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Roland Routier
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Roland Routier

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Pretty Hasdrubal finds a town

    31. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    I have left the Dutch and thankfully the Costa Blanca, and heading West along the Costa Calida to Cartagena. This used to be an Iberian settlement called Mastia, until General Hasdrubal renamed it Qart Hadasht in 223 B.C. until the Romans decided Carthago Nova was a more up-to-date name, until the Muslims thought Cartajana a more with-it moniker, until the Christians reconquered it in 1242 when it bacame Cartagena because they had run out of other ideas.Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Hounds

    26. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    Either she thinks I am her boyfriend or her slave playmate. Meet Sara, the 14 month old Pyrennien mountain dog. After nearly beeing knocked to the ground a few times, I have managed to train her not to jump up on me whenever she sees me, but mornings are still too much for her to exercise restraint.

    The other dogs are the elderly Pepper, a cross Labrador / Alsatian bitch and the tiny male, Naughty who is something like a Chihuahua and spins on his hind quarters like an out of control merry-go-round whenever he greets me. Both of them too insist on daily tummy rubs from the guest.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Casita

    26. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    The house built by Rob. It has been built of terracotta blocks covered in a concrete roof, (with only one leak,) along one level of almond tree terracing. So it ressembles a Dutch barge, having a long corridor with spare bedroom and bathroom to one side and leading down to a kitchen / dining / seating area. The main bedroom continues the run. What used to be the dry-stone wall of the terrace has been plastered and visually incorporated into the structure by painting it white. It is difficult to keep clean even if there was time to do so.

    Power comes from solar panels and a few batteries, but insufficient to power the house properly. There is no light in the kitchen for example, and the generator must be started to run the washing machine. The fridge, which tends to freeze things periodically, is gas powered as is the on-demand hot water. Rob made a neat enclosure in the bathroom for the gas bottle, electric water pump and heater though didnt have time to make a vent in case of gas leaks. The hot water does not run to the kitchen. The toilet runs to a cess pit and some form of mechanical aid like a stick is often required to flush it properly.

    The home is decorated with some quaint teapots and six statues of Laurel & Hardy.

    The quality and condition of this do-it-yourself home is best demonstrated in the photo of the corridor lamp. Makeshift.

    After the success of their first building, Rob and Joanna are keen to build another smaller one at the other end of the terrace where all the builders rubble lies. The first is too big for their needs and too difficult to clean. They intend to have one room of about 20 sq m for themselves and the three dogs, with a sleeping alcove off to one side and a small bathroom separate.

    I am now helping Rob build an access path to the new building. It will run over the old pond which will be half filled with some of the accumulated stone / brick / glass rubbish accumulated over 18 years. Rob cannily wants to use the other half, beside what will be the entrance, as a cess-pit for the new dwelling. Unfortunately, it will be the last thing I do, as they have discovered that they do not have enough money to buy cement.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Huntin'

    25. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    Woke this morning to the pop-pop of local hunters vainly trying to get some porc for dinner. I didn't realise that I was experiencing the living hell that they have made for expats in the Jalon Valley.

    "We are terrified here," moaned a 70 year old grandmother formerly from Leicesteshire who does not wish to be named. "I had a cat killed, lead shot coming through the window and you just have to shut up."
    Having moved to this scenic area from the coast 15 years ago, she says that hunting dogs often jump her fence and run amok in her garden.
    "The noise from July to February is ridiculous - they begin at dawn and and we can't sleep! They hunt anything and the dogs are destroying the environment. Once I shouted at them from the roof but one just put his finger up. Then they spent hours parked at the end of my drive trying to intimidate me."

    After France, Spain has the largest number of licensed hunters in Europe, amounting to 2% of the population.

    The government has been slammed by animal right's groups for not doing enough to end hunting, and especially for extending til 2020 the planned 2017 deadline for ending hunting in all of Spains 15 National parks. And of course, King Juan Carlos himself an avid hunter when still mobile was roundly criticised and made to resign as honorary president of WWF (Spain).    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    My host, Joanna

