citizens of Alsace and Moselle between September 1939 and the spring of 1940) meant that work-horses were in short supply.

This young lady in a transparent skirt might have power in her legs and arms, but it's unlikely that she'll be able to carry on pushing that cart all the way to the primary destinations of these fleeing families: the French départements of Limousin, Périgord, Gers and Charentes. Those havens of safety lie hundreds of kilometers to the south. That's a long way on foot, pulling and pushing a cart.




This fellow is riding his bike in the opposite direction to the women with their cart. Is he contemplating a forthcoming bicycle evacuation from Strasbourg? Maybe he's training for the task. Or is he simply out on an excursion, to take in a bit of the action? Could he be an evacuation inspector, checking that everything's coming along fine?


Between the tram lines, where no trams have passed for ages, this confused little dog is wondering what the hell is happening. Should it follow the women and their cart? Or is there a ray of hope that the approaching cyclist might lead the tiny animal back to its former comfortable life in the great capital of Alsace? If we return to the original photo, there seems to be a tiny patch of clear sky above the buildings alongside the tram lines. The hesitant dog, pointing neither north nor south, is wondering: "Is this maybe the end of the tunnel?" Alas, no.

Bravo! We have a new tax in France

They refer to it as the carbon tax... which is a ridiculous expression. After all, diamonds are pure carbon, but this new tax has nothing to do with riches of that kind.

It's a tax—to become effective in 2010—based upon the production of pollutant carbon dioxide... which is quite another kettle of smelly fish. Wrong again, as far as that last cliché is concerned. Carbon dioxide has no odor... otherwise the world would indeed be a stinking place. This ubiquitous gas is not even toxic in very small concentrations: less than 1% of the air we breathe.

Nicolas Sarkozy has just announced that a tax of 17 euros per ton of CO2 will be "paid by all consumers of fossil fuel" in France. Whether or not you like taxes (I feel that in France, like Guinness, they're good for you), one must admit that this is a big and politically courageous step in the right direction concerning the all-important combat against global warming.

I hope that my native Australia will soon jump on the environmental band wagon, instead of simply letting off CO2-filled steam on this all-important question.

Nomadic beast filling its pouch

My daughter found this French video on the web:

If only the overrated Chaser's War on Everything on Australian TV had included imaginative sketches of this quality, I would have found their sense of humor less juvenile. To my mind, putting on a false beard, dressing up as an Arab and getting driven through security barriers (?) to an international conference is hardly hilarious.

I don't imagine, though, that all the kangaroo's encounters were spontaneous happenings. It looks like a staged video for a French song about a nomadic kangaroo. But it's still funny.

Smooth and rapid change

My recent change of ISP [Internet service provider] from Free to Orange has been an amazingly smooth and rapid operation.

In the context of France Telecom, I'm therefore surprised and saddened by front-page news stories about the high incidence of suicides, due to work stress, among their technical employees. Since February 2008, there have been 21 cases of suicide in France Telecom inside France... which is a truly huge figure. The latest case, a week ago, involved a 53-year-old technician at the research and development center in Lannion, Brittany.

I might be accused of disrespect if I were to say that there's an ISP whose technical employees are not likely to commit suicide through excessive work stress. This morning, 7 September, the postwoman brought me a letter from Free dated 21 August in an envelope with a postmark of 24 August, acknowledging the reception of my fax of 17 August in which I complained bitterly about the discontinuation of my phone and Internet since 3 August. This morning's obsolete letter asks me to be patient...

Other Norman ancestors... besides the Conqueror

Up until a month ago, I had never heard of a village in Normandy named Estouteville (known today as Estouteville-Écalles), nor of the English descendants of that place—the Stutville family—whose surname evoked their Norman origin. A month ago, on the eve of my monumental Internet collapse, I had just learned that my paternal ancestors in England named Latton were descendants of the Stutvilles of Estouteville. I must admit, however, that I am unlikely to unearth a detailed paper trail concerning the Stutvilles of the same quality as my direct links to the Conqueror, as presented in my previous post, entitled Genealogical breakthrough [display].

