… this afternoon.
You may remember a few days ago that Marianne and I went to do a recce of Bussieres to see what was going on there.
In this series of walks that she is doing around the villages that make up the canton of Pionsat, today was the day that she was doing the public walk around the village and so, as usual, I went along to hold her coat and keep her out of mischief.
As I’ve said on numerous occasions … “and you’ll say again” – ed … the church is the focal point of every village, and this is where we all met up.
I mentioned previously that the original building of the church has been expanded on several occasions, but as it is on a very constrained, the expansion has taken place in all kinds of directions and so its shape does not conform to what one would expect to see of a more traditional church layout.
Although the church might not be as interesting as the one that we saw last week at St Maurice près Pionsat, it does have a feature that is quite unusual – a sundial.
We’ve seen a sundial on a religious building before – but on a monastery in Trois Rivières in Quebec, Canada. And I do recall telling you the story about the two Québécois discussing it
“what’s the time?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a watch”
“Well go outside and look at the sundial”
“Don’t be silly. It’s dark outside”
“Well take a blasted torch with you!”
The claim to fame of Bussières does not lie in its church, but rather unusually in its village school, and you saw a good photo of that last time.
In the 1920s there was a controversial system of education introduced in France by someone by the name of Célestin Freinet. He didn’t believe in a structured, rigid system of teaching but more in a form of “learning by doing” in a kind of anarchic way.
His system was highlighted in a film called L’École Buissonnière – a title that is a pun on the French way of saying “playing truant” and in several novels such as Le Voleur d’Innocence by René Frégni.
One of the disciples of Célestin Freinet was the teacher at the village school here, Marcel Mercier. And he was apparently quite well-known throughout Europe for his efforts in the Freinet method of education.
While you admire the view across the valley with the zoom lens over to St Maurice près Pionsat, I’ll tell you that during the period 1938-1941 Mercier sent out all of the children to interview all of the elderly people in Bussières.
He encouraged the children to write down everything that they heard. The result was a book entitled Notre Petite Commune – “Our Little Home Town” – and it’s something of a classic of French social study for the first half of the 20th Century – although it’s been long out of print.
The biggest surprise however was that one of the people on the walk had actually been a schoolboy under Marcel Mercier, had participated in the project and, furthermore, whipped out from his rucksack a copy of the book!
Of course, Marianne was in her element and it promptly disappeared into her own rucksack. A promise to return it in very early course was made, once a hastily-arranged appointment at the photocopiers had been met.
Our former schoolboy friend still thought very highly of Mercier and told us that he had also written at least one novel that had become quite famous, but the name of which he had completely forgotten.
Bussières is another one of these isolated villages that has been decimated by a desertion of its population. In the 1840s it could rustle up almost 800 inhabitants but today, it’s a nice, round 100 people.
This building here formerly played an important role in the history of the village, but when I came to write up my notes I found that its former purpose had completely gone out of my head – just like everything else has.
Something to do with taxation – maybe the hated gabelle, or salt tax. I dunno now. I shall have to check with Marianne
Mind you, there is a reason that things have gone out of my mind. And that is that today I’ve given so many people a piece of it that I don’t think that I have any left.
Mindless, you might say.
Firstly, the courier company to whom I entrusted 6 parcels over 4 weeks ago still has three of them in its warehouse. They didn’t know where the other 3 were, but nothing has been forwarded on.
So I’m surprised that I still have a phone connection this evening, seeing the amount of heat that was generated while I was … errr … discussing the issue with them.
Secondly, the phone that I purchased four weeks ago has still not arrived despite the “24-hour guaranteed delivery”.
It seems that the courier company won’t deliver it here as “the address is inadequate” – which translated into English, means that the driver is too lazy to step out of the van and look for the name on one of the five mailboxes here.
I had them on the phone today too and once more I was surprised that the wire didn’t melt. But then again they had just seen the review that I had posted on their Amazon page – trust Amazon to remind me to review my “purchase” this morning.
At the Intermarche I went in for a loaf of bread. That took seconds but going through the checkout took half an hour as a stagiare – a summer student who had been left on her own at the tills tried her best to deal with a queue of 20 people.
At the petrol station I bought a bottle of gas – my first for 15 months seeing as I have a decent woodstove that I cooked on all through the winter. Last year the gas cost €25 – this year it’s €36, and I had a few things to say about that too.
All in all, I was glad to go out and about.
Better news at the Post Office, though. I’ve sent back the Nikon D5000
camera for repair – downloaded all of the instructions and the address label and so on.
When I sent the old Pentax K100D
back last year it cost me an arm and a leg to post it, but when I handed over the parcel and label and enquired about the price, I was told that it was “carriage-paid”.
Well, good old Nikon, hey? Let’s see what happens about that.
But returning to our gas bottle for just a moment. 15 months or so that I’ve had my new woodstove – costing €270. The wood burnt in it has cost me nothing.
With the gas bottles, I was getting through one every three weeks when I was running the heating – and probably a darn sight more when the temperature dropped minus 16°C.
By my reckoning, running the heat from November until mid-March is about 20 weeks. Say, 7 gas bottles at €36 a time – €252. One more period with the fire on and it’s paid for itself already.
