Strange fruit

Whenever a village is flooded, small boats arrive on the scene, seemingly out of nowhere.

Then, as soon as the floodwaters subside, the small boats disappear magically. One might wonder where they've gone. Where are they stored, up until the next flood, awaiting their reappearance? It's a mystery... as Christine liked to point out from time to time (so our children tell me).

In Pont-en-Royans, an old photo shows us a small boat on the Bourne, with fishermen.

These days, there are no longer any boats on the Bourne. I suspect that boating has become hazardous because of surges of fast-moving swirling water whenever the operators of the hydroelectric dam at Choranche decide to open valves releasing huge quantities of accumulated water. As in the case of flooded villages, the same question might be asked: Where have all the boats gone?

Yesterday, while wandering along the right bank of the Bourne, I found a partial answer to this question. At a spot roughly behind the head of the fisherman in dark clothes, I came upon an old boat (maybe the one in the photo) that had been hoisted up into the branches of a tree.

[Click to enlarge]

Although the context is far removed from the happy context of boat fishing on the Bourne, I was reminded of the title of a celebrated song by Billie Holiday, evoking the ghastly massacres of black slave workers in the American South.

Billy has a Kangoo

OK, the vehicle I brought home yesterday is not a kangaroo... but maybe the next best beast, named Kangoo (because of its spacious pouches).

Renault Kangoo

Big-beaked finch has flown

An adjective that amuses me in the case of wild birds is "sedentary", which evokes a vision of a couple of tiny birds that have just flown in from Africa.

The male bird says to his wife:

"I don't know about you, dear, but I'm exhausted. In any case, I like this place. I got the address from a finch I ran into down in Morocco. He told me it's called Gamone, and the owner provides a regular stock of sunflower seeds. Why don't we settle down here for a while?" 

 And the female bird replies:

"Sure, dear, you're preaching to the choir. You know I've always told you I wouldn't mind leading a sedentary existence, at least for a while, instead of our usual jet-set lifestyle, traveling constantly from one land to another. I'd be happy to just sit around in the sun... as soon as it appears. And I'm sure we'd have more opportunities to spend time with the kids."

It's time that I got around to naming correctly the beautiful bird that stopped here at Gamone for a week or so. I used to referred to it disrespectfully, here, as the "Galapagos guy". That was a silly nickname, because everybody knows that the passerine birds studied by Charles Darwin on the Galapagos were not in fact real finches.

My ex-wife (and constant friend) Christine Mafart succeeded rapidly (I don't know how) in identifying my big-beaked visitor. He was a Hawfinch [Coccothraustes coccothraustes, known in French as a Gros-bec casse-noyaux]. I use the past tense "was" because I think my bird has finally flown, after a brief stay at Gamone. I'm left with a set of splendid images of this exotic big-beaked creature, while hoping that he'll retain my address for a visit next winter.

This morning, I found another family of finches hanging around in the same area.

These dark little birds don't match the majestic beauty of my glorious pink-legged big-beaked Hawfinch... who liked to tap on my bedroom window, imagining his mirror reflection as an alien bird. I hope he'll be back here at Gamone in a year's time.

Work for a doctoral scholar in French history

Once upon a time, if you had asked me what the word "terrier" means, I would have said that it designates the kind of little dog you see in the celebrated painting of His Master's Voice. As a boy in South Grafton, I used regularly a spring-driven 78 rpm gramophone to play vinyl records, many of which carried the familiar image of the fox terrier.

Ignoring languages and etymology, I could not know that our own lovable smooth fox terrier on the farm at Waterview derived his name from the fact that he was an "earth dog" (Latin terra, "earth"), capable of burrowing into the ground in search of foxes.

Upon my arrival here in Choranche, a couple of decades ago, I heard of a second meaning of the word "terrier": a register of parcels of land whose owners owe allegiance (or taxes) to such-and-such a lord or superior body. That definition isn't meant to be rigorous.

