Bonjour

Well finally a flyer, It would appear my computer knows when I am starting to prepare a new edition and decides to turn text yellow and double space all text.

Hopefully all will be clear on your receipt. I am sorry if you recently submitted and an ad or text but I had to cut off adding things due to the repated computer problems and this document is already too large, I hope it doesn’t give problems to receive it.

Why do I do this, indeed a question I ask myself more and more frequently, well the idea is to run this as a small business with ads that are paid, and a website, both of which will attempt to serve the visitor and locals alike. At this point ads are free, any donations gratefully received

If you wish to submit ads then please put all text and pictures in the body of an email (rather than as attachments) no formatting please and send to muttonbirds@easynet.com

A word of warning to anyone who uses google autofill when booking a ryanaair ticket. It will overwrite the passenger name and put your name in, ok if you are traveling a disaster if you book for someone else, believe me I know!

Sting tickets

I have blocked some tickets for this show on July 5 at the amphitheatre in the old cite Carcassonne , please note they are 68€ each should you want any please let me know

Another new route from Carcassonne to Shannon starting October 12th three times a week on Tuesday Friday and Sunday

From our own correspondent (return of the new Limouxine next month)

Chickens and Austrians

The poor motorist who was killed on the M2 the morning we emigrated put all our little problems into perspective, but he added one little problem of his own. Because the M2 had to be closed, we arrived at Dover via the minor roads about five minutes before the Speedferry was due to leave. The people who did the signs at Dover must have been instructed to confuse and delay foreigners. Not for them such simple messages as ‘Way In’, or ‘This way to the ferries’. No suitable orifice presented itself, so my wife, Donna Quixote to my Sancho Panza, got out to ask a local the way. She reported back: “We have to go round there, up a slope and look for a sign saying ‘Carr Chickens’.”

Under severe pressure of time we spent about four seconds wondering about the chickens, and decided that, since Speedferry were a new company, and undercutting the others, they might well have been forced out of the main port and along the coast a bit, persuading a chicken farmer to give up some beach for the hydrofoil’s moorings. Off we went up the white cliffs, and spent ten minutes searching for the chicken farm. Since our ferry was now undoubtedly on its way to France, we gave up, and went sadly back to Dover. My wife went back to her informant. “Not ‘Chickens’, Dear, ‘Check-ins! It’s round there!” Oh dear.

This was not the dramatic flourish with which we had hoped say farewell to England, Home and Beauty, but we set off purposefully from Boulogne, only a few hours behind schedule. Quite soon Radio Four dissolved into hisses and crackles, and we were alone. There will be Test Match Special on the slopes of the Pyrenees, won’t there…? I mean, long wave means it goes a long way, doesn’t it?

We enjoyed the recently completed motorway via Cahors, and finally arrived at the gite. This had been chosen by me after I had stayed in it in the spring in my original journey of exploration to the Aude. The difficulty was, I am very easy going and rather uncritical of domestic details. Not so Donna Quixote. I had not noticed that the gite was fundamentally unfit for human habitation. I had no idea about cleanliness, the people owning the gite were grossly incompetent and undeserving of the rent, and we should leave immediately. Being translated, this meant that there was a fragment of toast still in the oven, and a piece of superannuated onion in the fridge. Since I had already paid the rent there was something of an impasse. The storm slowly abated, and soon every surface in the gite submitted, gleaming, to her authority. That evening we sat on the terrace watching the sun going down along the Pyrenees, making lengthening shadows in the neat rows of vines. With the help of avocadoes, cheese and wine we became friends again.

We started the search for a house. The estate agents were a mixed bunch, all quarrelling furiously with one another. Some of the worst ones were big advertisers in the French Property press. Attempts to follow up their adverts often led to one’s being cornered in a café by a man in a pork pie hat trying hard to sell you something belonging to his cousin which we could renovate with the help of his uncle. This was why we had abandoned the ‘fly down for the weekend’ approach in favour of setting sail with the house sold and the proceeds in our pocket.

