Tag Archives: montsegur

Monday 10th February 2025 – I’M FED UP …

… of asking people questions and having a completely different response to that which would have answered the question and terminated the discussion.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall when in Québec I encountered Spruce Beer for the first time, so I asked "is this beer alcoholic?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "that’s over there"

Today at the Dialysis Centre I asked the doctor "have you prescribed me a sleeping pill?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "do you want one?"

Leaving aside the ethical question of patients self-prescribing their own medication with the connivance of doctors, what’s wrong with anyone answering a question simply and straightforwardly?

As you can tell, I’m in a foul humour this evening. And it started out so well too.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I had to do, it wasn’t all that late so I headed to bed at something like a reasonable time for once. And that cheered me up.

Once in bed I was asleep fairly quickly and there I stayed until all of about 05:30 when I heard the phantom doorbell. At least, that’s what it said on the dictaphone round about that time. I have no recollection of that at all.

When the alarm went off I was away with the fairies (although not in any situation likely to bring forth comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) and it was a very weary me who staggered off into the bathroom

It’s Dialysis Day today so I had a good clean-up, a shave and so on ready for if I encounter Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a girlfriend at school. She used to come into school later than we did so when I came in I would go to my classroom and about 08:25 she would turn up. But one day there was a load of people in our classroom who didn’t belong in there, some kind of managers or something like that. I imagined that they would have an awful lot to say about this girl coming into a different classroom in the morning. I was there waiting for her and round about 08:20-08:25-08:30 she hadn’t turned up but I had some things to do so I went into the boss’s office next door. I caught a glimpse of her and she smiled at me and went into our room. I took these things for the boss and went back into our room. There was my girlfriend on the scales weighing herself. Really disappointedly she’d reached 325lb this week and was very disappointed by that. I noticed that she’d filled out this white dress suit that she was wearing, filled it out rather too much. We basically agreed to see each other at lunchtime and then she cleared off. The teacher looked at me, looked at the people who were surveying the class, looked at me again and asked me some comment about the girl, then looked at these people again as if to say “just be careful what you say because they’ll be writing it down and noting it”.

Weighing yourself as you go into a room? What does that remind you of? It certainly does to me.

To each his own of course, but attraction is a very personal thing – as they say over here des gouts et les couleurs on ne discute pas – but my ideal kind of girl would be one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed. Strangely enough, apart from once at school, I have never ever ended up with anyone at all like that. It just goes to show that life and fate sometimes deal out some very strange hands and you have to play them as best as you can. Whoever would have thought 30 years ago that I would have ended up in a relationship where there was a child present?

It’s true nevertheless that our school bus, which was the prolongation of a service route, always used to arrive first and a couple of girls with whom I spent some time used to travel on the last one to arrive. As for the rest of the dream, it rings a vague bell somewhere in the back of my mind that is best left there.

Having finished that I made a start on finishing off the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. However, Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me. We talked about Carnaval and her float while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve moved on now to discuss the construction of an earthen fort, with helpful plans and diagrams. That will come in useful if the Romans ever attack us here, I suppose. But joking apart, it’s extremely interesting and I wonder what I’m going to discover next.

Before we leave the general pages, he mentions that "It would seem to be a legitimate inference from such a priori reasoning that, subject of course to exceptional circumstances, a camp is later in date according as it is less irregular in plan, less elaborately defended, and constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site"

Anyone who has ever seen a Norman or Edwardian castle will know that this is far from the case. And while many of the forts that we visited in the USA were built accordingly, when Fetterman and Curser dug themselves in against the rampaging hordes of Native Americans, they both chose hilltops and promontories

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that in 2014 we WERE AT MONTSEGUR, the last refuge of the Cathars, and that is probably the most inaccessible, difficult-to-reach castle that I have ever visited, and I knew all about that climb for several days. None of your “constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site” with Montségur.

Back in here I finished off the radio programme, chose the final track and wrote out the notes ready for dictation on Saturday night. Then I made a start on the remainder of the Welsh homework. That’s not yet finished, and heaven alone knows when I’m going to find time to do it.

