29/11/2007 by Brigid.

Apologies for the lack of postings this month.  We have been in the UK.  John and I had one
or two social and family shindigs, and we needed to do some Christmas shopping.

If we are completely honest, apart from the inarguable pleasure of seeing our families, neither of us was particularly looking forward to this trip.  The work on the house is producing tangible improvements almost daily, but there is still a long way to go before The Mothers arrive for Christmas.  Far from being pleased to be going “home”, a kind of gloom set in several days before our departure.  Still, there was nothing we could do about it. Billy and Mrs F had kindly agreed to keep an eye on the cats. So we set the timer on
“George”, the automatic pet feeder, patted Tigger and Foggy on the head and sallied forth to Blighty.

In the event, the trip was a great success.  We saw everyone we wanted to, finished our Christmas shopping, stocked up on decorating materials at B&Q, and generally spent far more money than we had intended to … as usual.

We arrived home after 6 nights away to be greeted by … two furry footballs!  Regular readers will be aware that we have been concerned about the cats’ weight for some time now.  But this was different.  They were actually round!  Something had clearly gone very wrong with the feeding programme while we had been away.

On investigation, the automatic feeder had not been used at all.  It had opened according to my original timings, but had not been reset.  There was fresh litter in the tray, and there was no doubt at all that the cats had been extremely well fed. I couldn’t find the laminated sheet with the feeder instructions, and it began to dawn on me that Billy and Mrs F must have made a daily 45km round trip to top up the food, rather than the planned two-day intervals to reload “George”.

However, none of this explains how Tigger and Foggy had become so fat.

Now then, one of the friends that we visited back in the UK happens to be a prominent vet (a veterinarian rather than an ex-Marine, for the benefit of our American readers). Somehow the subject of the cats’ weight came up over a glass or two of wine.  “5.5kg?! What? Both together?” he asked.  “Err, no. Each.”  “At 7 months? Have they got stripes? Are you sure they aren’t tiger cubs?”

Back at home, it was clear that my previous attempt to limit the cats’ calorie intake had failed spectacularly.  Although I had already reduced their feed by about 25%, there had been no sign of them losing weight even before we left for the UK.  Following my conversation with Philip, who advised that dry feed manufacturers routinely recommend more food than is necessary, I began to suspect the Royal Canin measuring scoop. I decided to verify the weights given on the scoop with an electronic scale.

I carefully measured out 30gms of the Kitten 34 feed, leveling it against the appropriate scale on the scoop, then weighed it. Quel surprise! My 30gm scoop measure in fact weighed 40gms.  An accurately measured 30gms filled the scoop to about 1cm depth and was off the scale.  I then checked and cross-checked each of the scoop measures in turn. 40gms weighed 53gms. A scant 50gm, measured in the scoop, weighed 62gms.  60gms, the minimum recommended daily amount for a kitten aged 6 to 12 months, weighed 69gms. 70gms weighed 81gms, and 80gms, the maximum recommended amount, actually weighed 95gms!  It appeared, then, that I had been inadvertently feeding the cats the maximum recommended amount on a daily basis. I wonder if anyone has ever sued these manufacturers for weight associated health problems!

The problem had been further compounded by my supposition that ‘a little extra’, while we were away, would do no harm. Knowing that two 80gm scoops would practically fill one of the trays in the automatic feeder – sufficient for the two cats to share, I had asked Billy and Mrs F to simply refill both trays to the brim.  In the light of what I now know about Royal Canin’s scoop measures, this would have been bad enough.  A full tray of food in the feeder is probably equivalent to about 220gms food.  Unfortunately, while the cats’ regular bowls hold slightly less … there are, of course, two of them.

Poor cats.  The best I could do was to reduce their feed back to a carefully weighed normal level.  But next week the diet starts in earnest.

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11/11/2007 by Brigid.

On the night of 13th July 1944, a Halifax bomber crewed by an Anglo-Canadian crew of seven, took off from Algiers on a mission to parachute arms and munitions to the local resistance fighters, the Maquis.

Navigation systems were not what they are today, and only a few specialist crews would be capable of executing the low-level night flight into the mountains close to the border with Spain. Even with a highly experienced crew, perfect weather conditions were necessary. Tragically for this mission, a thick fog descended near the drop zone, and the plane crashed into the eastern flank of the Pic du Douly, killing all onboard.