    24. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    This is Rob's wife Joanna, matriarch of the family.
    She too is a transplanted Dutch burgher who has had her problems, chief of which was a brush with cancer 20 years ago. Having won once, she is confident she could do it again so limits her roll-your-own Drum consumption to before, during and after meals, (where 'after' is the time until the beginning of the next one).
    Jo has been working very hard to get her Dutch supermarket up and running, spending most days down there. She has been helped by one of her children, Jacinta, who lives nearby having married a Spaniard and producing a son. Jacinta's 2 brothers married and moved back to Holland with their own offspring.
    Joanna's mother also lives in Holland. Bizzarely, she refused to acknowledge her daughter's illness and has not spoken to her since. After several rebuttals, Jo has given up the attempt to communicate.
    She leaves plenty of white sandwich loaf with squashed meats and cheese for lunch and on her return home in the evening around 7:30 she insists on frying us up a dinner, for example of meat in breadcrumbs with cheese fried in breadcrumbs.
    With luck she wont discover that I have been stealing lovely oranges from an adjacent, abandoned orchard.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    My host

    24. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    This is Rob, the medical marvel who reminds me of Don Quixote de la Mancha. If he could stand up straight he would be a little short of 2m tall but damage to some vertebra in his lower back give him a permanent stoop. H He accidentally modified his left hand by smashing the sinews of his thumb repeatedly with a hammer. Despite this slight to his eyesight, he prefers to rely on his eyes rather than on site layout when building and subsequently is proud of the fact that the structures he builds are "organic" in shape.

    His knees are bigger than his thighs owing to arthritis and that, with a meagre bodyweight of 60kg, he weighs less than his dog. This may be explained by his diet which has been carefully planned to exclude most food groups especially fruit and vegetables. Perhaps this is to placate his hernia, though it does render him incapable of more than half an hours work before needing a nap. On the other hand, emphysema - treated by minimising his roll-your-own cigarette consumption to one every 30 minutes - could well have a part to play.

    Periodically he is unable to sleep which doctors desperately trying to prove their competence have suggested is caused by an unidentifiable ailment of the pancreas. To cap it all, his wife believes he has memory lapses caused by "frontal lobe dementia" which to me is as skillful a diagnosis as any his doctors could give, though deafness in his left ear might account for some of it.

    He is resigned to the pain and not inclined to do much about it; just chugs along one day at a time.

    Despite all his he is an affectionate and considerate host. Sometimes I think he is frightened by the prospects of his end.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Illegal immigrant

    23. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    When the almond trees blossom in Spring, this valley of Jalon is a carpet of pink and white flowers that attracts many sightseers, much to the irritation of the local peasants discomfited by sharing their road with other cars.
    But perhaps no more, for following the British and Dutch expats a new resident has arrived, Xylella fastidiosa. Not a prima donna on the flamenco circuit as one might guess, but a deadly tree plague. Farmers hereabouts are anxiously fighting the EU directive to eliminate all infected trees, including those within 100m of each one.
    "Laying waste to all the trees, healthy and infected alike, is no solution," gripes Eladio Aniorte, president of the Asaja Alicante agricultural union. "We are not facing isolated cases because the plague has spread to the Marina Baja, the Marina Alta and El Comtat. There is every likelihood that new focii could soon be found," he explains.
    Adolfo Ribes, spokesman for the AXFA growers' association thundered "This is the beginning of the end for our woodlands, towns and way of life."    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    View from the top

    22. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    I took last Sunday off and walked up the neighbouring hill to take some photos.
    The path disappeared a couple of hundred metres below the summit but I stuck to the plan. Soon I was stuck to the hill. I felt a bit of a prick: in fact many of them.
    The Romans had introduced terracing to the stony hills and once upon a time the entire slope up to the 300m summit had been terraced. Each terrace was only about 2m wide and the retaining walls were no more than stacked stones. The dry-stone walling familiar to Northern climes was not deemed necessary. In recent times the land had been abandoned, the walls had collapsed, and prickly plants have sewn themselves into a cover for the rocks. No way of knowing whether ones footstep will land on hard ground or stomp through scratchy veg for another metre. The predicament is to decide whether to scrape your leg out of the hole and hope for better luck next time, or keep going and let the other leg take a turn at suffering an angry stab strike from the side.
    But I made it and took these photos of the sea at Denia, the gateway to the Balearic Islands, and of the casita where I am staying.