My cleaner took me by surprise yet again as I was nowhere near ready, and she fitted my anaesthetic patches. We talked about cats, and it seems that I’m not going to find it as easy to adopt one as I might think. These days, these refuges are very picky and choosy as to who can adopt a cat and she reckons that I would fall down near the end of the queue.

If that’s not enough bad news for the moment, the taxi didn’t turn up until 12:45. It’s the school holidays of course and many drivers have taken time off. The car that came to pick me up was the wheelchair-carrier and we hadn’t gone half a mile before his ‘phone flashed a message “next job, wheelchair from the Centre Normandy – at 13:00”. So he had 15 minutes to undertake a 90-minute round trip to Avranches and back.

It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had we not encountered just about every problem possible on the road. And then when we arrived, there were seven vehicles all trying to unload at the same time – and we were sixth, so we had to wait our turn.

With everyone arriving at once and me being next-to-last I had to wait an age to be seen

The connection was as painful as it could possibly be and I suffered throughout the whole session. But the nurse did confirm to me that once the machine does start up, it’s not uncommon to have a wave of fatigue. It’s to do with the drop of blood pressure and strain on the heart.

The doctor came to see me as well, the unsociable one. We had our little discussion as I mentioned earlier and eventually he did confirm to me, as I suspected, that they had prescribed a sleeping pill. It has several other uses too which they think might be useful, which was why they prescribed it in the first place.

My response was that I was going to stop taking it as of now. He replied that I might find it difficult all at once and I should “taper off”, but if it’s a medication like that then I don’t want to be on it anyway so as of earlier this evening it’s off the list.

And so, incidentally, is the medication that they prescribed to counter some of the side-effects.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in, and then I had to wait. The driver who was to take me home had stuck her head in earlier but I told her that I would be fifteen minutes so as she had someone to pick up at the Clinic across town she decided to go there first.

She hadn’t come back by the time that I was ready so I waited. And waited.

Not that I minded because Emilie the Cute Consultant came past.

"Wiating for your taxi, Mr Hall?" she asked
“No, I’m waiting for N°11 bus to Marble Arch and Trafalgar Square” I would have said had it been anyone else but Emilie the Cute Consultant
"Yes I am" I replied "You don’t fancy taking me home, do you?"
"I don’t live in Granville any more" she said. "I live in Marcey, just around the corner"
"Well, you could always take me to Marcey with you"

She had the decency to laugh, but she wasn’t all that impressed. Ahh well …

A car suddenly screeched up outside, but it wasn’t my driver who hopped out. Nevertheless he had come for me.

He was one of the ambulance crew who was in the depot washing the vehicle when the call came through. Apparently my driver who had gone to the clinic discovered that there was a major problem there with the other passenger and she was obliged to wait. It’s a good job that I hadn’t gone with her.

We had a good chat all the way home, so much so that I forgot to warn the cleaner that I was on my way, and she had a mad scramble to meet the car. 19:45 when I finally arrived home.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by apple cake and soya dessert. But then I cut up the date bread that I had made, and if the rest of it tastes as good as the crumbs that I tasted, it will be absolutely excellent.

So fed up, in pain and glad that the day is almost over, I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow. I can understand what they meant in Leuven back in 2016 when they said "save your strength for the battle that lies ahead" because I can’t do with too many more days like this one.

But talking about going home just now … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of a guy in a pub in Nantwich.
He would sneak a photo out of his pocket, glance at it, put it back and then order a beer.
After three or four times curiosity got the better of the and he asked the customer about the photo
"What’s about the photo?" he asked
"It’s the wife" replied the man
"Do you always look at it just before you order a beer?"
"Yes I do" he replied. "When she starts to look beautiful, that’s when it’s time to go home"

Friday 20th November 2020 – DOESN’T CALIBURN …

… look smart with his new bodywork all finished off?

