Breakfast at Brittany’s

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The garage mechanic/roof tiler/drain unblocker/washing machine fixer/brain surgeon/lawyer/dentist are all descendants of the same gene. You have arranged to see them and you guess you’re just another Joe with a worn ball valve solenoid collapsed pipe spring widget divorce synapse enamel issue. They will have seen it all before. You are boring! And yet every time you encounter such people there is a huge intake of breath accompanied by a shaking of the head. Eventually those fateful words emerge ” Oh dear – dear Oh dear – this isn’t the normal sort of thing – dear me- this is more serious than I thought. Don’t know what we can do about this – dear oh dear- who fitted this brain/pipe/marriage/ widget sprocket/tooth?


 Does this sort of thing happen to you? Perhaps I just leave things too long.

So, I arrived in England on the overnight ferry. Sat naff sat with me all the way giving me impeccable instructions in French. My wonderful 1997 Mercedes 250 diesel shrugged off her 264,000 mile history and delivered me to Brittany ferries. I slept and awoke to the gourmet breakfast of smoked salmon, boiled egg, ham and cheese. There is also a choice of all manner of juices and fibres for people who have body temples. I don’t do commercial plugs, but Brittany Ferries posh restaurant breakfast buffets are WONDERFUL. So I drove to Rosina’s place, had coffee and set off for the dentist at the little market town of Romsey. I emerged an hour later a new woman. Dear me – I was a big job. I was pinned and shuttered like concrete gate post by a most meticulous guy called Dr Thomas and his lovely assistant Julie. If you’re in the area and need a tooth job – these are the guys.

Then the desk. I collected it from my old house. England no longer seems like home but sometimes neither does France. Tomorrow is the 14th Juillet – the national day with fireworks and well – fireworks. It is a celebration of the storming of La Bastille (a Paris prison) in 1789. I could join in of course but somehow I’m kinda glad to leave it to those born to it. Elgar’s Nimrod from his Enigma Variations, the peel of church bells and the bark of a dog across the meadows this evening are my home. Sometimes I think of all those frontier guys who set out to make the USA and could never come home or know again those subtle rhythms and aromas of their own place. As I have said before, everything that we are and that we have was paid for by some poor soul.

Emma thinx: Home is where the artful are.

Oh Oh Seven!

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In a few minutes time I will be at the wheel of my 14 year old car and taking the do or die auto route to the coast. Luckily the cruise out of control system still works. I set it at 80 mph and point it North. When I first arrived here I was worried about having a right hand drive UK car. My neighbours shrugged and said “Well – here we drive in the middle of the road, so it doesn’t matter”. I keep the vehicle taxed, insured and tested in the UK. I had hoped that Gilles would be able to come with me but he has to work poor soul. Do you think I feel any disquiet that several French ladies have offered to look after him while I am away? OF COURSE I DO NOT! At least none of them cook rabbit.


Look – I live in France and sometimes I don’t always catch what they say on the radio. I thought I heard that the Beckhams have called their child Harper Seven. The French don’t seem sure how to pronounce it. I must be hearing things.


At last a Buddhist hero. The cyclist Johnny Hoogerland was knocked off his bike by a car driven by journalists in the Tour de France.This bike race has always seemed to me like a bike rally that somehow got caught up in a car race. This poor guy hit a barbed wire fence at 40 mph. When interviewed he said “Well, these things happen – no one meant it to be this way – I feel sorry for the guys who did it because they will feel very bad.” Now – these remarks left me feeling utterly inadequate. He has acceptance, mercy and wisdom. He went off to receive 30 stitches weighed down with absolute respect of millions. I just hope that the ambulance chasing lawyers are careful not to knock him off again.


Remember I advised you to keep an eye on the Steroid-EPO team in the Tour. The cats pounced on a minor mouse today – well, sadly no surprise. Look all you Mr Gogetitnows- what sporting world do you want for your OWN kids? Write to me in confidence. I really want to know.




Emma thinx: What name would your child give to you?