In the space of a few years, by accident, I've stumbled upon two separate terriers concerning the Royans region in which I live. And, in both cases, I've obtained an authorization enabling me to publish, through a website, the original documents of the terrier in question. Each of my bulky Flash-based websites takes a while to load.

• 14th-century terrier

Established by the Sassenage family in 1351-1356. website

• 18th-century terrier

Established by the Order of Malta in 1780. website

In the context of French history, it's exceptional that two sets of precious documents of this kind, covering a time span of four centuries, have survived, and are available today for study. The investigation of these two quite different terriers would surely be a fascinating theme for a doctoral scholar, maybe attached to a university in the UK or America. I would be happy to handle requests for further information from interested researchers.

Primroses in the snow

The burgeoning primroses of Gamone were surely surprised to discover that, during the night, flakes of late-winter snow had fallen upon their delicate cream petals.

This chilly remnant of the cold season will no doubt stimulate the tiny flowers, and incite them to hurry up in their urge to welcome the approaching spring. As they might say in Rome (if their Latin was as elementary as mine, and if they weren't preoccupied by other less natural arrivals): Habemus primulam, primum tempum. The primrose has arrived and, with it (soon, in any case), spring.

Owner of Gamone in 1823

For the first time in ages, I drove up to Grenoble yesterday and spent an hour or so in the archives. In the context of my research concerning the history of my house at Gamone, this short visit to the archives was most fruitful, in that I succeeded in obtaining the name and identity of the man who owned my house and property at Gamone some two centuries ago. Let me explain how this happened.

A few years after crowning himself in the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, on 2 December 1804, in the presence of the pope Pius VII, the emperor Napoléon Bonaparte created the interesting concept of a national cadastre: that's to say, a vast map indicating the ownership of every fragment of real estate in France. Here in the corner of the Isère department where I live, the Napoleonic cadastre was only published—as indicated in the following oval title box [called a cartouche in French]—on 19 March 1823, a year or so after the death of the former emperor on the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

[Click to enlarge]

Here's an outline of the central parcels of the Napoleonic cadastre for my house (parcel #717) and land at Gamone:

Today, my property includes parcel #723 (a former vineyard) as well as a group of additional parcels up in the top left-hand region of the map. As indicated in the diagram, I discovered yesterday that my Gamone property was owned in 1823 by Michel Grégoire Tézier [1761-1833], the mayor of the neighboring village of Pont-en-Royans... shown in this spectacular panoramic photo that I found on the web:

[Click to enlarge]

Now that I've unearthed the identity of this eminent landowner (who had used his personal fortune to acquire real estate that came onto the market in the wake of the French Revolution, when the great religious establishments were disbanded, and their possessions sold), I should be able to move further backwards in time, and discover the exact identity of the owner of Gamone on the eve of the French Revolution.

Basic vegetarian rissoles

My gastronomical enthusiasm for supermarket minced steak (for my standard chile con carne dish) was dampened by the recent horse-meat affair. And vegetarian urgings emerged in my imagination. Unfortunately, such urgings remain largely cerebral, rather than making my mouth water. That's surely a cultural failing due to the fact that I've never really been initiated by friends, restaurants and fine cooking into the marvels of meals without meat. To be totally honest, I lived for years under the ridiculous illusion that vegetarians were weirdos with visceral links (maybe there's a better adjective than "visceral") to astrologists, alchemists, religious ascetics, Seventh-Day Adventists and six-day bike-riders. I imagined that you would only have to ingurgitate a few vegetarian dishes and you would soon find yourself refusing, not only pork, but alcohol and vaccinations. Retrospectively, I realize to what extent I've often "reasoned"—even as an adult—in a ridiculous mindless fashion, governed by a set of stupid superstitions, no doubt developed during my boyhood. So I hardly need to explain that I remain, for the moment, an uninspired and uninformed vegetarian cook: the equivalent of the proverbial husband in the kitchen who can't boil an egg.