Mind you, he ought to at the price that it cost me for the work. Before he gave me the bill, the garage proprietor asked me if he should fetch the defibrillator, and when I saw the cost, I wished that he had.

But there’s a 5-year guarantee on the body repairs and that will see Caliburn and I go out together. No-one has ever lived longer than 11 years with this illness and although it was only 5 years ago that I was diagnosed with it, I reckon that I had it for a good while before then. I remember CLIMBING UP TO THE CHATEAU DE MONTSEGUR in early 2014 and being totally wiped out in a situation that I would have run up without any problem a couple of years previously.

There’s no reason to dispose of Caliburn and have something else for whatever time remains. A new vehicle wouldn’t be worth it at all and if I were to buy something second-hand, who knows what I’d end up with?

What I need to do now is to attend to the wheels. He’ll need two tyres on the front sometime soon, and I have two old wheels in the back. I’ll clean those up and paint them and have winter tyres fitted, and then with the two that I take off, I’ll clean and paint them and have new tyres fitted on there too.

But I’m not impressed with the broken mirror though. That’s “disappointing” to say the least.

Something else that’s disappointing is that I missed the third alarm. What makes me feel even worse about that is that after the second one had gone off I remember saying to myself that I’ll beat the third one easily seeing as I’m so wide awake.

Oh Folly! Folly! As the late-lamented Stanley Unwin would have said.

First thing to do was to listen to the dictaphone.

There was a whole group of us looking at a map of the Far North of Russia. One of my friends was there and we were pointing out where we’d been on our famous trip to the North, although she was getting it wrong so I was having to show her on the map a lot better than she was guessing where we’d been. Another friend was there as well having a good look. We were talking about our journey, all this kind of thing very much in the same sense as we did about a dream quite a while ago when we were out in the High Arctic. I went to get my things. I had a tray with coffee and a jug of tomato juice, a few other bits and pieces. As I picked up the tray off the table the jug brushed the kitchen cupboard overhanging it and knocked it over. The tomato juice went everywhere. I just put the tray down in despair because I knew that this had really happened to me before and it’s going to happen to me again. It’s always the case when I’m in a rush – I have to do 3 jobs instead of 1. There was much to it than this but I can’t remember now – something to do with the taxis as well. I was having to go out on the taxis later but it was getting late and no-one had rung me. We were bound to be busy because it was a Saturday night and I’d have to go out. But I thought “who was going to take over on the radio?” This kind of thing. Then I thought that Nerina isn’t here either. She’s still away somewhere but she’ll be coming back and be stuck in the office. Maybe she could do the radio but I don’t know anything more about that.

Some other time during the night I had a computer and I was trying to do something. We were looking at this home video of someone’s bedroom and marvelling at the old selection of electronic and electrical appliances that there were back in the 70s and 80s that we don’t see now. Later on I had my computer coupled up to a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I was recording tracks that I was picking up on the internet radio onto that with the idea of editing them afterwards with Audacity or something. The idea was that once everything was stored onto master tapes it can be copied onto CD and filed away. I was having to work out how this was going to work

After the medication I carried on with a task that I started yesterday and hadn’t mentioned. There were almost 250 unread e-mails in my mailbox, some of which were going back to the early summer, as well as a whole pile of ones that I’d already read and which were now serving no useful purpose except to waste space.

Consequently I’ve been going through them yesterday and today, dealing with a pile of stuff that I should have dealt with a long time ago and there is still some to do. And a few more people will have a surprise over the next few days when they start to receive replies to messages that I sent out months ago.

Something else that required attention was to ring up a certain telephone number in the UK. Between 1972 and 1974 I worked for an Insurance Company in the UK and I was wondering whether I might be entitled to a pension payment in this respect. It took me ages to track down who I should speak to because the company has changed hands a few times since then but I eventually managed to speak to someone who reckoned that he could help me.

In the end it turned out that because I

was under 30
worked there for less than 5 years

There was nothing for me at all. But still, it was worth the phone call simply to find out.