Open Wide

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It’s all about focus isn’t it. I have broken a tooth, or rather what was left of a tooth has given up and just left me with a lump of mercury about the size of the planet.  Before this incident I was a human being, a woman, a romantic novelist, a mother and a vin de pays (not champagne) socialist-Buddhist-cyclist. Now I am a tooth. I am a jagged lump, unfamiliar to myself. I probe myself with my tongue. The breeze, the dishwasher, my sweet neighbour’s chatty friendship have become a tooth. The developing characters of my book have become teeth. I feel like the ocean the day after the storm when my reaching self folds around and takes in the new ravaged cliffs. I think I’m kinda fumbling forward here, towards some kinda understanding of how we deal with change, trauma and loss. Because my experience is so small and trivial the actual experience doesn’t overwhelm me and so I can objectivise it. Am I making any sense? A few folks will have had terrible news and problems today and I feel so pathetically selfish.




So, I’m gonna hop back to the UK. There is my father’s old desk for me to pick up and there is a dentist. Probably I’ll miss the 14th of July in France but I do need a desk. I’ve always tried not to do sentimentality but this item of furniture has many memories for me. I can’t say that I had good relations with my parents and they certainly did not have a good relationship with each other. The desk was where my father used to sit in his isolation doing whatever adults do on desks. Moving it to France probably means it will never come back to the UK and he would never have been able to imagine such an event. Something rooted in the gum of my familiar certainty is crumbling. I told you – I have become a tooth.


I’m reading two books. The first is an old fashioned tree book called “Fatherland”. It’s a cops and Nazi mega stega blockbuster with a gold and Gothic cover. I’ve read cop stories ever since my helmet and handcuff phase with a Scotland Yard detective. So far I’ve avoided the Nazis. The other book is on kindle and called “Shadowbrook” by Shannon Bailey. As an ex hippy poet type I know nothing of genre etc. It’s a paranormal romance crime thrilla frilla I think. Tell you what though – it’s got me hooked and spooked. We live in a fantastic new age of stories. All those old back scratching scribbling elites are cracking. Did someone say tooth?




Emma thinx: Certain of the rock and the sea, I am sand.

O Brave New World

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So, a star in the heavens slips beneath the horizon. The News of the Screws is no more. A pillar of certainty and tradition crumbles and I must confess to a genuine sadness. And I suspect that around the UK it is a shared sadness far more profound that a lot of the puffed up (Oh just look how moral I am) band wagoneering. I am a romantic novelist and I have been a thoroughly wicked woman. At least I know something juicy to write about. They would never have had to spy on me. I would just love to have told them! The decision to close a “toxic” brand is probably correct ……but if you think they won’t be back I wouldn’t get down to the bookies just yet.
Poor Rosina had to get to the Newsagents in England at 6am this morning in order to get my final souvenir copy. She’s a bit posh and probably felt a bit sullied by asking for it. I love her though – she’s a star yah. So, this morning after my portion of baguette I ventured to the tabac for a copy of the French Sunday paper “Le Journal de Dimanche”. The lead story was about a socialist politician. The headline translated roughly as “XXXXXXX – faces rumours about her private life”  Wow – did you feel the heat and explosion? Many column inches talked seriously about the Dominic Strauss-Kahn case in New York. Now, this is a sensational story with ambitious prosecutors facing utter humiliation as they come under fire for a botched case driven by what I call “big case boogie”.  Meanwhile a French accusatrice  alleges a sexual attack some eight years ago. The headline blares out “We have material facts says lawyer”  Wow!  The problem is that while in the UK they have both the gutter and the cerebral press, few countries have such a fantastic mix. Come on Ozzie tycoons- buy your way into France and give us some Dent de Lion and Murdoch.


All of a sudden copies of my short story “Sub Prime” are ripping up the download statistics (Well, my statistics). We did a free audio download with it on Smashwords.com. If anyone out there reading this knows what’s going on please please let me know.


A day of horrible crashes and heroism in the Tour de France.  But a Frenchman Tommy Voeckler  has won the yellow jersey as leader of the Tour de France. Mon Dieu merci!








Emma thinx: Your life is the bus ride – not some maybe stop round the bend.

Boys Toys

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What is it about bridges? I suppose that on any given road, a bridge is a place as opposed to just another anonymous portion of distance. How often we stop on bridges to take in the view or to watch a river flowing underneath. I’m sure you will all have seen spectators on bridges over the autoroute. I must confess I have done this myself – watching all those unknowns pursuing their private destinies. You may wonder what got me onto this. Well, in St Savinien we have two bridges – one that is on the road in and out of town and the other which is a pontoon bridge connecting us to La Grenouillette – which is a park with a boating lake with a circuit of canals. The boats are fantastic and are scale models of real vessels such as tugs, cross channel ferries and Mississippi steamers. These are real boys toys! Kids need adults to accompany them and Adults need kids so Gilles has to wait for some grandchildren to turn up so that he can play on the boats. Won’t be long and he’s getting excited. At least it takes his mind off the cycling. Every year the French scan the horizon for a home-grown winner. Oh dear, a Brit won again yesterday. Best not mention it.