    On my return I discovered that my hosts had vanished leaving the gate locked so I could not leave. Unfortunately I needed by 4 o'clock to be at another Dutch couples place as they had invited me to dinner. Nothing to do but wait and at 5 my hosts arrived and kindly drove me down to the other house.
    Rijn and Else are in their 70's and also live in a Dutch bubble here. She was an HR manager for the now defunct Wang and he was an ex-Burroughs man who had been in the computer business even longer than me, so between us we had a good winge about the decline of systems knowledge and the inability of accountants to understand the difference between commercial and Home computers. Then we watched Dutch TV for an hour because the final of Maestro was showing. This competition is between a number of wannabe conductors who are given the opportunity to conduct a professional orchestra in a variety of pieces. They were surprisingly good and it really demonstrated the difference the conductor makes to a piece of music. So there is a novelty, I found a game show I actually enjoyed.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    On the tiles

    15. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    As preparing the shop in Xalo (Hullo?) is the top priority, my first job has been tiling the food preparation counter in the shop. As the building has poor ventilation and the small extractor fan vents to a communal flue, nobody is allowed to cook on the premises. Fortunately, the delicacy to be sold here doen't need cooking so "food preparation" means making sushimi - the cloggies favourite snack of raw Herring. Can't wait.

    We have been sustained in our work by the dulcet tones of the "singing bartender" Andre Hazes singing songs about failed relationships in a late 50's style, (think Edith Piaf singing Country in low German) - a genre called levenslied ("song about life") - This is so attractive to Rob that his CD player is set on 'repeat'. Oh joy! Andre apparently lived an unhappy, alcohol fuelled life and is now deceased. Perhaps he llistened to one of his own recordings.

    Two young Lithuanian boys drove a semi-trailer from Holland with 3 pallets of stock. Regrettably the silly truckers at HQ had not seen the need to replace the control cable for the rear hoist, so we were forced to unload everything on the truck and to ferry the boxes 30m into the store on wheel-barrows. Took a couple of hours while we were all nervously watching out for the Policia Locale or even worse, the Guardia Civil, in case they disapproved of a TIR lorry treating a bus stop as an unloading bay. The narrow streets of Xalon do not lend themselves to international transport operations.

    I've also been roped in to install the Point of Sale system, a job beyond my capabilities I fear. I can get the thermal and the label printers working but not the bar code scanner, cash box or "shopmate" software. Trying to install them on a second hand XP machine with a defective hard disk fan and drained on-board battery may be aggravating the problem.

    Next job was converting an old Dutch, 3 phase bread slicer with a 4 pin plug to the more modern 5 pin Spanish supply socket. Of course, the owners could pay 150 Euros for an electrician to do the work, but I am going to do it instead. I am guessing that the original did not have a separate earth and since a 3 phase supply does not need a common return, I will simply connect the old common wire to the new earth plug. (Clue: the wire is green and yellow!). Lets hope the inspector doesn't notice!

    Actually it was started in my absence and worked perfectly. No one was more amazed than I, because all the texts about wiring these motors suggested that the motor would only rotate in the correct direction if the supply wires were connected in the correct order, which it is not possible to discover by examination.

    Finally I have been a plumber and fitted a new sink unit after digging the waste pipe out of the wall and lowering its exit point.

    Tiler, loader, IT technician, electrician and plumber. Is there no end to this mans talent?    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    La llosa de Camacho

    8. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    Arrived at my next WorkAway just outside a small village called La llosa de Camacho which is 10km inland from Denia. Apparently the villagers dont like foreigners; by which they mean everyone not from the village. There are about 30 native families whose children for several generations have braved the 6 km journey to an altogether more friendly Alcalali in order to socialise and endulge in dangerous thrills such as dancing. But woe betide any romantic liaisons as one lady discovered when she dared to marry one of the Alcalali lads and is now shunned by the good folk of her village. Why she still lives there I do not know.

    The old Frankia struggled up a short goat track to get to the house and is now comfortable in an almond orchard.

    A Dutch couple of my age, Rob and Joanna are my chain-smoking hosts in their self-built house on a hillside. There seem to be a lot of Netherlanders around, competing with the English expats to render Spanish unnecessary in the neighbourhood: the locals speak Valencian which is a dialect of Catalan.

    With musical background provided by the "Voice of Holland" show on the satellite TV, they tell me how they came to stay here 18 years ago on account of the warmer climate and encroaching arthritis. Since they obviously need less money than living in Holland, the Dutch government reduces their pension every year until - next year - it will not be sufficient to sustain them. Returning would mean paying a "re-integration" tax and receiving less social welfare rights than refugees. Having worked in a variety of self-managed businesses, (lorry driving, building, stained glass, restaurant, bar,) they have the capability to survive in the black economy and are starting a Dutch supermarket in nearby Jalon. Getting the shop ready for business by 21st Dec is the priority and I will now become a shop fitter.