It’s hardly a surprise that after all of this I crashed out on the chair for half an hour. And a really deep one too, just like the ones that I was having a week or two ago. Just recently, if I have crashed out at all, it’s just been drifting off for 5 or 10 minutes or so.

After lunch I headed off to pick up Caliburn – yes, I’d telephoned the garage too to see if he was ready.

Down in the harbour there was a trawler that I don’t recall seeing (although I must have done, I suppose) before. She’s registered in Cherbourg and she’s called “Le Pearl”, and proudly displays on her superstructure the fact that she comes from Granville

She’s quite a pretty craft, and by the looks of things she’s fairly new too so maybe she really is new and has replaced an older one that has been put out to grass somewhere. She’s only been mentioned in shipping records since 20th October this year.

We’ll have to see if there’s anything in the papers about it.

Further along in the harbour, there are signs of activity at the loading bay underneath the crane.

A whole pile of builders’ material is now there ready for loading. It looks as if one of the Jersey freighters is going to be coming back into port very shortly to take it all away.

The next question is not “which one will it be?” but “will I get to see it?”. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen just recently a really rapid turnround of the ships and we’ve probably missed more than we have seen since they have begun to extricate their digits

I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … into town on my way to the garage, but I only got as far as the Cours Jonville before I stopped again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that we’ve seen the Christmas decorations pushing up like mushrooms all over the town. Here I was lucky enough to stumble upon a couple of Council workmen with a cherry-picker who were busily stringing up a collection of fairy lights around a few of the trees down here.

Leaving them to it, I pushed on along the Boulevard Louis Dior (and forgot to take the photo of the alley yet again) and up the steps at the end, past the railway station and out of town.

It’s a long, weary trudge all the way out of town but I was determined to do it on foot as a form of good exercise, and I’m glad that it wasn’t very warm.

Past the centre of St Nicolas and into the countryside and here at the roundabout on the edge of town is the water tower that we have seen in the background of so many photos. I quite like this water tower. usually they are simply slabs of dull-grey concrete but with this one they have made an effort to try to make it blend into the environment.

By now, I’m well in the countryside and still a kilometre or two to go.

However I wasn’t alone on my travels.

There is a housing estate on the very edge of the town beyond the roundabout and here standing on the corner watching the world go by is a chicken. What he’s doing here I really don’t know but seeing as he near to a pedestrian crossing he might be trying to cross the road.

And as for why he would want to do that, it’s anyone’s guess.

At the garage they clearly have more faith in me than I have because they had left Caliburn parked in the street Had I had a spare pair of keys I could simply have driven away.

And I made rather a fool of myself in here by complaining that they had set the Controle Technique to expire in July, before I realised that I had been looking at the insurance sticker.

Having paid the bill and recovered from the shock, I went down to Leclerc for the weekend shopping, where I spent a fortune.

One thing that I like about the end of the grape season is that it’s the start of the clementine season and I can polish those off just as quickly as I can polish off grapes.

With not having bought any heavy stuff for ages the bill was somewhat elevated but a lot of that can be blamed on the soya milk that was in three-packs on special offer. My mid-morning hot chocolate gets me through a lot of that.

And interestingly, when I arrived at rhe checkout I found that I had a pile of ham in my trolley. Somewhere along the line I had picked up the wrong trolley and had to retrace my steps until I found mine

Ohhh! The exciting times that we lead these days!

Back here I made a start on the arrears, still getting nowhere rather fast. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

The hour on the guitars was successful again – I enjoyed it just as much as yesterday – and for tea I had a burger that needed eating with some pasta followed by apple crumble.

Just as I was about to go out on my run, Rosemary phoned for a chat. And 2 hours and 48 minutes later we stopped. We had a lot to say.

23:15 is far too late to go out for a run so I was glad that I’d had the marathon walk this afternoon.

Tomorrow I’m going to try my hand at baking seeing as I’ve finished off the banana bread. See what damage I can do to a chocolate cake. But that’s for later. I’m off to bed.

