brentcu

We drove to Pointis-de-Riviere to watch stage 9 of the Tour de France. The town was pretty with flags and the townsfolk were all out on their lawn chairs waiting for the peloton. We wandered out of the village to find somewhere with grass and shade where we could sit and watch. Someone made a bicycle sculpture out of the big French straw bales and hey, Otto liked it.

You have to get there early to watch the ‘caravane’ of random product trucks passing by. For the kids this is the best part of the day as they wave at the folks passing by and pick up all the thrown tchotchka and junk food. The Carrefour cars handed out little King of the Mountains polka dot hats. Minty liked hers. The Vittel girl took pity on me surrounded by little girls and Mothers and handed me a whole tray of water bottles.

There was a good collection of Tour de France babes handing stuff out:

1, 2) The Max Max girls with the water cannon were a big hit on a hot day.

3) I’m rather fond of the gendarme outfit – I want one for Jean.

4) The Vittel ‘babe’ guy on the bike had the most extroverted personality of the day, as well as an interesting scar from knee surgery.

The Kleber car handed out balloons. These are some new invention with a built-in valve so you don;t have to tie a knot. Kids can blow their own balloons, as Ella is deomstrating below, but all the balloons had burst within a few minutes.

About an hour and a half after the procession started, the breakaway came into view, breathing hard, grinding away to increase the gap to the peloton. The eventual stage winner, Pierrick Fedrigo, is the Bbox Bouygues Telecom rider in the second photo. He’s a Frenchman, so that would have made the locals happy.

The peloton sped by seconds later. I watched for the Team Astana riders, waved my hat and yelled ‘Go Lance’ and ‘Allez allez!’

It was so fast I wanted to watch it again, then again in slow motion. So when we got home I did just that. It was so fast I couldn’t recognize any riders – I recognized no Lance, Contador, Cadel or big George Hincapie. This is why there are such huge crowds on the mountain climbs – it is the only place where they go slow enough that you have a chance to recognize the riders.

There’s me in an oversize USA Rugby shirt, the only clothing I have that says USA on it although the cut down blue pants do give me away as a Northwest wannabe poser fixie hipster, waving at the peloton. They are followed by the support cars with their array of spare bikes and wheels.

There were a few helicopters around taking shots for the coverage. This is how they do low angle zoom shots – they hover at zero altitude in a field behind the route and use their fancy military-design cameras to get close (see the Planet Earth DVD for details).

And the last bike photos are of a coupe of teams’ go-fast bits. The Rabobank Giants have a fancy black Shimano Dura-Ace group and the Cofidis Time bikes have a fancy black Campy Record group. Black is in for componentry.

And here we are, waving at the breakaway group on the TV coverage. That was so much fun we’ll do it again next year.

Her hair was wet by the rain last night and this morning she’s woken up with a mass of messy curls. Here Minty and Otto are cycling around the house.

Friday night was the night the local music school, based in rooms above the primary school, held its music night. All the students of the school played their little pieces, some performed solo and some in groups. The music teacher got to be a star for the night playing in half of the performances.

It was Friday night and we felt like wandering down the road the check out the performances. They used the Foyer, the village hall with a stage. The event started at 8.30pm and we were running late so we raced down the road to the Foyer, but an 8.30pm start really means 9.15. Kids stay up late here. Dinner is always after 8pm. Kids’ hour at the local village fetes starts at 10pm.

Many of the students were new at their instrument, so you were listening to the music to see if you could recognize the tune rather than to hear its beauty. The students were confident whatever level they were playing at. Maybe it helped that each musician was related to about 80% of the audience.

The night started with an accordion, which set the tone of the evening. We heard guitar solos from new guitarists, accordion solos from new accordionists, some accordion duets and trios and a couple of solo drummers. The drummers play along to canned music – I heard U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday and a jazz number. A keyboard player doodled along to Enola Gay, a wonderful song that still works even with a ten-year-old playing along. He was enjoying himself so much that he wouldn’t stop playing until the teacher came by and switched off the accompaniment.

A few performances in I stopped attempting to focus on the musicians and just looked around. Otto was bored. Minty was commenting on everything in her non-words with a voice louder than the amplified musicians. Jean took her out to the entrance hall where she got plenty of attention from strangers and kept quiet. The kids in front of us were looking out of the window at the other kids playing outside. The rows behind us were chatting. People were walking in and out. It was more a social gathering than a performance.

Otto and Minty went outside for a break and chased each other around the Foyer/Mairie complex. They played with the musicians that were also spending their time between performances running around. At one point I lost Otto. I asked one of the musicians, Maxence, if he had seen Otto. They knew each other from the school bus. He organized the others and within a minute Otto had been found. He had decided to take his running further than the Mairie and was going around the village church. Jean took the two little kids home to bed and I stayed with Lucy.

At the intermission Lucy had a snack, of which there seems to be only one kind at these events – crepes. Five lemon and sugar crepes rolled up tight and all wrapped in piece of tinfoil. You pay your two Euros and get a packet. Lucy ate four and half and drank an Orangina, which seems to be the French kids’ drink of choice. Because of all this sugar she crashed and fell asleep on my lap two songs into the second half.

