Mirepoix Cathedral and a bit of a card

Mirepoix is a quaint medieval town where the English have settled in alarming numbers to see out the rest of their days.
I was expecting a Sunday afternoon to be quiet, with abundant parking available.
Wrong! There was a conference on sustainability etc going on. I finally got parked in a side street and dressed up like a posh waiter, I strolled around to the Cathedral. There was someone talking on a microphone to a sparce audience under the Halle. Stands were everywhere. The rastas/ hippies were in town. Against one wall of the Cathedral were several examples of hand built wooden toilet cubicles, painted up in various patterns and colours. Their USP (unique selling point) was that they did not require any water to flush them. They were dry toilets. I did not investigate further, but the individual cubicle units economised in the wood used for some of the walls.
A man was chopping slices off a log to make wooden roof shingles.
Some others were making bricks with straw, and what could have been mud or horse shit.
Someone else was selling wooden bricks presumably to make wooden houses? There was a big horse in a harness who seemed to serve no purpose, but could have been the engine to drive someone’s cart. There were the usual incense, soap, honey, bio-wine sellers.
There was also a tea tent, but not as we know it. It was a tea Tee-pee, with the bottom half missing. Here the great unwashed were winding down further (if that was possible) lolling about on the groundsheet and drinking tea?
I left them all to it and went into the cool of the Cathedral. This is a very wide church, so it is a bit like standing in a whale’s mouth.

Minimal setting up needed except for the lights and the harmonium. There were steps complete with red carpeting already in situ.
This was the last performance and so was to be followed by an American supper, or Auberge Espagnole as it is called over here. This was to be located in the parish rooms, which again doubled as the changing room.

The usual routine of warm up, admire the way our harmonium seems has slightly detuned, get changed, float about a bit, then it was time to file onto the “stage for the last time”.
All I can say is that it we got to the end, missing out some bits along the way.

The usual applause, bows from the soloists etc and we had to do an encore by singing the last piece again.

The acoustics were not good for us, but were ok for the audience. The turn out was reasonably good. One interesting thing was that during the performance some people from the audience would march up to the front and take a flash photograph whilst the soloists were in full flow. I suspect that in the UK the tutts of shame or annoyance from the rest of the audience which would surely have accompanied such a manoeuvre would have driven these moneylenders from the Temple.
Eventually we filed back to the parish rooms, changed and got tucked in to the food and drink.
Once a French man or woman has secured a position around the table from which they can reach food, they stay put. Not like me who takes some and moves away to let others have a chance, and then never gets a chance to reach the table again.
One of the choir members is always banging on about his vin noir. Black wine.
He had been sitting near me during the Toulouse orchestra concert and I had asked him if he would be bringing along his vin noir. Turnd out of course it is not vin noir, but vin noix. Nut wine. We live and learn.
I took a little bit in my plastic cup, but at around 18% proof, and as I would be driving, I just had a little bit.
A lot of the women disapproved of the vin noix, and were tut-tutting. This was of course the cue for the men to launch into their Ariegeois drinking songs.
I moved outside to chat to one of the smokers. A bit later one of the ladies in the choir brought out the bass soloist to chat to me. He turned out to be Scottish, from Edinburgh. He had sung in the St Giles Cathedral choir there for 30 years. I asked him how he made a living. He told me that he had owned a shop on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, but had moved to France 7 years previously, He has set himself up in business as a dealer in antique playing cards, and carries out his business over the internet.
I did not ask him if there was a living to be made from it.
Soon afterwards I headed back home, leaving the noise, heat and the empty plates and bottles behind me.

Oh, I forgot to update you on the Miss France situation. She has been allowed to keep her title. You can now resume normal sleep patterns.