In other words, I retain the fine but fuzzy idea that I'm a descendant of the English Stutvilles whose origin was the Norman village of Estouteville... but I shall surely remain eternally incapable of substantiating that claim by means of hard genealogical facts.

Meanwhile, I'm impressed by various well-documented French descendants of that Norman village and its noble family.

The cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, for example, pleaded in favor of Joan of Arc.

I shall be investigating both this Norman village and its descendants... and attempting to link them more precisely, if possible, to our Lattons.

Genealogical breakthrough

Just before my Internet went down, I made a fascinating discovery in the context of my paternal genealogy. The ancestral line of my grandmother Kathleen Pickering [1889-1964] leads back in a highly-documented fashion—with relatively credible and complete records for most of the way—to King John [1166/7-1216]. From there, of course, we get back to William the Conqueror [1024-1087].

Normally, if you click that chart on the left, your browser should display a more readable presentation of this résumé of my ancestral line back to the Conqueror.

I've already started to set down this stuff on paper, as the final chapter of a document on my paternal ancestors entitled They Sought the Last of Lands. Click the following banner to access a new blog on this subject, which displays a link to the website concerning my paper document. For the moment, only the preface and chapter 6 are available.

This document will finally include all my known Skyvington genealogy... which is not yet firmly linked in a documented fashion (contrary to what I have always imagined, and tried to confirm) to ancestors who write their name as Skeffington. The future document will also present my ancestors with surnames such as Mepham, Pickering, Latton, etc.

Local farmers

I love agricultural fairs and farm animals. Is it my particular rural childhood in South Grafton that is resurfacing? Or is this some kind of universal human sentiment? No doubt a bit of both.

I took these photos on a hot afternoon at the annual fair in the nearby village of Saint Just-de-Claix.

There weren't many animals, and not many visitors. I think this is a consequence of the simple fact that most of us, living in this Royans district, are in constant contact with farms and animals. So, we don't really need to visit a fair to see them.

I find that the faces and expressions of farmers are no less fascinating than those of their non-human friends. Often, you can read the feelings of farmers on their faces, through their physical forms, just easily as you can judge the weather by gazing up into the sky. They have a psychological and moral heritage of being direct and honest, and this renders them friendly. They can be complex individuals, capable of selling a five-legged sheep to somebody who's prepared to purchase it, but they are ruthlessly authentic human beings, who never call a spade anything other than a spade.

At an agricultural fair, though, I remain fascinated, first and foremost, by the beasts. When I look at such a litter, I have a terrible physical desire to grab hold of one or other of the squealing piglets and hold its writhing little mass in my bare hands. I recall experiencing this same muscular sensation of touch when I used to caress newly-born lambs at Gamone. (Psychologists such as Corina might detect, in my words, some terrifying sex-oriented affliction.)

Choranche lies just beyond the mountainous slopes that you can glimpse in the background. So, it was normal that the livestock of our commune should be present at the fair at Saint Just-de-Claix. In the above photo, my wild neighbor Frédéric Bourne (son of the present mayor of Choranche) is parading their prize horses.

Nice creatures... including a local cowgirl.

This is a portrait of my neighbor Bernard Bourne, mayor of Choranche, descendant of folk who have inhabited Choranche for centuries. Bernard has always maintained a courteous and timidly friendly behavior with me... even though he probably sees me as some kind of alien invader from outer space. To my mind, Choranche remains pure Wild West cowboy territory.

Visitors might get a kick out of agricultural fairs, but I'm convinced that many of the otherwise calm animals are greatly annoyed by all this silly fuss. After all, a cow couldn't give a shit about being awarded a prize. Many of them are unhappy at agricultural fairs. All they desire is to be left in peace, back on the farm.

Here, on the other hand, is a happy human creature, proud of his new-fangled metallic machine.