Due to the remoteness of the area, the crash was not discovered until a few days later, when some shepherds came upon the wreckage. A boy was sent down into the tiny village of Haut Nistos to warn a local schoolteacher – a founder member of the Maquis de Nistos Esparros.

It took three hours the following day for a detachment of Maquis, accompanied by a number of villagers, to reach the crash site. One of the members of crew had survived for a while after the impact and, though fatally injured, had managed to salvage the boxes of weapons and munitions from the burning fusilage before dying a few yards away.

The men spent the day carefully collecting the crew’s identity tags and other personal effects, overseen by Maquis commanders. They then used the munitions boxes to bury the seven members of crew at the crash site, marking each grave with a small pile of stones. When the burial was complete, the commanders distributed the new weapons and ordered the young Maquis to present arms in a salute to the dead men.

Remember that this was Vichy France. There was a Gestapo base in nearby Lannemezan and news of the crash or the distribution of weapons would certainly have resulted in swift reprisals. All involved in the recovery and burial, some as young as 15, were sworn to secrecy.

The authorities were informed of the deaths of the crew members, and their personal effects returned. But there was no official action concerning the makeshift cemetery on the mountainside. The bodies of the dead were not repatriated.

Throughout the next 46 years, the villagers never forgot the bravery of the Halifax crew, who lost their lives in the name of French liberty. The graves were carefully tended and each year, on the anniversary of the crash, a solemn group of English veterans, villagers and veteran resistance fighters, would make the three-hour ascent to hold a small memorial ceremony and place flowers on the graves.

In 1989, a new road opened that passed within an hour’s walk of the burial site, and plans were hatched for the creation of a formal cemetery. Work began in June 1994. Local rock as used and other materials were airlifted in by helicopter. Water was piped from a nearby source. The inauguration, held in August 1994, included surviving relatives of the English crew members, RAF veterans, the British Consul and several veteran members of the Maquis. At this time, the relatives of the Canadian pilot, Leslie Peers, had not been traced.

In 1998, Jean Bordes, one of the surviving Maquis who had helped bury the airmen, met Alain Gaudet, a Canadian who had been living locally for several years. Alain Gaudet had no knowledge of the existence of the cemetery or of the Canadian pilot buried there, but was deeply touched by the story. He immediately offered to help trace Commander Peers’ relatives. In 1999, two further memorial ceremonies were held to honour the Canadian officer. The 40-strong Canadian delegation included Peers’ son and daughter-in-law and grandson from Ontario.

In 2000 the cemetery was officially recognised by the War Graves Commission, and Alain Gaudet was appointed its local representative.

For many years a mass was held on 11th November at the cemetery to commemorate the dead and celebrate L’Armistice, the cessation of hostilities that effectively ended the First World War. The mass no longer takes place on the mountainside, as there are few veterans still able to manage the precarious walk to the cemetery. A ceremony is held instead at the base of the mountain at the Mairie in the village of St. Laurent de Neste.

However, John, myself and Mrs F did walk up to the cemetery as a personal mark of respect both to those who were killed on the night of 13th July 1944, and to those who tended the graves and eventually created this remarkable little cemetery. At 1400m, it is now officially recognised as the highest war grave in Europe. Three maple sablings have been planted between the cemetery and the heap of rusting metal that marks all that remains of the Halifax bomber.

Thanks to the care and dedication of the locals, seven neat piles of stones still mark the original burial places of the crew, and a 200-year old shepherds’ refuge at the site houses a visitors book.

It had been frosty when we set off up the mountain path at 9.30am but, by the time we left the cemetery, the winter sun was glinting through the copper beech, bathing this tranquil place in a warm golden light. As we drove home for lunch, we passed the Mairie at St. Laurent de Neste, where the remembrance ceremony had finished and apéritifs were being served.

A detailed account of the Halifax crash, construction of the cemetery and history of the Maquis can be found at L’histoire du Maquis de Nistos Esparros.

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09/11/2007 by Brigid.

Nicholas and Sebastian finished early last week and, on Thursday, M. Dufour himself turned up to install the electric heaters we had ordered. Heating! We have heating! Welcome news indeed as I am just getting over a cold.