How do you feel about wasps? I mean, would you go out looking for them? In France we have a species called les frelons asiatiques which Anglos would call hornets. They are huge and kill lovely little pollinating bees. Citizens are asked to trap them using a bottle containing beer and grenadine. I’ve always found that beer attracts most Northern European males and the grenadine certainly attracts me in a suitable cocktail with lemonade, vodka and ice. I’ve got to be a good citizen so I’m giving it a go. There might be a bit left for the hornets. Santé!


Emma thinx: Build a bridge. Kiss someone you love.


RWPC8WZSWANW
 

Kangaroo Caught

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Oh dear – there’s trouble at St Rupert’s College. I’ve just seen the Head Boy on the BBC. A wicked colonial student hid in the dorm and saw matron in bed with one of the local police constables. Then he conspired with the editor of the college magazine (a younger but related colonial), and blabbed the story in the campus organ “The Bare Rupert”. Now, much of this will make no sense to my American readers. Watching from France, British politics seems even more upper class. The story is that the most famous British tabloid newspaper “The News of the World” is to shut down almost immediately. Journalists have been hacking phones and paying police for juicy stories. Outrage and disgust sputter from every righteous quarter as the scandal rocks …..well, actually what does it rock? This is a wicked and grubby old world and the people who lead it should be the least surprised. For every spotlight triumph, there is a grim backstage, for every tame tiger there is a cage and whip. Deep beneath it all there is an unspoken issue. Murdoch (who owns the newspaper and a lot of outer space) is a damn Australian. I think they’re gonna have to ban him from the tuck shop. Oh huff puff – just be grateful that we’ve solved world poverty, war and disease otherwise we wouldn’t have the time for this stuff. We bred and fed a bright generation of self seeking shallow thrustoids to tear at one another in pursuit of gain at any moral cost. They did all we expected of them.


All this leads me to starting where I meant to start. Books about romantic novelists who fall in love with super hunks while researching a book where a romantic novelist …..blah blah, do exist. As yet I haven’t written any. When the media becomes the news it has much the same effect on me. The story is a serious one, but it just should not be a surprise to anybody. Let me fill you guys in a little. My book “Knockout” has a police theme. OK – it’s a romance but all the police politics, cynicism and attitudes are authentic. I know this because after my first marriage, I took up with a Scotland Yard cop, who introduced me to Wagner and many aspects of horns and helmets. What I learned was that much of what we see of gloss and celeb glitzywitzy is contrived. I also learned that outside the middle class comfort zone there are many worlds of despair and survival. That filthy guy drunk in the littered doorway has a story but it’s probably too dangerous to ask for it.


Oh – let me be quite honest about the vile, degrading, gutter dredging, over-sexed “News of the World” which is about to die. It was a fantastic paper and provided me with my earliest tingles of sexual pleasure and awareness with its utter filth and and disgusting titivation. I was appalled over and over again every single Sunday.


Emma thinx: Be outraged – it’s the in rage.


Knockout! Available at Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.com/australia

Sharp Practice

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“Try anything in life once except incest and folk dancing.” These words are attributed to none other than one of my heroes – Oscar Wilde. I suspect that a survey of British folk would reveal the view that folk dancing equated to Morris Dancing. A further survey might reveal a certain element of sniggering and derision as if Morris dancing was a form of train-spotting on acid.  Please let me assure any train spotting dancers that this is not my own view. (I was most relieved last week to stop the car near at a railway crossing and chance upon a French train spotter complete with notebook and camera). Returning to the dancing, the French have a completely different view. It is neither eccentric, comic nor quaint. It is the living manifestation of a shared tradition which is rooted in the soil of the soul. Readers will have noted my comments on the relative carelessness with which buildings and bones are treated. This is because France is not a museum. It is a land of living tradition and pride. Old stuff may fall down – this is the nature of time – but love of community and patrimoine is constantly renewed and handed on. France is a country of French people. Any one can enter but it’s not a theme park. The dancers are not entertainers, they are professeurs of pride.