Strippin’ and tippin’

My blog of two days ago has obviously had some repercussions. Eighteen years after the “phenomenal success” of The Chippendales, along with some new additions, the boys are back as a new rebranded group, 'Here Come The Boys'. They describe their new show as a musical with muscles. So that’s another of my ideas for income generation whipped out from under my feet.
Unless… How does the stage name “Rigsby’s Rising Damp” sound? Is it good enough to have the audience screaming for more (in disappointment)?

On the 27th April there will be a tribunal to decide if Cloe, the local lass who is currently Miss France, is to be stripped of her title after continued complaints from the runner-up in the regional heat. The problem seems to be that people on the judging panel must have no connection with the contestants. Cloe’s parents are allegedly connected by way of business with 2 people who were on the panel…… Such an easy mistake to have made.

Some of you may remember late last year, when my neighbour dumped a fetid old mattress on the pavement in front of my house. No? Well to recap. I chucked it back onto their property and It festered there for months while further crap was added to it by them. One morning I got a phone call from the Town hall asking if it was my mattress and was I not aware that if I phoned the council they would make a special trip and collect it for free. Well I dobbed my neighbours right in, and the next day all the items had been collected. I suspect that they council never actually spoke to my neighbours (who are Moroccan), because they are bloody well at it again. It is like the Borrowers but in reverse. The tiny Borrowers collected or borrowed other peoples (s)crap and made use of it, whereas the charming folk next door take stuff that was useful once and chuck it out on the pavement or on to my property. Probably unaware that the Borrowers do not actually exist. Madame put some of their old wood that had fallen off their terrace onto my garden, back onto their terrace today.Anyway, this is the evidence of the dumpee having a dump yesterday. I have not photographed the white metal box or cooker that is now in front of my wall

12.12.2008 Friday – Bitz and pieces

Cliff Richard will not be appearing in the UK Celebrity Big Brother House as his request to have his own personal toilet facilities away from the main house could not be met. What was he thinking of even entering into negotiations with these people?
Shops now have posters in the window to celebrate how proud they are that local girl Chloe has been crowned Miss France. Her village is just over 3 miles away from my house, so she is indeed a local girl.
However all is not well in the French beauty world as one of the contestants in Chloe’s Miss Ariege competition is now complaining that the competition was rigged and that it should have been her and not Chloe who won.
This week I missed the one bit of excitement in town. The secondary school children went on strike and over 150 of them held a demonstration at the Town Hall. They are unhappy about some new educational reforms which are being spoken about.
They were a bit disorganised at this stage and when they set off to their next demonstration point, the Prefecture, the march organisers had to tell them to “Slow down or we’ll be there in less than 5 minutes” and the disruption to normal life would be minimal, reports the local paper.
The paper also intimates that this is a soft introduction for the pupils to their future role in the many French strikes in the adult world. There was also a lot of texting and flirting going on….

6.12.2008 Saturday – Future plans and Miss France

Well here I am in France. My living quarters are now habitable, just some rather expensive external painting to be done, ventillation and dampness issues to sort out.
Thoughts turn to how to make some money. I will need to visit the ANPE (job centre) at some point to register as seeking employment.
A couple of years ago I attended a 20 hour teaching English as a foreign language course over a weekend.
I then started on the follow up 80 hour correspondence course, which for various reasons I have not completed within the required 18 months. I have started reviewing the two work books that I did complete and will phone the company (if it still exists) to find out if I can carry on with the course, and if so, how much it extra it will cost me.
I could then do a 4 or 5 week TESOL or CELTA qualification in the UK or abroad, at a cost of approx £1.5 thousand. Would the outlay be worthwhile?
I also started a personal coaching and a corporate and executive life coaching courses, which I did not complete within the required time span. Should I pursue this / these qualifications at the extra £!k plus that this would cost?
Anyway I will plough on with the teaching english workbook for the moment.
I went for a walk into town in the sunshine to clear my head, if not my ears.The evening the Miss France competition was televised. I went t bed well before the end of the competition, but Chloe Mortaud. the 19 year old local contestant Miss Albigeois Midi–Pyrenees won and will be Miss France 2009!