    The house is a long narrow building fitted into an olive terrace and reminds me of a Dutch barge layout. Water run-off is collected in a 20,000 litre tank which is nearly empty so showers are brief, like on a boat. Electricity is supplied by solar panels and a wind turbine and stored in a few batteries. This is inadequate for comfort and the small generator struggles if a band-saw and washing machine are used simultaneously. Even the fridge runs on gas. One project will be to calculate their real needs and plan some upgrades. They also dream of making an even smaller, easier to maintain house a little way along the terrace and renting out their current 2 bedroom house. This is what was advertised on the WorkAway site and will be a major project, especially since the entire water and power requirements will need to be upgraded.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    You looking at me?

    7. joulukuuta 2017, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    Arriving in Spain on my way to the next Workaway. No, not Torro-molinas - this is on the way South along the Costa Dorada. I can't find anything to recommend staying here for more than a few minutes.
    The old border crossing was unmanned of course, but I was astonished to find all the huge shops selling alcohol, perfume, jewellery, watches etc alongside the road. Spanish prices are lower than French ones but not that much.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Farewell F

    4. joulukuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

    My job is done I think. Here is F sitting at her desk; her papers filed, everything written in her blue cahier rather than randomly on bits of paper, post-it notes for activities needing planning, job sheets started and pinned to cork board etc etc. It took longer to explain than to make /organise the furniture but now she has it the house can be completed by next Summer. She even recognises that discovering the source of her son's problem is itself a project to be planned and managed!
    Her consulting room is the one finished room in the house.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Bitter memories

    27. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

    Saint-Nazaire Cathedral. The original VIIth church was destroyed by Vandals and this mid-Gothic one dates from the XIVth C. The altar is quite different from Northern ones and from the Spanish ones I found. The rose window is 10m across and the vaulted nave 14m wide, reaching a height of 32m.

    Like the Chelsea Pensioners Hospital, the Romans established a town on the road that linked Provence with Iberia for veterans in 36–35 BC, called Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum.
    They built on a location used since Neolithic times, before the Celts arrived. Béziers dates from 575 BC, making it older than Agde (Greek Agathe Tyche, founded in 525 BC) and a bit younger than Marseille (Greek Massalia, founded in 600 BC). The inhabitants have been known as Biterrois ever since, and have every right to be bitter as everyone seems to think they can boss the locals around.

    We have seen the Catholic Church imposing its will by sanctioning territorial ambition, and a similar event followed Louis Napoléon's coup d'état in 1851, when troops fired on Republican protesters in Béziers. Those not shot then were captured and either condemned to death or transported to French Guiana. In the Place de la Révolution, outside the Cathedral and the old Palais de Justice, Jean Antoine Injalbert carved a monument to the 3200 deported souls. The bust on top enscribed RF stands for Republique Francaise, the woman represents the failed rebels and the bust is of a former mayor who died trying to escape.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Atlas shrugged

    27. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ 🌙 2 °C

    Injalbert also designed the Fontaine du Titan in The Plateau des Poètes (1867), a vast park laid out in 1867 in the English style that connects the city on top of the hill with the railway station at the bottom. OK, it isn't Titan, it is Atlas, who was one of the Titans, but they are over foreign myths in these parts.

    Nowadays the plundering is more camouflaged. Beziers scores in the top percentiles in France for the number of unemployed and the lowest income per capita. It also scores highly for the number of people paying the Impôt de solidarité sur la fortune or ISF. This was an annual direct wealth tax on those French residents having assets in excess of €1,300,000 which was substituted in September, at the behest of the rich, by an Impôt sur la fortune immobilière (IFI) a tax on real estate which ignores all other financial assets. They made their money from wine, which they made on the land they took from the locals but Atlas didn't care.

    Beziers also scored highly on the number of non-resident householders, most of whom live in Paris or Geneva. But their houses make nice photos.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Not feeling the cold

    24. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Without a constant supply of electricity, the refrigerator cannot be used but this is less of a problem than I thought. There is a mini-Carrefour 5 minutes into Cessenon for perishable items and the three other medium sized ones within a 30 minute drive. Milk of course is mainly UHT in France to ensure that none of the cows' goodness survives and the old butter dish works remarkably well. The one in the photo came from Brittany.