Back in 2011, I was proud to have unfathomed, as it were, the secrets of a mythical meat dish from a Greek restaurant of my student years in Sydney [access]. Today, my culinary achievements, far more modest, are presented in the following dull photo, which would be rejected instantly by any self-respecting cooking magazine or website.

Here, there is no horse meat. Indeed, there is no meat of any kind whatsoever. My delicious rissoles are fake steaks, concocted out of soy protein and dried cereals (oats, wheat, etc).

I was interested to learn that it's easy to store such uncooked rissoles in the deep-freezer. And they can then be cooked easily and rapidly on an iron grill plate placed above my gas burners, with a little olive oil.

As you can gather from the presence of the two bottles in my photo, I tend to be a heavy-handed user of both Worcestershire sauce (like my Walker uncles out in Australia) and soy sauce... which explains why my vegetable mixture (deep-frozen product) has a blackish look. Basically, though, the above meal is unadulterated (clearly-identified ingredients), tasty and healthy.

What is there in common...

... between me and the Sistine Chapel?

Did I hear somebody say that, what's in common is that both William and the Sistine Chapel are fine examples of Renaissance splendor? Well, if you insist... but that's not the right answer. I'll give you a hint. The answer to my question has something to do with our respective roofs (or rooves, if you prefer).

Here's the answer.

Like me, the people at the Sistine Chapel are installing a new chimney on their roof.

Here's my Gamone chimney, which I intend to install as soon as possible.

I don't know what brand of chimney the Sistine Chapel has decided upon, but I can assure them that the French-manufactured Poujoulat product is excellent.

As soon as my new chimney and wood stove are installed, I intend to test the system by burning some old papers. If all goes well (that's to say, if the chimney joints are all OK), then I should see white smoke emerging from my new chimney. (If not, it's my house that's likely to fill up with white smoke.) Now, to avoid potential misunderstandings, I want to make it perfectly clear, by means of the present blog post, that I have no intention whatsoever of electing an antipope at Gamone. On the other hand, I cannot deny that I've often thought that my dog Fitzroy has all the necessary qualities for that job. There's a technical problem, though. Fitzroy has not yet become a cardinal.

Pinnacle of worldly fame

It's all very well to be an Oxford professor, a successful author of books, and to have been awarded a pile of honorary doctorates. That doesn't necessarily make you a famous person.

To become a genuine celebrity, the English biologist Richard Dawkins still needed a greatly-sought-after extra feather in his hat. Happily, we've learned today that the flame of true fame has finally touched Dawkins. Within a few days, he will be able to think of himself, at last, as an international megastar. Next Sunday, on US television, Richard Dawkins will be appearing in an episode of The Simpsons, in the role of himself, using his own voice.

Mummified house

I found this photo on the Internet. It's an old house not far from my birthplace: Grafton in Australia. I don't know the photographer's name, but he appears to be, like me, a native of Grafton. And he's also an excellent photographer.

I don't understand what it is about old houses in Australia that causes many of them to become mummified, like this specimen. That's to say, the structure is clearly abandoned and decaying, but it still retains its original form... in a state of fragile equilibrium. As we used to say about decrepit old-timers: the house is dead, but it won't lie down. Clearly, for a house to survive for long in this mummified state, there can't be too much wind, snow or rain in the vicinity. And the people who pass by don't have the bad habit of dropping smouldering cigarette butts on the ground. It's likely, too, that the timber used in this construction was particularly hard and rugged, in spite of the visible signs of rot in the photo. The inside walls appear to be in quite good condition.

Is it thinkable that the flock of ducks might play some kind of mysterious role in keeping the house upright?

Maybe, for a reasonable financial investment, the house could be restored, and made to look like new. There would be no problem about domestic water, because I see a galvanized iron tank on the verandah. The new resident could use the plow to create a vegetable garden. And there would be no problem as far as transport is concerned, because I can see a fine bicycle leaning up against the wall.