The music got more interesting. There were a few performances from teenagers who knew their instruments well and could play beautiful music. It built up to an ensemble piece with eight accordions onstage. At first Maxence was the drummer and he kept slowing down and speeding up. I was a little frustrated – I play bass and keeping the beat is important to me. The next song the accordions stayed onstage but another kid switched in to play the drums. He kept the beat but the accordions went so much slower so that the drummer played an extra bar every now and then, lapping them several times. I realized that it wasn’t Maxence who had the timing problem, it was the music teacher, playing lead accordion, who was ignoring the timing of the drum beat. Maxence was trying to follow along and keep the group together.

At the end the musicians played songs that the audience could sing along to and a choir went on stage. I was the only one in the room singing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ in English. Since I didn’t know the real words after the first verse I sang the They Might Be Giants version (“In the space ship, the silver space ship, the lion waves goodbye”).

It was a good evening. I met a few new people, spoke to some people in a new context and saw the kids play around with the locals. This is all part of becoming a little local ourselves. The evening ended at midnight and I carried Lucy home on my shoulders. Finally, joy of all joys, everyone in the house slept in past 9am the next morning.

When I got into Christchurch I called up my cousin Tony to see if I could visit. Sure, he said, and gave me his address. I took a bus and walked the final part, arriving at the house where he was staying. I knocked on the door and they let me in. And what a great family! After several nights sleeping in Youth Hostels it was great to be welcomed by friendly people who had a reason to care about you.

Tony was off at his local pub and I thought it would be fun to catch up with him there. The family gave me directions to the pub but warned me it could be a little rough. I wandered off, leaving my backpack behind. I was dressed in the clothes I had hitched in, a flannel shirt, some dirty shorts and my old hiking boots. The route they suggested took me to the pub without incident. I wandered inside but couldn’t see my cousin, but this was no surprise since I hadn’t seen him in a few years. It was likely I didn’t recognize him. I went up to the bar and called the barman over.

“Is Tony Bisset here?” I asked.

“Nah, don’t know him,” he said.

“But this is his regular pub!” I protested.

“Sorry, mate.”

Hmm. Maybe he was a new barman and didn’t know Tony. The guy standing next to me looked like a regular customer. He was a large Maori, way taller than me, with arm tattoos and a beer.

“Have you seen Tony Bisset in here tonight?”

“Sorry, can’t help you,” said the big guy.

“He’s supposed to be here. I’m visiting him from Australia. I’m his cousin,” I said.

“Don’t know the guy.”

At this point I gave up and wandered back to Tony’s house. He was at home this time. As I was walking to the pub he had been walking a different route home.

“I asked for you but nobody knew you.” I told him.

“Who did you ask?” He said.

“The barman and a large Maori guy with tatts.” I said.

“Hika! My mate. You know what, I bet they thought you were a cop. That was a bit brave asking around like that. That’s a rough place. You could have got into trouble.”

I looked back at the visit to the pub and wondered what they were thinking when this Aussie kid was talking to them. I wondered what was going on that cops could be in the pub snooping around. It is a creepy feeling doing something brave but only finding out about it later.

France has this interesting social gathering called an ‘aperitif’. In the English speaking world, an aperitif is a drink you have before dinner, and so it is here in France, but there’s a system that goes with it.

The first thing to know is that dinner in France is late, some time after 8pm. So you get invited over for an aperitif with a start time of 6.30pm. This limits the length of the stay since it is understood that an invite for an aperitif is not an invite for dinner. You will go back home to eat.

The aperitif will come with snacks and lots of them. There will be chips and other bread snacks but also salami and dried sausage and whatever interesting thing the hosts can come up with. Then the drink choice is a little unusual. Whereas we might have a glass of wine of a kir before dinner, the range of drinks that are offered at an aperitif are more diverse.

It seems that here wine is usually reserved for dinner so you won’t get it served at an aperitif unless you are one of those uncultured foreigners who will drink nothing else. A kir is fine, which is a good thing since it is my aperitif of choice. But people will drink Scotch. And Floc, the ‘Armagnac lite’ you can buy at the local markets. Late in the gathering, when the Floc and Kir have started working their hazy magic, I’ve seen people drink eau de vie, which in my mind is 100% a digestif.

Eau de vie is an interesting drink. It seems to be the local equivalent of moonshine. You can buy very fancy marcs, which are just eau de vies made with used grapes, but most of the local eau de vie is made from fruits of the garden like pears and plums. The fruit is grown by local families, then they take it off to a distillery to get it processed, then they store the bottles in the cellar at home. And drink it over the year. This home made spirit does not mature in oak casks, so it doesn’t get smooth or go brown. And I think this is all legal – families inherit the right to make eau de vie.

We have been invited to an aperitif happening tomorrow at the Mayor’s house, so we will be on our best behaviour. I won’t do my impression of Belly Savalas.