    Progress has been made on the planning front. We have set up a project area with filing cabinets and a table near the fireplace. Now we have to collect all the bits of paper from around the house and put them into folders. I have made a list of 250 things to finish or fix so that the house can be completed. Now F can see how to best use future Workaways next year. I've drawn up plans for a front porch and also for a back deck just in case the other work gets finished!    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Acres of mass

    20. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    In linking Toulouse and Beziers as the start and end point of his canal, maybe PPR was reminding us of their shared 13thC catastrophe when Rome was scandalised by Catharism, with such dangerous doctrines as not needing the intervention of priests to gain salvation and not giving tons of money to Rome, which was attracting too many converts in in Southern France. Pope Innocent III sent preachers to convert the Cathars, but called a crusade after his legate, Pierre of Castelnau, was killed in January 1208.

    A Crusading army was formed in Lyon and arrived in Beziers in 1209, motivated more by spiritual umbrage than by Innocent’s declaration that they would be entitled to keep any land seized from heretics. Under the command of another papal legate, Arnaud Amalric, Abbot of Cîteaux the army arrived at Béziers and called for the surrender of the Cathars and local Catholics. Some Catholics to their credit refusing to betray the few hundred Cathars in their midst to the glories of martyrdom, and the heretics took sanctuary in the Holy Catholic Church of St Madeleine. (Only restored last year.) So when the walls fell, it was mostly orthodox Catholics killing orthodox Catholics. Well, what’s a crusading army with other cities to sack supposed to do?

    "When they discovered, from the admissions of some of them, that there were Catholics mingled with the heretics they said to the abbot “Sir, what shall we do, for we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics.” The abbot, like the others, was afraid that many, in fear of death, would pretend to be Catholics, and after their departure, would return to their heresy, and is said to have replied “Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His” (2 Tim. ii. 19) and so countless number in that town were slain." (Caesar of Heisterbach)

    "And they killed everyone who fled into the church; no cross or altar or crucifix could save them. And these raving beggarly lads, they killed the clergy too, and the women and children. I doubt if one person came out alive … such a slaughter has not been known or consented to, I think, since the time of the Saracens." (William of Tudela, cited in Cathar Castles)

    Amarlic and Milo, a fellow legate, in a letter to the Pope, claim that the crusaders "put to the sword almost 20,000 people.

    Simon de Montfort, a prominent French nobleman, was then appointed leader of the Crusader army and was granted control of the area encompassing Carcassonne, Albi, and Béziers. After the fall of Carcassonne, other towns surrendered without a fight. Albi, Castelnaudary, Castres, Fanjeaux, Limoux, Lombers and Montréal all fell quickly.
    Although his first siege of Toulouse in 1211 was unsuccessful, he defeated the city's army two years later and then appointed himself as count before he himself died at the Siege of Toulouse in 1218. Many more thousands perished.

    Following all these disturbances, the University of Toulouse was established by the 1229 Treaty of Paris. Their basic courses in theology and Aristotelian philosophy were beefed up to combat heresy. The Dominican monastic order was founded, with its home in the Couvent des Jacobins de Toulouse. A nearly four-century holy inquisition began, centred in the city.

    Not a lot of people know this.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Can't escape the Canals

    20. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    The nearest large town is Beziers and to day we visited it to buy a replacement generator and to have a quick look around. Unfortunately, being the winter season, nothing was open on a Monday except the UNESCO World Heritage Ecluse de Fonserannes.... and what I was told is ...

    When our Harry Curtmantle and Aliénor got hitched in 1152 it was not just the merger of Plantagenent assets with Aquitaine but also the start of Britains consumption of Bordeaux wine. This powerful thirst strained the meager production of local plonk and so the good citizens outsourced to Languedoc but retaining naming rights: a trade which continues to this day.

    Unfortunately, there was a mountain range between the Med and the Atlantic so the only way to transport goods North was by jolting along in a rattley cart. In fact so bumpy was it that places such as Dijon made a reputation for themselves by turning the soured Languedoc wine into mustard.

    In order to avoid the dreaded Barbary pirates and the corrugated tracks the Southerners had dreamt of a canal "entre deux mer" for a few hundred years without ever solving the problem of water supply to the highest points of the canal. Augustus, Nero, Charlemagne, François I, Charles IX and Henry IV all dreamed of it: François I brought Leonardo da Vinci over in 1516 to survey part of a route.

    As always, a project of such scope involves hefty contributions from the tax man. In this case one taxman, (the collector of salt revenues, Pierre-Paul Riquet,) took a personal interest and eventually solved the problem. He got the backing of Louise XIV and devoted the rest of his life to digging.
    One of his achievements was to build the 9 lock lift at Fonserannes, each in the shape of a bottle, which have worked well to this day. The last photo of the modern, efficient strramlined version has never worked at all and has been abandoned.