Potential French investors might contact me. For a small commission, I'll attempt to identify and get in touch with the current owner, and we'll see if we can reach some kind of a deal.

Change of clothes

Over the last two days, the sun has reappeared at Gamone, after weeks of damp overcast skies. I decided to take out my my warm-weather working clothes, to give them an airing.

As you can see, from a sartorial viewpoint, they're not particularly attractive. I've been thinking that it might be a good idea for me to change to bright garments of the following kind:

Admittedly, if I were to start wearing stuff like that when I'm working outside at Gamone, I would have to make sure that Fitzroy didn't jump up onto me with his muddy paws, as he usually does. My summer hats, too, are rather dull:

Something of the following kind would add a gay note to Gamone:

There's no doubt about it: the ex-pope had a fabulous taste in clothes, and I'm sure we'll all miss him. Personally, I was particularly impressed by his early gold period, when Benny looked like an ancient Aztec chief.

Attired in gold lamé, the pope had a kind of Elvis look, which surely appealed to Catholic youth throughout the world.

Benny's gold period was a trend-setter for an all-too-brief moment. If only he had stuck to his job until the bitter end, the full impact of the pope's influence upon fashion would have been recognized throughout the world. Today, in any case, Catholics everywhere are hoping that his successor will look just as elegant as Benny.

Guess what happened to this guy

He got into a fight with a dog. Did the dog bite him? No, this guy's an electronics engineer who works in advanced computer technology. And it so happened that a big dog threw a brick at him.

When the first brick hit him in the chest, he raced forward desperately with the intention of cutting off power to the big dog. But the beast promptly threw another brick that hit him in the head. And then another brick that hit him in the solar plexus. Finally, the beast ran out of bricks, and it ended up throwing a computer at the poor guy. At that stage, lab workers were able to get up close enough to turn the dog off.

Here's a spectacular presentation of the animal's evolution:

If ever the big dog were to step up to me, looking like it wanted to lift up a leg and piss on me, I think it would be best to say: "You're welcome, my friend." No sense in doing anything that might peeve the beast.

Newspaper's new name doesn't sound right

When I first arrived in Paris, I didn't know enough French to take advantage of an excellent newspaper such as Le Monde. So, I contented myself with another fine daily: the New York Herald Tribune, made famous by Jean Seberg.

It has just been announced that the name of this famous publication—edited conjointly in Paris, London and Hong Kong, not to mention New York—will soon be changed to International New York Times.

Alas, that new name just doesn't sound right. I reckon that, if Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Belmondo and their charming young American accomplice had been obliged to work with a name like that, their Breathless might have been a gigantic flop.

Exotic winter vegetation

At this time of the year, rare species have started to bloom on the slopes of Gamone.

The long thorns of the ice tree are as sharp as daggers, making it difficult to pick the fruit.

The soft white blossoms of snow flowers are extremely delicate, making it impossible to gather a bunch.

Red cliffs in the winter sunset

At this time of the year, I don't usually drive across in the vicinity of Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne. But I went across there a few days ago for the combined luncheon for the senior citizens of our three neighboring villages: Châtelus, Choranche and Presles. The food (prepared by a restaurant in the nearby village of Saint-Romans) was excellent, but I was dismayed to find that conversation was ruled out through the presence of a DJ who did his best to make everybody dance and sing. On the way home, I was able to take a lovely photo of the cliffs above Choranche in the direction of Presles.

[Click to enlarge]

Galapagos guy

The bird I've nicknamed the "Galapagos guy" is a finch that I presented in a blog post on the eve of Darwin Day [display]. He seems to like the general atmosphere at Gamone, which wet and snowy these days.

In any case, he has moved in here permanently. He never enters the wooden bird house where I put sunflower seeds for the yellow-and-black tits. The Galapagos guy dines outdoors at all times, in all kinds of weather.