Our house search had not been going long when we began to notice the Austrians. My memories of Austria centred round a drive through the Vienna rush hour with a temperature of 104º, and the mind-boggling cost of living. In 1969 we spent as much in a weekend in Vienna as we had in ten days in communist Czechoslovakia. Why therefore did all the Austrian tourists seem only to be able to afford small battered French cars? Where were the grand Mercedes, Audis and BMWs? Why, with all those Alps, did they choose to holiday among very small Pyrenean foothills, nosing timidly about sad provincial housing estates all day? And where were the leather trousers and feathered hats? We decided they must be unreconstructed Nazis searching for the Holy Grail and the treasure of the Visigoths, driving Peugeot 106s to avoid attracting unwanted attention. They failed in this as far as we were concerned, as their slow and erratic driving added to our difficulties in getting used to driving on the right. We often needed to follow Formula I estate agents leading us to new properties, and having to overtake the sluggish Austrians on the narrow roads. We became vehemently anti-Austrian in a short time.

We saw a lot of houses, and I thought about six of them were OK: pleasant buildings, within the budget and in convenient or scenic locations. Not so Donna Quixote. They were all crap. A pattern established itself. We tour the building making approving noises and discussing possible alterations. I mystify the owners with my French repartee. We part the best of friends, and as we drive away Donna Quixote speaks. It was crap. ‘But there was a lovely view across the cemetery?’ ‘Didn’t you see the bathroom? Who puts a toilet in the middle of the room? It was crap.’

We rejected the house in the valley because of the boars, and the house on the hill because we ran over a large green snake on the way out. We rejected the house with the green shutters and tearful, widowed mistress, because my proposal to build a decked terrace-cum-Bridge of Sighs over the gas tank was ridiculous. We rejected the Dutchman’s new built house: although, as the notaire could see from our photographs, it palpably existed, the very reasonable price being asked for it was calculated on the basis (for tax purposes) that it did not.

We rejected the Beatle tribute band player’s house because it was next door to a meat factory, even though I had negotiated a substantial reduction for having once urinated next to John Lennon. The charming Swiss style house with a magnificent view of the Pyrenees was rejected as an ugly Teutonic structure and because you had to go through the bathroom to get into the garden, though this was admittedly not as bad as the little village terraced house on the road to the hippy colony, where you had to climb through the bathroom window to get on to the terrace. ‘The world is not for sale’ shouted the hippy graffiti. Think again, hippies.

House No 39 was different. The day began unpromisingly with a lumpy journey up from the nearby town in the estate agent’s Peugeot 106. The estate agent, though not an Austrian, had reservations about the English putting the prices of property beyond the reach of the local French and the conversation was somewhat prickly. But then we swept into a gravelled, flower-tub-and-tree-lined oval in front of an imposing edifice. As the car engine died the air was filled with the sound of turtle doves. The sun shone on the lizards scurrying about the sandstone slabs of the sheltered, south facing terrace. We hardly needed to go in, as Donna Quixote decided to buy it four metres short of the front door. It was big and beautiful, and belonged to a French railway engineer. An anxious friend stuck an unravelled metal coathanger right through the crack in the metre thick west wall, but the locals all chorused ‘Ce n’est pas grave’, and we took it. A man who builds TGVs will not live in a house which is falling down, we reasoned. The estate agent closed his eyes and thought of the commission. We had a house in France.

And the Austrians? They turned out to be French learner drivers, who are obliged to show a red letter ‘A’ for ‘Apprenti’ where in England we should have an ‘L’ for ‘Learner’. Sorry, Austrians.

Hugh Nicklin

Bonjour

Chickens and Austrians

The garden

Sport, wellbeing and fitness

I am teaching fitness classes (Shape Aerobics and Kick boxing) every Tuesday morning.

The class starts at 9:30 am and is 45 minutes.

Bowen Therapy in Trèbes ( Aude)