Thursday 6th March 2014 – I’M IN QUILLAN TONIGHT

And in case you are wondering where Quillan might be, it’s back in France again in the Département of the Aude about 50kms from Carcassonne.

But I’m not going to Carcassonne (well, at least, not yet) – I’m going to somewhere quite different, more of which anon

Today, though, I left Andorra nice and early in the bright sunlight and to cheer me up even more, I found a petrol station selling diesel at 111.3 cents per litre, which has to be the cheapest that I can get anywhere in Europe.

The climb up and out of Andorra was rather fraught though. They were still dealing with the after-effects of the heavy snowfall the other day, and what wasn’t helping matters was that there was a really strong wind up aloft. That’s not a cloud coming over the top of the mountains – that’s the snow being whipped off by the wind.

I was going that way too and the higher the road climbed into the mountains, the worse the road became. But while there weren’t any problems, it was still uncomfortable.

What didn’t help matters was that the snowploughs had not been able to clear the parking areas at the ski resorts. Consequently, all of the holidaymakers simply abandoned (I refuse to use the word “parked”, as “parked” they certainly were not) all over the sides of the roads by the ski lifts regardless of the snowploughs and the moving traffic. It was total chaos in quite a few spots and had I been an Andorran policeman, all of the cars would have been towed away.

Thoughtless was not the word. Pig-ignorant and selfish are far better.

Now, how about this for something? That castle perched up there on that rock in the distance is one of the most enigmatic places in the whole of France and was on the top of the list for me to visit. It’s the reason why I’ve come down here.

It’s the Chateau de Montségur and while it can’t match Béziers for being the place of the greatest massacre of French civilians (well, okay, they weren’t French back in the 13th Century), what happened at Montségur is one of the most mysterious and bewildering events ever to occur in what is now France.

Somewhere round about where that monument is (no-one can be exactly sure where the exact spot might have been) on 16th March 1244, approximately 225 Cathars and Cathar sympathisers were put inside a cage and were burnt to death.

And it has to be said that they were quite happy with the idea, to such an extent that about 20 of the victims actually volunteered to go to their doom. One eye-witness report tells of the Cathars singing as the flames were engulfing them.

In brief … "thank goodness" – ed … Catharism was a religious sect that dissented from the teachings of Rome. Cathars were Christians without a doubt, but nevertheless their manner of worship and their beliefs were considered heretical by the Pope.

Catharism was quite strong in this region and some of the wealthiest landowners were Cathars. Consequently, other local notables didn’t need much encoragement to urge the Pope to declare a Crusade against the Cathars.

Béziers was one of the first Cathar towns to fall and it is said that maybe as many as 20,000 people in the town were burned alive.
It was reported that someone asked “who shall we burn? How do we know which ones are Cathars?”
The reply was quite simple. “Burn them all. God will recognise his own”.

But as the noose slowly tightened around the Cathar region, the rock of Montségur was fortified and turned into a refuge of the last resort. Little by little, refugees arrived here bringing with them the religious treasures and relics from other Cathar centres that had succumbed. In 1243 there were 500 people living on the rock, all prepared to make a last stand.

Montségur by this time had already withstood several sieges but in May 1243, with opposition elsewhere being almost totally crushed, the whole might of the Crusade laid siege to the rock and slowly but surely, fought their way up the hill.

By Christmas 1243 it was clear that the garrison could not hold on for much longer and in a daring escape, several of the parfaits, as the Cathar monks and nuns were known, took the entire treasure that had accumulated inside the castle, and disappeared with it to a place of safety. What became of it, no-one ever knew and no trace of it has ever been discovered to this day.

Even more incredibly, one of the escapees managed to return to the castle and he was there on 1st of March 1244 when the castle finally called a truce. The terms of the truce (which was effectively a surrender of course) was that the civilians could leave unmolested, but any parfait (there were said to be about 200 or so in the castle) who failed to renounce his or her vows would be burnt to death.