Besides, he seems to prefer to dine alone, and gets upset whenever a tit dares to join him for dinner.

He tried for a while to use aggressive body language to scare away intruders. But thankfully, at this level, he appears to be evolving towards a certain degree of sociability.

I often wonder whether, deep in the mind of each tiny creature, they realize that they're all members of the bird family. Probably not. After all, they are a still a lot of people who refuse to admit that we humans are all members of a single family.

Please excuse the poor quality of my bird photos. There's simply not enough light at Gamone these days, and I'm trying to take photos through the double thickness of glass in my bedroom windows. Incidentally, the birds don't seem to notice my presence behind the window glass, provided I don't move. Even Fitzroy likes to spend long moments there, observing calmly the birds. As for the Galapagos guy, he apparently notices his own mirror reflection at times, and he starts to peck furiously on the glass, trying to chase himself away.

Cheesy awards

In the cheese domain, my native land seems to have invented the equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest. At the annual dairy awards of the Royal Agricultural Society in Sydney, the major prize-winner was neither from France nor even from Australia. Maximum awards went to an international chain of discount supermarkets, based in Germany, named Aldi. That choice strikes me as weird in the sense that I didn't even know that Aldi produced cheese.

I'm told that Australia has many excellent artisan cheesemakers (which doesn't surprise me), but their products were swamped by those of the giant low-cost multinational.

Michael McNamara, cheesemaker at Pecora Dairy in Robertson, NSW
— photo Sahlan Hayes, The Sydney Morning Herald

I wonder whether horsey lasagne from the French Spanghero company would be an award-winner in Australia

BREAKING NEWS: Many people in France (and elsewhere, of course) have been shocked by the lasagne affair. In their eagerness to get to the roots of the problem, French authorities have been jostling with several key concepts such as credible and complete labeling, traceability (enabling consumers to know the origins of foodstuff) and DNA testing (to distinguish horsemeat from beef). This morning, people concerned with dairy products have drawn attention to the astonishing fact that 90% of French cheeses are made with milk imported into France. Ideally, consumers should be aware of the origin of milk used by French industrial groups in the dairy products domain. They should be informed as to how the dairy cows were fed, and how the milk was collected. For the moment, this is not at all the case.

A few days ago, on French TV news, journalists presented the "Australian made" phenomenon as an exemplary system, which might serve as a guide for France. Fair enough. I trust that Aldi's award-winning dairy products bear this celebrated green and yellow logo.

Unexpected links

A few days ago, a friendly reader of my blog sent me a link to a list of online genealogical resources [here]. I replied that an all-important resource was glossed over in the list. Genealogical research is often dominated by black swan happenings, in the sense suggested by Nassim Nicholas Taieb: that's to say, totally unexpected events that upset the nice and tidy little applecart upon which the researcher had been basing his beliefs.

The biggest black swan that has alighted upon my genealogical research over recent months concerned my Pickering relatives (through the family of my paternal grandmother). On 3 March 2012, my bucolic blog post entitled Vicar's garden [display] evoked the rural existence of our forebear Henry Latton [1737-1798],  the vicar of Woodhorn in Northumberland. I ended that blog post by saying that the vicar would have surely disapproved of my science-based atheism.

Be that as it may, my dear great-great-great-great-grandfather did not deserve to be murdered by bandits while returning from an afternoon of betting on the horses at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.

Six months after having evoked this Latton ancestor, I got an unexpected e-mail from an unknown Englishman named Latton who told me an amazing tale. He alleged that his own grandfather, known to him as John Edward Latton, was in fact the same individual designated in my document They Sought the Last of Lands [display] as John Edward Latton Pickering [1851-1926]. In other words, my correspondent was saying that we had a skeleton in one of our family-history closets: a respected Londoner (archivist at the Inner Temple law library) who had invented a new name for himself (borrowed from our Latton ancestors) and forged a marriage certificate enabling him to become a full-fledged bigamist and raise a second family in parallel to his first one. Needless to say, I've got over the surprise by now, and I'm looking forward to meeting up with my new English cousin when he drops in at Gamone with his wife this summer.