We could construct a sort of Maslow-type Hierarchy of Needs for house renovation. The first, Physiological, level would consist of simple structural elements: walls and roof. The second level, Safety, would include electrical, plumbing, pests, etc. The third, Social, level probably equates to room designation and basic furnishing. The fourth, Ego, deals with decor and the niceties of accommodating the hi-fi speakers and TV projector, while the fifth level, Self Actuation, looks at the spiritual level. In the case of house renovation, this equates to “Oh God!” or “Why am I here?”.

The problem with my interpretation of Maslow is that, despite not having fully satisfied our basic furnishing needs, we so often find ourselves looking for God. Nevertheless, having business in Toulouse on Tuesday, John suggested we get the most out of the péage costs by calling in at Ikea (kings of clever Swedish flat-packed furniture) and Castorama (France’s answer to the UK’s B&Q DIY chain).

Since July, the first floor bathroom has been used as a tool shed - a place to store anything sharp, pointy, heavy or fragile, or otherwise noisome to cats. Between us, we have an awful lot of tools. In the time we have been together, John and I have basically accumulated three sets: the tools that we personally have collected over the years, and a set of new ones that we bought for our French ‘holiday home’. So, before we could use bathroom or create a cosy first floor office, it was necessary to do a bit of housekeeping … tidy our sock drawer, so to speak.

The idea was simple enough. We would collect together families of tools and materials and store them in easily identifiable boxes in the loft. The reality, however, was a tedious and time-consuming process.

There were moments of levity when, for instance, I found the bendy three-pronged grabby thingy that we had been looking for when the car’s oil filler cap dropped into an inaccessible spot in the deepest recesses of the engine. Meanwhile, John’s toolkit gave up a treasury of pre-electronic motoring history. “I’ll bet you don’t know what this is”, he said, holding aloft some rusty impliment. “You’re right”, I said, “I don’t”. “It’s a boss-eyed fanny wrench”, he replied, lovingly pushing it back into its battered box. “Very useful. Made for a Mk II Valiant Diehard. You never know when you might bump into someone looking for one of these.” I’ll take your word for it, darling.

John pushed the wrench back into its box and continued rummaging. Before long another small cardboard box was held up for admiration. “Look! A saber-toothed sprocket slapper.” “A what?!” John sighed and lovingly pushed the box into the bottom section of the toolbox, among his prized collection of imperial gauge spanners.

None of these things, as you can imagine, are in the least useful for a 2007 4-wheel drive Skoda with 6 forward gears and an onboard computer. But John looks fondly back on an age where one was actually able to maintain one’s own car without computer diagnostics.

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06/11/2007 by Brigid.

… the 5th of November.  Gunpowder, treason and plot!

The French don’t celebrate the discovery and subsequent failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Why would they?  After all, being a predominantly Catholic society, they probably thoroughly approve of Guy Fawkes’ plot to blow up James I and his protestant parliament.  Perhaps they should revive the tradition!  Certainly the Health and Safety Executive seem to have put the mockers on the traditional British firework party.

Before children roamed the streets demanding money with menaces on 31st October in the name of “Trick or Treat”, we had “Penny for the Guy”.  Of course, that was back in the days when children could still buy fireworks with the proceeds. Remember those halcyon days when it was not politically incorrect to burn efigies of historical personages with extreme religeous views, and encouraging children to dip apples in molten caramel or boil homemade fudge was not considered the height of irresponsibility.

£20 would buy a sizeable haul of rockets, catherine-wheels, bangers and sparklers, and the only hardware one needed for the perfect display were a few milk bottles, a sturdy fence and a hammer and nails.  The trouble with the old-fashioned Guy Fawkes parties was that they were invariably subject to the vagueries of British weather. The presenters of “Blue Peter” advised keeping pets indoors, while Dad lit the blue touch-paper and stood well back … keeping everyone wondering whether the evening drizzle had really exinguished the fuse or not!  If you were lucky to have a really big back yard, dinner consisted of charred sausages and blackened baked potatoes, cooked in the embers of the bonfire. We wore anoraks, wooly hats and gloves, and wellies, and stood so close to the fire that we burned our cheeks as rain dripped from our hoods and down our necks.

Britain has now become so … un-British … that I doubt whether many children understand why we have fireworks on, or around, 5th November.  But there was a kind of magic about those rain-soaked bonfire parties, that no slick public firework display, with its beer stands, hamburger stalls and candy-floss, can replicate. Now bored kids with bare midrifs and baggy pants winge about being too cold to send a text message on their mobile phones or operate their Playstations.

Tant pis, as they say in France!

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