The defenders asked for a 15-day truce (why, no-one knows) and this was accorded. And on the eve of the final day, an important ceremony of some nature was held within the castle. Later that evening, a few more parfaits slipped out of the castle, taking with them the final objects of importance that had (presumably) been used at the ceremony. And all of that disappeared too, never to resurface.

Next morning, the garrison surrendered. and it is said, quite astonishingly, that not only did no parfait renounce his or her vows, but another 20 or so claimed to have taken the vows in the meantime and demanded to be burnt – a request which of course was granted.

So what was the treasure that was taken away at Christmas 1243?
Where was it taken to?
Why did the garrison demand a 15-day truce?
What was so important about the 15th of March that a truce was requested to cover that day?
What was the ceremony that took place on that day?
What were the objects that were used at the ceremony?
Why were they taken away?
Where were they taken to?
Why were so many people so happy to be taken away to their deaths?

There has been endless speculation about all of this and so many books and novels have been written that they could make a stairway up to the castle. But you can see why Montségur is a place of such interest to so many people.

This is another site in the Ariège that is associated with Cathars. It’s the village of Montaillou.

This is not the original site of the village, though. This is a more recent reincarnation. The village that we are interested in is the one that was in existence at the end of the 13th Century and this is about half a mile away from the present site. And unless you know where to look, you won’t find it at all.

This chapel sitting down in a field dates from the 11th Century and it was at the foot of the chapel that the original village was situated.

And so to set the scene, the fall of Montségur did not quite spell the end of Catharism in France. It lay dormant for probably 50 years but someone discovered several documents setting out the important tenets of Cathar belief, and he resurrected the religion. Montaillou was one of the most important “new Cathar” villages, so much so that a Papal inquisition descended on the place and arrested all of the inhabitants.

They were fully interrogated and their answers were fully recorded. There were indeed parfaits in the village but many escaped. One by one, though, they were tracked down and burnt to death

So while you look at the site of the Medieval village and marvel at how clearly the traces of the roads and habitations show up through the snow after 7 centuries of abandonment and agricultural exploitation, let me tell you a little about what is so interesting about the village.

If you remember my visit to Red Bay in Labrador in 2010

you’ll recall how a chance find in a dusty, forgotten archive led to a discovery of the 2nd-most-important historic site in Canada, something similar has happened here.

While you look at the ruins of the castle of the Counts of Foix, situated on a hill nearby, I’ll tell you that someone by the name of Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie went a-ferretting in some dusty, forgotten archives of one of the local bishops, and actually discovered the verbatim records of the interviews between the members of the Papal Inquisition and the inhabitants of Montaillou.

He wrote a book (a copy of which is in my possession) to summarise the information gleaned from the interviews and it has become one of the most important references to life in rural France at the end of the 13th Century, adding a great deal to whatever was previously known about the subject.

While we are on the subject of castles, this whole area is teeming with them. Not quite one on every hilltop but pretty much near enough.

This is the Chateau de Puivert and was another Cathar stronghold. It fell to the Crusaders after a siege of just three days in November 1210 and the leader of the crusaders, Simon de Montfort, granted it to one of his marshalls.

As an aside, de Montfort was the father of the Simon de Montfort who opposed Henry III of England during the Barons’ Revolt of 1264-67. It was however Montfort père who was responsible for most of the atrocities committed against the Cathars during the early years of the Crusade.

It wasn’t all work either. I’ve seen a couple of really interesting motor vehicles today, highlight of which has to be this German Hanomag Kurier light truck.

Apart from the fact that its engine is a diesel, I know nothing else whatever about it. Hanomag stopped making trucks in 1969 and so this gives me some idea of the date. I wouldn’t have put it many years earlier than that. Still, I’d take it home with me tomorrow given half a chance.

-2

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: montsegur

Monday 10th February 2025 – I’M FED UP …

Friday 20th November 2020 – DOESN’T CALIBURN …

Thursday 6th March 2014 – I’M IN QUILLAN TONIGHT