The above photo shows a cow emerging from his contraption. But what exactly is this device? What has been going on behind the jail-like metal bars?

That's a closeup view of the hardware. Can you guess what it's all about?

I myself had no idea what it was all about until I asked this fellow a lot of silly questions. He's a specialist in the chiropody of bovine hooves. Does that mean he's like a blacksmith, who cleans up the hooves of horses and donkeys? No, not at all, because the latter animals have a single "toe", whereas cows have two. The general idea, if I understand correctly, is that dairy cows often have hoof problems, which can influence adversely the animal's general state of welfare and productivity. So, the purpose of this giant steel contraption is to hold the beast safely in place while the hoof specialist gets into action with his various tools. Apparently, bovine chiropody is a new and lucrative professional specialty in the farmyard domain.

Talking about lucrative professions, I've been impressed during the last few weeks—while on my way to my regular Internet rendezvous at McDonald's on the outskirts of Saint-Marcellin (in fact, in Chatte)—by the intense activity in the two or three remaining fields of tobacco.

The harvesting takes place rapidly in August, with an armada of agricultural machines, and teams of hired hands to hang the precious leaves on racks. (I avoided taking photos of workers, because they might imagine me as an employment inspector.)

In case you still imagine that French farmers are miserable, with hardly enough money to buy shoes for their kids, here's a photo of a local tobacco farmer:

Driving past his place, I've often wondered about the role of all the vast hangars alongside his modern home. Today, I discovered that half of them house his impressive array of tractors, trailers and specialized farming machines, while the others are drying sheds for his tobacco production.

Tobacco is a sideline activity, because he also runs a prosperous dairy farm, and his house is surrounded by endless fields of corn. The problem with tobacco is that the market prices vary constantly, from one year to the next, and you have to be solidly settled—with cash in the bank, and not too many outstanding debts on your investments in machinery—in order to play the game safely. Outsiders might imagine that, with the drop in smoking, growing tobacco for a living would be a risky professional choice. Not at all. All the old-fashioned tobacco farmers have disappeared, and the demand for high-quality tobacco leaves exceeds greatly the supply. The three remaining farms at Chatte are run by young fellows (like the guy in the photo) who operate in a high-tech style, with computers, etc.

My question: "When growing tobacco, does your crop encounter risks of an agricultural kind throughout the year, such as diseases or other possibilities of degradation?"

Tobacco farmer: "No, not really."

My question: "Does growing tobacco involve a lot of manual work throughout the year?"

Tobacco farmer: "No, there's not much to do while it's growing."

My question: "So, what are your major problems?"

Tobacco farmer: "Finding and hiring seasonal personnel. Besides, these workers are becoming more and more demanding, more and more expensive."

He might have added that this management task lasts for no more than a week or so every year. What he was trying to say, I think, was that old-fashioned farmers (such as his ancestors) carried out the harvesting by calling upon family members, and then helping one another, working first in their own field, and then in their neighbors' fields. Today, on the other hand, you have to run your farm like a business. The fellow actually gave me a figure (which I've forgotten) indicating the precise number of hours of required labor, and its cost, for a hectare of tobacco. And I'm sure he uses the Internet to keep track of the evolution of the price of tobacco in the planet's markets and stock exchanges.

The leaves dry for a year in the farmer's hangars, and then the blending process takes another year. So, customers won't be smoking this stuff before two years' time. Naturally, it is a highly-controlled activity, because the authorities don't want farmers to be setting aside leaves for home consumption, or maybe with a view to setting up a business in home-made cigars.

With all these agricultural images in mind, I can imagine a dialogue between a teacher and her juvenile pupils Penelope and Pierre in a rural primary school:

Teacher: "Penelope, what do you want to do when you grow up?"

Penelope: "My dream, Miss, when I grow up, is to become a bovine chiropodist."

Teacher: "And you, Pierre?"

Pierre: "I want to make a fortune growing tobacco, Miss... so I can buy a McDonald's restaurant for me and my friends."