    BTW something else I heard: each year large quantities of Sauvignon Blanc are harvested in the early hours of the mornings and driven over to Reims by nightfall. Not saying anything of course, Mums the word. Honi soit qui mal y pense.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Feeling the heat

    17. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ 🌙 8 °C

    We have been discussing F's son who is 17 and starting his studies for the Baccalaureate. Unfortunately he is not doing at all well, withdrawn from the class and scoring low marks in tests. I have found him an agreeable and fairly knowledgeable young man so I was taken by surprise until I overheard him doing his homework with his mother. His reading age and behaviour were like a 13 year olds. Then I discovered that he always had difficulty with reading, that dyslexia or something similar was hereditary in her family, and that the doctor's solution had been to make him speak with a spoon in his mouth to pronounce words properly. No wonder the poor kid was withdrawn in class. I have been quite rude to F and she is determined to go to Montpellier to sort this out.

    Meanwhile, I have competed the fireplace installation and created a warm feeling in the household.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Medical matters

    10. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    The delivery driver unloads the new, 100kg fireplace leaving it outside the front door , refusing to wheel it 5 metres further along the concrete floor of the house because that would be installation and he doesn't do that whatever the invoice says ( it includes installation) and he leaves us with a gallic shrug to carry it ourselves.

    F was wearing her working clothes, chinese pyjamas; which together with a collection of ornaments from the local Chinese 2 dollar shop, reassure her clients about the authenticity of her practice. She has a clinic in which she practices Bo-chi, a form of Chinese Medicine similar to Reiki or shiatsu. It took many years study under the direction of Dr Shen Honxun, (now deceased,) for her to get her diploma so this is not a fly-by-night operation but one requiring skill and experience.
    Now the funny thing is, she is established as a proper company, recognised (and taxed by the French government,) but the practice of Chinese Medicine is outlawed here; although even the pharmacy provides plastic bags printed with a lotus flower and instructions for how it is used in Chinese Medicine!

    It all started with the Vichy government, who established the "Ordre des Medecines" with the help of local industries principally involved in chemical production and pharmaceuticals. The Ordre is financially very secure, receiving cash from corporations as well as generous donations from those who wish to practice medicine and who do not rock the boat. The Vichy government decreed that only members of the Ordre could practice medicine in France; something that persists to this day. An example of who rocked the boat most recently is Prof Joyeaux.

    One example of the result of this close liaison between government, industry and a closed shop is that babies are given 12 vaccinations at the same time after birth. Another is that, in order to teach in public, the teacher must provide copies of up-to-date vaccination certificates.

    F thinks vaccinations are good, but at the same time is concerned about the increasing levels of non-essential ingredients that are being added for the sole purpose of increasing profits. Since the ingredient labelling laws on products do not include vaccines, it is hard to know the truth of this. (This is when I really miss professor Google!)

    Meanwhile, I have been checking and measuring the house and its apertures for windowsills. There is only about 10mm space available on the inside so I fear it will be impossible to provide a proper slope for run-off. Only two of the frames, some wood and some aluminium, have been installed parallel to the wall; some fancy and time consuming cutting will be needed when the time comes. I also noticed that three of the double-glazed, metal windows have been installed with internal stresses, resulting in cracked panes.    Lue lisää

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  • Roland RoutierRoland RoutierMatkaaja

    Spanish flue

    6. marraskuuta 2017, Ranska ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    The commotion in Catalonia has been given a new twist by F, whose father and antecedents came from those parts.

    Apparently the schism, fundementally with Madrid, stems from the Civil War, when Franco's delegates asassinated a large number of Catalans and shovelled them into mass, unmarked graves. To this day F and her family do not know where her great-uncle and his wife's bodies rest.

    People who were at least sympathetic to the fascist cause are still ruling from Madrid and apparently have never acknowledged or apologised for the atrocities. Since then, whilst Fascist widows get a pension, Republican ones don't. And the authorities have been silent with their hands in their pockets over the puzzle of where the bodies have been thrown. (And they take more money from the area than they ever return in kind.)

    Like the Japanese actions in Manchuria, if old crimes are not confessed and vitiated, hatred and distrust will continue for generations.

    Meanwhilst, back at the worksite, I have removed the old cast iron fireplace, cleaned the chimney and knocked out the old concrete stovepipe surround to make the surfaces all nice and flattish for the new one that I pressured F to order. Maybe at the end of the week we'll have some heat in the evenings.    Lue lisää

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