When I first arrived I used to study some odd looking knives in the Intermarché. I thought it was a very blunt peeling knife. Soon enough Gilles explained to me that it was an oyster knife. OK, my experience of shell fish was the whelk and cockle stall at Southend and the best thing about these shell fish was that they didn’t have shells. Next time at the shop I bought knives and 6 oysters. Once I had stopped the bleeding, the oysters were ok. You have been warned. Hold the mollusc in a towel or chain mail gauntlet. I’m told that a scarred palm is a rite of passage.


Emma thinx: If the fall didn’t kill you be proud of your reflexes.

Dem Bones

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“Oh yes”, my neighbour began, “there are many regulations about the guttering.” Now, if this sounds like it’s gonna be boring just think how I felt. One can discuss les gouttières between rain here and that can be months. Without boring you with zinc, copper and iron possibilities, let me simplify the regulations into a single expression. “NO PLASTIC” If you have ever lived in neatened gentrified development with plastic cladding and double glazing you will know what everyone is trying to avoid. Dilapidation topped by the crowing cockerel is the ambience of France. This is why people come here! One of the avowed intentions of my little town is to attract tourism. Much work is being undertaken to make us more attractive to visitors.  Cables are being buried, cobbles quainted and façades painted. The town needs the work and without it the place will die. Anyone old enough to recall the cargo cults of post war Pacific will see the sadness and dilemma of it all. Check out cargo cults here. One thing for sure is that the zeal of converts such as I should be ignored.


Part of the cable burying project unearthed many human bones around the church. Just imagine the scene in England. The whole thing would be closed down. The Secretary of State in the department of Bones n’ Stones would be interviewed for TV, conservationists would chain themselves to railings and would be politicos would outrage themselves with – well – OUTRAGE. Here, a guy dabs away with a brush while diggers and pile drivers carry on. I saunter up and ask about the bones. “It is a mother and child – probably from the Fourteen Hundreds”. Explains an obviously experienced, competent and worryingly brainy university guy. I opine that they will have to stop while matters are catalogued and analysed. “I have the rest of the day – then the cables come in.” He replied. The reconstruction of the past needs a very modern present.


I’m worried about the lizard in my drainpipe. I haven’t seen him for days. I thought we were friends.Do you think he’s blocked me on lizard-book?


Emma thinx: All time, all history led to you in this moment.

Cyber Splash

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The appeal of most news stories is that somehow it all has something to do with us. The DSK affair involves all of us in France because he is – well – French. Opinion polls here today suggest that at least half the population think he should return to national politics. None of this serious reflection is of interest to Gilles. He has already spent the morning in Lycra on his bike and soon the live TV coverage of la Grande Boucle will start. Now, I’m not sure whether or not to raise issues of waxing and shaving – perhaps I’ll come back to it when I discuss supermarket armpit issues. However, a most serious matter has arisen as a result of the DSK affair. Many Anglo media outlets have suggested that as a man of 62, DSK would not have the sexual drive to chase females. Now, Gilles has taken this matter very much to heart and has asked me to rebut any suggestion that the Euro male in his 60s is not up for it. So, world take note. The old boulangers of France are still baking the best hot baguettes. They do tend to get up early but in my experience this is often the case wherever you are.


News that Facebook has had a slight fall in users has left me wondering if we need to recreate some of the old fashioned social networks. In France some of these have never gone away. The cafe, the street market and the long aisle blocking supermarket chat still rival cyberspace. In the Boulangerie this morning the young assistant spent two or three minutes talking to an old guy about his daughter’s dog. Husbands, wives and children in the same house do not send one another e-mails. Sadly the old town and village lavoirs have fallen out of use. These were areas of a river or stream partitioned to allow the communal washing of laundry and of course the exchange of News, blues and views. Whenever I come across an old lavoir I feel like writing a story where young  Primrose Fodderfurrow (Marguerite Vachemouton)  (Foundling orphan and probably a misplaced aristocrat) takes her mum’s table linen down to the river and learns that there’s to be a party at the big house (Château). Sounds like a winner to me. Anyone wanna suggest a title? Tell you what – a free copy for the winner!


The word lavoir does of course rhyme with La voix (The voice). The Eurovision song contest of 2009 introduced me to the Swedish entry sung by an opera singer named Malena Ernman. The song, entitled “La voix” is something else and so is she. Check her out here. Spot the “Queen of the Night” pastiche and WOW that dress…




Emma thinx: Know what you don’t know. Know who you do know.