That wasn't the only recent black swan. In April 2012, I became really excited about a possible research avenue aimed at elucidating the mystery of the Norman origins of the Skeffington family. In blog posts entitled Patriarch [display] and Skeffington/Verdun links [display], I evoked the identity of a celebrated Norman family with close attachments to the Leicestershire village of Skeffington at the time of the Conquest. I concluded my first blog post, on 27 April 2012, as follows:

Another fascinating question emerges. Is it thinkable that our patriarch Bertram de Verdun might have descendants today in France and elsewhere? Well, to put it mildly, judging from what I've seen through a rapid visit to the Genea website, it would appear that the community of my so-called "genetic cousins" includes many present-day members of the old nobility of Normandy and France.

When I asked that "fascinating question", I had not yet started to look around in France with the aim of contacting living de Verdun descendants. From this point on in the present blog post, I'm obliged to be deliberately vague, because I wish to avoid mentioning names that would be picked up by search engines. Let me explain in roundabout terms that, in April 2011, French police had come upon a nasty crime scene in the city whose mayor was our present prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault. They unearthed the bodies of a mother and her four teenage kids. As for the father, he has totally disappeared. Most people consider that the father—whom I shall refer to as X—is indeed the culprit. On the other hand, X's sister is convinced that her brother never murdered his wife and children. In the ongoing crusade aimed at protecting the honor of her brother, this determined lady is assisted by her husband... who happens to bear exactly the same ancient Norman name as the Conqueror's companion associated with the Leicestershire village of Skeffington, evoked in the "fascinating question" that I have just quoted. For all I know, X's brother-in-law could well be a direct descendant of the 11th-century personage who interests me. Naturally, in the context of my Skeffington research, I would be interested in the possibility of examining a description of the Y chromosomes of this present-day Frenchman. For the moment, though, such a request for DNA data would be out of place, and unwise.

POST SCRIPTUM: In the wake of my initial enthusiasm about the possibility that Bertram de Verdun might have been the "elusive patriarch" whom I've been seeking for so long, I now believe that this was a false track. Click here to download the latest version of chapter 1 of my slowly-emerging Skeffington One-Name Study.

Several things that make sense

Over the last hour, a guy named Richard Dawkins has been using Twitter to create a brilliantly succinct treatise on Christian theology.

Here are the basic points of his theological wisdom, which all make sense... even though they are necessarily so esoteric at times that common mortals might not grasp their profound sense immediately:

• Joseph Ratzinger became infallible in a puff of smoke 19/4/2005. About to become fallible again 28/2/2013. Makes sense.
• A wafer, if blessed by a priest (who must have a penis and intact testicles) literally becomes the body of Christ. Makes sense.
• God is simultaneously himself and his son (and a ghost). Makes sense.
• God couldn't think of a better way to forgive the sin of Adam (who never existed) than to have his son (aka himself) executed. Makes sense.
• Adam didn't exist, but his sin was so huge that the Creator of the Expanding Universe needed a blood sacrifice to pay for it. Makes sense.
• The SUBSTANCE of the wine truly becomes the blood of a 1st century Jew. Only the ACCIDENTALS are fermented grape juice. Makes sense.
• Jesus's 12 apostles all had penises. Therefore if you don't have a penis you can't be a priest. Makes sense.
• Isaiah prophesied "young woman" would bear a messiah. Mistranslated into Greek as virgin. So Jesus had to have a virgin mother. Makes sense.
• "Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak" Makes sense.
• And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." Makes sense.
• Creator of the Universe went to great trouble to create the foreskin. Then insisted that you cut it off. Makes sense.